Security News > 2021 > January > All Aboard the Pequod!

Like countless others, I frittered away the better part of Jan. 6 doomscrolling and watching television coverage of the horrifying events unfolding in our nation's capital, where a mob of President Trump supporters and QAnon conspiracy theorists was incited to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.

Many have speculated that Jim Watkins, the administrator of the online message board 8chan, and/or his son Ron are in fact "Q," the anonymous persona behind the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that President Trump is secretly working to save the world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals.

A person identified only as "Q" has for years built an impressive following for the far-right conspiracy movement by leaving periodic "Q drops," cryptic messages that QAnon adherents spend much time and effort trying to decipher and relate to current events.

"Angeli's presence at the riot, along with others wearing QAnon paraphernalia, comes as the conspiracy-theory movement has been responsible for the popularization of Trump's voter-fraud conspiracy theories," writes Rachel E. Greenspan for Yahoo! News.

If somehow Moby Dick was indeed the inspiration for the "Q" identity in QAnon, yesterday's events at The Capitol were the inexorable denouement of a presidential term that increasingly came to be defined by conspiracy theories.

Rothschild has been working hard on finishing his next book, "The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything," which is due to be published in October 2021.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/01/all-aboard-the-pequod/