You may have realised in recent weeks a friend, relative, or someone you know has started to become invested in the trafficking of children under tunnels in major cities around the world led by a "cabal" of global elites.
Well if you have then you might know someone who subscribes to the anti-semitic and right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon.
The conspiracy movement is sweeping through many social media feeds as misinformation surrounding the pandemic and the US presidential elections begin to brew.
A number of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok have looked to ban accounts linked to QAnon.
The concerns of government-enforced lockdowns during COVID-19 have coalesced to bring a once shadowy conspiracy theory with its origins on fringe internet forums into mainstream consumption.
More interestingly, the movement that began in the US has started to take shape in Australia.
So what is QAnon?
The conspiracy theory 'QAnon' has become "all-encompassing" according to experts over the last few years since it's emergence in October 2017.
The origins of the right-wing movement come from the divisive messaging boards 4Chan and 8Chan. These are the same forums where several mass-shooters have posted their manifestos in recent years.
The QAnon conspiracy purports to have secret information that's gathered by a source close to US President Donald Trump, and their chief claim is an alleged pedophile ring that involves the 'global elite'.
"It's developed into, well, what it is today, this enormous juggernaut of every possible conspiracy under the sun," Dr Kaz Ross a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, told The Feed.
When Dr Colin Klein, from the Australian National University, looks at the QAnon conspiracy, it seems more and more like a Hollywood movie, despite the movements distaste of the Hollywood elite.
“It's got this real kind of collective fiction aspect to it,” Dr Klein, the Acting Director of Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences at ANU, told The Feed.
Dr Klein has traced the emergence of the ideas around QAnon back to the 2016 US presidential elections, where ‘Pizzagate’ became front and center in the minds of the US electorate.
claiming that the Clintons ran a child sex-trafficking ring in a Washington pizza shop. The online conspiracy had some real-life consequences as a man from North Carolina drove to Washington DC with military-style weaponry taking shots at the pizza restaurant.
Now, the conspiracies under the umbrella of QAnon, according to Dr Ross, include the anti-vax movement, the anti-5G phenomenon, , COVID-19 as a Chinese invention, and the anti-semitic notion of Jewish people running the world.
“So, what started off as a series of cryptic comments on a trolling bulletin board has turned into this enormous conspiracy movement.
“It's been sort of weaponised under COVID-19 this year.”
How did it come to Australia?
The weaponising of COVID-19, as Dr Ross says, has contributed to the spread of the QAnon conspiracy in Australia. She explains some people's skepticism surrounding COVID-19 and the enforced government-lockdowns can pretty quickly push people down the "rabbit-hole" of QAnon.
"Why are we having a lockdown? There must be some bigger reason and that's where they start spinning off into their conspiracy theories," she said.
"They encounter the QAnon world where there's a much bigger agenda going on there."
The conspiracy is bigger than previously when it was about Donald Trump bringing down "the deep state" and the apparent pedophile cabal of elites trafficking children.
"It's so much broader now," Dr Ross said, it's now "about compulsory vaccination, about pedophile cabals in every government, and microchipping and children in tunnels under the streets of Melbourne and Sydney."
She says it's been able to incorporate every local nuance, and condition into the larger QAnon conspiracy.
"You see that anti-5G or anti-vaccination movement, which has just been bubbling along on their own, have now also been folded into QAnon," she said.
This means for Dr Ross people are being radicalised into QAnon, they may enter with concerns around vaccinations or 5G but quickly become "sucked into" the conspiracy behemoth.
"They themselves say not everybody's ready to hear this research," she said.
"But if you're ready for it, and you're a truth seeker, then you'll have the stomach to find out about this material, particularly the sexual exploitation of children."
Dr Ross describes QAnon's momentum like a massive fire front generating so much heat and energy that it begins to build it's own weather conditions -- becoming bigger and bigger.
"I think that's why social media platforms have decided that this has become a real force," she said.
#SaveTheChildren
A recent collective fiction of QAnon, as Dr Klein calls it, involves former model Rachel Chandler whose picture with former US President Bill Clinton from years ago resurfaced online. Chandler has been accused by QAnon followers of being a 'childhandler', and a part of Epstein's child sex-trafficking ring.
This tweet was shared on Twitter: "Expose Rachel Chandler (Epstein's Child Handler) recruiting manager at Wayfair ... #childtrafficking #savethechildren #knowthyenemy #wayfair #wayfairtrafficking #pedophila."
The followers of the conspiracy found a different Rachel Chandler who works at US furniture company Wayfair and decided to cross-search generic girls' names of their furniture to missing children, and found some names that match.
Despite there being no evidence of Wayfair or either Chandler being linked to Epstein in any way the conspiracy continued to steam ahead. It led to Wayfair rebranding their furniture to different names.
"We have temporarily removed the products from our site to rename them and to provide a more in-depth description and photos that accurately depict the product to clarify the price point,".
It seems that the only crime (against good marketing) Wayfair had was having furniture with generic names, while both Chandler's had a name that was understood in QAnon circles as a Hollywood-esque codename: 'childhandler'.
The use of #SaveTheChildren is a tactic Dr Ross says is being adopted by QAnon.
People hold signs as they march in support of the QAnon conspiracy theories in Hollywood, California. Source: EPA/CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA
"The hashtag #SaveTheChildren is also a way of avoiding censorship as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube are all cracking down [on QAnon]," she said.
The hashtag has been trending over the last few weeks as protests began outside Buckingham Palace, in California and there have even Save The Children picnics in Australia.
QAnon's diverse support
The biggest danger of QAnon compared to other far-right movements, with its origins in online communities, is the limited barrier to entry. Because it's now so wide-ranging, its followers are incredibly diverse. Dr Ross says this is one of the reasons social media companies have begun to crack down on the conspiracy.
"[To be apart] the alt-right, you need to be of a political, particular political viewpoint. To be a neo-nazi, you need to be white. But this incorporates everybody," she said.
"From the whitest of wellness influencers on Instagram, your Pete Evans celebrity chefs right through to ethnic communities in Melbourne.
"It's much more representative of diverse ethnic communities than previous mass movements such as the Patriot movement."
However, Dr Ross explains they may be sharing anti-vax, anti-lockdown information, or signing petitions against Victoria's premier Dan Andrews lockdown but not even realize that they were in the QAnon conspiracy world.
"So it's hard to say whether you could call them in the QAnon community," she said.
"Or maybe they're QAnon adjacent but certainly that is the danger of QAnon that it just incorporates absolutely anything into the overall conspiracy."
