Alex Kaplan
@AlKapDC
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Senior Researcher @mmfa , focusing on social media misinfo/disinfo & online extremism. Statements are mine, not employer's. Send tips to akaplan @mediamatters .org
Joined November 2015
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My "Beyond 'Q'" series is now complete.
I hope it will be considered a comprehensive review of how QAnon evolved after Q & continued to cause harm.
If you have time, I truly hope you are able to read all 3 parts.
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Both Osama bin Laden's niece and the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit are QAnon supporters.
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Since Biden was inaugurated, QAnon supporters have pushed false claims of supposed proof that Biden hasn't really been president & his activities as president haven't been real. This may be the first time those claims have in some manner really spread elsewhere in the far-right.
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In the past 48 hours:
-Twitter banned QAnon accounts
-Twitter banned Trump
-Reddit banned r/donaldtrump
-Reddit banned the head moderator of r/conspiracy
-YouTube banned Steve Bannon's show
-Discord banned TheDonald dot win's channel
-Google banned Parler from its app store
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Some users on 4chan are threatening violence against the grand jurors in Georgia who voted to indict Trump after their names were released publicly in the indictment, calling the list of names a "hit list" that they're "about ready to go Turner Diaries on."
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Former national security advisor Michael Flynn at the QAnon Dallas event endorses a military coup happening in the US like it did in Myanmar. The military coup in Myanmar has been widely praised in the QAnon community.
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UPDATE: Here's the now 9 QAnon-supporting congressional candidates who have now made it to November by state:
-CO: Lauren Boebert
-CA: Mike Cargile, Erin Cruz, Alison Hayden, Buzz Patterson
-OR: Jo Rae Perkins
-GA: Angela Stanton-King
-OH: Ron Weber
-TX: Johnny Teague
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SCOOP: Roku has allowed a channel dedicated to QAnon conspiracy theories to launch & be installed hundreds of thousands of times by Roku users in just a matter of weeks, even though the channel's content seems to violate Roku’s own rules.
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A sitting member of Congress, Louie Gohmert, is currently speaking at a QAnon event in front of the event's logo, which has the QAnon slogan right in it.
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A false conspiracy theory has spread widely in the far-right internet (not just within the QAnon community) that some incident involving a microphone and Biden talking to reporters shows he and the incident were somehow faked.
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For reasons that are unclear, The New York Times does not mention or cite my QAnon candidates piece at all here, even though they seem to be citing material from my piece.
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Users on far-right message board 4chan "/pol/" tried to clog up The Trevor Project's hotline for LGBTQ+ youth considering self-harm with fake cases to prevent people from accessing the hotline. Users posted images of their conversations & claimed were able to clog up the hotline.
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Today is Inauguration Day. It will be a milestone day for QAnon supporters. We may see splintering as Biden takes office between those realizing QAnon isn't real & those doubling down & moving the goalposts. Here's a poll from a QAnon Telegram channel today suggesting a divide.
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Jacob Wohl tells USA Today he's going to create fake left-wing Facebook & Twitter accounts to interfere in the Democratic presidential primaries. This sure sounds like the kind of "inauthentic behavior" Facebook has previously banned accounts for.
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Sebastian Gorka asked on Fox what Trump can do to pressure China over North Korea. Gorka: "We have the president's Twitter feed."
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The Krassensteins, anti-Trump Twitter personalities when Trump was president, are now promoting a cryptocurrency feature from Ali Alexander, a far-right figure who organized the "Stop The Steal" efforts leading to the insurrection (Alexander amplified their praise).
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It appears that Elon Musk will not stop boosting Kanekoa, a known QAnon influencer -- particularly it seems regarding the war in Ukraine -- despite my reporting on Kanekoa's clear QAnon association.
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"GOP political strategists acknowledged in interviews with Insider that Republicans view QAnon believers and the movement not as a liability or as a scourge to be extinguished, but as a useful band of fired-up supporters."
