Andrew Griffin
Wed, January 20, 2021
Followers had hoped for mass arrests of their enemies and the final proof that their faith in the unknown person named Q and Donald Trump had not been misplaced. But the largely uneventful inauguration seemed to be the final blow for the theory – leaving many upset and angry, even as others struggled to find new ways to keep the theory going.
The baseless QAnon theory suggests, without any evidence, that argued that a group of powerful, Satan-worshipping people running a cannibalistic child sexual abuse ring. It argues that Donald Trump is planning to take down the group – and that those plans could not be revealed publicly, but have been disseminated by an anonymous individual named Q.
In a series of posts, originally on website 4chan, Q laid out those theories in cryptic language. As those posts accrued, so did large numbers of followers, many of whom attended Mr Trump’s rallies and received some encouragement from him and his family.
QAnon’s adherents came to believe that the cabal would eventually be exposed and arrested in an event known as the Storm and orchestrated by Mr Trump. But despite repeated predictions of dates for such an event – including an initial indication from the person going by the name Q that it would happen in 2017 – and an insistence that it would eventually arrive, nothing happened.
The inauguration and Mr Trump’s final day in office came to symbolise for many the final opportunity for the beliefs within QAnon to be realised. Followers suggested that the ceremony would not go as planned: that Mr Trump was gathering people together so that they could be more easily arrested, for example, or even that Joe Biden was working on behalf of his predecessor.
Even in the final hours of Mr Trump’s presidency, followers were looking for clues. His final speech as president, for instance, was made in front of 17 American flags – taken by some to be a reference to the fact that Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet.
As the inauguration came and went, however, and Mr Trump left for Mar-a-Lago, it became clear that no such storm was coming.
The inauguration was just the end of a run of events that served to undermine the QAnon narrative, and the view of Donald Trump as powerful and secretly in control that underpinned it. Since Mr Trump lost the election, posts by Q have been few and far between, leaving followers with little guidance for how to understand damaging events such as Mr Trump’s response to the attacks on the Capitol and his departure from the White House.
That silence from the person or people at the heart of the conspiracy theory continued on Wednesday. The Q account has not posted since December, leaving its more active and well-followed adherents to fill in the gaps and attempt to flesh out the reasons that the predictions had not come true, which led to the belief that the Storm might arrive during the inauguration.
The uneventful inauguration left many of those who had believed that some cataclysmic event was coming frustrated and lost. Many suggested that it was the final straw of their trust in the conspiracy theory – even while others found new ways to believe.
One prominent Q supporter, for instance, posted on right-wing social network Gab to suggest that it was an “exciting day”. “Don’t worry about what happens at 12pm,” they wrote, referring to the Tim eo fate inauguration – “watch what happens after that”.
Followers picked up on some indications from Mr Trump and his circle that they would not be going away as a cause for hope. Mr Trump ended his final speech, in front of those 17 flags, by telling supporters to “have a good life” and saying “we will see you soon”, which some adherents took as an indication that all was not lost.
Others suggested that the Storm had actually arrived, and people had perhaps not noticed it. Another prominent account posted a picture of a large crowd at one of Mr Trump’s rallies, captioning it with the hashtag #TheStormIsHere.
Others however, seemed lost – finding themselves angry or upset after the central tenets of the conspiracy theory appeared to have come undone.
“Where’s the damn storm?" wrote one person in a large QAnon supporting Telegram group.
“I want to puke," another wrote.
“Sad and confused,” one follower wrote, seemingly summing up many followers’ feelings. “Sick to my stomach."
Even an account belonging to Ron Watkins – who has been central to the QAnon mythology and run the website, 8kun, on which much of its material has been disseminated – suggested that people should give up and move on.
“We gave it our all,” he wrote on Telegram. "Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able. We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution regardless of whether or not we agree with the specifics or details regarding officials who are sworn in.
“As we enter into the next administration please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.”
Inauguration sows doubt among QAnon conspiracy theorists
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, AMANDA SEITZ and DAVID KLEPPER
Wed, January 20, 2021
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — For years, legions of QAnon conspiracy theory adherents encouraged one another to “trust the plan" as they waited for the day when President Donald Trump would orchestrate mass arrests, military tribunals and executions of his Satan-worshipping, child-sacrificing enemies.
Keeping the faith wasn’t easy when Inauguration Day didn’t usher in “The Storm,” the apocalyptic reckoning that they have believed was coming for prominent Democrats and Trump’s “deep state” foes. QAnon followers grappled with anger, confusion and disappointment Wednesday as President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
Some believers found a way to twist the conspiracy theory's convoluted narrative to fit their belief that Biden’s victory was an illusion and that Trump would secure a second term in office. Others clung to the notion that Trump will remain a “shadow president” during Biden's term. Some even floated the idea that the inauguration ceremony was computer-generated or that Biden himself could be the mysterious “Q,” who is purportedly a government insider posting cryptic clues about the conspiracy.
