AP Dario Lopez-MIlls
The inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, which took place without any concrete incidents, dealt a painful blow to the hopes of a crowd of supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory in support of outgoing President Donald Trump.
This right-wing conspiracy theory, citing a secret source within the government known as the letter Q, states that Trump is fighting a backward plot behind the “deep state” represented by an international child trafficking gang that includes prominent leaders in the US Democratic Party, prominent businessmen and artists, all of whom worship the Devil.
This conspiracy theory appeared for the first time in October 2017 and spread widely on social networking sites. The number of participants in groups for this theory on the “Facebook” site alone is millions of people in 2020.
Last year, the US House of Representatives issued a bill denouncing and refuting this conspiracy theory.
In recent weeks, the communication sites changed their policies towards QAnon, after the proponents of this theory played a tangible role in the storming of the Capitol, and thousands of pages promoting this theory were closed.
The advocates of the QAnon theory believed until the end that things were developing according to the previously proposed plan, waiting for a “storm” that would strike Trump’s enemies involved in that alleged secret gang, including large-scale arrests, the organization of military courts and the execution of multiple executions.
Despite the blow that QAnon advocates suffered following Biden’s victory over Trump in the elections, some of them were able to find other explanations, especially stating that Biden’s victory was nothing but an illusion and Trump will remain de facto president, or that Trump will remain the “shadow president” during Biden’s term, and even Biden’s inauguration was not actually organized but fabricated using computer technologies. Biden himself is Q.
But yesterday’s events, including Trump’s departure from the White House and Biden’s arrival without any “storm”, undermined the faith of even the most vocal proponents of the conspiracy theory, and some of them on social media expressed their shock, fear and confusion, and decided to quit the communication sites at all.
Yesterday, QAnon websites were subjected to a barrage of abusive and derogatory messages and comments, while some extreme right-wing groups, such as Proud Boys, attempted to recruit conspiracy theorists into their ranks.
Writer Mark Rothschild, who will publish his book on the QAnon theory soon, said that it is too early to talk about whether the disappointment of the proponents of this theory after Trump’s loss dealt a fatal blow to it, explaining: “I think these people made many sacrifices in their family and personal lives, and they believed in that. Altogether, it is not easy for most of them to give up on that now. “
Source: “The Associated Press”
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