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QAnon: a wild conspiracy theory with Donald Trump’s support?

The pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon has been infiltrating mainstream media at a fast pace. While the president has never publicly stated his support for the theory, many clues suggest that his stance towards its supporters is not unfavorable.

Idhuna Pastoor

Published date

29/01/2020 - 09:00

Courses

Reading and writing in online culture

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

16 minutes

Have you ever heard of QAnon? It is a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that started on the platform 4chan, but has been infiltrating the mainstream media in a fast pace. Followers of QAnon - the Q-army - believe that “there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world”. (Rozsa, 2019). Thankfully, Trump got elected and since he knows everything about these pedophiles, he will fight hard to destroy them. At least, that is what the Q-army believes (Wong, 2018).

What is interesting is that, while Trump has never publicly spoken of QAnon or connected himself to the theory, the Q-army has found quite some evidence over the years that would confirm that Trump believes in QAnon as well. For this article, I used Google Trends and Google News to find the most relevant events for the Q-army in relation to Trump. And with the help of issue mapping and CrowdTangle, I will show some examples coming from Trump that are seen as such evidence by the Q-army. But in order to understand all of this better, we need to first take a look at the history of the relationship between QAnon and Trump.

QAnon and Trump

The QAnon conspiracy theory is also called ‘The Storm’. Reason being that ‘The Storm’ is an anticipated event in which the members of the cabal will be arrested, which will lead to redemption. (Wikipedia, 2019). The beginning of this ‘Storm’ can be traced back to Trump himself.

In 2017, on October 5, Trump was taking photos before a military dinner. He declared that the dinner was aybe the calm before the storm’. When asked what he meant by this, he simply responded ‘You’ll find out’. This conversation - seen in the video below - sparked the first post from an anonymous user called ‘Q’, on the messageboard 4chan. (Coaston, 2018). The name ‘Q’ refers to Q clearance, which is the security clearance from the Department of Energy that allows access to “Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, National Security Information, and Secret Restricted Data”. (Wikipedia, 2019).

YouTube video from the channel Bloomberg Politics, in which Trump refers to the 'Storm'.

In the first post, ‘Q’ claimed s/he was a high-level government insider with top security clearance. (Wong, 2018). In a second post that followed a few hours later, Q shared coded phrases that more and more people started to interpret and argue about for months to come. This post can be seen down below. More and more people started following Q, and the group of people who read and believed his posts became known as QAnon. (Coaston, 2018).

If we look at the current status of QAnon, we can clearly see the growth. QAnon gets mentioned in the mainstream media, gains a lot of attention, and has a growing army behind it who show isupport both online and offline. QAnon supporters can now be found on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Twitter users who actively tweet about QAnon have between 150.000 and 200.000 followers, and they use many hashtags like #Storm, #Qarmy, #GreatAwakening, #MAGA, and #WWG1WGA. (Twitter, 2019). The last hashtag means ‘where we go one, we go all’, which stands for the Q-army never giving up and leaving no one behind. (Charles, 2019). Below you see some examples of tweets with the QAnon hashtags.

Despite the fact that many of the predictions coming from Q have been proven to be false, the Q-army continues to have a strong belief in their theory. What Q does, is that it offers hope to Trump supporters. It gives them the feeling that all is fine, because Trump controls everything. This basis of the theory, that Trump has the control, is reliable in a way because the Trump administration does, actually, control the entire federal government.

A belief in conspiracy theories shows confirmation bias: you tend to believe what you want to believe. It results in a suspicious attitude towards disconfirmation.

This strong belief in a conspiracy theory is connected to confirmation bias: people tend to believe what they want to believe. And “once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it”. (Heshmat, 2015). This means that disconfirmation does not work, it only raises more suspicion in the minds of the Q-army. Stephan Lewandowsky, professor at the University of Bristol, explains it like this: “Conspiracy theories like QAnon are ‘self-sealing’ - meaning that evidence against them can become evidence of their validity in the minds of believers. (...) Trying to disprove a conspiracy theory thus usually only serves to reinforce it.” (Coaston, 2018).

What we see with QAnon, is that it "brings together people with different levels of knowledge and expertise from a wide array of domains which they utilize in concordance in their pursuit of 'the truth'". (Procházka and Blommaert, 2019). The QAnon community does not just want to find and expose 'the truth', but is actively making an effort to create a logic of explanation and persuasion, a way of reasoning, and a sort of earning environment for members.

On Twitter, the Q-army and non-believers are also constantly fighting for the truth. Whenever a QAnon believer gets a response that contradicts his/her beliefs, the response gets overruled with QAnon memes, hashtags, and messages in capslock. Just one of the many examples can be seen below. A Twitter user called @WWG1WGA posted a tweet about 'pizzagate' - a theory related to QAnon. The picture shows a tweet from the official NSA Twitter account confirming pizzagate.

