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If you have never heard of QAnon, consider yourself fortunate.

Years down the line, future generations will look back at this moment in time very unkindly, and much of their judgement will have to do with the fact that despite having a world of information at our fingertips, we as a society still chose to believe utter nonsense like this.

The beliefs held by those who follow QAnon are laughably absurd, but let’s get the basics out of the way.

This from a great Guardian explainer on the topic:

“QAnon” is a baseless internet conspiracy theory whose followers believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.

QAnon followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against this cabal and its “deep state” collaborators to expose the malefactors and send them all to Guantánamo Bay.

…Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Chrissy Teigen and Pope Francis are just some of the people whom QAnon followers have cast as villains in their alternative reality.

Those who follow QAnon really have gulped up all the Kool-Aid. Read the rest of that explainer here.

In amongst all of this, there’s also a very real South African connection to QAnon, which was the lead story of the Daily Maverick’s newspaper this weekend.

Here’s what Rebecca Davis covered regarding that connection:

A Johannesburg-based former technology journalist has been identified as one of the key figures behind the spread of the global conspiracy theory QAnon.

Paul Furber, a former writer for ItWeb and Brainstorm, has been fingered by US media in the past as having played a prominent role in the popularisation of QAnon. But Furber’s involvement is now believed to have extended beyond helping spread the bizarre web of theories that make up the QAnon movement.

One of the world’s most popular technology podcasts, Reply All, this month aired the strong possibility that Furber might in fact have been the individual responsible for creating the QAnon myth in 2017.

Some who have studied QAnon closely believe that Furber is actually the man who started it all, with the first post on message board 4chan back in October 2017.

Given that Donald Trump is painted as the saviour in all of this, it’s no surprise that QAnon has taken off in far-right circles around the world.

The same is true here in South Africa, with Google searches and trends showing a spike over the past 12 months.

To draw a correlation between Google searches and support for QAnon might be a leap, but there is other evidence, too.

Tessa Knight, a research assistant for the Digital Forensic Research Lab, spoke with Davis:

…there has also been an increase in South African Twitter accounts referencing QAnon or “QArmy”, together with the establishment of local QAnon supporter groups on Facebook and Telegram in recent months.

“There is a noticeable overlap between QAnon followers and those who protest against farm murders and the alleged white genocide in South Africa,” Knight said. She added that Q drops and related QAnon information are also posted to pro-white South African Facebook groups.

QAnon’s presence in South Africa has also recently been visible beyond the digital sphere. In early September, the local Move One Million march against corruption saw protesters in Cape Town marching with posters bearing the Q logo of QAnon.

Yup – sadly, they walk among us.

It’s worth reading the rest of Davis’ article, which you can do here.

As anybody who has watched The Social Dilemma can attest, Facebook and YouTube bear a great deal of responsibility for the rise and rise of QAnon.

You follow one group aligned with anti-vaxxers, or watch one video on YouTube, and the algorithms on both sites will often push you to follow or watch more extreme content.

Still, that’s no excuse for casting aside basic logic, and perhaps that’s how we should look at the rise and rise of QAnon.

Branko Brkic, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Maverick, agrees.

He penned a column for the paper, headlined ‘QAnon is an IQ test – and a sanity check’:

QAnon’s apocalyptic visions and insanity will help no one. One cannot be a decent, intelligent human being and believe such transparent, amateurishly put-together bullshit.

So I want to talk directly to those tempted to sign up as QAnon followers:

QAnon is the most basic of IQ tests, which you fail when you believe in such transparently laughable idiocy. You might want to seek professional help.

And if QAnon is your bandwagon on a cynical journey to burn a civilisation that took millennia to build, you might ask yourself: how is your life going to be better if everything around you is burnt to the ground?

It’s one thing to have a mistrust in mainstream media, or prominent political figures.

Some might even say that’s healthy.

But to believe that the ‘Hollywood elite’ are harvesting adrenochrome from children, and Tom Hanks and Hillary Clinton are orchestrating a massive sex trafficking syndicate, and that Donald Trump is going to save the world, is not healthy.

Not by a long, long stretch of the imagination

[sources:guardian&dailymav&dailymav]