The United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. was breached by thousands of protesters during a "Stop The Steal" rally in support of President Donald Trump during the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by: zz/STRF/STAR MAX/IPx 2021 1/12/21 AP Photo)
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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When Lin Wood, the de facto QAnon king these days, publicly said he wasn’t involved in QAnon, he was applauded on the conspiracy movement’s internet forums. And when Tucker Carlson told the world he could find no evidence of QAnon on the internet, followers took it as tacit support of their cause. But claiming that there is no such thing as QAnon completely ignores the fact that for years, those at the heart of the conspiracy theory used the term freely to describe the movement.“Some of the earliest websites that compiled posts written by Q even had QAnon in their domain names—and some of the maintainers of those sites are now also claiming that there was never a QAnon despite evidence of them using the term for years,” Nick Backovic, a researcher with Logically, a fact-checking group that tracks QAnon, told VICE News.QAnon influencers quickly latched onto the name within months of Q’s first post, using it to title their books, podcasts and highly popular YouTube videos.In the latest edition of one popular QAnon book released in 2019, all references to QAnon have been removed, even in the book’s title.