Jesselyn Cook is a Canadian journalist and non-fiction writer. She is a Nieman Fellow. [1]
Cook was initially a tech-focused journalist who wrote about the Internet's "dark corners". [2] [3] She has been researching and writing on the QAnon conspiracy theory since 2020. [2] In 2024, Cook published The Quiet Damage, a book which profiles five QAnon believers, and how those beliefs impacted their families. [2] The book won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award in 2023. [4]
QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those claims have been relayed and developed by online communities and influencers. Their core belief is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters is operating a global child sex trafficking ring that conspired against president Donald Trump. QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate, an Internet conspiracy theory that appeared one year earlier, but also incorporates elements of many different conspiracy theories and unifies them into a larger interconnected conspiracy theory. QAnon has been described as a cult.
Pope John Paul I died suddenly in September 1978, 33 days after his election. Following his death, several conspiracy theories have sprung up.
A death hoax is a deliberate report of someone's death that is later revealed to be untrue. In some cases, it might be because the person has intentionally faked death.
Reptilians are supposed reptilian humanoids, which play a prominent role in fantasy, science fiction, ufology, and conspiracy theories. The idea of reptilians was popularised by David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who claims shapeshifting reptilian aliens control Earth by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate human societies. Icke has stated on multiple occasions that many world leaders are, or are possessed by, so-called reptilians.
Rashid Ali Buttar was an American conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer and osteopathic physician. He was known for his controversial use of chelation therapy for numerous conditions, including autism and cancer. He was twice reprimanded by the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners for unprofessional conduct and cited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for illegal marketing of unapproved and adulterated drugs. An analysis found that Buttar was one of the top twelve individual and organization accounts producing up to 65% of all anti-vaccine content on Twitter and Facebook.
According to an American political conspiracy theory, the deep state is a clandestine network of members of the federal government, working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government.
"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.
The Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and associated Facebook group are some of the major hubs of the American anti-vaccination movement. It was established by anti-vaccination activist Larry Cook in 2015.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, sometimes referred to by her initials MTG, is an American far-right politician, businesswoman, and conspiracy theorist who has been the U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, she was elected to Congress in 2020 following the retirement of Republican incumbent Tom Graves and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.
Angela Stanton-King is an American author, television personality and conservative speaker based in Atlanta, Georgia. She spent two years in prison for conspiracy and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump a decade after serving her sentence. She subsequently became a media personality and was a main cast member on the third season of the BET docuseries From the Bottom Up. She was the Republican candidate for Georgia's 5th congressional district in the 2020 election, losing to Democrat Nikema Williams. Stanton-King has shown support for QAnon, which espouses a number of far-right conspiracy theories.
Since the early twentieth century there has been a significant overlap between Christian fundamentalism and millennialism in the United States and belief in false conspiracy theories, primarily the New World Order conspiracy theory, QAnon, and COVID-19 conspiracy theories, which are frequently perceived to represent fulfilment of Christian eschatology.
Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, Q Shaman, and Yellowstone Wolf, is an American far-right conspiracy theorist, rioter, politician, media figure, and felon who participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, for which he was convicted after a guilty plea on charges of obstructing an official proceeding. He is a supporter of former US president and current President-elect of the United States Donald Trump and a former believer and disseminator of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Ronald Watkins, also known by his online pseudonym CodeMonkeyZ, is an American conspiracy theorist and site administrator of the imageboard website 8kun. He has played a major role in spreading the discredited far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, and has espoused conspiracy theories that widespread election fraud led to Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He is the son of Jim Watkins, the owner and operator of 8kun.
QAnon Anonymous (QAA) is an investigative journalism podcast that analyzes and debunks conspiracy theories. It is co-hosted by Travis View, Julian Feeld, and Jake Rockatansky, alongside British correspondent: Annie Kelly, Canadian correspondent: Liv Agar. Inner Earth correspondent: Brad Abrahams, and QAA Legal Analyst: Allie Mezei.
Q: Into the Storm is an American documentary television miniseries directed and produced by Cullen Hoback. It explores the QAnon conspiracy theory and the people involved with it. It consisted of six episodes and premiered on HBO on March 21, 2021. The series received mixed reviews, with some critics praising its insight into the conspiracy theory, and others finding it to be overlong and lacking in analysis of the impacts of QAnon. Some reviewers have criticized the series for not following best practices outlined by extremism researchers for reporting on extremism and conspiracy theories.
Pastel QAnon is a collection of techniques and strategies that use "soft" and feminine aesthetics – most notably pastel colors – in order to attract women into the QAnon conspiracy theory, often using mainstream social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.
Brandy Zadrozny is an American investigative journalist and reporter with NBC News who specialises in political radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet.
Will Sommer is an American journalist working as a media reporter for The Washington Post. Previously, he worked as a politics reporter for The Daily Beast since 2018, a campaign editor for The Hill and the Loose Lips columnist for the Washington City Paper. In his journalism, Sommer covers right-wing media, political radicalization and right-wing conspiracy theories in the United States.
Since the movement's emergence in 2017, adherents of the QAnon far-right conspiracy theory have been involved in a number of controversial events, some of them violent, resulting in the filing of criminal charges and one conviction for terrorism.
Real America's Voice is a right-wing to far-right streaming, cable and satellite television channel founded in 2020 and owned by Robert J. Sigg. The network and online presences have promoted right-wing and far-right conspiracy theories, including COVID-19 misinformation, 2020 election conspiracies, and QAnon. The network is a sister channel to WeatherNation TV. It is of no relation to the former National Empowerment Television of the late 1990s, which rebranded to America's Voice in its final years.