What is QAnon, and are they serious?

You may have heard passing reference to QAnon recently, probably in relation to anti-mask or anti-lockdown protests, and wondered what it is. Well, the answer probably won't satisfy you very much, but that doesn't mean the movement, if movement it can be called, can be written off as a bunch of harmless cranks.

QAnon is essentially a conspiracy theory, that seems ludicrous at first, or even second  glance, but it is apparently growing and making new connections among far-right wing groups, particularly in Gilead-style Republican America. Its base belief is that there is a shady international cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has been secretly abducting and sexually abusing children, and harvesting their blood to make a serum for eternal youth. 

The conspiracy theory maintains that this cabal, which supposedly includes high-profile individuals like Hillary Clinton and financier George Soros, is part of a secret government, or "deep state", that is controlling American and world affairs behind the scenes. Unlikely as it may seem, Donald Trump is considered by believers to be the knight in shining armour, the saviour that is leading a righteous war against this deep state. Trump, of course, is quite happy to play long with it, and has retweeted several QAnon posts in the past. There are various other ancillary beliefs to QAnon, many of them anti-semitic, and the movement is a deliberately vague, cryptic and ill-defined protean entity that can take on any shape or flavour it sees fit.

It all began in October 2017, on the sketchy social media site 4chan, the work of a single anonymous user labelled "Q". Q claimed to be a secret service operative, and he/she worked to spread a rather random and unlikely conspiracy theory, that appeared out of nowhere during the 2016 US election, that Hilary Clinton was operating a child sex ring out of a Washingto DC pizza parlour. Somehow, Q's posts struck a lodestone of interest, even after Trump was elected, and took advantage of the magical thinking that many far-right and Trump supporters are prone to. The rest, as they say, is history.

In fact, the movement has been getting more and more active on social media in recent months, and has even spread outside its American heartland. Britain is now its second-largest support base, followed by Canada, Australia and Germany. In Britain, Boris Johnson has been hailed as a potential co-saviour, along with Trump.

I know, sounds cracked, eh? And so it is, but its adherents, like the anti-vaxxers and other odd alt-right groups, can be seen popping up at any right-wing protest, and lending their support to all manner of anti-progressive causes, and so it cannot just be ignored. The FBI has gone so far as to identify QAnon as a potential terrorist threat, and you can see why: anyone that divorced from reality could potentially be capable of just about anything. Twitter and Facebook have been busy blocking QAnon-related accounts but, hydra-like, they just pop up again elsewhere.

Some acts of violence have already been linked to the belief, including the mass shooting in Hanau, Germany, in February of this year, and several QAnon supporters are even running as Republican and independent Senate candidates in the upcoming US election, which could conceivably see it move more fully into the real, offline world. Not so funny now, is it?