-QAnon is in essence a conspiracy theory
that gives hope to people
who want the things it says to be true.
-And according to the conspiracy theory,
Trump is actually leading an effort
to prosecute villainous Democrats,
most of whom are engaged in baby sex trafficking rings
and committing other heinous crimes.
-It also wraps in "deep state" conspiracy theories.
It is used as a hopeful way to explain things
like the Mueller probe into the Trump campaign.
-I personally believe that much of what we are taught
and told by authorities or institutions in this country
is false information.
It looks to be
a public intelligence dissemination program
whereby they're utilizing anonymous online posting boards
such as 4chan and 8chan as a back channel
to give the public information to help guide them,
to help show the way and let them know what's really going on
and what's going on behind the scenes.
-Although Trump hasn't given any indication
that he is aware of QAnon or believes it,
he is the person who I guess inadvertently started it.
He made a cryptic statement to reporters in early October
where he talked about the "coming storm,"
a statement that he then refused to explain.
-The calm, the calm before the storm.
-The phrase "the storm" has come to be super important to people
who believe or circulate these posts,
where "the storm refers to this kind of coming mass justice
against all of Trump's enemies.
After this statement a few weeks later,
there started to be these kind of anonymous posts
on a site called 4chan.
They started spreading to other platforms,
like YouTube and like Reddit,
where people who maybe aren't as familiar with how 4chan works
or how to read it could start to access
and see these posts and get excited about them.
-I came across Q at the end of October in 2017.
And it was within the first maybe one, two, or three days.
Now I first started seeing these posts on Twitter, actually.
-A bunch of people who believe in QAnon
or wanted to give it more visibility
showed up to a Trump rally wearing T-shirts
and carrying signs that had big letter Q's on them.
Many media outlets covered that and explained what QAnon was
and began to kind of dive into this breakthrough moment
for this conspiracy theory.
-People who believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory --
-Conspiracy theories are so broad
and often bizarre -- -It is also shockingly widespread --
-It's like an alternative-reality game.
-Experts I've talked to who study media amplification
will often kind of describe this paradox where journalists
who are reporting on conspiracy theories or outlets
that are pursuing these stories are simultaneously
doing important and necessary work
and doing the worst possible thing that they could do,
which is giving these conspiracy theories an even wider audience.
-Common understanding of conspiracy theories
and political life
says that people who are out of power
politically cling to political conspiracy theories
or advance political conspiracy theories
to somehow explain or justify their station.
What's different about QAnon
is that it's a vast conspiracy theory advanced by proponents
of the victor of the presidential election.
I think a lot of it is Trump supporters who love Donald Trump
who look at the publicly available evidence and say,
"Well, I'm a little disappointed," right?
And a small fraction of those people
then say there's some other explanation for this
that transcends the available evidence.
The vast majority of Americans,
including the vast majority of Republicans,
including the vast majority of Trump supporters
do not believe in or subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
That being said, the Internet has made exposure to QAnon
pretty easy to come by.
-First, you don't know how many people who are circulating QAnon
really believe it, right?
So, there are a couple reasons
why you might circulate a conspiracy theory.
One is because you believe it to be true
and you want to awaken the masses
to the truth of that theory.
Another reason you might spread it
is you like to cause chaos.
The other thing is that it's really easy to look big
on the Internet without being big.
You know, it doesn't take a lot of people
to get something trending,
particularly when you have the help of outrage.
-It's incumbent upon media institutions,
it's incumbent upon scholars, it's incumbent upon anybody
who feels that an informed citizenry matters
to actually tell their fellow citizens,
"No, QAnon is false, QAnon is not real,"
and then point them to evidence showing why.