Last year, QAnon was on the ropes.
The pro-Trump conspiracy theory had been left homeless by the disappearance of 8chan, the message board where ¡°Q,¡± its pseudonymous central figure, posted cryptic clues about a cabal of child-eating satanic pedophiles. The message board had been cut off by its security provider after the El Paso, Texas, mass shooting, and while 8chan¡¯s owner, Jim Watkins, was struggling to bring a replacement site online, some QAnon believers appeared to be losing interest.
Then, the pandemic hit ¡ª and with it, a new wave of misinformation that QAnon could incorporate into its overarching narrative, from false claims about mask-wearing to conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and a COVID-19 vaccine. The Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd in May also provided new fodder for QAnon¡¯s ¡°bakers¡± ¡ª the amateur sleuths who gather in private Facebook groups and chat rooms to decode Q¡¯s latest posts and discuss their theories about the global cabal.
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