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Facebook says that a post from QAnon supporter Danielle Stella, a congressional candidate running against Ilhan Omar, that calls for Omar to be hung "doesn't violate our Community Standards." She was suspended last night on Twitter for the same post.
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The Department of Defense has now joined the FBI in declaring QAnon as a potential extremist threat.
In December the military anticipated "election related unrest" in the DC area, warning "a large segment of the population views the results as invalid or fraudulent," per intel report leaked to me.
It also identified QAnon as an extremist group:
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NEW from me:
How Devin Nunes and Kash Patel appealed to QAnon supporters to build Truth Social’s user base. That has included Patel suggesting that the platform was trying to “incorporate” QAnon “into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.”
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This appears to be the song previously released online with the title "Wwg1wga" -- the QAnon slogan. Trump this summer used the song in a campaign-style video he posted on Rumble and Truth Social.
Official video posted to Trump’s social media account appears to use QAnon song
www.mediamatters.org
Oh my goodness -- Trump's hypnotic rant about how the US is declining is now set to dramatic music. Weird and very cult-like.
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The QAnon influencer who was moving the goalposts earlier this morning is now claiming Biden has been part of QAnon all along.
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Far-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos has been banned from YouTube.
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UPDATE:
@buymeacoffee
has suspended every account mentioned in this article. Its CEO sent
@mmfa
this statement:
NEW from me: The crowdfunding platform Buy Me a Coffee has become a notable revenue stream for QAnon figures, allowing them to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Multiple QAnon influencers & a major QAnon forum are hyping Kayleigh McEnany's tweet suggesting something nefarious about Biden and children.
From a former WH colleague of McEnany’s: “This is 100% meant to stir up the qanon crowd. Awful.”
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NEW from me:
A troll account & its deceptive tweet based on a racist 4chan meme that aimed to spread anti-trans sentiment following the Nashville mass shooting was shared on social media & by right-wing figures & outlets, including Fox’s Tucker Carlson.
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NEW from me:
-Doxxing their addresses
-Threatening violence against them
-Posting their LinkedIn & Facebook pages
Users on far-right message boards are targeting the Georgia Trump indictment grand jurors after their names were made public
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UPDATE: Trump has now amplified QAnon accounts at least 131 times via at least 80 individual accounts, according to the newest count. Since the coronavirus pandemic began in the US, he's amplified QAnon accounts at least 36 times via 15 individual accounts
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Update: One of the QAnon-connected congressional candidates, Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai, has lost his primary.
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Folks, a QAnon supporter is probably going to Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene, who extensively supports QAnon, came in 1st in her primary yesterday by a wide margin & will go a runoff in August. She's likely favored in the runoff & then in November in this very GOP district.
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An account that appears to be affiliated with Anonymous is claiming credit for far-right forum TheDonald having issues being online at the moment.
Hmmm TheDonald, the forum where Trump fans openly planned January 6th, is down right now.
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Documents newly released by the FBI suggest that the bureau opened an investigation in 2018 into the identity of Q regarding the possible federal crime of "false personation of a federal official," & that subpoenas were issued, but that the investigation closed in 2019.
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Every member of QAnon influencer Juan O. Savin's secretary of state candidates coalition who attended last year's QAnon conference where the coalition & Savin's involvement were announced -- NV's Jim Marchant, AZ's Mark Finchem, MI's Kristina Karamo, & CA's Rachel Hamm -- lost.
Another member of Savin's secretary of state candidates coalition, and who has additionally promoted QAnon himself, Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, has also been defeated.
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A hashtag connecting Joe Biden to riots has been trending nationally today. According to Twitter search, the first account to use that hashtag, back in May, pushed Pizzagate.
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New from me: A 4chan hoax about Chief Justice John Roberts tricked a presidential elector, went viral on social media, & was amplified in multiple Newsmax segments.
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New from me:
Multiple new far-right conspiracy theorists are now getting money from Twitter's ad revenue sharing program, including a conspiracy theorist who previously posted child sexual abuse imagery on the platform.