For many others, however, Trump’s departure sowed doubt.
“I am so scared right now, I really feel nothing is going to happen now,” one poster wrote on a Telegram channel popular with QAnon believers. “I’m just devastated.”
Mike Rothschild, author of a forthcoming book on QAnon called “The Storm is Upon Us,” said it’s too early to gauge whether the wave of disillusionment that swept through the QAnon ranks Wednesday is a turning point or a fleeting setback for the movement.
“I think these people have given up too much and sacrificed too much in their families and in their personal lives,” he said. “They have believed this so completely that to simply walk away from it is just not in the realm of reality for most of these people.”
On Wednesday, as it became obvious that Biden’s inauguration would proceed, many QAnon message boards and online groups were bombarded by hecklers and trolls making fun of the conspiracy. Some longtime QAnon posters said they planned to step away from social media, if only temporarily.
“Trump has said, ‘THE BEST IS YET TO COME.’ I’m not giving up,” Telegram user Qtah wrote in an announcement to his 30,000 subscribers that he was taking a social media break.
Some groups seized the moment to try to recruit disillusioned QAnon supporters to white supremacy and other far-right neofascist movements like the Proud Boys. On Wednesday, for example, an anonymous poster on 4chan posited in a thread that “this would be the perfect time to start posting Nat Soc propaganda in Q anon groups. Clearly, this is a very low point for Q believers, and once people have been broken, they will look for ways to cling back to hope again.” Nat Soc stands for national socialism, commonly referred to as Nazism.
Although Facebook and Twitter platforms vowed last year to rid their sites of QAnon, accounts with thousands of loyal followers remained until this month, when the tech companies finally disabled thousands of users who used violent rhetoric to encourage protests of the election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Twitter announced it had suspended more than 70,000 QAnon accounts in the days following the riots. Facebook, meanwhile disbanded more than 57,000 pages, groups, Facebook profiles and Instagram accounts this month. Trump also was barred from using his Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.
The crackdown sent some of the conspiracy theory’s most ardent promoters fleeing to less populated social media sites like MeWe and the Telegram messaging app, where they quickly raked in thousands of followers.
But the social media companies’ suspensions paralyzed QAnon chatter on the sites, with mentions of popular QAnon hashtags like #FightforTrump and #HoldTheLine declined by roughly 90%, according to an analysis by media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
Other QAnon believers still found ways to promote their message on Facebook and Twitter, urging followers to hold out hope that Trump would find a way to stay in office or expose the “deep state” network of government leaders who they believe operate a child sex trafficking ring.
“This presidential inauguration that we’re going to see coming up ... I’m telling you it’s going to be the biggest thing we’ve ever seen in the history of the United States,” one pro-Trump singer, who promotes QAnon conspiracy theories, warned in a Facebook video viewed more than 350,000 times since Monday.
But the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden came and went Wednesday.
Among the most notable defectors appeared to be Ron Watkins, a prominent promoter of election fraud conspiracy theories who helps run an online messaging board where QAnon conspiracy theories run wild.
“We gave it our all,” Watkins wrote in a Telegram post, minutes after Biden was sworn into office. “Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able.”
Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher who co-hosts The QAnon Anonymous Podcast under his pseudonym, said Watkins encouraged Trump supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol riots.
“He did a lot of damage to a lot of people,” he said. “He’s responsible for a lot of pain.”
Other QAnon followers spent their time online Wednesday calling Biden an illegitimate president and accusing Democrats of pulling off voter fraud. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed support for the conspiracy theories, called for Biden’s impeachment across her Twitter, Facebook and Telegram accounts as the new president was sworn in.
Other followers continued to hunt for clues that QAnon prophecies would be fulfilled, with several social media posts noting that Trump's speech Wednesday was delivered in front of 17 American flags — a significant number to QAnon conspiracy theorists because “Q” is the 17th letter of the alphabet.
“I believe the game is still being played this is not over!” one QAnon user wrote to his 26,000 Telegram followers moments after Biden took office.
__ Seitz reported from Chicago and Klepper reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press reporter Garance Burke in San Francisco and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center Investigations Lab and the Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this report.
'We all just got played': Some QAnon followers lose hope
Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny
Wed, January 20, 2021
Some QAnon conspiracy theorists, in public and private internet forums and chat rooms, were despondent Wednesday as their prophecy of an Inauguration Day coup to keep Donald Trump in power failed again as President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
The situation left some QAnon adherents with no choice but to write off the conspiracy theory entirely, but others continued to maintain that it was still developing.
