Front Burner - QAnon gains ground ahead of 2020 U.S election

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

On Wednesday, U.S. president Donald Trump thanked QAnon conspiracy theorists for their support. This follows his move last week to publicly back a QAnon supporter who just won a Republican primary run-off in Georgia. The endorsement drew widespread criticism because QAnon is a baseless conspiracy theory built on an unfounded belief about a deep state group of elites who exploit children and are united against Trump. Kevin Roose is a tech columnist for the New York Times and host of the podcast Rabbit Hole. Today he explains why QAnon is a dangerous source of misinformation with the makings of a national security threat.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. At the crux of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind? Well, I haven't heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?

I mean, you know, if I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to put myself out there. And we are actually. Donald Trump on Wednesday, responding to a question about QAnon by actually praising the conspiracy theorists for their patriotism and even thanking them for their support. QAnon is the people that believe in what Trump's trying to do to change our country. He knows exactly the plan that QAnon is, that Q is going along with. He knows. And that's why they don't want him running again.

That's why they don't want him in office. To be clear, QAnon is a totally baseless, wide-ranging conspiracy theory, all built on an unfounded belief that this enigmatic high-level government official named Q is revealing clues about a deep state group of elites who exploit children and are united against Trump. It's a lot. But as ridiculous as it sounds, QAnon is gaining prominence in the United States. Catching on, and I would anticipate at future rallies we'll see more people holding big Qs. QAnon has firmly taken root in the 2020 campaign trail.

Honestly, everything that I've heard of Q, I hope that this is real. Q is a patriot. He is someone that very much loves his country, and he's on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump, okay? Kevin Roos is a tech columnist for The New York Times and host of the podcast Rabbit Hole. And he's on the same page as us. And he is very pro-Trump, OK? Kevin Roos is a tech columnist for The New York Times and host of the podcast Rabbit Hole. And he's here to explain why QAnon is a dangerous source of misinformation with the makings of a national security threat. I'm Josh Bloch. This is FrontBurner. And a warning, this episode includes some disturbing details. Hello, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

We should start with Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's a QAnon supporter who just won a Republican primary runoff in Georgia. I want to tell you guys, the fake news media, the D.C. swamp, the political establishment tried to take me out. But there's definitely more of us than there is of them. She's probably going to be a congresswoman. And Trump tweeted his support of her last week. What does it signal that QAnon believers may soon become lawmakers?

Well, I think it signals that this movement, this QAnon movement, which was once, I think, seen as a fringe group that sort of hung out in the dark corners of the internet, has really crossed over into the mainstream. You know, they're not fringe and marginal anymore. They're not hanging out in the dark corners of the internet. They know, they're not fringe and marginal anymore. They're not hanging out in the dark corners of the internet. They're on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Their numbers are growing and they're gaining political power. If you're not happy with grocery shortages and massive government regulations during this Chinese virus, imagine what it would be like if America became a socialist country. That's what will happen if we let the Democrats win in 2020.

And in fact, she's not the only candidate who has affiliations with QAnon. No, not at all. She's one of, I think, roughly a dozen congressional candidates this cycle. There are many more running for state and local legislatures. So QAnon is really becoming a political movement that I think in some ways mirrors the rise of the early Tea Party in the US during the Obama administration. And there already seems to be a shift in the way that mainstream media is reporting on QAnon. I think there was some early feelings like reporters shouldn't be giving the conspiracy theory too much oxygen. But now we do seem to be

seeing discussions around QAnon entering the political sphere and becoming part of a public discourse. Right. I think part of what's so astounding about QAnon is that it was able to grow its ranks and build a coalition without really any support from kind of mainstream conservative media. I mean, you don't normally see QAnon supporters on Fox News or talk radio, but they've built this sort of parallel media apparatus that includes lots of YouTube channels and chat rooms, Facebook groups, Twitter threads. They've basically set up their own parallel media and used that to get their message across. Of course, as usual, many breaking news stories, many different things to follow.

