The Rise of QAnon
Over three years, the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon has spread from the outskirts of the internet into the mainstream. And by next year, it will most likely make its way into Congress: A QAnon supporter is almost sure to be elected after winning a Republican House primary runoff in Georgia this week.
It’s a remarkable rise for a group that believes in, among other things, a ring of Satan-worshiping, child-trafficking criminals led by prominent Democrats. We spoke with our colleague Kevin Roose, who has covered QAnon extensively, to get a sense of how the movement expanded its reach.
Social media platforms are a big part of it. “It’s still very fringe in terms of its ideology, but not in terms of its scale,” Kevin said. “We’ve seen QAnon Facebook groups swell to hundreds of thousands of members, and they are routinely driving conversations on social media.”
This week, NBC News reported that an internal Facebook investigation found thousands of QAnon-supporting groups and pages with millions of members and followers. Twitter permanently suspended thousands of accounts associated with the movement last month. And TikTok has blocked searches for QAnon-related hashtags.
