QAnon Great Awakening Subreddit Banned, Conspiracy Theorists Incensed
The elaborate conspiracy theory QAnon lost a major rallying center Wednesday when Reddit banned the "Great Awakening" subreddit, citing content policy violations including "inciting violence, harassment, and the dissemination of personal information."
"As of September 12, r/greatawakening has been banned due to repeated violations of the terms of our content policy," a Reddit spokesperson told The Hill. "We are very clear in our site terms of service that posting content that incites violence, disseminates personal information, or harasses will get users and communities banned from Reddit."
The QAnon conspiracy theory is an evolution of the Pizzagate debacle, postulating an entirely baseless international child sex trafficking ring implicating Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Barack Obama, John Podesta, James Comey and more. QAnon adds a new twist, relying on the 4chan posts of the anonymous Q, believed on faith to be either an individual or multiple individuals within the Trump administration broadcasting secret plans to undermine the Deep State with the mass arrest of politicians and celebrities.
Unlike conspiracy theories proposing sinister forces, QAnon adherents believe a hidden war against the old rulers of the world is being won by Donald Trump and his administration, with tribunals sentencing enemies of the state to Guantanamo Bay. For now, those tribunals and prosecutions are secret, but Q adherents believe all will be revealed when "The Storm" of arrests and vindication finally arrives. The QAnon theory is essentially a fervent, faith-based desire for the government to be overthrown by Republican authoritarian powers.
As a segment on The Jim Jefferies Show reveals, this leads to some radically inconsistent beliefs, always proposed without a shred of evidence:
In addition to Q-inspired terrorist attacks, QAnon has already pierced the mainstream political consciousness, with Q fans appearing at Donald Trump rallies and even in the Oval Office, but the Great Awakening ban is likely to hurt the growing conspiracy movement, relegating it to white supremacist bastions like 8chan and Voat.
Conspiracy theorists are predictably incensed about the ban, with one fellow redditor posting to r/conspiracy, "Reddit is dead. Soon all mediums will be dead but truth is always truth." Others theorize that the ban is a signal that The Storm has begun, finally fulfilling the thus-far faith-based promise of mass arrests and a coup.
The sprawling, amorphous nature of the proposed conspiracy has drawn headlines, even as QAnon continues to be largely unknown and unpopular with all but the extremely online. A recent poll of Floridians (the site of Trump's Q crowd rally) found the conspiracy theory only slightly more popular than Fidel Castro.
