The anonymous leader of QAnon, known simply as “Q,” has been blamed for coming up with right-wing conspiracies and encouraging its followers to commit acts of violence like storming the Capitol building Jan. 6. However, Q hasn’t posted in three months.
QAnon, a loosely connected group of people that believe an elite ring of cannibalistic pedophiles are running a worldwide sex trafficking ring and were plotting against former President Donald Trump while in office, came under increased scrutiny following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. (RELATED: Majority Of Americans See QAnon Conspiracy Theory As ‘Very Bad’ For The Country)
“Followers of the movement participated in the deadly Capitol riot in January, and other QAnon believers have been charged with violent crimes, including kidnappings, assassination plots and the 2019 murder of a mafia boss in New York,” the New York Times reported. U.S. Capitol Police braced for a violent attack March 4 by unnamed militia groups, and the media pointed to QAnon followers who believed that March 4 was Trump’s true inauguration day. However, March 4 came and went without any violence.
QAnon accounts falsely claim that today, March 4, Donald Trump will be re-inaugurated because an 1871 bill effectively dissolved the U.S. government, making all presidents after Ulysses S. Grant illegitimate. Pants on Fire! https://t.co/xAFHb6vxah pic.twitter.com/jWxzC09M26
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) March 4, 2021
Q hasn’t posted since December 8. So where are these supposed plots to violently take over the Capitol in March and plans to storm the Capitol in January coming from?
Social media sites have worked hard to scrub content related to QAnon. Twitter said that it purged over 70,000 accounts posting content related to QAnon in January, although many prominent conservatives reported losing many more than 70,000 followers. In October, Facebook banned all QAnon accounts from its platform.
Despite massive bans and purges of accounts, QAnon followers have found other forums to talk to each other online.
The hub of Q-related discussion is a site called “8kun,” where the majority of posts come from. Another forum, called The Great Awakening, describes themselves as “researchers who deal in open-source information, reasoned argument, and dank memes. We do battle in the sphere of ideas and ideas only.”
They say that “this is a pro-Q community.”