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The video appears to come from the account "TheGeekzTeam." The account is listed as a creator for Meme World, the site created by far-right figure Carpe Donktum. Donktum attended the White House social media summit & met with Trump.
NEW: The video showed the president as a mass shooter executing members of the media and his political opponents in a church. It was played at a pro Trump conference at the Trump resort in Miami last week. w/
@maggieNYT
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Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general of Florida, went on QAnon show X22 Report, where he tried to cast doubt on the safety of COVID vaccines.
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Will likely be publishing tomorrow what is probably one of the most significant stories I've ever written.
Without revealing details, I will say it feels like a vindication of what I've focused so heavily my reporting on in recent years. The story is a doozy.
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QAnon influencer QAnon John, who has been ban evading on Twitter, has now been verified under Twitter's new verification system.
Twitter under its new verification system has now verified multiple QAnon-supporting figures.
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Twitter CEO Elon Musk interacting with Ron Watkins, the onetime administrator of far-right message board site 8chan (later 8kun) & who is suspected of controlling the Q account there for at least a period of time (Watkins has also praised Q.)
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This would be at least the 5th murder tied to QAnon. Others were QAnon supporters killing his brother with a sword, a QAnon supporter killing a mob boss, & QAnon supporter killing someone aiding her child custody case, & a QAnon supporter killing his mom.
California surf school owner Matthew Taylor Coleman killed his 2 young children in Mexico because he was influenced by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories to believe his wife had infected them with "serpent DNA" and they were monsters, the FBI says:
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JoeM, one of the biggest QAnon accounts on Twitter -- who played a major role amplifying the false claim that forced a California school fundraiser to be cancelled & whose material was shared by the account of the Pizzagate arsonist's parents -- has been suspended by Twitter.
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New from me:
Elon Musk has boosted a QAnon influencer on Twitter at least two dozen times since he took over the platform and reinstated the influencer’s account, a
@mmfa
review has found.
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NEW:
Footage has been leaked of Michael Flynn participating in a Zoom call in 2022 with a group of QAnon figures, telling them, “I love you guys” & being told, “You have no idea how much you are respected and loved and admired by your digital soldiers.”
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QAnon congressional candidate Brian Perras has lost the Republican primary in Florida’s 12th Congressional District.
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SCOOP: A new COVID vaccine & masks misinfo video has earned more than 90 million Facebook engagements from uploads to streaming platforms, according to tracking tool BuzzSumo. It's significantly higher than what the engagement numbers were for Plandemic.
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New: White nationalist Nick Fuentes cheered Elon Musk for boosting the anti-ADL campaign: "We have a captive audience of one who just happens to be the richest man in the world."
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NEW:
After claiming to disavow QAnon in 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared today on a QAnon show.
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SCOOP: An official video posted to Trump’s Truth Social account appeared to use a QAnon song. The song's apparently called "Wwg1wga," which is the QAnon slogan. The QAnon community's celebrating the use of the song as confirmation of the conspiracy theory.
Official video posted to Trump’s social media account appears to use QAnon song
www.mediamatters.org
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New from me, & my final piece of 2020:
In 2020, a false message board conspiracy theory harmed the pandemic response, significantly impacted our political process, & destroyed lives & families.
A deep dive into how QAnon's breakout year harmed us all:
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Thread: Trump this morning amplified on Truth Social at least 7 different QAnon-promoting accounts a total of 16 times, including amplifying an image featuring a "Q+" (what some QAnon supporters refer to Trump as). Below are images showing this.
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NEW from me: I tracked how a false claim about Beto O'Rourke & the Odessa shooting spread across social media with the assist of bots, QAnon accounts, the Proud Boys, a TPUSA advisory council member, & current & former Trump administration & campaign staff
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Ryann McEnany, the sister of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany & a social media strategist for Trump's campaign, has joined Gab, a platform known as a haven for white nationalists. She may be the first Trump official to join the platform.
