QAnon conspiracy theory explodes ahead of the election

The QAnon conspiracy theory is growing — and being weaponized to boost President Trump ahead of the election.

Why it matters: What began as a single conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to child trafficking four years ago is now part of a convoluted web of falsehoods being spread to undermine Joe Biden.

The big picture: In a year of unrest and expected election turmoil, experts are concerned that belief in QAnon could be another instigator of violence in some communities if Trump loses in November.

"That's the question that keeps me up at night," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen of the cyber threat intelligence firm GroupSense, which specializes in disinformation.

Tracking these kind of local, potentially militant groups is difficult, he said, because recruitment is often both online — where most of the QAnon community lives — and offline.

By the numbers: New polling provided exclusively to Axios by HOPE not hate, a U.K.-based anti-extremism nonprofit, found more than a third of Americans saying that they believe it's at least probably true that elites "are secretly engaging in large scale child trafficking and abuse."

10% said they are at least “soft” supporters of QAnon, specifically.

The QAnon theory is based on a sprawling online network that analyzes cryptic messages in remote online forums by an anonymous figure “Q," who claims, without evidence, to be a Trump administration official with high-level clearance.

https://www.axios.com/qanon-grows-2020-election-0f2d7be2-4ae8-4fc1-b5d1-727b77498165.html