ElonAnon: Twitter CEO Elon Musk goes QAnon

Musk is playing footsie with the QAnon conspiracy cult

Dec 13, 2022

Right-wing narcissist manbaby Twitter CEO Elon Musk is diving rapidly into the orbit of the QAnon conspiracist cult.

One sign of evidence is Musk baselessly pushing QAnon tropes about former Twitter head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth supporting the “sexualization of children”.

Sawdah Bhaimiya at Business Insider:

Elon Musk smeared Twitter's former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, by falsely and baselessly claiming that he supports the sexualization of children, in a tweet on Saturday.
Musk posted a snippet of Roth's 2016 PhD dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania titled "Gay Data" and said: "Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis."
The research paper is about Grindr, the location-based social networking app, targeted at LGBTQ+ people. In the excerpt Musk posted, Roth advocated for social platforms like Grindr to become safe spaces for queer youth under the age of 18.
Roth wrote that Grindr is not "a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers," but since queer youth already use it, such platforms "should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety of use cases."
Musk was responding to Eliza Bleu, a human trafficking survivor, who had dug up an old tweet by Roth from 2010 that said: "Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?"
Bleu misconstrued the tweet and wrote "I think I may have found the problem @elonmusk," referring to the issue of child sexual abuse material on Twitter. Musk initially responded by saying: "This explains a lot."

Yet another sign of Musk playing footsie with QAnon conspiracists is his “Follow rabbit emoji” tweet.

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D @RVAwonk

Elon Musk is now explicitly encouraging his 120 million followers to start following QAnon. Put differently, Elon Musk is encouraging his 120 million followers to join a domestic terrorism movement.

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D @RVAwonk

Yeah so QAnon fans have definitely noticed Elon Musk’s “follow the white rabbit” tweet and have already started connecting it to adrenochrome, Podesta, Hillary Clinton, child trafficking, Saudi Arabia, & more. “The storm is ramping up…”

Caroline Orr Bueno’s Twitter explains the story behind Musk’s “follow the white rabbit” QAnon bat signal tweet:

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D @RVAwonk

Yes, “follow the white rabbit” is a QAnon reference. One of the first, actually. Hence why QAnon adherents — the ones deemed to be a domestic extremist threat — will unquestionably hear Elon Musk’s dog whistle.

dailydot.com‘Follow the White Rabbit’ is the most bonkers conspiracy theory you will ever read‘Follow the white rabbit’ is a legendary phrase from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Now it’s home to a bonkers conspiracy theory

Elon Musk amplified former CBS and Fox “News” contributor and QAnon conspiracist Lara Logan’s deranged claim that Roth did nothing to stop child trafficking.

Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan

Nothing to see here. Just Twitter owner Elon Musk amplifying and agreeing with conspiracy theorist Lara Logan who was recently banned by Newsmax (too extreme for Newsmax!) after going on a QAnon-style rant about “elites” who “dine on the blood of children.” Totally normal.

Kayla Gogarty at MMFA:

QAnon-supporting accounts were suspended from Twitter in July 2020, due to the real-world harm associated with the conspiracy theory. Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter in April, and subsequent acquisition of the platform in October, seemingly gave a green light to QAnon users to create new accounts and promote the dangerous conspiracy theory.
On October 27, Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter and quickly began enacting changes, such as firing top executives and dissolving the board. The acquisition was completed roughly six months after Musk made an unsolicited bid to buy the company on April 14. Right-wing media and personalities, particularly those who have been banned on Twitter, quickly praised Musk’s planned takeover.
[…]
In the days following Musk’s acquisition, QAnon influencers who were previously banned on Twitter started rejoining the platform.

David Gilbert at Vice News:

On Monday night, Elon Musk tweeted an explicit encouragement to his 121 million followers to look into the QAnon conspiracy movement.
“Follow [rabbit emoji],” Musk tweeted. Seemingly innocuous, “follow the white rabbit” is a line taken from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that has since made multiple appearances in pop culture, most notably in the original Matrix film.

But since 2018, the saying has become synonymous with QAnon and when pushers of the conspiracy urge others to look into the movement. The term “white rabbits” was mentioned on three different occasions in Q drops, twice in 2018 and once in 2019. This gave the term even more importance to the community, which believes Trump is waging a secret war against the deep state.
Within minutes of Musk’s tweet, QAnon communities on message boards, Telegram channels, on Trump’s Truth Social platform, and on Twitter itself, lit up with excitement, believing that the world’s richest man was sending them a direct message.

While Musk has dismissed the claims that he is promoting QAnon, experts worry that the explicit signals he is giving the QAnon community by referencing the white rabbit will embolden them even further, and possibly cause violence. And over the last few weeks, Musk hasn’t done much to dissuade QAnon believers: Twitter has reinstated a host of major QAnon accounts onto the platform.

UPDATE (12.13.2022, 2:25PM CST): Media Matters For America reports on Elon Musk’s dogwhistle to QAnon conspiracists.

Alex Kaplan at MMFA:

Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have celebrated Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeting a phrase that has been regularly invoked in the community, taking it as evidence that he supposedly supports the conspiracy theory in some manner.
On December 12, Musk tweeted, “Follow” next to a rabbit emoji. The wording with the emoji would seem to be referring to the phrase “follow the white rabbit,” a reference to the classic fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was repopularized by The Matrix film franchise and subsequently adopted as an online rallying cry in the early days of the QAnon movement. The conspiracy theory’s central figure, “Q”, repeatedly referenced the “white rabbit” and the story directly in posts.

QAnon figures, who were already primed to believe that Musk was an ally, hyped Musk’s “clear Q reference” as some kind of green light, along with a follow-up tweet from Musk in response to a scene in The Matrix about choosing between taking a blue pill and a red pill (which has been embraced in the far-right as so-called “red-pilling,” referring to a process by with individuals come to support far-right ideas).

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