Will QAnon survive?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With President Trump no longer in office and a clampdown by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, what is the future for the QAnon conspiracy theory? It’s had a considerable following from the Republican rank and file who supported Donald Trump but was strongly associated with the attack on Capitol Hill. Now Republican party leaders have warned QAnon is dangerous. But will ordinary Americans turn their backs on it? With Tanya Beckett.
(A pro-Trump mob confronts U.S. Capitol police outside the Senate chamber in Washington DC. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Tanya Beckett, each |
| 0:05.6 | week one question for expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:11.4 | It's Thursday, the 20th of January 2021 in Washington, D.C. Joe Biden's inauguration |
| 0:22.1 | day. He's poised to take the presidential oath. Suddenly men in military fatigues rush |
| 0:29.0 | forward and arrest him. Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton and other prominent |
| 0:35.6 | Democrats attending the ceremony are also detained. Donald Trump is going to remain American |
| 0:42.5 | president after all. Of course, none of this happened, but thousands of Americans who've |
| 0:49.5 | been following a conspiracy theory called QAnon really thought it would. |
| 0:56.0 | This sprawling online community has mushroomed across the United States and abroad since |
| 1:01.8 | lockdown. As it became clear, Joe Biden had, after all, become president, some QAnon believers |
| 1:08.7 | started to post online messages, expressing their anger and disbelief. So, in this week's |
| 1:16.9 | inquiry, we're asking, will QAnon survive? |
| 1:24.5 | Our first expert witness explains the origins of QAnon. |
| 1:33.8 | Annie Kelly is a researcher of the digital far-right and also the British correspondent for |
| 1:39.1 | the podcast QAnon Anonymous. She says it all started one October day just over three |
| 1:46.5 | years ago. |
| 1:48.1 | Kevin Anon began in 2017 with a post on a slightly obscure image board called 4chan. |
| 1:55.8 | 4chan is an anonymous online message site, which plays host to some pretty unpalatable |
| 2:01.6 | contents. That initial post claimed to originate from a mysterious security officer who goes |
| 2:08.5 | by the name of Q, and it made a very alarming prediction. It claimed that Hillary Clinton, |
| 2:15.1 | who'd lost the presidential election to Trump a year before, would be arrested the following |
| 2:20.0 | weekend. It was bold, it was dramatic, and of course, it didn't happen. But that didn't |
... |
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