How the Covid pandemic saw the rise of QAnon in Australia

QAnon was fading - then the pandemic hit. Here’s how the internet conspiracy took over Australia’s underground fringe movements.

QAnon went from internet fantasy to mind-poisoning Covid conspir­acy in Australia in just three years with the global virus effectively resuscitating the failing fringe group.

The birthplace of QAnon, 4Chan, is an online backwater full of loners, racists and angry men.

But the forum has had an outsized impact on internet culture – most internet users’ favourite memes were either born on 4Chan or inspired by the nihilistic comedy it set down.

The users are well aware their work filters into the broader internet through social media, and that’s exactly what happened with QAnon in 2017.

Conspiracy theorist QAnon demonstrators on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Picture: Kyle Grillot / AFP

BOARDING CALL

One of 4Chan’s subgroups, the political board, became infatuated with libertarianism and then helped ­define the alt-right in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.

Many users would post on the forum pretending they were members of secretive government agencies – Blackwater, the CIA, the FBI – and claim there were big things “happening” out of sight.

One user claimed he was a government insider with “Q-level ­clearance” and began posting familiar predictions about a shadowy deep state.

QAnon, either an individual or group of people using the name, gradually created an elaborate story of Satan-worshipping, blood drinking paedophiles facing destruction by Trump and the godly US ­military.

PILL POPPERS

The day of reckoning never came but many Australians had already been “pilled” – a 4Chan term for being “awakened” to the conspiracy.

Localised theories proliferated online: Australian politicians were accused of operating child abuse rings and every major event from bushfires to trade disputes with China provided fodder for the amorphous conspiracy.

Social media giants Facebook and Twitter stepped in last year and banned major accounts spreading Q’s disinformation.

But the grave allegations made by the Q movement, that paedophiles are running the government, was already inspiring multiple serious incidents in the real world.

CAPITOL OFFENCE

In January this year QAnon was widely referenced by the rioters who stormed the US capitol building while Q’s logo appeared on T-shirts and posters every time a group protested against the US election result.

Riot police push back protesters outside the US Capitol building on January 6. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

Trump’s defeat was definitive proof Q’s predictions were badly off but believers held out hope saying Joe Biden would be arrested on ­inauguration day in January. Their holy war never started.

With Biden elected and Q ejected from all major social media platforms it seemed a weird period in the internet’s culture was ending.

COVID COMEBACK

But the pandemic, with its enforced lockdowns, mass vaccines and worldwide disruption, was breathing new life into QAnon, particularly in Australia.

In Melbourne the lockdowns spawned QAnon theories that the military was evacuating children through underground tunnels.

In Sydney Q believers made nonsensical claims Prime Minister Scott Morrison was about to be arrested.

Q began joining with anti-vax, anti-lockdown, anti-government crews across the political spectrum.

Again the conspiracy groups started acting out offline. Sovereign Citizens, an older conspiracy movement, rushed across locked down state borders claiming all laws were illegal.

Supporters would film their ­arrests and scream that police had no authority, the videos firing up other conspiracy-minded allies.

In September a “Freedom Day” rally attracted numerous protesters to Sydney who brandished signs about the New World Order or QAnon’s global paedophile rings.

As it stands now at least two fringe political movements, who have contested elections in NSW and Queensland, have courted QAnon beliefs in some form.