Elon Musk Is Giving QAnon Believers Hope Simply in Time for the 2024 Elections

With no new messages from Q in virtually three years and former US President Donald Trump going through mounting authorized woes, one would assume that the QAnon political conspiracy was dropping steam. However, on November 22, Elon Musk might have renewed hope for conspiracists world wide: Because the US was getting ready for Thanksgiving, Musk tweeted “Q*Anon” out to his 164.5 million followers.

Musk’s submit, which has been considered 7.eight million instances, linked to a narrative referencing a secret OpenAI mission generally known as Q* (pronounced Q star). Immediately, the net areas the place QAnon nonetheless thrives—message boards, Telegram, and X itself—lit up with excited believers cheering Musk’s submit. They claimed it was an endorsement of their worldview and, regardless of years of failed guarantees, affirmation that they had been on the suitable path.

“Let’s gooooooo,” wrote Erica, a member of a distinguished QAnon channel on Telegram, in response to Musk’s submit. “The sheep will learn QAnon [and] hopefully they’ll ask themselves why he did it, and search for solutions, identical approach all of us did,” a QAnon believer wrote on Reality Social. “Loud and Clear,” one other wrote on X in a reply to Musk’s submit.

Other QAnon figures flagged that the best way Musk wrote QAnon—with a star image between Q and Anon—was a reference to the oft-used, and inaccurate, chorus inside the group that claims the phrase QAnon is a media construction. “The asterisk separates Q and Anon,” an X person wrote in response to Musk’s submit, “He is aware of precisely what he’s doing.” “Message obtained,” one other wrote. On QAnon Telegram channels over the weekend, Musk’s latest posts had been dissected as if there have been messages written instantly by Q, and a few customers decoded the dates and instances of Musk’s posts on Twitter to try to discern a hidden which means. QAnon believers additionally shared more and more radical conspiracies about Musk, together with obvious hyperlinks between Musk’s tweet and the involvement of AI within the 2024 election. The identical platforms the place these discussions are occurring had been additionally major vectors for election conspiracies in 2020.

With the 2024 election now lower than a 12 months away, and virtually 1 / 4 of the nation believing in some aspects of QAnon, it’s clear that the conspiracy motion may play a key position: Trump continues to court the group’s attention; one in all their very own, the QAnon Shaman, is now running for Congress; and, simply final week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a US consultant from Georgia, appeared on one of the most popular online QAnon shows and mentioned the conspiracy that the FBI was behind the January 6 assault on the Capitol. On X, the conspiracy and its promoters have flourished since Musk took management of the corporate final November. And now, Musk’s use of the time period QAnon serves because the X proprietor’s most express endorsement of the motion to this point.

Musk’s supporters had been fast to defend his reference to QAnon, claiming within the replies that this was simply Musk trolling. Even when he was, that doesn’t actually matter: QAnon adherents see it not as a joke, however as a wholehearted endorsement from probably the most highly effective folks on this planet. “Whereas Musk isn’t explicitly endorsing QAnon, he’s making a inconsiderate joke that Q believers will completely interpret as an endorsement,” Mike Rothschild, the writer of The Storm Is Upon Us, a guide about QAnon, wrote on X.