Can't stop it

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/qanon-twitter-ban-evasion/

Last week, Twitter announced that after over two years of almost unchecked growth by the QAnon conspiracy theory, it was taking steps to crack down on the activity of believers, including targeted harassment and sharing of links to QAnon websites.

The effectiveness of that measure, however, is questionable. Major promoters, supposedly banned, are still rampantly posting.

QAnon, which holds that a military intelligence team is using the message board 8kun to leak clues to their upcoming (and forever delayed) purge of deep state sex traffickers, has grown explosively on Twitter since late 2017.

Twitter has outsized importance in the Q movement, as popular QAnon promoters use it to decode Q’s posts, share videos and memes, alert Q acolytes to possible deep state “comms” hidden in tweets, and attempt to win over new converts.

From March to June 2020, there were over 12 million tweets that mentioned Q or one of its associated catchphrases, according to a new report from extremism research think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Many of these tweets are also part of direct harassment swarms carried out against high-profile users who have fallen afoul of the Q movement, including Chrissy Teigen, Lady Gaga, Patton Oswalt, and Tom Hanks. And since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Twitter has seen a massive spike in QAnon disinformation and harassment, driven by the unchecked spread of coronavirus conspiracy theory videos like “Plandemic.” And just weeks earlier, Twitter was part of an explosive, QAnon-driven conspiracy theory that furniture giant Wayfair was using its website to sell missing children to traffickers.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/masks-sharia-qanon-spreading-anti-muslim-ideology-coronavirus-opposition

A secret plan orchestrated by Muslims to bring Sharia law to the United States by way of coronavirus restrictions is the latest theory backed by the increasingly popular QAnon conspiracy.

The movement, believers in a collection of far-right conspiracy theories, is based on the idea that a network of "deep state" actors is working behind the scenes to control the world. In 2019, an FBI field office in Pheonix, Arizona, was so concerned, it deemed the group a domestic terrorism threat.

Despite its wildly xenophobic rhetoric and threat designation, the group has gained more traction in recent months, with at least 11 Republican congressional candidates expressing support.

Heavily backed by a fringe section of US President Donald Trump's base, QAnon believers have been further united by opposition to coronavirus restrictions and galvanised by this year's presidential election.

Coupling the group's hatred of coronavirus restrictions with its anti-Muslim rhetoric, one of QAnon's most recent memes depicts an imagined trajectory that takes place over the course of four years. The first panel in the image shows a woman wearing a surgical mask, the next a cloth mask, and so on, before ending with a woman wearing a full burka, a covering often worn by Muslim women in the Gulf.