Experts who track extremist ideologies and movements as well as domestic terrorism in the U.S. say QAnon is a unique and unpredictable new strain of extremism in America's far-right political landscape.
The conspiracy theory imagines that President Donald Trump is secretly battling a global network of evil elites, Democrats, celebrities and their "deep state" bureaucratic counterparts -- a dizzying conspiratorial alliance of thousands of American citizens who, behind closed doors, are believed to be closeted Satan-worshipping pedophiles who traffic, abuse and sacrifice children, and their enablers.
Past and present far-right extremist movements in the U.S. are "much more anti-government in their perspective," said Donald Haider-Markel, a University of Kansas political science professor who studies domestic extremism.
"What's weird about today is that if they are anti-government like QAnon, it's about a 'deep state,' this second government," he said. "Typically, on the far right, they're wildly opposed to a strong federal government. But this doesn't look like that. This is, in fact, a defense of what they see as their government."
For nearly three years, QAnon followers have been feverishly deciphering thousands of cryptic clues and predictions posted online by the shadowy persona of "Q" at the center of a metastasizing movement that experts say is the first far-right extremist conspiracy theory in the modern era to penetrate mainstream American culture and Washington politics.
Yet, a consensus of leading researchers and critics who study and debunk QAnon disinformation told ABC News that a key to identifying "Q" has been hiding in plain sight for years -- on a pig farm south of Manila in the Philippines -- at least until recently.
The rapid online growth of QAnon since early spring -- and a series of trolling incidents that surged through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok before those platforms began banning QAnon groups and hashtags this summer -- has sharpened focus on the forces behind this alternative reality game-like phenomenon.
At least 24 candidates who have "endorsed or given credence to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content" -- 22 Republicans and two independents -- have secured a spot on the ballot in the 2020 congressional elections, according to the media watchdog Media Matters, though it remains unclear how many could actually win their races. Last month, one candidate who pollsters say is almost certain to win her heavily GOP district in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared to rescind her previous support for QAnon, telling Fox News that "once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path."
People who believe in QAnon conspiracies have also been associated with a number of strange and disconcerting real-life incidents in recent years, including a man using an armored truck to block traffic on the Hoover Dam in 2018, and another man accused of fatally shooting alleged New York Gambino mob boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali last year because, according to court records, he believed Cali that was part of the "deep state." In June, a New York judge found the suspect mentally unfit for trial and transferred to a mental health facility for further evaluation, the Staten Island Advance reported.
Haider-Markel and other experts said QAnon's penetration of mainstream American culture and politics is unprecedented in the modern political era for a far-right extremist conspiracy theory.
"The closest thing I could compare it to is [that] this is the way anti-Communism spread," he said. "Certainly, many people wouldn't call that extremism, but that brand developed its own extremism, whether it be the John Birch Society or the tactics of McCarthyism in the U.S. Senate. But that... all-or-nothing anti-Communism in the context of the Cold War really is the closest thing to compare this to."
At the start of the Cold War in the 1950s, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society were both at the forefront of a hunt for Soviet spies and Communist-sympathizers in America which at times verged on paranoia, a period scholars describe as the nation’s second “Red scare” of the 20th century.
QAnon: Trump Embraces Far-Right “Deep State” Conspiracy Theory Deemed a Threat by FBI
As the Republican National Convention gets underway this week, we look athow the party has openly embraced the far-right conspiracy theory known asQAnon, which claims, among other things, that President Trump is secretly atwar with a deep state cabal of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sextrafficking operation. Trump has retweeted messages from supporters of theconspiracy theory and recently spoke publicly about it for the first time,describing QAnon believers as “people that love our country.” “At this point,it’s reached full spread, that we really can’t ignore it anymore,” says AngeloCarusone, president of Media Matters, who notes 20 “full QAnon adherents” areon the ballot in November.
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AMET:
