New US Congresswoman Is QAnon Supporter

US media is report­ing on Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, the new­ly elect­ed mem­ber of the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that is a sup­port­er of the so-called QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. Accord­ing to the Vice News report:

Jan­u­ary 5, 2020  Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene was post­ing videos of her­self stand­ing under an umbrel­la in a mud­dy field out­side the tiny town of Rock­mart, Geor­gia, and seek­ing sup­port for her pri­ma­ry race in Geor­gia. The posts got lit­tle engage­ment, receiv­ing a few retweets and a few dozen likes. On Mon­day night, Greene, who was sworn in as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Capi­tol Hill Sun­day, was intro­duced to a crowd by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. “I love Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene,” Trump enthused, about the QAnon-sup­port­ing law­mak­er, adding: “Don’t mess with her.” Trump was speak­ing in Dal­ton, a major car­pet-man­u­fac­tur­ing hub, at what was pur­port­ed­ly a cam­paign ral­ly for Sen. Kel­ly Loeffler’s runoff race against Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Raphael Warnock on Tues­day. But Trump bare­ly touched on the Sen­ate runoff dur­ing his speech, focus­ing once again on his own elec­tion fail­ings, boost­ing base­less con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and mis­pro­nounc­ing the word “Amer­i­ca.”

Read the rest here.

The GIOR report­ed last week on the influ­ence of QAnon on the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the US.  The BBC has described QAnon as follows:

At its heart, QAnon is a wide-rang­ing, unfound­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that says that Pres­i­dent Trump is wag­ing a secret war against elite Satan-wor­ship­ping pae­dophiles in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and the media. QAnon believ­ers have spec­u­lat­ed that this fight will lead to a day of reck­on­ing where promi­nent peo­ple such as for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Hillary Clin­ton will be arrest­ed and executed.media cap­tion­Trump on QAnon: ‘They do like me’ That’s the basic sto­ry, but there are so many off­shoots, detours and inter­nal debates that the total list of QAnon claims is enor­mous — and often con­tra­dic­to­ry. Adher­ents draw in news events, his­tor­i­cal facts and numerol­o­gy to devel­op their own far-fetched conclusions.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed in Octo­ber that Russia’s Inter­net Research Agency troll farm was attempt­ing to use social media accounts to boost the role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mot­ed by QAnon.

In Octo­ber, we also report­ed that YouTube had joined Face­book and oth­er social media com­pa­nies in tak­ing action against QAnon.