Below the tweet, responses like the one from @CeciliaCmaide emerge. @CeciliaCmaide clearly does not believe in the theory and shares this in her tweet. A response coming from @TheWantedEmcees - another QAnon believer - contains pictures and memes that show the truth of pizzagate. (Short) conversations like these are happening frequently, and show that the Q-army does not deviate from 'their truth'.

For non-believers, the QAnon theory is fake news. Tandoc and Ling talk about how fake news is not just constructed by journalists, but also by the audience "for its fakeness depends a lot on whether the audience perceives the fake as real." (Tandoc and Ling, 2017). For the Q-army, the theory is obviously not fake, and this belief only gets reinforced because of echo chambers. "Echo chambers exist where information, ideas or beliefs are amplified and reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system where competing views are underrepresented." (Bakir and McStay, 2017). In other words: algorithms - based on the internet history of a user - selectively show the information that the user wants to see. The algorithms treinforce existing false information, while alternative views are not considered. The Q-army thus stays in their own filter bubble that only confirms their bias.

The members of the Twitter Q-army support each another. Under the same tweet from @WWG1WGA, a user called @MCollaborator shares how the QAnon theory has really impacted him. @WWG1WGA responds with supportive and informative tweets. Because of this, @MCollaborator's bias gets confirmed.

Lewandosky also touches upon how conspiracy theories are difficult to fight, because they are not created by evidence, but by (the desire to) believe “that there must be something more to the events that shape our lives, culture, and politics than accident or happenstance”. (Coaston, 2018). For the Q-army it is clear: Trump confirms our theory, and thus gives us the evidence that proves that QAnon speaks the truth. But, what is the evidence and what is it based on?

QAnon at Trump rallies

Especially since 2018, QAnon believers have started to make their presence known offline as well. (See Tweet shown below). They show up at Trump rallies and speeches with merch and signs including the Q sign, and they shout things as “We Are Q”, “Make noise for Q” and the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all”. (Relman, 2019). Because of their offline appearance at such events, a couple things happened that are seen as evidence by the Q-army that Trump is a QAnon supporter.

In June 2018, a Trump and QAnon supporter who appeared at a Trump rally with a shirt showing the QAnon logo, was given VIP access. During the rally, Trump approached the man and gestured towards him. (Holt, 2018). The Q-army responded enthusiastically to this, and shared it on their own social media timelines. For example, see the FaceBook post from Linda Forsythe below.

QAnon supporters also believe that during a different speech, Trump made a ‘Q’ hand gesture. While talking, Trump seems to make a ‘Q’ with his right hand. (YouTube, 2018).

In the YouTube video above, Trump makes a 'Q' with his hands - according to the Q-army.

For the Q-army, this is a sign, which they discuss in the comments under the YouTube video. But, besides QAnon believers, there are also some sceptics in the comment section. (See the pictures below).

Another incident happened at a Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina. A baby wearing a onesie that said ‘Trump’ on the front and ‘Q’ on the back, got noticed by Trump. The president pointed at the baby and said: “Look at that beautiful baby, look at that beautiful baby. Wow, what a baby. What a baby! That is a beautiful baby! That’s like from an advertisement, perfect! Look how happy that baby is! So beautiful, thank you, darling. That’s really nice.” (YouTube, 2019).

Donald Trump notices QAnon baby, YouTube video from the channel Alt Right Notsee Propaganda.

This baby quickly turned into the QAnon mascot symbolizing the good that would remove all evil, and the hashtag #Qbaby became a trending topic with over 38000 tweets. What should be added here, is that the chances of Trump knowing that there was a Q at the back of the romper, are very slim. (Dickson, 2019). But this seems to be only a small, irrelevant detail for the Q-army. Again, the YouTube comment section was filled with QAnon believers.

And in case you do not completely understand why the baby is seen as evidence that Trump supports QAnon, the Q-army is happy to explain it to you. (See picture below).

QAnon merch: accepted or denied?

The next example shows contradiction and the effects of confirmation bias. With a growing amount of supporters wearing the Q-merch offline, we can no longer avoid seeing “Q” when looking at photos or news coverage of Trump rallies. But, there is an interesting tension between the Q-army and the Q-merch rules during a Trump rally: is it allowed to wear clothes that show a Q?

When a Trump campaign official was asked about the standard operating procedure for the Q-army during a rally, he said that the staff was instructed to “generally just ‘ignore them’ and not ‘make a big deal out of’ them, both to deprive them of as much press attention as possible and to avoid ‘pissing off the crazy’ people”. (Relman, 2019).

Some QAnon believers shared that their Q merch was banned from the president’s rallies. They were instructed to turn their t-shirts inside out or cover them up with another clothing item. (Sommer, 2019). For the Q-army, this was a disappointment, but it did not keep them from finding new ways to still show their support for Q. For example, they just added a piece of tape to an O to make it seem like a Q. (Tweet from Sommer, 2019).

It seems clear that there is no support coming from Trump’s staff for the conspiracy theory. But for the Q-army, this only raises suspicion. They think that the ban is only there because Trump knows that QAnon is true, and he wants to keep this truth a secret.

