Dailykos is not a place for conspiracy theories. It’s not a place where we cook up crazy ideas and toss them around willy nilly. It’s not 4chan.
However…
That doesn’t mean we can’t ask a question. It doesn’t mean we can’t consider a possibility. I am not going to spread Qanon nonsense here, but I do think we should be able to consider whether the process and methods used by the Qanon “movement” match the methods used by Russian Intelligence and State Media to influence American elections.
It can’t be conclusively determined since the original posts are apparently anonymous exactly who or what cooked up this mess. It’s very likely that it had nothing to do with Russia, which is the current presumption. But then again, there are some reasons to believe that they just might have something to do with it.
I was having a discussion with an old friend who isn’t necessarily a Democrat or a Republican, but it is someone who has become completely disillusioned with the media. He says both sides are distorting the truth, both sides slant the truth and twist the facts into what they want people to believe.
I happen to believe that those on the right, do far more obvious and devious fact twisting than those on the left. That’s my position and I have ample evidence for it. In that discussion I used Qanon as an example. I guesstimated about about 30% of Republicans are Qanon believers. My friend doubted this, and claimed it was merely a fringe belief that only impacted 1% of the GOP.
Well, after I got off the phone I looked for a poll. I found this one by Dailykos/Civiqs.
QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory about “deep state elites” has extensive support among Republican voters. One in three Republicans (33%) believe that the QAnon theory is mostly true. Another 23% of Republicans say that some parts of the QAnon conspiracy are true. Only 13% of Republicans think that it is not true at all. In contrast, 72% of Democrats say the QAnon conspiracy theory is not true at all.
Awareness of QAnon has grown substantially since one year ago. In July 2019, 35% of Americans had never heard of QAnon -- that number has fallen to 14% now. For Republicans, greater awareness has led to greater support. The percentage of Republicans who believe that the QAnon theory is partially or mostly true has grown from 46% one year ago to 56% today.
My friend doesn’t believe in polls either, so this won't resolve our disagreement, but I do think it’s illustrative of how pervasive and powerful the Qanon phenomenon has become.
The majority of Republicans believe at least some, or most of the claims made by this so-called “Q” are real. I have to believe that the idea that this is giant Russian hoax might go some ways into help “inoculate” some of those who’ve fallen for this tripe. It would also be a major intelligence coup for the Russians, to have over half the GOP under their sway.
Of course, it could also backfire. People who might hear “Russia” in association with Q could very well pack up and close their ears to the argument just like my friend.
Still, there are some things that those of us with open minds should consider.
First, there is that fact that the Q posters have created this persona to generate their posts in a manner that is somewhat similar to that used by Russia GRU operatives to create the persona of Guccifer 2.0.
Soon after the June 2016 announcement by CrowdStrike that the Democratic National Committee's network had been the victim of a long-running breach perpetrated by Russian intelligence agencies, someone going by the name "Guccifer 2.0" suddenly materialized to take credit for the breach. Guccifer 2.0 started leaking internal DNC documents soon after. Intelligence officials and security experts have previously insisted that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact part of a Russian intelligence information operations campaign and not, as the person or persons behind the blog and social media accounts associated with the Guccifer 2.0 identity insisted, a Romanian hacker inspired by the original Guccifer.
Now, the Daily Beast reports that intelligence officials had direct evidence of Guccifer's true identity. One of the individuals maintaining Guccifer 2.0's social media presence forgot to use a virtual private network to access a US-based social media platform, thus leaving an Internet Protocol address located in Moscow in the service's logs. Working from that address, a source told the Daily Beast's Spencer Ackerman and Kevin Poulsen that analysts were able to dig deeper and associate Guccifer 2.0 with a single individual: "a GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow," Paulson and Ackerman reported. (The GRU, or Russian General Main Staff Intelligence Directorate, is Russia's largest foreign intelligence agency.)
The Guccifer 2.0 WordPress and Twitter accounts were hastily launched after the DNC information-gathering campaign was revealed. According to one source Paulson and Ackerman spoke with, operation of the accounts was handed off to a more senior GRU officer with a better command of English—as shown in the evolution of Guccifer 2.0's WordPress posts from October of 2016 to January 2017.
