How QAnon, a fringe online movement, is drawing followers in Wisconsin and across the U.S. with a stew of conspiracies

Harrison Hawkins has experienced firsthand the insidious spread of QAnon.

In early April, he fell in love with a college student who was spiritual and intelligent. She liked to meditate and take hikes. But within months, she began to express anxiety, filling his phone with troubling links and articles concerning conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and child trafficking. 

They had their first big fight in early July when she didn’t show up to dinner at his mother’s house because she was researching the chemical adrenochrome. Followers of QAnon, a fringe online movement, erroneously believe adrenochrome is harvested from children’s blood. From that point forward, she avoided him, then cut him off. Hawkins said he still clings to “a tiny bit of hope” that QAnon will release its hold on her. 

“Some media outlets have written it off as a kooky conspiracy,” he said. “The word ‘conspiracy’ discredits its power.”

Swept up in the culture wars over immigration and race, rattled by economic upheaval and desperate for companionship in an age of social isolation, an untold number of Americans are succumbing to radicalization in the form of fringe or extremist ideologies rooted in baseless conspiracy theories.

The emergence of QAnon — which has promoted and capitalized on Donald Trump’s presidency — comes at a volatile moment amid a raging pandemic and a coming election. The movement, which holds Trump on a pedestal as a hero in a fight it portrays as being against evil liberals and the media, is rallying support for the president in his campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Experts who study extremism say the patchwork of conspiracy theories has gained currency in part because of its promise of easy answers to complex problems, and the sense of community it creates at a time when many people feel isolated and overwhelmed.

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While the far-right movement’s most devoted followers have been active on extremist online platforms like 4chan and 8kun, the spread of their conspiracy theories and political opinions into mainstream social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is accelerating during the pandemic.

Membership in 109 popular QAnon Facebook groups more than quintupled from February to June, reaching 1.12 million, according to a database maintained by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks extremism around the world. 

“I have just started describing QAnon as a digital cult instead of a conspiracy theory,” said Aoife Gallagher, a disinformation and extremism analyst at the institute.

The FBI has gone so far as to declare QAnon a domestic terrorism threat in a May 2019 intelligence briefing.

Billing itself as methodically rooting out a secret nationwide cabal of Democratic leaders who traffic children for sexual purposes — an accusation with no basis in reality — QAnon appeals to people who are likely to see those on the other side politically as despicable. 

Political scientists call this “affective polarization” — the tendency to personally loathe people who believe the opposite of what you believe. One survey, for example, found that more than 1 in 5 people, regardless of whether they’re Republicans and Democrats, view the other side as “evil.”

“If you think they’re evil and you don’t trust them at all, then it’s much easier to believe that they’re pedophiles,” said Josh Pasek, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in political communication and misinformation. 

‘Right in front of our eyes’

Some followers suggest that high profile child sex abuse cases such as Larry Nassar at Michigan State University, Jerry Sandusky at Penn State University, and the Catholic Church globally, prove its existence. 

In Wisconsin, some even point to a 2009 arrest of former Racine Mayor Gary Becker, who attempted to meet a teenage girl for sex, as evidence of the network’s reach.

“There’s no such thing as coincidence and when there’s too many points leading to the same thing, you can’t call it a conspiracy anymore, it’s real,” said Claudia Hoffmann, an organizer of a QAnon march in Milwaukee in July.

Followers express frustration that not everyone sees what to them seems so clear.

“Human trafficking has been surpassing every other criminal enterprise and the media is silent on it, they’re part of it, there’s a lot of people involved, so we’re trying to make everyone aware of what’s going on right in front of our eyes,” said Sara Cook, another organizer of the march.

Chris Parker of Paddock Lake was walking a friend’s dog when he came over to watch presidential candidate Joe Biden’s visit to Kenosha on Thursday.

“We’re not a ‘terrorist’ group and we’re not making up lies,” the Trump supporter said of QAnon. “We simply take things that have happened, that are documented, and we just put it out there.” 

Parker said there are children “being bred for trafficking” and he is “holding out hope that Trump is part of Q and is working in cahoots with this military operation of good guys … to take down the satanic cabal and this child trafficking ring. It is, unfortunately, a huge business, billions and billions of dollars.” 

The threat of violence

The concern with QAnon, and other fringe conspiracy groups, is that they translate their ideas into action — violent action.

In April, an Illinois woman who immersed herself in QAnon theories was arrested in New York after traveling there with a stash of knives and weapons and threatening Biden and fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.

That incident came about four years after a North Carolina man traveled to a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. — where, conspiracists believed, the alleged child sex trafficking ring was being run — and fired his rifle. Now, despite being thoroughly debunked, “Pizzagate” is circulating again.

Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland who leads a domestic radicalization team, has identified a sharp increase in “more deliberately violent actions.” 

“We have absolutely seen a spike in not only people just engaging online and discussing it but now people who are acting on behalf of those beliefs,” Jensen said.

That action also could translate into a get-out-the-vote effort at the polls this November or even attacks on the outcome of the race under the false premise that the results cannot be trusted if Trump loses.

Emerson Brooking, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and co-author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media,” said the election could be “a real tipping point” for extremism in America.

