QAnon revealed: or is it just fake news?

Forensic linguists believe they have discovered the identities of the two men behind the QAnon conspiracy theory.

QAnon conspiracy theorists demonstrate in Los Angeles in 2020. Picture: AFP

Forensic linguists believe they have discovered the identities of the two men behind the QAnon conspiracy theory that inspired a right-wing movement and scores of attacks across the US.

Two teams of experts using different methods to analyse linguistic and writing styles have named South African tech journalist Paul Furber and internet message board operator Ron Watkins as the likely creators of the movement that began with a string of cryptic, anonymous online posts in October 2017.

QAnon evolved into a sprawling conspiracy theory that claimed Donald Trump was waging a secret war against ­pedophiles within America’s political, business and media elites. Many of its followers were already obsessed with the theory that left-wing Satanists led by Hillary Clinton were running a child-abuse ring from a Washington pizza restaurant.

Contacted by The New York Times, which has seen both linguistic studies investigating Q, the leader of the conspiracy, Furber, 55, denied he was behind the posts. He acknowledged that his writing resembled Q’s but ­insisted that Q’s messages “took over our lives”. “We all started talking like him,” he said.

Watkins, a 24-year-old conspiracy theorist who ran the 8kun website where messages from Q began appearing in 2018 and is now running for congress in ­Arizona, also said: “I am not Q.”

The studies, one Swiss and one French, used a mathematical approach known as stylometry to break down the messages from Q and compared them with replies and messages from Furber and Watkins. The Swiss team said it had identified the men’s writing with 93 per cent accuracy. The French scientists said their software had correctly identified Watkins’s writing in 99 per cent of tests and Furber’s in 98 per cent.

When Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year, QAnon followers were among the most prominent figures in the riot, including Jake Angeli, better known as the QAnon Shaman, now serving 3½ years in prison.

The Times