Due to a mistake with their VPN, Guccifer 2.0 was outed. Unfortunately, the anonymous nature of posts on 4Chan make this type of tracing to fully identify “Q” somewhat more difficult. It could be one person, it could be a group of persons. We don’t know and it can be proven either way unless Q outs themselves.
it’s fairly easy to generate leaks and rumors in places like 4Chan and have those percolate out to other individuals who get suckered into the lie. Just as is shown here by Youtuber Ketwolski who plotted to generate a set of false rumors about CBS and the CW and feed them to the so-called “Fandom Menace” of Star Trek/Star Wars haters.
Ketwolski’s plan worked like a charm. The fake rumors he had a friend post on 4Chan were very quickly picked up and seized upon by other youtubers such a Doomcock, MechaRandom, Midnight’s Edge and Nerdrotic. All of whom spend their time spreading negatives rumors about Star Trek and it’s showrunner Alex Kurtzman. They fell for it hook line and sinker. [There is also, as revealed by Ketwolski in his video, the strong similarity between Doomcock’s presentation and a crazed White Supremacist Youtube channel.]
So the mechanics of creating something like “Q” are not very challenging.
The second fact, and this links the “Q” rumors more into the leaks generated by Guccifer 2.0 and wikileaks comes from the Pizzagate rumors.
In the span of a few weeks, a false rumor that Hillary Clinton and her top aides were involved in various crimes snowballed into a wild conspiracy theory that they were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor. The fast evolution of the false theory revealed how a powerful mix of fake news and social media led an armed North Carolina man to investigate the rumors about the pizza place, Comet Ping Pong, last Sunday.
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WikiLeaks began releasing emails hacked from the account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, a month before the election.
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Social media users on a popular Reddit forum dedicated to Donald J. Trump and 4chan’s far-right fringe message board searched the releases for evidence of wrongdoing
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Within the emails were discussions that include the word pizza, including dinner plans between Mr. Podesta and his lobbyist brother, Tony Podesta.
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A participant on 4chan connected the phrase “cheese pizza” to pedophiles, who on chat boards use the initials “c.p.” to denote child pornography.
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Following the use of “pizza,” theorists focused on the Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong. The WikiLeaks emails revealed that John Podesta corresponded with Comet’s owner, James Alefantis, who had connections to Democratic operatives.
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The theory started snowballing, taking on the meme #PizzaGate. Fake news articles emerged and were spread on Twitter and Facebook.
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The false stories swept up neighboring businesses and bands that had played at Comet. Theories about kill rooms, underground tunnels, satanism and even cannibalism emerged in fabricated stories and on social media.
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On Dec. 4, Edgar M. Welch, a 28-year-old from North Carolina, arrived at Comet with a military-style rifle and a handgun. The police said he fired the rifle inside the pizzeria, hurting no one, and surrendered after finding no evidence to support claims of child slaves being held there.
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The shooting did not put the theory to rest. Purveyors of the theory and fake news pointed to the mainstream media as conspirators of a coverup to protect what they said was a crime ring.
So here we have a perfect example of where we start with the stolen emails which were hacked by the GRU leading to the theories of child trafficking, satanism and cannibalism that seems to be at the heart of the Q rumors. They are in fact, exactly the same theory. It’s just that Qanon is a bigger theory and even more crazy than Pizzagate was.
EARLIER THIS SUMMER, I noticed this alarming shift in my Facebook feed. Childhood friends and old high school acquaintances began plastering my timeline with posts referring to a satanic cabal of pedophile elites, including hysterical, unfounded claims about the proliferation of child sex trafficking and cultural or political efforts to “normalize” pedophilia.
During the pandemic, some of the people I grew up with in Colorado had gotten sucked into QAnon, the sprawling and baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that is deemed a domestic terror threat by the FBI. I remembered them as perfectly reasonable people: some liberal, some conservative, but all frozen in my memory as intellectually curious. Now, online and from a distance, I was watching them change. Young, white suburban women, in particular, were falling for a Q-adjacent movement, “Save the Children,” which raises false fears about child sex trafficking through fabricated stories, pastel infographics, and hashtag campaigns.
“When George Floyd cried for his momma everyone ‘felt that,’ now try to imagine 22,000 CHILDREN A DAY crying for their momma and no one hearing them! Please, ‘feel that’ too!! #SaveOurChildren,” read one post liked by nearly a dozen people I went to school with. Other posts incorporated Covid-19 misinformation or advocated against mask-wearing: “Mask or no mask? What we NEED to ask is where the fuck did 8 million children go???” another image read.
It is more than a bit ironic that these Q supporters are so enamored with “Saving the Children” while Trump is systematically separating and kidnapping children from their parents at the border. Deporting the parents, many of whom have subsequently been murdered, and keeping the children in concentration camps where some women have had forced involuntary hysterectomies.