QAnon supporters believed Wednesday's inauguration was an elaborate trap set by the former president, wherein Democrats would be rounded up and executed while Trump retained power. Various other doomsdays theorized by the QAnon community have also come and gone without incident.
But in contrast with the events of those days, Biden's inauguration leaves the community with little daylight. As their predictions failed to come true, radicalized QAnon members expressed their sense of betrayal on messaging apps like Telegram and forums named after their failed doomsday scenario, The Great Awakening.
While Biden took the oath, a top post on a QAnon forum read "I don't think this is supposed to happen" and wondered, "How long does it take the fed to run up the stairs and arrest him?"
Other users became immediately dejected, realizing that their dreams of a bloody coup were not going to be realized.
"Anyone else feeling beyond let down?" a top post on a popular QAnon forum read. "It's like being a kid and seeing the big gift under the tree thinking it is exactly what you want only to open it and realize it was a lump of coal."
One of the largest QAnon groups on Telegram closed comments to let everyone "take a breather" after Biden's inauguration. When it reopened after it was accused of censorship, thousands of users expressed a range of reactions: confusion and realization that QAnon was in fact a hoax, as well as renewed commitment to the conspiracy theory, despite its unreliability.
Ron Watkins, the former administrator for the message board and QAnon hub 8kun and a major force behind false conspiracy theories surrounding the election results, seemed to capitulate, posting a note to his more than 100,000 followers: "We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able."
QAnon influencers fled to fringe apps like Telegram and Gab after years of unbridled growth on larger platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, which banned QAnon accounts and content last year. Facebook reported Tuesday that it had removed 60,000 pages, groups and accounts that had promoted the conspiracy theory since November.
Some QAnon followers spent weeks preparing for a nationwide blackout starting at noon on Inauguration Day, warning friends and family in text chains and Facebook messages to buy CB radios and stock up on food. They believed Trump would announce martial law through the Emergency Alert System before carrying out mass arrests.
Travis View, who hosts the conspiracy-debunking podcast QAnon Anonymous, said those who make money on the conspiracy theory are having a harder time persuading adherents to keep the faith after such a spectacularly wrong prediction.
"QAnon influencers who have built large audiences over the past three years continue to encourage their audiences to 'trust the plan,'" View said. "Many rank-and-file QAnon followers are expressing anger and disillusionment."
Some QAnon followers stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including a man wearing a QAnon shirt, while leading a pack of protesters toward the Senate chamber.
In QAnon chats captured by the fact-checking technology company Logically.AI and reviewed by NBC News, QAnon supporters drew hard lines shortly before the inauguration began and immediately felt embarrassed when the coup did not occur.
"God help us we're beyond ready. If nothing happens I will no longer believe in anything," one supporter said at the beginning of inauguration.
"We all just got played," another said moments later.
Logically.AI researcher Nick Backovic said that while it does appear that many QAnon followers are giving up after this last failed prophecy, he has seen white supremacist recruiters "raid" QAnon groups with the explicit goal of recruiting disillusioned and hopeless conspiracy theorists.
"There are lots of people feeling shocked, cheated and angry. As scary as that is on its own, it's the rest I'm most worried about," Backovic said. "We're seeing a lot of neo-Nazis preying on the potentially disenchanted Q people."
In the days after the Capitol riots, white supremacist groups expressly targeted "Parler refugees," or Trump fans who they believed could be radicalized after the conservative social media platform Parler was at least temporarily shut down and QAnon was banned from Twitter and Facebook.
"Focus less on trying to red pill [or recruit] them on WW2 and more on how to make them angrier about the election and the new Democrat regime," read a white supremacist recruitment message on Telegram. "Heighten their burning hatred of injustice."
QAnon believers are realizing their entire conspiracy was a hoax
as Biden is sworn in
Kathryn Krawczyk
Wed, January 20, 2021
President Biden has taken office, former President Donald Trump is in Florida, and the U.S. still hasn't seen a mass arrests of Democrats or a nationwide blackout.
All of these facts were shocking for some followers of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, as they thought and hoped that Trump would somehow seize permanent power on Wednesday, NBC News reports. But as Biden was sworn in without a hitch, QAnon message boards lit up with followers who realized a violent overthrow of the government wasn't about to happen, that Trump had no secret plans to somehow stay in office, and that they'd been wrong for months, if not years.
Even Ron Watkins, the administrator of the extremist message board 8kun who may have even originated QAnon, posted a last-ditch call for unity that didn't acknowledge the harmful conspiracy theories he'd allowed to spread for years.
Still, just as the many flaws in QAnon's past predictions failed to dissuade supporters, some believers are continuing to make excuses for Wednesday's events and suggesting some sort of overthrow is still possible.
Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday marks not only the historic beginning of a new presidency, but also, for countless Americans, the devastating end of a years long grift.
For believers of QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that holds Donald Trump as a deity-like figure secretly battling a “deep state” cabal of pedophiles who control the government, things weren’t supposed to go down this way. Month after month, year after year, they had been told by “Q,” the group’s shadowy online leader, and Q’s army of social media influencers, that a symbolic “storm” was coming. The mythology held that on Wednesday, at long last, the Bidens, Obamas and Clintons would be rounded up and executed for child sex trafficking, treason and other crimes. Trump, having finally conquered evil, would remain in power.
This was the moment they had desperately been waiting for.
Inside digital safe havens for far-right extremists, such as Gab and Telegram, massive QAnon groups turned into virtual watch parties reacting to Wednesday’s ceremony in real time. As the event began, members could hardly contain their joy — or their desire for bloodshed.
“WELCOME TO THE GRAND FINALE!!!” someone cheered in a 185,000-member Gab group. “Anyone else wanna puke with excitement?!?!?!” another person asked amid a rapid stream of messages coursing through a 34,000-member Telegram channel. Others salivated over the idea of decapitations and sexual violence against prominent Democrats. Several messages were too grotesque to publish.
By 11:45 a.m., though, as Kamala Harris took her vice presidential oath of office, the crowds grew anxious.
“Well this popcorn just got cold,” one QAnon supporter wrote. “When do the arrests start??” another questioned. Still, they continued clinging to hope while counting down the minutes until their long-awaited “great awakening.”
But as noon arrived, and a grinning Biden placed his hand on a Bible to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, reality came crashing down.
“I can’t stop crying. Fuck. Why?” one person pleaded. “It’s over,” another conceded. Some wondered how they could possibly mend their broken relationships with the loved ones they’d pushed away over their obsessions with Q.
Like a flipped switch, the attitude inside online QAnon communities shifted from glee to shock and misery: “NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED!!!”; “So now we have proof Q was total bullshit”; “I feel sick, disgusted and disappointed”; “Have we been duped???”; “You played us all”; “HOW COULD WE BELIEVE THIS FOR SO LONG? ARE WE ALL IDIOTS?”
Meanwhile, several QAnon loyalists performed medal-worthy mental gymnastics to keep their delusion alive. A few suggested that the video of Biden becoming president was a deepfake and that he was actually locked away behind bars as it played across the nation. Others posited that Biden himself had in fact been working with Trump to dismantle the deep state all along, and would be the one to sic the military on the supposed traitors. Many simply pleaded with each other to stay patient: “Q wouldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t let us down. Don’t lose hope.”
But even some of QAnon’s most prominent influencers reluctantly acknowledged that it was time to move on. MelQ, a major QAnon leader, turned off commenting in her Telegram channel as Biden’s swearing-in drew nearer and members appeared to lose faith, in order to “have everyone take a breather.” But once the ceremony was complete, she changed her tune: “Ok let it all out,” she wrote, later adding, “We’ll get through anything together.”
Ron Watkins, the former administrator of 8kun — a platform that has long been vital to Q’s communication with believers — also pulled the plug: “We gave it our all,” he told his nearly 120,000 Telegram subscribers. “Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able.”
Even Joe M, one of the earliest and most widely known Q backers, had hinted days ago that QAnon could be a ruse: “Next week, either Q turns out to be an elaborate well-intentioned hoax … or we are all about to watch the Red Sea part and the unfolding of a new biblical-level chapter in human civilization,” he wrote on Jan. 16. But on Wednesday afternoon, he wasn’t ready to accept defeat: “My faith is not in Q, or ‘The Plan’. My faith is in red-blooded, proud and tenacious Americans and everything they have always stood for,” he assured the tens of thousands of users in his Telegram channel. “No matter how dark today may feel, that faith is unbreakable.”
To be sure, this isn’t the end of QAnon or the immense damage it has inflicted on this country. The movement, which the FBI considers to be a domestic terrorist threat, has already evolved and regrouped to string its members along time and time again, and it has planted deep roots in an array of other communities: yoga lovers, church groups, school classrooms, anti-vax networks — the list goes on.
QAnon’s mass radicalization of Americans is part of Trump’s legacy. Addressing it will likely be one of the Biden administration’s greatest challenges.
It’s unclear where the conspiracy theory goes from here; many ardent supporters are vowing to keep marching forward, undeterred. For today, though, the group is at a loss.
“WE’VE BEEN SCAMMED INTO BELIEVING Q!!!” a Telegram user declared.
“WHAT NOW?!?!?!”
Related...
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Feeling Betrayed, Far-Right Extremists Have A New Message For Trump: 'Get Out Of Our Way'
Joe Biden Sworn In As 46th President Of The United States
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
