Asserting that Global Elites Run Child Sex-trafficking and Torture Rings

QAnon is a conspiracy myth that began to gain influence among users of online platforms starting in 2017, predominately among those based in the United States. Followers of the conspiracy myth believe an anonymous individual, ‘Q’, with a high-level U.S. intelligence security clearance, is leaking information about Trump’s secret war with a cabal run by criminal politicians and the Hollywood elite funded by George Soros and the Rothschild family. The QAnon myth quickly gained support internationally and has moved into the offline sphere. This support has continued to grow at a more rapid rate amid the coronavirus pandemic.  

QAnon claims that a secret cabal of political and Hollywood elites are harvesting the chemical Adrenochrome from the blood of abused children and are running a child sex-trafficking and torture ring with the goal of controlling the masses. This conspiracy myth is inherently antisemitic, as it accuses prominent Jewish figures such as the Rothschilds and George Soros—in addition to others whom proponents of the myth mistakenly believe to be Jewish, such as Bill Gates--of being the orchestrators of the movement to torture children. Holocaust denial, distortion, and trivialization are present in language as well.

The QAnon movement has spread across the United States and has proliferated internationally in the Balkans, France, Germany, and elsewhere. Along with it, phrases such as “Jewish virus” have seen greater use across social media platforms as well as an increased renewal in the use of epithets such as “kike,” “dirty Jew,” and other derogatory terms, in comparison to the previous year, according to Google Analytics data examining the searches for these keywords.