QAnon emerged in the US, but its unconventional extremist theories have spread to Europe – and are gaining traction
It has been years since Dutch rapper Lange Frans had a hit single. Now, however, the former singer from the hip-hop band D-Men records two-hour podcasts where he bandies outlandish ideas about vaccines, UFOs, and “the strange things” surrounding the 11 September attacks in 2001.
He is particularly fond of QAnon internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles.
“This is the thing that no one wants to talk about,” he tells i. “This is the sentiment of the QAnon people: you have to get rid of these paedophiles in the highest places.”
A report by campaign group Get The Trolls Out! analysing hashtags on Twitter found that Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain are all becoming QAnon hotspots.
Lange Frans had almost 100,000 subscribers on YouTube before being taken down by the channel in October for violating rules on hate speech and misinformation, notably when he accused Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte – without evidence – of protecting a supposed shadowy network of paedophiles. Lange Frans calls this “censorship”.
He is far from alone in subscribing to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory. Europe’s QAnon aficionados are growing on social media. They claim disparate conspiracies involving factors like 5G mobile networks and coronavirus, sometimes tying them together in an extravagant grand theory about how 5G installations created the pandemic.
But like Lange Frans, many QAnon supporters have been purged from Twitter and YouTube after breaking the rules of the social media giants.
Groups such as the DeQodeurs in France, the Querdenker “lateral thinking” movement in Germany and Denmark’s Men in Black have shifted to other internet and social media platforms to share the supposed truth that they claim the establishment wants to silence.
For example, more than 100,000 subscribers of messaging app Telegram follow German conspiracy theorist and anti-Semitic extremist Attila Hildmann, a celebrity vegan cook, who claims Berlin’s Pergamon Museum is the seat of the “throne of Satan”.
Mr Hildmann is a leading figure in the Querdenker, which is associated with the neo-Nazi Reichsbürger group that claims pre-Second World War German Empire or Reich still exists.
Mr Hildmann fled to Turkey in late 2020 to evade prosecution on multiple criminal charges, including incitement to racial hatred and harassment.
The Berlin-based Amadeu Antonio Foundation says the QAnon conspiracy theories are driven by racism and violent imagery. The Foundation says theorists use twisted logic to spread hostility against women, minorities and democracy.
“The QAnon conspiracy ideology is the driving factor behind one of the most dynamic and dangerous anti-Semitic, right-wing extremist movements of the present day,” says the Foundation’s executive director, Timo Reinfrank.
Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, says anyone can fall prey to conspiracy theories if they feel at a psychological loss over events in their lives or the wider world, especially during times of crisis.
“This is one explanation why there are so many conspiracy theories about Covid-19,” she says.
“People are scared and uncertain and are looking for ways to cope with the uncertainty, insecurity and loss of social contact. It also helps explain why conspiracy theories seem to emerge quite a lot during elections, after disasters. They seem to thrive in times of unrest.”
QAnon adherents claim to battle sinister schemes concocted by the ruling class. Many are ardent backers of Donald Trump, believing he is fighting the so-called deep state, child-trafficking elite, shadowy corporations and fake-news media.
Official explanations of shocking events involving eccentric, scandalous characters are dismissed: the apparent suicides of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and tech mogul John McAfee are assumed to be faked.
The pandemic has only confirmed these alternative versions of reality: QAnon supporters question the existence of a global health crisis, saying a state of emergency allows the elites to control the masses through lockdowns and vaccines.
Lange Frans is one of them, arguing that vaccines are pretend medicines devised by drug giants with the help of corrupt politicians and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
“I will never, ever, ever, ever get the vaccine,” he says. “It feels like a scam or a hustle. And it is easy to see who the players are – they are hustling for the pharmaceutical business.”
And there are consequences.
Last April, former French politician Rémy Daillet-Wiedemann, a promoter of QAnon-style theories about child sex rings, was charged with orchestrating the kidnapping of an eight-year-old girl – along with plotting to attack vaccine centres.
Another French QAnon supporter, former paratrooper Christian Maillaud, was charged in August with campaigning to overthrow the French state. And earlier this month, a German father immersed in the Querdenker movement killed his wife and three children after police uncovered his counterfeit Covid pass.
Yet although most conspiracy theories are easily disproved, many people still see world events as being controlled by some hidden, malign group – and that the truth is being hidden from the public.
Rod Dacombe, director of the Centre for British Politics and Government at King’s College London, offers two reasons for their continued grip on people.
“First, there is a broad decline in confidence and trust in political institutions,” he says.
“Second, the emergence of social media has meant that we can not only communicate conspiracy theories more readily but that participatory platforms can engage adherents to shape and develop these ideas, finding new ‘evidence’ and bringing others into the fold.”
Lange Frans is aware that many consider him odd. “They call me a ‘wappie’, which means a crazy person,” he says. “But I represent a dying breed. A God-fearing man who loves his family. And if someone who comes close, I will protect them with everything I’ve got.”
However, his paranoid, hostile view of the world is spreading: what started among a few cranks is now becoming as viral as the disease that conspiracy theorists insist is fake.
What is Qanon?
QAnon first emerged on the website 4chan in 2017 and gained huge global prominence when its supporters helped lead the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol in the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
It takes its name from a supposed individual called “Q”, believed to be a senior US official close to Donald Trump. Its followers in the US believe eccentric theories, notably that Trump was recruited by military generals to run for president to break up this criminal conspiracy.
Other far-fetched notions include the idea that John F Kennedy Jr is not dead and will soon return to lead them, and that former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizzeria – and some even say she would kill and eat victims to extract a life-extending chemical called adrenochrome.
The FBI considers QAnon a potential source of extremist violence. But QAnon has powerful supporters: Trump has refused to disavow believers, his ally Michael Flynn has an “oath” to QAnon and Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls them “gentle patriots”.
