Put A Q On It
In this week’s Meme War Weekly, we continue to look at the memes of the “new deplorables,” the groups that make up the MAGA coalition, focusing closely on Qanon. Networked factions, due to their individual differences and rivalries, rarely become a full fledged social movement, rather they are the product of communication networks facilitated by major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. While these networked factions may be welcoming some new groups into the fold for 2020, the themes are the same: conspiracism, white nationalism, and hyperpartisanship. With Trump’s polling data thrown askew by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the uncertainty of the November elections looming, we will continue to track how these ‘keyboard warriors’ are memeing their way into mainstream political conversation.
While supporters of the Qanon conspiracy theory have gained new relevance by inserting themselves into conversations around #Obamagate, the COVID-19 crises and subsequent Reopen America protests, they’ve been a visible presence at Republican political rallies since 2018. Reenergized by the conviction and death of Jeffery Epstein and the acquittal of General Flynn, the Qanon movement has used COVID-19 pandemic for recruitment, using lockdown protests in public spaces and on social media to further an anti-institutional agenda by spreading hashtags, coded phrases, and memes emblazoned with the fiery Q. Despite attacks from establishment conservatives, Qanon followers are moving closer and closer to the mainstream of Trump’s supporters, where Qanon from all walks of life are hanging on his every tweet in hopes of decrypting a coded message.
What is Q
The Qanon movement is built on decades of previous conspiracy theories, and uses leftover iconography from the “alt-right” and the MAGA coalition of 2016. Emerging in October 2017, like many arresting and confusing moments in contemporary internet history, the Qanon conspiracy theory first grew on 4chan, an anonymous image board that spawned trolling and hacktivist movements, and later helped facilitate the rise of the “alt-right.” The saga begins with a psuedoanonymous 4chan poster dubbed “Q,” claiming to have high level White House security clearance, planted a cryptic message into a conspiratorial thread about the Muller investigation, indicating the upcoming arrest of Hillary Clinton. In the following days, this poster gained temporary legitimacy with some 4chan users, who left breadcrumbs hinting at unseen changes Trump was trying to enact against agents of the “deep state.”
Since 2017, a mass of followers have reposted and overanalyzed the frequent cryptic messages posted by Q across many websites as it spread from anonymous message boards and into other online communities. Forced to migrate from 4chan to 8chan, and then later its replacement 8kun, Qanon content was outright banned on Reddit for the violent speech of its supporters. Despite these deplatformings, this networked factor of Qanon believers has embedded itself on major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, where they can reach even wider audiences.
Qanon, like the “alt-right” and manosphere before it, has appropriated the ‘redpill’ metaphor from the Matrix, meaning bits of information that can awaken one to the real world. To this end, the Qanon community relentlessly spreads their narratives on social media, often taking over conservative hashtags in an effort to grow their following. While not directly mentioned by name, Qanon content praising Trump has been retweeted by him in the past, most recently on May 11 in a tweetstorm blaming Obama for the Covid-19 pandemic. While still a culturally fringe movement, that according to Pew Research most Americans haven’t even heard of, Qanon’s growth doesn’t seem to have been blunted by ongoing debunking and criticism from mainstream press.
Q and the Media
“We Are The News Now!” This rally cry sums up Qanon’s oppositional relationship to the mass media. Since its inception in 2017, the movement has drawn negative press from most major American publications. While Qanon has had brief mentions in conservative networks like OANN and Fox News, they show less partisan favoritism to these outlets than the MAGA mainstream. Their movement is vehemently anti-mainstream media of any political variety. They go beyond accusations of bias against conservatism, instead claiming that broadcast and print media is part of a satanic cabal controlling the planet. The negative press coverage has done little to dissuade Q followers, who view negative attention from the mainstream as proof of their legitimacy.
As such, the Qanon community works around the mainstream press, picking and choosing articles and narratives that fit within their pre-existing frame. They also rely on mainstream press for hijacked exposure, sharing high-res photos of their participation in conservative political rallies, and providing opportunities to attract newcomers with cryptic branding and links to Qanon websites. When people do venture into the Qanon media ecosystem, newcomers discover an entire alternate media network riddled with disinformation, junk news, and vlogs ranging from conversations on mainstream politics, to alternative medicine, and apocalyptic spirituality.
