On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump.
Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory.
Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year.
QAnon grows on X
Tracking commonly used QAnon phrases like "QSentMe," "TheGreatAwakening," and "WWG1WGA" (which stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All"), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk.
From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023.
One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the "Frazzledrip" conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk.
The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre's supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was "suspended for posting child exploitation pictures."
Sharing child sexual abuse material or CSAM would result in a permanent ban on most platforms. However, Musk decided to personally intervene in favor of @dom_lucre and reinstated his account.
Since then, @dom_lucre has posted about how he earns thousands of dollars directly from X. The company allows him to monetize his conspiratorial posts via the platform's official creator monetization program.
Musk has also previously voiced his support for Jacob Chansely, a QAnon follower known as the "QAnon Shaman," who served prison time for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
The dangers of QAnon
QAnon's adherents follow a number of far-right conspiracy theories, but broadly (and falsely) believe that former President Trump has been secretly battling against a global cabal of Satanic baby-eating traffickers, who just happen to primarily be made up of Democratic Party politicians and Hollywood elites.
Unfortunately, these beliefs have too often turned deadly. Numerous QAnon followers have been involved in killings fueled by their beliefs. In 2022, one Michigan man killed his wife before being fatally shot in a standoff with police. His daughter said her father spiraled out of control as he fell into the QAnon conspiracies. In 2021, another QAnon conspiracy theorists killed his two young children, claiming that his wife had "Serpent DNA" and his children were monsters.
Of course, QAnon never completely disappeared from social media platforms. Its followers still espoused their beliefs albeit in a more coded manner over the past few years to circumvent social media platforms' policies. Now, though, QAnon believers are once again being more open about their radical theories.
The looming November 2024 Presidential election likely plays a role in the sudden resurgence of QAnon on X, as QAnon-believing Trump supporters look to help their chosen candidate. However, Musk and X have actively welcomed these users to their social media service, eagerly providing them with a platform to spread their dangerous falsehoods.
I think a large part of this is that X is the only major social media which has no dedicated team for detecting and banning the propaganda bots / troll farms.
I have no idea how much of the Q / antivax / conspiracy material on social media is deliberate campaigns to destabilize American politics in general (as opposed to perfectly organic homegrown nuttiness which the US has always had plenty of anyway), but I know it's not 0.
It's not just to destabilize "American" politics, it's a series of worldwide campaigns to destabilize all information flow, to sow doubt and confusion among everyone, then out of the blue present an aligned front to push a certain narrative.
If people are kept in a "flux state of distrust", they're easier to convince when suddenly a bunch of their sources agree on some point, "it must be true if conflicting sources suddenly say the same".
This is a good point. I see this alot with ukraine. There are many famous shills (eg. max blumenthal) who have been promoting the fascist invasion of ukraine. Now these same shills are supporting Palestine. This would be good except they are just using the issue to lure people in. Then once they're hooked on all these shady accounts, they start talking about how ukrainians are nazis, how stalin was awesome, etc. It's so transparent but so dangerous. I imagine this happens on many fronts.
edit: Just remembered these podcasts about this: Part 2 and Part 3
The biggest problem with Ukraine... is that they aren't fully detached from Nazis:
All of that has nothing to do with the Russian invasion... but it does give Russia's propaganda machine an awesome excuse. It's just too easy to get people hooked up with some actual facts, then get them to do a leap of faith and fall straight into full propaganda... and Russia knows it.
Israel and Palestine is a particularly juicy case, where there are really shitty groups coming from both sides, ending up like an "all you can eat" buffet for every propaganda machine out there. No matter what narrative one wants to spin, chances are they'll find a latch point in the Israel vs. Palestine conflict, even contradictory ones for different audiences.
also the fact that the ceo of twitter is responsible for spreading a lot of the misinformation, antivaxx, and conspiracy theory content on twitter.