And the story goes on. Apparently, when talking online, the Q-army also found out that this request to change or hide QAnon clothes did not get asked at every rally. On top of this, the U.S Secret Service themselves have denied certain accusations coming from QAnon believers. Cathy L. Milhoan, director of communications, said: “The U.S. Secret Service did not request, or require, attendees to change their clothing at an event in New Hampshire”. (Bump, 2019). This shows different narratives, which are (possibly) caused by the strong confirmation bias that QAnon supporters have, and also by the ability of the Q-army to turn ccounter-arguments into evidence.

QAnon on Trump’s Twitter timeline

Donald Trump has also tweeted about the rallies, attaching pictures to his tweets that show q signs or people wearing Q-merch. (Tweet from Trump, 2019). It might not be a lot or seem far-fetched, but for the Q-army, these kinds of tweets are massively important and serve as evidence. Shown below are just two of the many examples I could give when it comes to Twitter interactions between Trump and the Q-army.

Talking about Twitter: Donald Trump has retweeted quite some QAnon believers during his presidency. For example, “he shared a video critical of the Transportation Security Administration that originated from a Twitter account called Deep State Exposed that is operated by a QAnon follower.” (Hendrix, 2019). And it has also happened before that, to show shared critical claims against the Democrats, Trump retweets accounts that support the QAnon theory. (Hendrix, 2019). Whether Trump is aware of the background of those users he re-tweets, remains a question.

QAnon appearances in Trump’s public life

With 'Q' standing for top secrecy, part of the conspiracy theory culture is anonymity. Discreetness and invisibility is part of their culture: they call themselves QAnon, and 'Q' posts anonymously. But despite the relative invisibility of Q, they have (had) quite some public appearances.

In August 2019, an official Trump campaign advertisement featured QAnon supporters and Q signs. In a video titled ‘Women for Trump’, we see a woman holding a sign where the O’s are changed into Q’s, and somewhere else we see a sign with ‘Keep America Great’ that has a large Q in the left corner. (Derysh, 2019 ). See the pictures down below for evidence. Ofcourse, these signs could be accidentally included, especially since Trump rallies are filled with QAnon supporters and it is getting more and more difficult to not see or include them in your footage.

After these Q signs appeared in the advertisement, many QAnon believers saw it as Trump's way of apologizing and rectifying the fact that Q merch was not allowed at rallies. According to the Q-army, Trump did this on purpose. (See Tweet below).

But QAnon supporters are not only prominently present in the audience. At another Trump rally, one of the warming up acts for Trump recited a QAnon slogan during his speech. When the speaker said ‘Where we go one, we go all’, the audience gave an enthusiastic response. (Msnbc, 2019). (Sommer, 2019). The video down below shows this fragment at 1 minute and 22 seconds. What does this say about Trump’s support for QAnon? How much knowledge did Trump have about his warming up acts? For the Q-army its clear: their theory is confirmed.

Video from MSNBC shows a warming up speaker shouting the QAnon slogan.

It is important to understand that these examples are just one of many. Other happenings that are seen as evidence are: Trump employing a publicly active QAnon believer as chef for his Mar-a-Lago resort (Sommer, 2019); a Florida SWAT Officer wearing a Q patch during Mike Pence’s visit (Haag, 2018); and Trump hosting William Lionel Lebron - a leading promoter of the QAnon conspiracy - in the Oval Office for a photo opportunity. (Wikipedia, 2019). Besides that, not only Trump has interacted with the Q-army on Twitter more than 25 times, but also “members of his family, his personal attorney, current and former campaign staffers, and even some former administration officials” have repeatedly and publicly given attention to the QAnon theory. (Kaplan, 2019).

The conspiracy theory QAnon

When it comes to conspiracy theories, most of them tend to stay in this category of unbelievable or bizarre. But in this case, where the President of the United States himself possibly agrees with the theory, it is different. QAnon is no longer a small conspiracy theory that only reaches some of us, but the belief in the truth of QAnon has continued to grow both online and offline. The theory is bigger, but still unbelievble and bizarre. The conspiracy theory is entering the mainstream media and there is a growing importance in educating more people on the QAnon theory and its consequences.

The online (and offline) interactions of the Q-army show support for one another and the theory. While at the same time, QAnon believers refuse or ignore any contradicting evidence or comments. The Q-army seems to continuously find new information rand sees counter-evidence as a suspicious cover up for hiding the truth. Besides that, the Q-army is living in their own 'echo chamber', which only reinforces their belief. Skepticism gets combined with our current state of information overload and the crisis of expertise. It is a form of gaslighting, where we get paranoid and start thinking: as long as there is no evidence that very clearly states that it is not true, we cannot debunk it.

The examples shown in this article, indicate that Trump has (had) quite some interactions with QAnon. The difficulty lies in the fact that we do not know whether those were conscious decisions made by Trump, or far-fetched connections created by the Q-army. What we do know is that - with or without Trump's support - QAnon seems to be a growing community of people supporting a conspiracy theory that will not die quickly.