And everything that Q has predicted, obviously, is in the process of either coming true or already has come true. And what we do to fight back? If you're healthy, take off the mask. And for heaven's sake, go back to church and pray that Trump wins in November. It's a relatively young conspiracy theory, but it actually has this kind of complicated and strange history. And so to understand the origin story, I want to go back to 2016, to Pizzagate, which involved a man from North Carolina named Edgar Madison Welch. He was a religious guy. He had two children. And he deeply believed in this idea that there was a

child trafficking ring that he needed to shut down. Tell me what happened. So he went to this pizzeria, this place in Washington, D.C., called Comet Ping Pong, that was at the center of this conspiracy theory with a gun aiming to free what he thought was a ring of trafficked children that were being held in the basement. And this conspiracy theory had had started rising on the fringe Internet in places like 4chan ever since the leak of the Podesta emails during the 2016 campaign. And there were people who combed through those emails and found what they believed were clues about this vast criminal conspiracy involving the Clintons and John Podesta and lots of other top Democrats. And they basically formed this convoluted false theory that all of these Democrats were using coded language, things like pizza and hot dogs to refer to their child sex trafficking ring. And of course, he shows up at this pizzeria with AR-15 and a six shot 38 caliber

revolver and a shotgun. Who walked straight into the back room briefly after that one of the staff basically best told me that there's a gunman we need to get out of here he allegedly pointed the gun in the direction of an employee and fired the weapon inside the restaurant you know there's no there's actually no basement in comet ping pong so this whole theory was just based on a complete fabrication, complete lie. And he was arrested and charged. And I think that, for a lot of people,

was sort of the last time that they thought about Pizzagate. But on the internet, in these fringe forums, Pizzagate just kept going. And then in 2017, it kind of rebooted itself as this new and improved, much bigger and broader ranging conspiracy theory called QAnon. Right. So what is the central conspiracy theory at the core of QAnon? So the core sort of charge of QAnon, the core tenant of the QAnon belief system is that there is this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who are plotting a coup against the Trump administration while operating a global child sex trafficking ring. And this cabal, it includes people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, a bunch of Hollywood celebrities they believe are in on it, like Oprah and Tom Hanks, Ellen

DeGeneres, and also people like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. So in the minds of QAnon believers, these people are all conspiring to not only kidnap and traffic children, but to molest them. And also QAnon believes to eat them. They believe that these people are literally drinking the blood and eating the flesh of children in order to extract this supposedly life-extending chemical from their blood. Pedophile rings where, you know, they have money, they could hide it. You get into it, man. Who isn't involved in these cabal groups? The Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, all of them.

They're all complicit. Oh my gosh. So, and what kind of feeds this conspiracy when it comes to these like outlandish claims about eating children's blood or drinking children's blood? Well, obviously, all of this stuff has roots in conspiracy theories from decades ago. I mean, the notion that there's this cabal of global elites who are conspiring to run the world is not new. But what is new is this figure named Q, this kind of anonymous figure

who's at the heart of the QAnon movement, who has spent the last three years now posting these sort of cryptic messages on these internet message boards, claiming that they are a government insider with access to top secret information about the Trump administration and about Trump's war on this global cabal. And so Q, as this person or persons have become known, is kind of feeding nuggets into this conspiracy theory, which then people who believe in QAnon sort of take and try to decode and make sense of and sort of fit it into the overarching conspiracy narrative. Tell me more about Q. I mean, who does Q claim to be? So Q began posting on 4chan in October 2017. And this was an account that was totally anonymous,

but that called itself Q clearance patriot. There's a type of clearance in the US government called Q clearance. It's sort of one of the highest levels of security clearance. And this person claimed that they were a high ranking intelligence officer with access to classified information about this global cabal, and started making all these predictions. So predicting that, you know, Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested, that certain perpetrators of this cabal were going to be brought to justice. I saw that, you know, you provided an example of one of these Q drops in a recent article that you wrote for the New York Times. And they are pretty cryptic. I mean, in the one that you wrote about, it says, LL talking equals truth in capital letters, reveal tarmac, and then in brackets, BC question

mark. What's going on there? I mean, how difficult are these things to decipher? Well, if you're new to it, it's totally baffling. You can't make heads or tails of it. It's all acronyms and code words and things like that. But for QAnon believers, they've been following Q's posts for three years now. There are almost 5,000 posts in total.

