Sexual abuse, the calm before the storm, televised secret gestures, and a great awakening. It reads like a script for a horrific movie, but those are the real-life beliefs of the conspiracy theory group colloquially known as ‘Q.’ Thousands of accounts and pages connected to the right-wing group QAnon were shut down by Facebook this week, as the influential social media platform seeks to limit the celebration of violent acts.
Facebook described the accounts it is banning as ‘offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests, US-based militia organizations and QAnon.’ Changes have been made to the companies ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations’ policy to remove such content from the platform. “We have seen growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior,” Facebook wrote in an announcement.
Under the new measures, 790 QAnon groups were banned on Facebook, as well as 100 Pages and 1,500 ads. More than 10,000 accounts on Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook, have also been restricted. The content on the restricted Instagram accounts is being monitored by Facebook and may be deleted in the future. Mindful of the necessity of free speech, Facebook noted that it is violence and the organization of Q events that it is cracking down on. “While we will allow people to post content that supports these movements and groups, so long as they do not otherwise violate our content policies, we will restrict their ability to organize on our platform,” the announcement said.
Facebook also mentions Antifa as one of the ‘political militias and protest groups encouraging riots’ that it is monitoring. The company says it is studying trends so that it can adapt to the techniques groups are using to evade detection and enforcement of its policies. “Any non-state actor or group that qualifies as a dangerous individual or organization will be banned from our platform,” Facebook says. “These movements and groups evolve quickly, and our teams will follow them closely and consult with outside experts so we can continue to enforce our policies against them.”
Today’s announcement comes 7-weeks after Facebook identified a group known as ‘boogaloo’ as dangerous, and designated it as a violent US-based anti-government organization. “This violent network is banned from having a presence on our platform and we will remove content praising, supporting or representing it,” Facebook wrote on June 29. The company took issue with boogaloo members engaging with one another on the Facebook platform and promoting violence against civilians, law enforcement, and government institutions.
While QAnon is fundamentally a conspiracy theorist group, it has also been linked with violence in the real world. Critics point to the Pizzagate myth that resulted in a man armed with an AR-15, a revolver, and a shotgun showing up at a real-life pizza restaurant in Washington D.C.. His intentions were supposedly to fight back against the ‘bloodlust and moral degeneracy of the left-wing secretive cabal running a sex trafficking ring out of the basement of the pizza shop.’ No such ring, or basement, existed.
Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of the Atlantic published an in-depth investigation on the group in June. She describes Q as being fixated on the unproven conspiracy theory that President Trump is battling a deep state child sex trafficking ring, run by high-profile democrats and celebrities. LaFrance says QAnon and its ideals proliferated on 4Chan and other shadowy corners of the internet, as well as in the diatribes of right-wing media conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich. “It’s this anti-establishment, anti-democratic, very violent rhetoric, certainly anti-free press, anti-media,” LaFrance told NPR in an interview. “QAnon is fundamentally a pro-Trump conspiracy theory. Sometimes people describe it as far-right, but it really isn’t; it’s really a pro-Trump conspiracy theory.”
LaFrance cautions that misinformation and rhetoric expressed by Q are particularly dangerous in the context of a pandemic. “Facts just don’t matter. It’s sort of this blind faith,” she says. “You see sort of the Venn diagram overlap of, you know, anti-vax conspiracy theories crashing into QAnon conspiracy theories crashing into Deep State conspiracy theories.” LaFrance notes that while observing QAnon believers in her reporting she could see why they are entertained by solving a mystery, looking for clues, and being a part of an immersive, inclusive ‘spy novel’ type-group. She says there are elements of gamification and a religious movement in QAnon, though it is centered around a very dark theme. “This all goes back to this belief that Donald Trump is going to save the children,” LaFrance said in the radio interview. “And so this fixation with the idea that children are in danger and that on the other side of this storm, even if it’s violent, is going to be children are saved, you can use that framework to justify all kinds of beliefs.”