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https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wqm7/ron-watkins-meet-the-dangerous-qanon-figure-doing-whatever-it-takes-to-win-trumps-approval
As the administrator of 8kun — previously known as 8chan — Watkins is seen by many experts as being instrumental in the perpetuation of the QAnon cult, a movement that has destroyed families and led to real-world violence, including murder.
But in the last month, Watkins has sought to step out of the shadow of QAnon and forge his own identity as a star witness willing to say whatever it takes to win the approval of Trumpworld.
On Election Day last month, Q, the anonymous persona behind the QAnon cult, posted a generic update including a quote from Abraham Lincoln and a short message: “Together we win.”
On the same day, Watkins announced that he was stepping down as administrator of 8kun, the fringe message board when Q posts their updates.
When asked why he was stepping down, Watkins at the time told VICE News that he “fell in love with woodworking and plan on focusing all my efforts into mastering it. Also want to finish a book I’m writing about constitutional law.”
And while Watkins has made some references to woodworking in his public tweets since the election, the vast majority of his posts show him positioning himself as something of a conspiracy whisperer to the growing ranks of right-wing figures and groups that have aligned themselves with Trump and his outlandish and baseless claims of election fraud.
Watkins, who now lives in Japan, has tweeted incessantly during the last six weeks, jumping from one conspiracy theory to the next.
His most influential campaign has been his attempts to smear Dominion Voting Systems. Earlier this month, Watkins posted a video of a Dominion employee using one of the company’s voting machines, falsely claiming the employee was manipulating results. As a result, the 20-year-old employee received death threats and someone hung a noose outside his house.
But such incidents didn’t stop Watkins from becoming a star in the alternate universe that sprouted up to support Trump’s wild allegations of widespread vote-rigging.