More than 200 people the United States has sent back to El Salvador have been killed or seriously abused — including sexually assaulted and tortured — according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
The group's investigation found that from 2013 to 2019, 138 people were killed and more than 70 others were beaten, sexually assaulted, extorted or tortured after they were sent back to the Central American country.
The report, released Wednesday, highlights the risks Salvadorans face when sent back to a country facing a humanitarian crisis, racked by extreme levels of violence. It emphasizes how efforts in the last few years by the Trump administration to restrict legal immigration — particularly asylum — have hit Salvadorans especially hard.
Why exactly don't they want to “save” those children? Why don't they care about saving those lives?
The third issue is how exactly is Russian state media treating the Q phenomenon? There is a habit for them to coordinate in pushing their messages out in line with Russian intelligence, and although they initially didn’t really respond to the Q rumors, that has changed.
There’s this post on RT: Are dark forces really to blame? So many people believing in conspiracy theories like QAnon reveals a sad truth about the West
We need to talk about these lunatic claims that see sinister hands at work everywhere. Not because they're true, but because of what they demonstrate about our society and the quest for meaning in the age of Covid.
It’s easy to simply dismiss QAnon as deranged. It began in 2017, on the notoriously foul online message board 4chan, when an anonymous user, ‘Q’, posted that Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested. What prompted ‘Q’s’ post was a quip President Donald Trump made during a press conference about a “calm before the storm.” Q’s theory was that a cabal of Satan-worshiping, child-trafficking pedophiles and cannibals, led by Hillary Clinton and others, sought to dominate the world and were plotting against President Trump. ‘Q’ claimed that Trump’s press conference revealed that, at some appointed time in the near future, Trump would unleash ‘The Storm’, destroy the conspiracy, and thus restore America to greatness.
Undaunted by the notable absence of Trump’s ‘Storm’, ‘Q’, and many others have built upon this ridiculousness, which has morphed into an “uber-conspiracy” theory related to Trump and the elections. The posts, which have moved from 4chan on to numerous social media platforms, have attracted thousands of followers.
But it has not been confined simply to those social media platforms. Some QAnon believers have led coordinated harassment campaigns against journalists, rival online communities, celebrities, and liberal politicians. Others have shown up at Trump rallies wearing ‘Q’-themed merchandise. The president has retweeted Twitter accounts related to ‘Q’ or conspiracy theories dozens of times. How aware Trump is of what ‘Q’ is, beyond a movement that supports his presidency on the internet, is unknown.
So they treat Q-anon as a “crazed conspiracy” but then they use how it’s spread in America as a cudgel that slam the “west” for falling for such tripe.
Then there’s this: Covid and QAnon conspiracy theorists are deluded, dangerous and dumb BUT they're created by governments acting conspiratorially
Covid and QAnon conspiracy theorists are hitting the headlines with some outlandish, illogical and potentially dangerous notions. But why do these people exist? Because governments and corporations act conspiratorially.
We all love a good conspiracy theory. Enemy of the State is probably in my top 10 films ever. A masterful blend of action, twists and the Fresh Prince taking on Angelina Jolie’s dad with the help of Lex Luthor. RIP Tony Scott.
It is, however, a film. A work of fiction. Much like most of the theories espoused by the ‘Covid hoax’ devotees and ‘QAnon’ enthusiasts who have, incredibly, garnered a large slice of attention recently, not least when many of them attended anti-lockdown protests in London and Berlin. Oh, and when the president of the United States of America in desperation alluded to ‘people in dark shadows’.
[...]
However, governments do foment conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists exist because governments act conspiratorially – and it’s not always that hidden.
They assassinate people in their own and other countries. They conspire with people to agitate, resist and push for regime change (even the Dalai Lama had a nice six-figure salary from the US as part of its funding of Tibetan resistance). They carry out questionable medical research. They sweep crimes under the carpet if it’s politically convenient. They hand cushy contracts and jobs to their pals. They employ people to manipulate social media (and the people using it). They spy on their citizens. They spy on other countries’ citizens. They turn a blind eye to corporate cover-ups and tax evasion. They fake reasons to go to war.
Oh, and they gently encourage conspiracy theories that conveniently distract from their own failings and ill-doings.