“My fear is that, as the election approaches, these cycles of radicalization and violence will intensify,” he said. “These groups have created a powder keg.”

All of that is nonsense — just more attempts to discredit QAnon, Cook said.  

“All of the information that Q posts is so real to the point that people won’t know how to comprehend it,” Cook said. “So everybody is trying to debunk it… but Q is anything but violent. We are the most peaceful people you will ever come across” 

Conspiracy theories gain currency

To be sure, conspiracy theories are nothing new. What’s new in the digital age is the ability to easily congregate with people of similar beliefs, share baseless ideas or — worse – hatch plans to take action.

Before the internet, “you might be isolated in your town” but unable to spread your beliefs widely, limiting your ability to do harm, said Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth College who has studied the matter. “Now you can immediately plug in.”

Filippo Menczer, a computer science professor at Indiana University Bloomington and director of the Observatory on Social Media, said social media’s tendency to reinforce people’s beliefs in a digital group setting is particularly conducive to conspiracy theories.

“If something is a fringe movement, there are a few people scattered around the world who believe this weird stuff. Now, with Twitter and Facebook, it’s really easy for these people to find each other,” Menczer said.

Facebook’s algorithms are particularly adept at helping people find groups they might be interested in, Menczer said.

Last week, frustrated Facebook employees challenged CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a company-wide meeting over the company’s handling of violent conspiracy theories and militia groups on Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook should have removed an event listing that encouraged armed civilians to defend the streets of Kenosha after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, and violated the company’s policies. He called it an “operational mistake.”

One smartphone, one laptop at a time

Researchers said movements like QAnon lure people who are looking for answers in a complicated world. Perhaps they’ve experienced a traumatic loss. Some may be depressed or isolated. Some may be frustrated that life hasn’t turned out how they hoped.

Still others are raging at the nation’s fights over immigration and racial justice. Being part of a larger group gives them comfort, or excites them. 

Jensen has tracked high rates of mental illness, unemployment rates and previous criminal histories among American extremists.

“It’s a population that is fairly susceptible to the narrative,” Jensen said. “They are looking for an answer. And they are spending a lot of time online. They are looking for someone to blame and they find it there.”

Primed to believe that mainstream media cannot be trusted and that fact-checkers are part of the conspiracy, they reject anyone who disagrees with QAnon as a “sheep” unwilling to do their own research.

One Milwaukee follower, Gamalier Sergio Reyes, said he has been doing his own research for years. 

“I don’t tell my resources because that’s a foolish thing to do,” Reyes said. “All you have to do is take a look outside your window and you can see all the signs. When you take a look on the internet, you can see a little more.”  

When asked about what signs he was referring to, Reyes was vague.  

“Basically how people react to certain situations, the things they say, that’s the most important thing,” Reyes said. “You can see where someone’s head is at simply by their mannerisms and the things they say.” 

Providing connection amid isolation

Before the pandemic even began, the CDC was warning that loneliness and social isolation in older adults were “serious public health risks affecting a significant number of people in the United States.”

“For most people who wind up in these fringe, radical and dangerous communities, they don’t start out expecting that they’ll belong to a group that considers all their political opponents cannibals and part of a massive pedophilia ring,” said Brooking of the Atlantic Council.

Rather, it’s a gradual process.

Gina Allende of Milwaukee said she first learned about the QAnon movement in December 2017. 

“If children’s lives don’t matter then no one’s life matters,” Allende said. “If we don’t come out and speak for them, who will.” 

Allende said QAnon doesn’t tell people what to believe but to draw their own conclusions.  

“They don’t tell you anything, they show you articles and pictures of people together and they tell you ‘Now you come up with your own conclusion,’” Allende said. “After you see all evidence put together, once you see it you cannot unsee it.” 

The core component of that evolution, Brooking said, is a sense of togetherness that the online community of believers provides to each other and to newcomers.

Cook, the Milwaukee march organizer, said that if people dismiss QAnon, “the only thing I can say is that I’m sad for you.”

“We pray for your awakening,” she said, “because when this does come to light, you’re going to say ‘Oh, I guess Q wasn’t the cult we were making them out to be.’”

From fringe to mainstream 

To be sure, QAnon remains a “fringe phenomenon in terms of public opinion,” because research shows that “most people don’t know what it is, let alone believe it,” said Nyhan, the Dartmouth professor.

“But if the ideology that they’ve been exposed to inspires them to commit violence, that’s potentially dangerous,” he said. “I’m also worried about the way that ‘Q’ believers have become more visible and influential online and within the Republican Party base.”

Earlier this month, far-right GOP congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed support for QAnon theories, won a Republican primary runoff election in Georgia. Trump, in a tweet, called her a “future Republican Star.”

Trump himself has also given credence to the movement. When a reporter explained part of the movement’s premise — that Trump himself is saving the world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals — the president responded: “Is that supposed to be a bad thing? If I can help save the world from problems I’m willing to do it, I’m willing to put myself out there.” 

Trump clearly “is more than willing to dabble in stuff that others used to keep the lid on,” the University of Michigan’s Pasek said. “Fortunately, it’s not all that widely believed. But the fact that it is not something that’s so far out of the mainstream to be laughable is alarming.”

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