Origins of QAnon revealed: Forensic linguists uncover what kicked off the movement
Forensic experts may have uncovered one of the enduring mysteries of former President Donald J Trump's era -- Who is Q?
The growing popularity of the QAnon movement perturbed many in the liberal media throughout Trump's presidency. Now, some forensic linguists have published two separate papers using different techniques to conclude that the identity of the movement's founder is one of two people -- South African tech journalist Paul Furber, 55, and 4chan internet message board moderator and computer entrepreneur Ron Watkins, 34.
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"While relying on two completely different technologies, both stylometric [quantitative study of literary style] analyses could establish that QAnon's early period on the 4chan forum, from October to December 2017, was likely the result of a collaboration between Paul Furber and Ron Watkins," Claude-Alain Roten, the CEO of OrphAnalytics, told The New York Times.
Roten worked with Lionel Pousaz, a partner at OrphAnalytics, to analyze the writings of several people identified as potential Q originators before cross-referencing them using computer software with early QAnon posts. The Times, which obtained access to the linguistics studies, reported how the first post that launched the movement in October 2017 urged the public to "open your eyes" as "many in our govt worship Satan".
Furber acknowledged to the Times that Q's writing resembled his own. Meanwhile, Arizona congressional candidate Watkins told the newspaper, "I am not Q." Florian Cafiero, a visiting scholar at Columbia University who co-authored the study with Jean-Baptiste Camps from the French École des Chartes, said that "an accidental stylistic resemblance between Watkins and a still-to-be identified author seems quite unlikely."
What started out as a fringe group on the obscure 4chan internet forum has grown into a global movement. QAnon followers believe many establishment politicians and globalists are part of a satanic cult or "deep state" full of pedophiles and predators, and that former President Donald J Trump is on a mission to "drain the swamp" and hold such leaders accountable. While the FBI has described the movement as a terror threat, a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 15 per cent of all Americans believe the basic tenets of QAnon.
In their research, Roten and Pousaz concluded that Furber and Watkins worked together initially but the latter took over when the message board migrated to 8chan. Watkins's father reportedly owned that message board. Speaking to the Times, Furber explained that his writing may bear a resemblance to Q's posts because he was heavily influenced by the moderator's style. While he didn't dispute that Q's writing resembled his own, he asserted that the posts had influenced him so deeply that they eventually altered his prose altogether.
Furber told the newspaper how the posts "took over our lives, literally" and that "we all started talking like him." Watkins, on the other hand, bluntly told the Times that he wasn't Q, albeit he defended the messages behind the movement. "There is probably more good stuff than bad," he told the newspaper, citing messages such as "fighting for the safety of the country, and for the safety of the children of the country."