These are things that governments are capable of and actually carry out. Which means it’s absolutely right to question them. As I said, a healthy level of distrust in authority is a must for all, with the emphasis on the word ‘healthy’
So clearly RT has an opinion on “Q” and it’s all our governments fault.
As time has gone on, these types of Qanon postings by Russian State Media have dramatically grown and are being specifically used to help re-elect Trump.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Russian government-supported organizations are playing a small but increasing role amplifying conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon, raising concerns of interference in the November U.S. election.
Academics who study QAnon said there were no signs Russia had a hand in the early days of the movement, which launched in 2017 with anonymous web postings amplified by YouTube videos.
But as QAnon gained adherents and took on new topics - with President Donald Trump as the constant hero waging a misunderstood battle - social media accounts tied to a key Kremlin ally joined in.
In 2019, accounts removed by Twitter and suspected of being controlled by Russia’s Internet Research Agency sent a high volume of tweets tagged with #QAnon and the movement slogan #WWG1WGA, short for Where We Go One, We Go All, said Melanie Smith, head of analysis at social media analysis firm Graphika. The IRA was indicted by Robert Mueller in his election interference prosecution.
More recently, Russian government-backed media RT.com and Sputnik have stepped up coverage of QAnon, which began with a false proclamation Hillary Clinton would be arrested for an undetermined reason and now includes theories about child trafficking by Hollywood elites, the novel coronavirus and more.
Again, no one knows who generated the original Q postings. It’s generally assumed that it wasn’t Russia, however there is the fact that many of these tropes are quite old, some used heavily in Nazi Germany, some dating back centuries, but the most prominent of the anti-Semetic tropes happens to have been published in the Russian novel The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in 1903.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a classic in paranoid, racist literature. Taken by the gullible as the confidential minutes of a Jewish conclave convened in the last years of the nineteenth century, it has been heralded by anti-Semites as proof that Jews are plotting to take over the world. Since its contrivance around the turn of the century by the Russian Okhrana, or Czarist secret police, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" has taken root in bigoted, frightened minds around the world.
The booklet’s twenty-four sections spell out the alleged secret plans of Jewish leaders seeking to attain world domination. They represent the most notorious political forgery of modern times. Although thoroughly discredited, the document is still being used to stir up anti-Semitic hatred.
Serge Nilus, a little-known Czarist official in Moscow, edited several editions of the Protocols, each with a different account of how he discovered the document. In his 1911 edition Nilus claimed that his source had stolen the document from (a non-existent) Zionist headquarters in France. Other "editors" of the Protocols maintained that the document was read at the First Zionist Congress held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, frustrated supporters of the ousted Czar rescued the document from obscurity in order to discredit the Bolsheviks. The emigre Czarists portrayed the Revolution as part of a Jewish plot to enslave the world, and pointed to the Protocols as the blueprint of that plan. The scheme of yoking the Protocols to the Bolshevik Revolution not only led to the allegation of a Judeo-Communist conspiracy, but promoted the forgery internationally. In later years, vicious Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda under Stalin and others echoed the conspiracy mythology of the Protocols.
So in summary we have a similar anonymous source for the Q rumors, as we’ve seen with Guccifer 2.0. We have essentially the same rumor in Q as we saw in Pizzagate and in the Protocols of Zion, which is a Russian novel. And we have Russia State media and the Russian troll farm now pushing the Q rumors because, well, why wouldn’t they do so to sow discord in the US and also help Trump in his re-election? I admit this is a circumstantial case that Q may have been started or supported by the Russians from the start, but it’s not totally without merit.
As FBI Director Wray stated under oath that there are “very active” efforts by Russia to influence our election against Biden.
“The intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections, primarily through what we would call malign foreign influence,” the FBI Director told members of the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday.
“But we certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020, through what I would call more than malign foreign influence side of things – social media, use of proxies, state media, online journals, etc. – an effort to both sow divisiveness and discord and, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to primarily, to denigrate Vice President Biden, and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
Also the CIA has stated that Putin and senior Kremlin officials are probably “directing" the negative message campaign against Biden.
Two unnamed sources told the Washington Post the Kremlin was attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election through a Ukrainian parliamentarian with ties to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani
“We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. vice president, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November,” the report states in its first line
The anti-Biden rumors pushed by Ukrainian MPs who are really Russian Intelligence Assets to Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson completely flamed out with a lame rehash of allegations that fail to prove that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did anything wrong.
But that doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped.
Even if Q wasn’t originally a Russian intelligence operation, it is now. And that’s something that should give all of us pause.