QAnon started out as one conspiracy theory. But its followers now act more like a virtual cult, worshiping and widely believing in the misinformation that the conspiracy community is causing.
His main conspiracy theories claim that dozens of prominent politicians and celebrities are working in tandem with governments around the world to engage in child sexual abuse. Supporters also believe there is a "deep state" effort to wipe out President Donald Trump.
There is no evidence that what QAnon claims is factual. The
Followers make unsubstantiated allegations, then amplify them with fabricated or out of context evidence posted on social media to support the allegations.
The birth of the anarchic group and its continued infiltration into traditional American life occurred on the tail of the Russian disinformation campaign that targeted the 2016 American elections.
While the Russian campaign had an apparent objective - to influence voters to elect Trump - QAnon is decentralized, having no clear objective outside of its popular slogan, "Question all".
Anyone can create a plot, offer evidence to back it up, and tag it with QAnon hashtags to spread it. But no one is held responsible for the wake of the chaos and the misinformation it leaves behind.
How QAnon started
QAnon's origins are emblematic of how it evolved: an unsubstantiated, out-of-context assertion made to support an allegation, which is easily discredited.
This all goes back to an anonymous and cryptic message of October 28, 2017 on 4chan, an online bulletin board that frequently presents extremist and sectarian content. The individual, whom followers would later call "Q", said that Hillary Clinton would be arrested.
There were no arrests.
But similar messages pushing baseless allegations of "deep state" arrests and actions continued to appear on 4chan. It is not known who was behind the messages, or whether those who followed were posted by the same person - 4chan messages are anonymous.
Believers claim that their "Q" is so well informed because of their request for security clearance in the United States government.
Proponents of QAnon compared the first and subsequent messages to Hansel and Gretel type breadcrumbs, or "drops", as they now call them.
Since then, the group has injected itself into the mainstream by creating communities on Reddit and gaining a foothold on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In a series of videos posted in 2018, QAnon targeted Cemex, a Mexican cement company, because it would own an abandoned camp in Arizona, which conspiracy theorists mistakenly believe to be the location of a human trafficking.
Earlier in 2020, Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks were both targets of QAnon conspiracies.
At the time, CNN contacted Cemex and representatives of Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey, but never received a response.
Believers have claimed on several social media sites that an Oprah house in Boca Raton, Florida, was seized by the police in a sting on child sex trafficking and cluttered with paperwork.
Another person on Twitter published an article, which collected thousands of actions, wrongly claiming that Tom Hanks, who had tested positive for coronavirus in Australia, had in fact been arrested for pedophilia. The post said other celebrities on List A would be arrested soon.
QAnon's conspiracy theories have been further promoted by high profile individuals and organizations. In March 2018, before being fired from her sitcom, actress Roseanne Barr tweeted about the conspiracy theory of pedophilia, alluding to an unsubstantiated claim that President Trump "broke trafficking networks everywhere in the world". Barr then deleted the tweet.
The GOP and QAnon
QAnon almost reached the main Republican Party scene at President Trump's July 31, 2018 rally in Tampa, Florida, where signs saying "We are Q" and "Q" appeared near the front of the crowd when of the president's speech.
Four months later, Vice President Pence posted - and then deleted - a photo on Twitter with a police officer wearing a QAnon patch on his uniform.
And in July 2019, the White House invited a QAnon supporter to an event touted by the White House as a "social media summit" with conservative influencers.
Today, the GOP has three candidates who sympathized or supported the group and who could see themselves in Congress in January: Jo Rae Perkins, candidate for a seat in the United States Senate in Oregon; Marjorie Taylor Greene, congressional candidate for the seat of the 14th district of Georgia; and Lauren Boebert, who defeated a Trump-backed five-year incumbent in the primary election to run for Colorado's 3rd district. The
"Everything I've heard from Q - I hope this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are coming back to conservative values, and that's why that I am, "said Boebert, leader for the seat of the House. said in an interview in May.
Her campaign manager, Sherronna Bishop, told CNN in a statement that despite these comments, Bishop "is not following QAnon".
CNN contacted the Republican National Committee and President Trump's campaign for comments on QAnon and comments from GOP candidates on the group, but had no response.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story distorted the date of a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida. It took place on July 31, 2018.