And so multiple times a day, they'll be getting some new Q post, they'll decode it, and they kind of build this glossary over time of these secret meanings that are embedded in these posts. So, you know, LL, for example, is Loretta Lynch, who was President Obama's former attorney general. BC is Bill Clinton. And sometimes they're sort of less vague than that. But a lot of the times, it's sort of these coded, you know, cryptic puzzles. And that's part of the fun for QAnon believers. It's not just, you know, someone tells you something, and you immediately understand it,

they have to kind of jump in and explain things and debate amongst each other what the various things mean. It's almost like a game. Right. I've seen people compare it to alternative reality games, which are these kind of games that play out in the real world that have a kind of grandmaster that drop clues around for people to decipher. And in fact, in QAnon, they refer to these things called crumbs that Q leaves. What are crumbs? Crumbs are just the posts, the posts that appear on internet message boards that are collected and distributed to QAnon believers who call themselves bakers because they take the crumbs and then they assemble them. And you can see this going on in these Facebook

groups, many of which have more than 100,000 members in them. The minute Q posts something new, they rush to the Facebook group or the chat room or the YouTube comment section, and they start trying to decipher and decode all of the messages. And it's not just Q's messages that are deciphered and decoded. It seems like seemingly mundane things like the color of Trump's tie or a gesture or a blink, for instance, can take on a huge amount of meaning with these QAnon followers. in the QAnon conspiracy theory. He's the person who's going to sort of, you know, bring the cabal to justice. And he is sort of a target of fascination by QAnon believers.

They watch everything that he does. They listen to all his press conferences. Solving the human trafficking epidemic, which is what it is, is a priority for my administration. We're going to help out a lot. Solve is a wonderful word, a beautiful word, but I can tell you we're going to help a lot. They pick out minor details, and then they use those to claim that Trump is speaking to them, that he's sending them messages, or that he's

signaling some development in the conspiracy theory. So yeah, every time he mentions the number 17, for example, QAnon believers go nuts. Why? Because Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet. I was also interested in the amount of attention paid to this one Trump quote, in particular, where he said, the calm before the storm, and that this notion of the storm seems to be really important to QAnon. Tell me more about that moment. be really important to QAnon. Tell me more about that moment. Yeah, so the sort of initial wave of Q posts all had to do with this moment in 2017. It was kind of this weird, uninterpretable moment where President Trump was posing for photos with some of his generals from the military. And he made this cryptic comment.

Do you guys know what this represents? Tell us, sir. Maybe it's the calm before the military. And he made this cryptic comment. You guys know what this represents? Tell us. Maybe it's the calm before the storm. What's the storm? Could be the calm before the storm. What storm is the president? You'll find out. And Q seized on this moment and said that basically what President Trump was referring to was this kind of global cabal. They believe that the storm represents the moment when President Trump unmasks the cabal, sends all the perpetrators to prison, and sort of frees America from the control of these evil elites. That moment in QAnon lore is known as the storm, or sometimes they call it the Great Awakening. A simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. First of all, it seems like there's a lot of conspiracy theories wrapped up into QAnon. It's kind of like an uber conspiracy theory that's able to kind of subsume a bunch of other theories that are floating around there as well. You know, whether it's the 9-11 truthers or the Kennedy assassination, they kind of all fall under this QAnon tent. Is that correct? Yeah, I call it the Swiss army knife of conspiracy theories, because it's got a little something for everyone. You've got your QAnon core believers, you've got your 9-11 truthers, you've got aliens and UFOs. There's a bit about the JFK assassination in there. So it really does

encompass every major conspiracy theory of the last century, really. Is there a conspiracy theory that you don't believe in? That's a great question. I can't think of it off the top of my head right now. What QAnon is, is just an amalgamation of all of the greatest conspiracy theories. But a lot of QAnon conspiracy theories are concerned with child welfare, like we saw with Pizzagate. I know that more recently, there's been a conspiracy theory around Wayfair. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, so this really started spreading during the pandemic.

People on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook started noticing that Wayfair, the online furniture store, had these really expensive industrial cabinets for sale. A lot of these storage cabinets on the Wayfair website have girls' names. A well-known QAnon activist noticed this and tweeted, my spidey senses are tingling. What's with these storage cabinets? Extremely high prices, all listed with girls' names and identical units selling for different amounts. Some conspiracy theorists started saying that this was evidence that Wayfair was actually part of this child sex trafficking ring,

that these so-called cabinets, when you were buying them, what you were actually buying is a trafficked child slave. And the claims became increasingly outlandish. So it wasn't just about the cabinets anymore. It was about personalized pillows, which if you tried to put certain messages on them seemed to cost $10,000. And this spread wildly on social media. And Wayfair, the company, actually had to issue a statement saying like, this is not

true. We don't traffic children. It really captured the imaginations of internet conspiracy theorists. And then that sort of became kind of an on-ramp for a lot of people to QAnon. They said, well, if I believe that Wayfair is trafficking children, then there must be something more going on. It must not just be Wayfair. Let me investigate and go look for other clues. And then they end up believing in QAnon. So it seems like QAnon is using kind of anti-human trafficking, the anti-human trafficking movement, and these kind of legitimate campaigns like Save the Children to attract new members.

