Q, the leader of the QAnon movement, which promoted the theory that the world is controlled by Satan-worshipping cannibalistic child molesters, has resurfaced and has been online for the first time in two years.
“Let’s play another game,” the shadowy figure behind the global movement posted Friday night on the online chat form 8kun, which was formally 8chan.
Followers recognized the message from the original Q’s unique signature on the forum. Though his identity has never been revealed, linguists believe Q is a computer entrepreneur Ron Watkins, the founder of the Internet chat room.
Ron Watkins, pictured here, is widely regarded as the man behind the Q posts on the 8kun online forum
His cryptic posts on 8kun created a global movement pushing the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump had been recruited by the military to topple the imagined Satanist cabal.
QAnon supporters were part of the group of insurgents who stormed the Capitol on January 6 to stop the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Disinformation researchers believe Q’s re-emergence coincides with the US Supreme Court’s recent controversial decision to undo Roe v Wade, which sparked nationwide protests.
Disinformation researchers believe Q was created to capitalize on divisions in the country over recent Supreme Court rulings
Jacob Anthony Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, a QAnon believer known as the “QAnon Shaman,” speaks to a crowd of Trump supporters in November 2020
“Taking advantage of social and cultural instability has long been a hallmark of QAnon,” Bond Benton, an associate professor at Montclair State University, told the New York Times. “This really adds fuel to the fire and takes advantage of people’s fear of the future.”
The new message appears to echo a scene from the 1980s movie “War Games” in which a computer hacker, played by Matthew Broderick, breaks into a Department of Defense computer and nearly unleashes nuclear war, assuming that he only plays a computer game.
A popular QAnon theory claims he faked his death
Followers wondered where their leader had gone after all these years.
Throw us a bone Q, we’ve all been waiting for what seemed like an eternity. What is happening?’ asked an anonymous member of the forum Friday.
Typical of the inscrutable leader, the response was minimal.
“It had to be this way,” Q responded.
And later, in another indecipherable post, he wrote: ‘Are you ready to serve your country again? Remember your oath.’
The 8kun posts were copied and posted on Twitter by the Daily Beast writer Will Sommerwho wrote about the subculture.
QAnon started in 2017 as a fringe group on the obscure 4chan internet forum, but grew into a global movement promoting wild conspiracies, including one that said there was an international child sex ring run by Democrats that operated out of a pizza shop in Washington, DC called Comet Pizza.
Watkins, who is flagging for a seat in the House of Representatives in Arizona, has denied being Q but has supported QAnon conspiracy theories.
“There are probably more good things than bad,” Watkins told The Times earlier this year, after being taken out of the closet. He ticked off a few benefits, such as “fighting for the safety of the country and for the safety of the children of the country.”
Despite Q’s silence, followers have still pushed their wild beliefs onto the internet.
Some of those posts have gained supporters in the mainstream Republican Party, with Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert expressing support for the movement.
Photos posted to social media by Steven Monacelli, the publisher of Protean magazine, show QAnon followers gathering on the infamous grassy mound. At one point, the group stands in the shape of a giant ‘Q’
In March, Q supporters promoted the theory that a speech by President Joe Biden on Russia’s cybersecurity threat was a call to companies to cement a ‘new world order’ with a ‘shadow government’
“No, Joe Biden, there is no new world order coming my way,” Colorado GOP Representative Lauren Boebert wrote on Twitter in response.
Other QAnon supporters believed that John F. Kennedy Jr, who died in a plane crash in 1999, faked his death and would come back to lead the country after Donald Trump.
The group gathered in Dallas on November 2, 2021 at Dealey Plaza, where President John Kennedy was shot while waiting for the son.
He didn’t appear.
Coleman revealed his thinking behind his belief that his wife, Abby, had reptile DNA that she passed on to their children
Matthew Coleman confessed to killing his son Kaleo, 2, and daughter Roxy, 10 months, by shooting them in the heart with a harpoon gun in Mexico in August 2021.
In a two-page letter, Coleman wrote to a friend about what had been going through his mind in the 10 months since he was incarcerated for the August 2021 murder of his two children.
A poll conducted last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 15 percent of all Americans believe the basic tenets of QAnon.
The FBI labeled the move a terror threat.
Crazy political theories aside, QAnon followers have been shown to be capable of extremely violent actions.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, a father of two, killed his two-year-old son and his 10-year-old daughter with a harpoon gun in Mexico in August 2021 in a cloud of QAnon-fueled delusions. He believed his wife had reptilian DNA that she passed on to their children.
Coleman believed that Q communicated directly with him and that he “ultimately… saw the big picture that he had to kill his children to prevent them from becoming an alien species causing carnage across the Earth.”
Only after his conviction for the murder of the children did he realize his mistake.
“I was kidding myself. I now know that the [reptile] DNA thing was a delusion in my own mind. I let myself believe something that wasn’t there,” he wrote in a letter from prison.
QAnon: America’s Most Creepy Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theoretical Group
Origins: Q didn’t start on the fringe website 4chan, where a poster calling himself Q left messages claiming to be a senior federal official and claiming to reveal a “deep state” clique planning to overthrow Donald Trump. Q originated from the discredited ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy that top Democrats engaged in pedophilia and cannibalism from the basement of a Washington DC restaurant, but quickly picked up steam when ‘Q’ left ‘clues’ claiming Trump would overthrow him the deep state. Whenever the conspiracies turn out to be untrue, followers rationalize that the inaccuracies are part of Q’s bigger plan.
Who is Q?: Multiple people can now impersonate Q on the anonymous 4chan boards
A QAnon believer blocked the bridge at Hoover Dam with a homemade armored tank in the name of the movement, later pleading guilty to terrorism
Hoover Dam: In June 2019, 32-year-old Matthew Wright, a QAnon supporter, blocked the bridge at Arizona’s Hoover Dam with a homemade armored vehicle in a 90-minute stand-off. He pleaded guilty to charges of terrorism and has written two letters to Donald Trump from prison, including signing what has become the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we all go.”
Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser became a martyr to QAnon believers after accepting a plea deal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, admitting he lied about his contacts with Russia. QAnon conspiracy has caused Flynn to plead guilty and make him a persecuted victim of the deep state — and some even claim he called “Q.” is.
Many believers post three-star emojis next to their Twitter handles. But the retired three-star general has denounced all connections to the group and has withdrawn from participating in an event after discovering it was hosted by a QAnon believer.
QAnon Believers Martyr Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn After Reaching Plea Deal With Robert Mueller
QAnon Political Candidates: Jo Rae Perkins, 64, won the Oregon Republican primary in May to run for Senate against incumbent Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “I stand behind Q and the team,” she said when asked about her interest in the group. She insisted that she went to QAnon message boards as a “source of information” and claims that the media focuses too much on the group. Perkins won 49 percent of the vote against three other Republicans.
Marjorie Taylor Greene took first place in the Republican primary in a deep red Georgia district and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in November 2020. She says she no longer believes in QAnon in 2018, but continues to make controversial statements, and had to apologize in June for comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust