The question, then, is how much of the phenomenon is actually attributable to peer-to-peer digital information flows vs. the simple consequences of motivated and resourced actors pushing their agenda in a low-trust, low-filtration information environment.
Here, personal experience makes me suspicious. Coincidentally, I lived in Eastern Europe, centered mostly in Budapest, for a number of years off-and-on for the period between 2002 and 2009. While I was based there, several very similar episodes of allegedly “uncovering” but somehow never quite actually verifying, grave accusations against public officials played out in the nascent low-filter Hungarian and Ukrainian *print-media* ecologies- right down to the eye-rolling blather about cannibalism, protecting children’s virtue, leaked recordings & emails, calls for suspension of normal justice processes and the ad hoc emergency military trials to prevent unverified coup attempts etc.
The sensationalist information was always mixed with just enough genuine scuttlebutt and innuendo to keep quasi-believers on the fence about overall veracity.
The power structure there had completely different, and much more recent, origins than anything in the US so the chances that these exact and overwhelming patterns genuinely emerged independently in both environments, and was subsequently being uncovered, is fairly remote.
The follow-up sleuthing then was mostly centered on investigations of circumstantial evidence of these broad accusations by dubious small publications and interest groups (imagine not one or two InfoWars-style media operations, but several), rather than 4chan. But as it turns out, the absence of editorial standards in itself was sufficient to perpetuate the phenomenon.
While mostly new to the US, motivated Psychological Operations are not actually new. What exactly does social media per se add?
In retrospect, it seems fairly clear to me that these episodes almost certainly emerged from state-level operations intended to achieve state objectives. Indeed, a number of the most likely intended goals have indeed already been achieved in that region.
While I will not speculate the degree to which the same actors may be involved in Qanon, it is absolutely clear from my perspective that it is using the same playbooks.
Which to me begs the question: what if Qanon is not primarily a great early example of a social technology designed to filter information, but a relatively sophisticated iteration of an established social technology designed to efficiently manipulate large groups toward more fear and anger based patterns of political discourse, and to move Overton Windows on specific issues?
Ultimately, I would be willing to bet you $100 dollars that, within the next 10 years, it will emerge (we can figure out mutually acceptable verification terms etc. here) that whether or not it is actually being run by Russia, the overall architecture of the Qanon operation is primarily derived from information campaigns that have been running in Eastern Europe for more than two decades, rather than from a Red Religion point of origin.
Would you be willing to take that bet?