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New from
@ohhkaygo
& I:
After the ADL spoke with Twitter/X’s new CEO about hate speech, Elon Musk boosted an anti-ADL trending hashtag from an antisemtic figure Musk reinstated to the platform who has ties to Spencer & who instigated the hashtag.
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New from me: I put together a list of how Trump and multiple people in Trump's orbit have repeatedly amplified QAnon supporters & their content. Trump himself has now amplified QAnon Twitter accounts more than 25 times.
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White nationalist Nick Fuentes' YouTube channel was apparently just suspended by YouTube.
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Tucker Carlson is now at least the 3rd Fox News host to downplay or defend QAnon, following Jesse Watters & Greg Gutfeld. Additionally, Fox Nation has had a QAnon supporter as a host of one of its shows.
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NEW from me:
Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2022.
We begin with 19 candidates.
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UPDATE: A new count finds that Trump has now amplified QAnon accounts at least 72 times via at least 58 individual accounts.
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Facebook apparently approved an ad today promoting QAnon that also links to a YouTube video encouraging people to not wear masks and which also features QAnon content. It comes days after Facebook said it was cracking down on QAnon.
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On YouTube, this false conspiracy theory has gotten tens of thousands of combined views. At least 2 of those videos have ads, meaning YouTube has made money off of this false conspiracy theory.
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A video of someone falsely claiming coronavirus vaccines could change your DNA, make you infertile, & contain microchips received more than 16 million Facebook engagements alone.
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(For full context, other 4chan users were not happy with these posts, basically accusing the users of being feds, likely out of fear for the potential harm it could bring to 4chan more broadly.)
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Users on the far-right message board 4chan "/pol/" are cheering Elon Musk's tweet, writing that "arguably the most influential person in the entire world just. f*****g. named. them." & urging fellow users to "like elon's tweet to show support."
This is literally the conspiracy theory espoused by the white supremacist who massacred the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue. Musk approves.
I have no further commentary.
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It appears that at least 8 QAnon supporters have now been arrested and/or face charges from authorities for the Capitol storming.
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Months after "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander in an online stream suggested that he had a "freedom cell" in Brazil, he is in response to the storming of the Brazilian Congress saying that he does "NOT denounce" it & is "activating all" of his "networks" in the country.
"Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander in an online stream earlier this week seemed to suggest that he had a "freedom cell" in Brazil.
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@oneunderscore__
Anti-vax figures' increasing alliance with online conspiracy theorists was one of the most alarming trends of 2021.
This was one of the most significant trends in 2021 for QAnon that hasn't gotten as much attention. It's not just that QAnon is very anti-vax, that's well known. It's what happened on the other end that's concerning: anti-vaxers actively used the QAnon community as allies.
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As of tonight, at least 32 congressional or state legislative candidates who have expressed some level of support for QAnon -- a conspiracy theory the FBI has labeled as a potential domestic terror threat -- have secured a spot on the ballot in November.
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Former national security adviser Michael Flynn attended an event with QAnon influencer inTheMatrixxx yesterday. Flynn was wearing a wristband with the QAnon slogan on it. inTheMatrixxx posted this video of them together on Telegram.
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There's now been multiple reports about internal warnings at Facebook for years about QAnon's spread on Facebook, without Facebook taking action, during which time QAnon built an influential infrastructure on social media. Facebook only started cracking down on QAnon last August.
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New: Days before appearing on a U.S. senator’s panel, Lara Logan said the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory "is all true."
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Some QAnon influencers seem to be suggesting (baselessly) that a cicada landing on Biden today was somehow tied to the conspiracy theory.
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Twitter has banned the podcast QAnon Anonymous as part of its new QAnon crackdown. The podcast was not pro-QAnon and reported on the conspiracy theory's influence. This is an error by Twitter.
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To recap: Ali Alexander was banned from Twitter after January 6, then reinstated under Musk, then banned again, then reinstated again, & is now banned yet again following the new allegations against him.
Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander has been suspended from Twitter.
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Worth noting that, as Gab has seen a surge in traffic from QAnon supporters, both members of Congress who have expressed some level of support for QAnon have also joined Gab in the past few days.
