Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the National Space Centre construction site in Moscow on February 27, 2022. (SERGEI GUNEYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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But that all changed in January 2021, when QAnon accounts were purged from mainstream platforms in the wake of the Capitol riot, and found a new home on Telegram.According to data collected by Argentino between January and November 2021, one website stood out as the most shared link in the nascent QAnon ecosystem: Russia Today.
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- This is a psy-op, a false flag, or a movie: For many in the QAnon world, nothing is ever as it seems, and so when Russia invaded Ukraine, the reflexive reaction from believers was to claim that this was all a construct of the mainstream media and that no such attack was taking place. To back up their claims, QAnon followers shared the bogus claim that one of the iconic early pictures of the conflict, of a woman in Ukraine with blood on her face, was taken in 2018 and not 2022. The photo was taken on Feb. 24, 2022, by photographer Wolfgang Schwan. QAnon followers have long promoted the idea that President Joe Biden is simply playing the role of president is an elaborate movie, as part of a complex campaign to oust the deep state. So the fact that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a former actor just adds to their “evidence” that this is all a false-flag operation. One major antisemitic QAnon influencer, Robert Smart, known online as Ghost Ezra, created a poll asking his followers whether they thought the Ukraine invasion was “just a movie and not real.” Over 50,000 followers have voted, and so far 71 percent agree.
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- Attack on the deep state: Almost immediately, QAnon followers justified the invasion of Ukraine not as an attack on a sovereign nation by an authoritarian leader, but as part of an operation to flush out the “deep state.” The reasoning behind this conspiracy is related to the central role Ukraine plays in so many QAnon conspiracies, ranging from links to Hunter Biden’s laptop to the Podesta emails. The current round of conspiracies claim that Putin is waging a war on the globalist cabal of elites who are trafficking children around the world for sex. Sabal described the invasion as “a cleaning out of a VERY corrupt center of operations for the Cabal.” Meanwhile, the QAnon “Queen of Canada”, Romana Didulo, posted a video claiming the Russian military is conducting an operation to remove the deep state in Kyiv. A typical comment in the QAnon swamp on Telegram reads: “Go Russia! Get rid of this deep state bullshit.”
- U.S.-funded biolabs: This particular conspiracy theory was first spread on Russian state-run media and gained traction more broadly when it was shared by a Twitter account with the handle @WarClandestine, claiming Russia was really invading Ukraine to target the sites of U.S.-run biolabs. That account was quickly suspended, but the narrative gained traction as other accounts shared the claim with the hashtag #USbiolabs. Even though the claim about the biolabs and Putin targeting them has been widely debunked, QAnon channels continue to promote the claim.
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