They're kind of blurring the lines there between some of these legitimate campaigns and then theories that are more conspiratorial. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the last few weeks, the hashtag Save the Children has been going just absolutely viral on social media. QAnon has been sort of hijacking this anti-trafficking movement in order to seed its own claims about this global cabal of elite pedophile cannibals. And so they'll go into a parenting group or a natural health group, a group with, you know, moms, and they'll start planting content about child trafficking, hoping that that

will lead people to investigate and end up in QAnon. My name is Allison, and I'm here to save the children, defund Hollywood and put Hillary in prison. We have to unite. We have to show the world that we are well aware of what's going on with all the missing kids in the world and we're not going to have it anymore. And to be clear, the whole conspiracy around Wayfair being involved in human trafficking has been entirely debunked. Yes. I mean, all of this has been entirely debunked, to be very clear. entirely debunked. Yes. I mean, all of this has been entirely debunked, to be very clear. Well, I'm curious to know more about this community that has formed around QAnon. I mean,

what do you think it is about this conspiracy that attracts people? What does it offer the people that follow the QAnon conspiracy theory? Well, I've spent a lot of time in some of these QAnon groups and chat rooms just kind of observing how these people interact with each other. And it's really striking. I mean, they're not just talking about conspiracy theories. They're not just trading, you know, false information about the Clintons or whatever. It really is a social activity. I mean, they are, they're all participating in these decoding, you know, puzzle sessions together. But more than that, they're also just hanging out. You know, if you spend a day in one of these chat rooms, you'll see that a lot of their

conversation has nothing to do with QAnon. They're just, they're hanging out. They're talking about their families. They're, you know, they're wishing each other, you know, a good day. They're praying together. They're sort of like an almost like a church element to a lot of the QAnon community. And so I think if you just focus on the beliefs, while they are incredibly disturbing, I think you miss the sort of community aspect that these people are getting out of QAnon.

For a lot of people, this has become very core to their identity. It's how they make friends. It's how they socialize. And right now, when everyone's sort of locked in their houses, it's their way of accessing the outside world. Hmm. A number of experts have drawn the parallel between QAnon and a new religion, or even a cult. Yeah, I mean, I think there are elements of both of those things in Q, but it's not so easily mapped onto our existing terminology. I think QAnon is really different than anything we've seen before

because it's an internet native movement and it moves at the speed of social media. So it changes day to day because Q is always changing the rules, dropping in new information, sending people in different directions. As you mentioned at the beginning, it's not just a conspiracy theory in the dark corners of the internet. You have QAnon believers running for office.

And these accusations that the Republican Party under Trump are actually courting QAnon followers. I want to ask you, you congratulated Marjorie Taylor Greene in a tweet. You called her a future Republican star. Greene has been a proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory. She said it's something that would be worth listening to. Do you agree with her on that? Well, she did very well in the election. She won by a lot.

She was very popular. And she had a tremendous victory. So absolutely, I did congratulate her. How do you think it's going to shape the 2020 election? I think it's going to be a major force in the 2020 election. I don't think, you know, QAnon believers are going to suddenly take over Congress. I think there will be QAnon believers in Congress, at least one. But I think it's going to be the case that Republicans need support from QAnon believers in order to win elected office, and they're going to court that support actively. And when they're asked to denounce or deny the claims that QAnon makes, they're going to hesitate to do that. Well, I want to ask you about the danger that could be posed here. I mean, how much worry is

there about what might happen in response to the 2020 election, whether Trump wins or loses? Well, the fears that QAnon could turn violent are long founded. There have actually been violent crimes committed by QAnon believers in the name of Q. There was actually an FBI bulletin last year that sort of cited QAnon as a potential domestic terror threat. So law enforcement is worried about QAnon. And I think there's a sense among disinformation researchers, people who have been following QAnon for a long time, that this movement could become violent. Kevin, thank you so much for your insight into this. Thank you for having me. Some news before we go today. On Wednesday, Facebook cracked down on accounts promoting QAnon conspiracy theories,

along with militia and anarchist groups. According to the social media giant, around 10,000 Instagram accounts, as well as hundreds of Facebook groups, pages, and advertisements were taken down or restricted. It's not an outright ban. Facebook is still letting people post content in support of these movements, but will, quote, restrict their ability to organize using the platform. This follows a similar crackdown by Twitter last month that affected roughly 150,000 accounts. That's all for today. I'm Josh Bloch.

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