“It’s not just a conspiracy theory, this is a domestic extremist movement,” said Travis View, a host of “QAnon Anonymous,” a podcast that seeks to explain the movement. Mr. View said that Twitter and Facebook pages exploded with comments from gleeful followers after Mr. Trump’s comments. Mr. View pointed out that the president answered the question by supporting the central premise of the QAnon theory — that he is battling a cabal of left-wing pedophiles — rather than addressing the lack of evidence behind the movement. “They are very practiced at trying to interpret any comment from Trump as validation,” Mr. View said of the movement’s followers. On Wednesday, after a record amount of QAnon-related growth on the site, Facebook said it removed 790 QAnon groups and was restricting another 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts.

Source: New York Times August 20, 2020 01:52 UTC