Last Friday, the internet troll known as “Q” from the QAnon conspiracy cult, aka Ron Watkins the administrator of the 8kun message board, Ron Watkins Slips Up, Suggests He Is Q, in HBO QAnon Documentary Series, and currently a GQP candidate for Congress in Arizona, returned after a two year hiatus. QAnon Creator ‘Q’ Returns After Nearly Two-Year Hiatus:
The anonymous message board user known as “Q,” whose cryptic announcements spawned the fascist pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, has returned to posting after a nearly two-year hiatus.
On Friday night, someone with access to Q’s login credentials posted on 8kun, the anarchic internet community where Q last posted in December 2020.
“Shall we play a game once more?” the first post marking Q’s return to the board read, signed “Q.”
The message was written in the same clue-like format as thousands of earlier Q posts, dubbed “Q Drops” by their fans, that led to the creation of QAnon in late 2017. Q’s followers believe the messages explain the world as it really is, controlled by Satan-worshipping, child-eating pedophiles in the Democratic Party, finance, and other institutions.
In QAnon’s telling, Donald Trump was recruited by the military to run for president in 2016 to take down that nefarious “cabal.” QAnon believers await “The Storm,” an event in which they believe Trump enemies like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be executed via orders from a military tribunal, or imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
The Q poster followed up with two more messages on Friday night. Asked why they had disappeared for more than a year, they wrote, “It had to be done this way.”
“Are you ready to serve your country again?” Q wrote in another post. “Remember your oath.”
This sounds like a cryptic refrence to the violent armed insurrection on January 6, 2021. Is Ron calling for another violent armed insurrection? As Fox News used to say, “We report, you decide.”
I mean, I get why Ron is posting as Q again, is there anything to even do in Tonto Basin?
— AZ Right Wing Watch (@az_rww) June 25, 2022
Despite its ludicrous claims, QAnon has managed to become a faction within the Republican Party … A 2021 poll found that QAnon’s core tenets have a significant amount of support, with 15 percent of people surveyed saying they believed the world is run by a Satanic pedophile cabal.
Q stopped posting on 8kun in December 2020, shortly after Trump’s election defeat. Ron Watkins, the former 8kun administrator who has often been accused of controlling the QAnon account, is currently running as a longshot candidate for an Arizona House seat. (Here posing with QAnon cult member, kari Lake).
Watkins, who has denied posting as Q, didn’t respond to an immediate request for comment on Q’s return. It’s not clear whether the new Q posts are meant to coincide with the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday overturning Roe v. Wade and abortion rights.
[T]he QAnon conspiracy theory has also inspired terrorism and multiple murders, as well as providing the inspiration for a number of Capitol rioters.
On Wednesday, “QAnon” targeted Cassidy Hutchinson following her devastating incriminating testimony before the January 6 Committee. Trump admin official: Return of mysterious conspiracy theorist could threaten the life of J6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson:
The targeting of January 6 star witness Cassidy Hutchinson by the mysterious internet account behind the QAnon conspiracy theory could pose a threat to her safety, a former deputy director of the FBI told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday.
In that case, the FBI office in Arizona needs to pay Ron Watkins a visit.
"Q" has made 3 major opsec blunders in 5 days.
1) Posting with the 2020 tripcode despite a recent salt rotation. 2) 8kun enabling TORposting mere hours before Q used TOR to post. And now 3) Responding to a post insulting Jim Watkins sans tripcode, as evidenced by the post IDs. https://t.co/slJUhUYHsZ
— Travis View (@travis_view) June 29, 2022
“Well, another person lining up against Cassidy Hutchinson is the online poster, Q, whose completely absurd posts, which would be laughably cryptic and are actually never accurate are at the heart of the movement,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported. “After 18 months of silence, the Q account is back and on Wednesday, it aimed its conspiracies towards Hutchinson.”
“It’s really too stupid to even show the posts of this Q person, but they contain numerous cryptic questions and ended with asking who is Cassidy Hutchinson? And ‘trust the plan,’ which is a common Q catchphrase. The Q stuff would be funny if it didn’t have real-world consequences, the FBI says it’s arrested more than 20 people involved in Capitol riots who said they followed Qanon.“
Cooper replayed an interview with a former member of the cult who thought he himself was “worshipping Satan, drinking the blood of children” after the CNN anchor was mentioned by Q.
For analysis, Cooper interviewed former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“Andrew, what is the significance of Q mentioning Hutchinson and what could be, do you think, the real-world consequences?” Cooper asked.
McCabe said, “There is no significance to the post beyond the fact that he included her name specifically. It’s not because he said anything logical or factual, it’s just the existence of her name in that post turns her into a target for people who ascribe to these beliefs.“
He said the fact her name was listed is “very, very damaging to her in terms of the attention it will bring who believe in, who knows which of the Qanon conspiracies.”
“And so if you toss this young woman’s name into that conversation, into that froth, you run the risk that someone who is following these things and who’s projecting their own rage and their dissatisfaction about whatever it is in life they’re mad about is going to attach her to that and one of those people, maybe more than one, might decide to take the matter into their own hands and resort to an act of violence in the exact same way that the young man from North Carolina did about the nonsense around Comet Ping-Pong Pizza, the pizza restaurant here in Washington, D.C. when he had been digesting this material, got in his car, drove to D.C. on a Sunday with an AR-15 intending to shoot up the place.”
Threatening or intimidating witnesses is a felony. This is not a “game.”
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