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TAMPA, Fla. โ Amid the โTrump 2020โ placards, the โWomen for Trumpโ signs and the โCNN SUCKSโ T-shirts, the most inscrutable message that came out of Donald Trumpโs Tampa rally on Tuesday evening was a letter: Q.
People wore T-shirts with the letter emblazoned on the front. Others carried signs containing the letter: โQ WWG1WGA Trump 2020 Keep America Great! MSM is the enemy.โ Another held a dog-eared and slightly crumpled piece of paper in the air. It said, simply, โWe are Q.โ
The entire, loose movement has been called everything from โa deranged conspiracy cultโ (The Washington Post) to a grassroots movement โabout the covert battles being waged between the deep state and President Trumpโ (according to Tyler, a guy at the Tampa rally who held a metal coin emblazoned with the letter and showed it to WPLG, a TV station from Miami).
Hereโs a look at the trend thatโs sweeping certain dark corners of the Internet.
Who Is Q?
In late October 2017, an anonymous user posted on 4chan, a shadowy site known for, among other things, cruel hoaxes and political extremism. Under the title โThe Calm Before the Storm,โ the poster claimed to have a high-level government security clearance โ Q clearance to be exact โ and referred to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, political parties and former President Barack Obama.
Like Tyler, the man at the Tuesday rally in Tampa, many believe the mainstream media is lying to them.
Other 4chan users have pointed out that โQโ uses the plural โwe.โ
Keep in mind, users can, and often do, post anonymously on 4chan.
What Makes Q Different?
Many on 4chan seemed to enjoy discussing the cryptic posts and the clues, and Q spread like wildfire. Terminology was born. Inside jokes and theories blossomed. Q subreddits swelled to 30,000 followers. Qโs Twitter account has 80,000 followers.
A YouTube video posted by โprayingmedicโ on July 28, titled, โSomething Big is About to Drop,โ has 275,000 views. It is an hour and eight minutes long:
It is unclear if anything actually dropped.
Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor who co-authored the book, โAmerican Conspiracy Theories,โ said Q โis just hitting the right audience at the right time given the right circumstance.โ
Qโs topics appeal to many who already are inclined to believe conspiracy theories, Uscinski said. Those conspiracy-minded folks have always been around in the country.
Actress Roseanne Barr has tweeted about Q and retweeted posts from the โQAnonโ account. In Nov. 2017, she tweeted โWho is Q?โ and reportedly asked Q to direct message her. In May, Barr posted a racist tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, who figures in some QAnon conspiracy theories. In response, ABC cancelled her hit TV show.
What Does Q Believe?
Uscinski, who has studied Q over the last month, says the userโs posts are often about the โdeep stateโ battling Donald Trump, using bureaucratic inertia. Which isnโt that farfetched, he said, given that many in federal government didnโt likely vote for Trump.
Q and the QAnon supporters refer to โThe Stormโ often, which is a reference to an October 2017 meeting between Trump and military leaders during which Trump said, โthe calm before the storm.โ
But then, things get nutty.
Q has posted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller isnโt investigating Trump at all โ heโs really investigating Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and Barack Obama. Other theories involve familiar players in conspiracy theories such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati, while others mention The Titanic, pedophile rings in Hollywood, and the possibility that former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin wears an ankle monitor. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the Rothschild family and Satan also make appearances in discussions.
Sometimes the posts are cryptic, throwing the bakers into a frenzy of riddle solving, such as:
โ27-1_yes_USA94-2
โ27-1_yes_USA58-A
โ27-1_yes_USA04
โConf_BECZ_y056-(3)_y
The_Castle_Runs_RED_yes
Godspeed.
How long do experts think Q will contine posting?
Uscinski said: โVery few conspiracies have the staying power of a JFK.โ
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