QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that emerged in 2017, quickly gained notoriety with its wild claims.
These ranged from assertions that Hillary Clinton led a global conspiracy of cannibal celebrities to the suggestion that John F. Kennedy faked his death and planned to run for office again.
Despite its initial explosion, QAnon seems to have gone silent.
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So what could this mean, especially as the United States gears up for another crucial election?
The vast majority of QAnon supporters are also Trump supporters. Given this, there’s speculation about QAnon’s potential reemergence as the US approaches the November elections.
On today’s episode of The Briefing, we talked to Mike Rothschild, a global expert on QAnon, to discuss whether this period of silence is a strategic pause or a sign of the movement’s decline.
Mr Rothschild said the enigmatic “Q” fed followers a steady diet of cryptic posts, or “drops,” which fueled numerous conspiracy theories.
“The tenets of QAnon, this idea of an all powerful, deep state of the global elites, running these trafficking rings of the election, the 2020 election in the US being a fraud,” he said.
Recently, there has been a noticeable drop in these communications. Observers and experts are left to wonder: what is QAnon up to now?
“All of that is now mainstream conservatism. So one could say that the actual QAnon has really faded away, but ideas of Q in one sense are really more popular than ever.”
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