The Qanon scene has its own influencers, many of whom are selling books, merchandise and even feuding with other authors. Influencers are referred to as “bakers” because they pick up and explain Q’s breadcrumbs and then interpret drops from Q to their followers across Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Gab and Instagram. While 8kun still serves as the ‘official’ location of Qanon posts, all but the most devoted researchers need only to look to mainstream social media for their fix, avoiding the darker and more explicitly hateful online message boards this conspiracy community originates from. Like most online political factions, memes are the most valuable weapons in the Qanon arsenal.
Q Memes
The Qanon memesphere is vast, esoteric and largely decentralized. As Qanon grew on the back of the Pizzagate conspiracy and hacktivist movements of 4chan, many of the memes are visibly leftovers from these other groups. Memetic fragments from the MAGA campaign or “alt- right” like the redpill and Pepe persist, though their meaning has become detached from their 4chan origins. Many of these shared images take the form of ‘proofs,’ evidence collages or infographics designed to lead the curious away from verified news down rabbit holes of independent research.
The use of the ‘Q’ as part of a branding strategy is important here. On the one hand, the Q can be used by anyone as an open sourced identifier that indicates affiliation with Qanon, but on the other hand might be completely ignored by those who are sharing the memes for other reasons. That is to say, as a signifier, the Q is just mysterious enough that memes containing it might still be considered authorless by those who are unfamiliar with the Qanon movement.
Qanon memes are made by people from disparate backgrounds, but many seem devoid of the playful humor that drove meme culture to the mainstream. “Where We Go One We Go All” (abbreviated as WWG1WGA) and other Qanon slogans are superimposed on all manner of images within emphasis on military imagery, esoteric new age spirituality, and evangelical Christian iconography. Present in many is the flaming Q, often paired with ominous claims of retribution.
WWG1WGA
Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA) — out of all the slogans used by the Qanon movement, this one is the stickiest and most versatile. It serves a dual function of reinforcing community and acts as a memetic gateway to others investigating the movement. WWG1WGA is often paired with pro-Trump hashtags on Twitter, where infographics, memes and other ‘redpills’ are inserted into more mainstream political conversations taking shape online. While often appearing together, Q branding and #WWG1WGA may be used independently and interchangeably.
Using #WWG1WGA and many other more internally referential phrases as hashtags, Q believers refine and reinforce frames for interpreting breaking news events on social media. Of the several times Trump has interacted with supporters who use Qanon phrasing, in late 2019 he retweeted a post using the #WWG1WGA hashtag. Most notably, it has recently been used by newly elected Oregon senator and Qanon follower Jo Rae Perkins, who has since distanced herself from the movement after backlash. As we examine hashtags used by more mainstream sectors of Trump supporters, WWG1WGA seems to be growing in use outside of spaces frequented by Q believers and is quickly becoming a more normalized part of the MAGA landscape.
Q worldwide
Some in the Qanon faction have international aspirations, and supporters have surfaced in the UK, Japan, Germany and Brazil. In the distorted Qanon vision of world peace, Donald Trump is a messianic figure for the whole world, not just Americans. While racism and anti-semitism are present across the various incantations of the Qanon community, the wedge issues most divisive is one of nationalism. White supremacists themselves have expressed frustration that the Qanon movement was distracting conservatives from adopting a more overtly ethnonalionalist agenda, and white supremacists continue to have difficulty infiltrating and co-opting the Qanon faction of the MAGA coalition.
Conclusion
Using the Qanon style guide, hashtags, and interpretive frames, the movement has continually grown on social media since its inception in late 2017. Conventional fact checking and platform intervention seems too late to halt the growth of Qanon, or shake the foundation of disinformation at its base. As the movement changes, many adherents are expecting a great reckoning, global political and spiritual revolutions based on the teachings of Q. Some researchers are suggesting the spiritual elements of the movement will win out, seeing Qanon develop into a religious cult. By all accounts Qanon, as any sticky conspiracy theory, will continue to iterate and adapt to changes in our media ecosystems. We speculate it’s only a matter of time before the MAGA mainstream sends more explicit calls out to unify the galaxy of Qanon supporters, disregarding the specific differences between these groups to unify behind Trump.
