QAnon’s core prophecy has always been that there is a “plan” and that former President Donald Trump will rid the world of an evil cabal, culminating in the unmasking, imprisonment or even execution of cabal members. But that prophecy dates back to when Trump was actually president — now that he’s not, believers have been convincing themselves there is evidence that the plan is still very much in place, maybe even more so than ever before. In the Kremlin’s disinformation, some have seen that hope.
There is a disinformation machine at work here.
The methods used to spread this kind of disinformation are not new, either. Former KGB agents have said the KGB would plant stories in obscure or small publications in foreign countries and then those stories would be cited as sources in official Russian media.
Russia does not necessarily need to push its disinformation to QAnon adherents, because the two have enough shared interests. Today, many Americans find themselves in online groups and following accounts that mobilized around QAnon — there, Russian disinformation is sometimes embraced with enthusiasm.
On an American QAnon online radio show broadcast Monday, one host read verbatim from Russian state media reports about biolabs.
Over on the show’s online discussion forum a person who had intentionally misspelled the word “Patriot” so it would include the letter “Q” wrote, “I had a hunch that these bastards were getting ready to release another bio weapon and we needed SOMEONE to put a stop to it. Putin stepped up. IMO this was part of his deal with DJT.”
“A central element of conspiracy theory belief systems is the constant refining of narratives and reactions to wider events to support the grand narrative,” Ciarán O’Connor, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that analyses disinformation, told CNN.
Journalists and government officials have been trying to debunk the falsehoods and spread the truth. Big Tech companies have been trying to stop the conspiracy theory’s spread on their platforms, too. But those measures have thus far been no match for the power of belief and the sustained campaign to promote this theory.
On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman helped the Russian effort, making his own suggestion that the US was up to something nefarious at labs in Ukraine. The same official in 2020 promoted the idea that the US military brought Covid-19 to China.