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I would urge reporters who pointed to a report last week to suggest that QAnon was in some fashion "dead" to reassess. The conspiracy theory may change form over time, but it is very much still alive.
This is a good & important report, but I have seen some reporters suggest in response that it shows QAnon is dead or gone essentially from the internet. That is just not correct, as Marc explains.
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Rep. Matt Gaetz is participating and chatting in a Clubhouse chatroom with Chuck Johnson, a far-right figure who has denied the Holocaust.
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Trump has now amplified QAnon-promoting accounts at least 24 times this week alone, just over a quarter of his overall total of QAnon-promoting account amplifications since he began using Truth Social.
Trump since last has amplified 6 different QAnon-promoting accounts, including an account whose profile name is the QAnon slogan (it is at least the 3rd time Trump has amplified that specific account).
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New: "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander in an online stream claimed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey would “put me on the phone with other Twitter executives” & that he prevented Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes “from being banned initially” on Twitter
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Fuentes' ban from Twitter comes just days after
@MichaelEHayden
reported that Twitter told him that Fuentes was not violating the platform's rules.
check out
@MichaelEHayden
's deep dive of how Twitter empowered the extreme right, which includes, among other things, this response to me emailing them in the midst of the insurrection to say Nick Fuentes was at the Capitol as it was being attacked.
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"Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander has also been banned again on Twitter, after being reinstated on the platform earlier this month.
twitter appears to have suspended fuentes roughly 24 hours later. he praised hitler and the unabomber in a twitter space last night, at one point claiming “jews run the news.”
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Ron Watkins at the QAnon conference in Las Vegas just called himself the "digital Rosa Parks."
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Last night Trump amplified a false claim about the vote totals in Pennsylvania. That exact image & text had been going around social media & appear to come from a blog posted a few days ago from Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock dot com.
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This means that we've had now multiple FBI warnings about QAnon, a warning about QAnon from the Department of Defense, & a joint bulletin warning about QAnon from the National Counterterrorism Center, the DOJ, & DHS.
First on CNN: FBI warns that QAnon followers will likely "begin to believe they can no longer 'trust the plan' referenced in QAnon posts" & that they have an obligation to change from serving as 'digital soldiers' towards engaging in real world violence."
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Some news: Infowars hosts Owen Shroyer & David Knight have apparently been banned from TikTok.
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A sitting member of Congress, Louie Gohmert, criticized calls for a proposed commission to investigate the insurrection at an event for QAnon, a conspiracy theory whose adherents were part of the insurrection.
OK, now he's back onto the subject:
"I'm taking flak for" opposing the January 6th commission. "Pelosi... appointed a general who has called the Republicans excrement, and other things."
You just claimed Dems want young girls to get raped by Mexican immigrants, my man. 👞 fits
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NEW from me:
How True the Vote's Catherine Engelbrecht & Gregg Phillips formed relationships with QAnon influencers to target an election software company & be a liaison between QAnon influencers & law enforcement after they claimed the FBI spurned them.
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Twitter owner Elon Musk is now apparently subscribing to this QAnon influencer.
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This is straight out of QAnon. Conspiracy theories that RBG was secretly dead/incapacitated/replaced by a body double were so widespread among QAnon supporters that some of them harassed Supreme Court phone operators over them.
In early 2019, conspiracy theorists claimed that Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't appear at an airport and was actually replaced by a body double.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose GOP colleagues have given her committee assignments, was one of those people.
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Thread: Trump this morning amplified on Truth Social at least 12 different QAnon accounts a total of 18 times. Below are images showing this.
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Billionaire creator of Minecraft Markus Persson tweets that "Q is legit" and has "gotten people digging real deep to uncover the truth" (h/t
@travis_view
).
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One error in the final episode of
#QIntoTheStorm
: it says about 24 QAnon-connected candidates ran for Congress in 2020. That's a major undercount. During my tracking throughout 2020, I found at least 97 candidates (27 were on the general election ballot).
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