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JN INVESTIGATION: Inside QAnon – Comfort through conspiracy
A secret cabal controlling the world? Now where have we heard that one before
With his long white hair, David Icke is easy to spot even by those at the back, as he rises to the platform. Handed the mic, the 68-year-old British conspiracy theorist, a Holocaust-denying advocate of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, seems to be in the mood. At his feet, thousands of mask-less fans. It is 29 August 2020, and they are packed into Trafalgar Square to protest coronavirus lockdown measures.
“This world is controlled by a tiny few people,” he begins, barely five minutes into his set. A few minutes later, he has the crowd (including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers) manically chanting “Freedom!” Fascism, in his telling, comes dressed as safety.
A woman holds a QAnon sign at a protest in Washington, DC
With his long white hair, David Icke is easy to spot even by those at the back, as he rises to the platform. Handed the mic, the 68-year-old British conspiracy theorist, a Holocaust-denying advocate of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, seems to be in the mood. At his feet, thousands of mask-less fans. It is 29 August 2020, and they are packed into Trafalgar Square to protest coronavirus lockdown measures.
“This world is controlled by a tiny few people,” he begins, barely five minutes into his set. A few minutes later, he has the crowd (including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers) manically chanting “Freedom!” Fascism, in his telling, comes dressed as safety.
As the cameras span the crowd listening to talk of “the illusion pandemic” and of “contagion fear designed to control you”, one letter stands out amid the banners and placards – Q. It refers to a conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Settle in.
QAnon is the belief that US President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a shadowy ‘cabal’ that controls governments, banks, entertainment and all manner of industries from pharmaceuticals to agriculture, keeping people serfs.
This cabal is a satanic “deep state” whose members include billionaire liberal philanthropists, left-wing A-listers and Democrats. All are engaged in paedophilia and human trafficking, harvesting the blood of abused children for a life-extending chemical compound. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) politely describes it as “remarkably elaborate”.
It began in 2017 with anonymous encrypted posts from the person or entity ‘Q’ on chat site 4chan and continues today on successor site 8kun. Believers think ‘Q’ is someone in the top echelons of government, with high-level security clearance. What started as a trolling and disinformation account has grown. The ADL estimates that there are now “tens of thousands” of Qs, mainly US-based adherents. Some are even running for political office – and succeeding.
It need hardly be said that aspects of QAnon lore mirror longstanding antisemitic tropes. “The belief that a global ‘cabal’ is involved in rituals of child sacrifice has its roots in the antisemitic trope of blood libel, the theory that Jews murder Christian children for ritualistic purposes,” says the ADL.
“In addition, QAnon has a deep-seated hatred for [Hungarian Jewish philanthropist] George Soros, a name that has become synonymous with perceived Jewish meddling in global affairs, and QAnon’s ongoing obsession with a global elite of bankers also has deeply antisemitic undertones.”
In May, the FBI identified QAnon as an “anti-government, identity-based fringe political conspiracy theory very likely to motivate domestic extremists to commit criminal, sometimes violent activity”. Trump calls Q adherents “patriots”.
Critics say he is playing with fire – conspiracies have already led to Jews being killed. On 27 October 2018, a man killed 11 and injured several others at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, having just reposted an online cartoon depicting the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ conspiracy theory and saying the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people”, adding: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
QAnon now stretches into mainstream sites such as Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and Discord, and pushes a welter of conspiracies in other areas, such as Covid-19 and vaccinations. Some were quick to close in on it, others less so.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/jn-investigation-inside-qanon-comfort-through-conspiracy/