What does WWG1WGA mean? - CBS News.

The fringe movement started by former President Trump's supporters has taken a mainstream turn.The conspiracy theory started on 4chan and spread to larger social media platforms.Facebook has taken action against groups and pages, while Twitter has removed thousands of accounts.

The FBI warns that fringe conspiracy theories pose a domestic terrorism threat.

What is the conspiracy theory?What do its followers think?Since the movement's inception, those questions have become more difficult to answer.

QAnon claims that America is run by a group of pedophiles and Satan-worshippers who run a global child sex-trafficking operation and that former President Trump is the only person who can stop them.A high-ranking government official is said to have posted information on 4chan and 8chan under the name Q.

That's the crux of the theory.Q's posts tend to read like riddles so the rest is open to some degree of interpretation.YouTube videos created by QAnon believers help fill in the gaps and create a storyline that's more-or-less comprehensible.

There is a parallel history in which a "deep state" took over decades ago.It appears to tie together and explain everything from "Pizzagate" to the prevalence of mass shootings and the JFK assassination.

Donald Trump was recruited by the military to run for the president.The deep state, which controls the media, tried to make him out to be a traitor.It says that despite the deep state's best efforts, Mr. Trump is winning and that Q is releasing leaks to the public in order to get people to watch "The Storm."The process has been called "The Great Awakening".

The storm is named after President Trump's comment about "the calm before the storm" in October.Q said that the storm Mr. Trump referred to was a coming series of mass arrests that would end the deep state forever.

The storm is a kind of Judgment Day in which the evildoers are punished and the faithful are redeemed, because President Trump was secretly working with special counsel Robert Muller to bring the deep state down.Q has said that certain people would be arrested at certain times and that the storm would hit in the very near future.

Q says that the dates need to be delayed for one reason or another, but that Mr. Trump still has the situation well in hand.

Q's posts were either vague or incomprehensible, but QAnon believers were more than happy to try and decipher them.Q posted a photo of an island chain.Q was traveling with the president and the photo must have been taken on Air Force One.

The Q posts are known to the faithful asbreadcrumbs.bakers are the people who try to figure out what they mean.According to Will Sommer of The Daily Beast, QAnon believers spend a lot of time trying to figure out who in the government is a "white hat" Trump supporter.They misquote a line from the 1996 Jeff Bridges sailing adventure "White Squall" as referring to President Kennedy.

Roseanne Barr used the phrase "WWG1WGA" in June of last year.The right-wing radio host and former Red Sox pitcher has promoted QAnon online.

The Energy Department has Q-level clearance.Nobody knows who is behind the posts.According to Sommer, the QAnon faithful sometimes point to former national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House aide Dan Scavino as possibilities.Others think it's Mr. Trump.There is a theory that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death.

The administrator of 8chan resigned on Election Day.Q did not post for a week, raising suspicions about a possible connection.

From its fringe beginnings on 4chan and 8chan, QAnon spread to larger social media platforms.These platforms have found it difficult to crack down on these accounts and groups.

Dan is a technology reporter for CBS News.

They did little to moderate activity for a long time.In the summer and fall of 2020, the larger platforms will take stronger action, removing groups and banning accounts.

These platforms don't give much information beyond the number of accounts affected."These organizations are driven by computers, and they favor engagement, which is what QAnon is good at doing."

New conspiracy theories helped subsume more followers as the QAnon movement migrated to more mainstream social media platforms.

Many people believe that President Kennedy was going to reveal the existence of the secret government when he was assassinated.They think that all the presidents since Reagan left office have been agents of the deep state.

The 9/11 "truther" movement and anti-Semitic claims about ownership of the world's banks have been latched onto by Qanon believers.The central conspiracy of child sex trafficking rings perpetrated by members of the Democratic party is what different QAnon followers identify with.

The "Save Our Children" demonstrations attracted more attention and support.In August 2020, the trend #SaveThe Children was mentioned more than one million times.Ahead of the 2020 election, the group organized a number of "Save the Children" rallies.

"It seems like they've hijacked the 'Save Our Children' movement, infiltrating it and putting their spin on it," says Daryl Johnson, who previously researched right-wing terrorism for the Department of Homeland Security.Think about how vulnerable children are.The issue tugs at the hearts of people.They're linking it to their crazy conspiracy theories.

According to political science professor Joe Uscinski, who studies conspiracy theories, the beliefs themselves are almost an encouragement to violence.You can't say anything worse about your political competitors than that they are sex traffickers who molest and eat children.

The supporters of QAnon used the same trends in their communities.

"Save the Children" is a recruitment tactic that is designed to hook and convert a mainstream audience, according to Dapper Gander.

Fredrick Brennan, founder of 8chan who split from the site and became a prominent critic, expects that the conspiracy will continue to evolve using similar tactics.

He said that the conspirators would be able to come up with new narratives that would keep a large number of people focused.

According to tracking by Media Matters, at least 19 House Republican candidates who support or have elevated the Qanon movement were on the November ballot.Two people were elected to the United States House of Representatives.

The conspiracy was invented by the media, according to the QAnon influencers.

The trend began when the user "Q" changed the message board 8kun to read:

There is 'Q.'There are 'Anons.'There is no 'Quan'.It's pretty self-explanatory to combine 'Q' to comments, suggestions, statements, and actions made by 2.

Mike Rothschild, author and conspiracy expert, explained that the ploy is an attempt to make the public believe that QAnon was invented by the media.

"True believers are pretending that 'QAnon' is a term made up by the media to malign truth-seekers and researchers," Rothschild said.Q believers have been using the term since the first Q drops.It's all over their merchandise and iconography, because Q used it in dozens of posts.Pretending they didn't use it is a form of gaslighting.Not just of us, but of ourselves.

The phrase echoed on social media almost immediately after the 8kun post.Several accounts continue to use the phrase "There is no Qanon" even though they were banned by Twitter.

According to prosecutors, Jacob Chansley planted a spear-tipped flag in the U.S. Capitol to "capture and assassinate" elected officials.Chansley denied that in an interview with 60 Minutes+.

More than 300 people have been arrested by the FBI in connection with the insurrection.

The violent nature of QAnon was exposed by the riot.Some QAnon followers were linked to violence incidents and had been calling for a military takeover of the U.S. government for years prior to the insurrection.

"Pizzagate" was an anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy that predated and inspired QAnon.A man who fired an assault rifle at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. was sentenced to 4 years in prison.An armored car with a number of military-style weapons was parked on Hoover Dam.In early 2020 a QAnon believer armed with over a dozen knives drove to New York in an attempt to take out Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

The group's true believers want us to believe they're peaceful patriots who love democracy, but this is laughable.Rothschild said that they are using this language to change their image.Donald Trump's authoritarian rule, enforced by the military, will result in the arrest and execution of his political enemies.

When Donald Trump was not sworn in for a second term, and there were no mass arrests of Satan-worshiping child abusers in an event called "The Storm", true believers were stunned.

Some of the believers moved to private Facebook groups, alternative social networks, and messaging apps.Many were upset.There is a support group for people who want to leave the conspiracy called "QAnon Casualties".

One woman, who chose not to share her name publicly because she fears reprisals from the group, told CBS News that her family was irreparably harmed when her daughter cut off communication with family members who did not vote for Donald Trump.

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