The Men Behind QAnon: How The Conspiracy Achieved Mainstream Interest, And Who Fredrick Brennan Thinks Is Exploiting Its Followers For Power And Influence
Despite originating back in 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory didn’t achieve mainstream attention until earlier this year when it seemed like nearly every media outlet began covering it en masse. Since then, new developments have continuously been cropping up around the net as investigations and insiders with key knowledge come forward with newly unveiled information.
Perhaps one of the most important individuals to step out from the corners of the web and into the mainstream media limelight is none other than Fredrick Brennan, the original creator of 8chan, which has become the apparent home of “Q” and all their mysterious "drops" containing the latest developments around the conspiracy. This year alone, Brennan has been interviewed by dozens of media outlets seeking information about QAnon and who might be behind it all.
Earlier this week, we spoke with Brennan and published a lengthy interview divulging all the insider information he could give us about his background, how he got caught up in QAnon, and what he’s doing to fight back against the people he believes are profiting from the conspiracy theory’s most die-hard followers.
In order to properly understand how Brennan fits into this tale of internet subterfuge, it’s best to trace back his origins of launching the imageboard 8chan back in 2013, which ultimately became the source of QAnon’s trail of conspiracy bread crumbs.
“When I got a little older, let's say after I was like 19, I started using the alternatives to 4chan -- mostly the really small ones that only have like a few hundred posts every hour or whatever,” Brennan told us. After getting into small-time development where he would help write new features for these various imageboards, Brennan found himself the new owner of a tiny community of incels on the site “Wizardchan” and got his first taste of running a website.
During this timeframe, Brennan eventually met a woman and began engaging in a chaotic relationship that introduced him to recreational drugs for the first time in his life. On a particularly noteworthy day, she gave him a dose of psychedelic mushrooms that kicked off a trip where he experienced an intense visual hallucination of a glowing mobius, inspiring him to launch his very own imageboard, known as 8chan.
“So I thought when I was tripping, ‘Oh, this idea of combining Reddit and 4chan is very novel,’” Brennan said. “So I worked on the software and I never really expected it to become that big.”
Little did he know that just a year later in 2014, after 8chan had existed as a humble site with a small userbase, the GamerGate controversy would result in a massive influx of users after being turned away from 4chan and other alternatives. “It really transformed the community a lot,” he said.
After GamerGate proponents flocked to 8chan, the site went from around 100 posts a day to over 7,000 an hour, rivaling the biggest competitors like 4chan. Alongside such a huge amount of traffic, 8chan began to struggle under the load, nearly shutting down in late 2014. This is where Jim Watkins entered the scene, offering Brennan a new place in his Filipino-based company with more than enough resources to aid the struggling site.
“[Jim’s] son actually emailed me and they knew that 8chan was having hosting problems. Watkins basically turned on the charm and was like, ‘Hey, we made 2channel. Here, let me prove that to you by putting a link to 8chan on 2channel,’” Brennan said. “He knew that I knew what 2channel was, so he knew that he could easily impress me.”
Shortly after, Brennan moved to the Philippines and began working for Jim Watkins, continuing to run 8chan despite his aversion for what it had transformed into post-GamerGate. Impressing Brennan by flaunting ownership of 2channel, one of the most popular imageboards of all time, he described meeting Jim Watkins as being “starstruck.”
At the time, Brennan was unaware of the fact that the Watkins had only claimed ownership of 2channel by demonizing its original creator, Hiroyuki Nishimura, and essentially “stolen” it, as Brennan put it. Nevertheless, he continued working for Jim Watkins’ company, but resigned from 8chan in 2016 and relinquished ownership of it to him shortly after.
Around this time, Brennan began to take notice of Jim Watkins’ more malicious nature. It was also soon after that the earliest appearances of QAnon began to hit the internet. In October 2017, an anonymous 4chan user made a comment on the /pol/ board under a thread discussing the Robert Mueller investigation. The post contained a series of cryptic messages and questions about the U.S. military and politicians, including the claim that Hillary Clinton would soon be arrested and that riots would ensue shortly after across major cities “in defiance.”
That same day, another 4chan user first posted under the name “Q” alongside a thread titled “Calm Before the Storm.” Within a couple of months, Q found a new home on 8chan and began posting their infamous “Q drops” for followers of the conspiracy to get the newest information on what would happen next. Brennan told us that he first heard of QAnon right around the same time it reached 8chan.
“Watkins was super excited about it,” Brennan said. “It kind of confirmed a lot of what I had already started to believe: that imageboard users suck at doing research. I started to realize that these people just want to believe this because they want to come up with excuses for why they still support Donald Trump — even though he's not doing the things that they want.”
About a year later, while QAnon continued to slowly spread its tendrils to pull in new followers, Brennan finally decided to leave Jim Watkins’ company after learning the truth behind 2channel. “I totally resigned from Jim's company cause I found out 2channel was stolen,” he said. “ secretly had a court decision translated on a third party website, and I confronted Ronald and Jim Watkins with the translation and accused them of lying to me and to everyone about how they got in control of 2channel.”
The confrontation between them sparks the beginning of a feud that would eventually see the trio embroiled in a series of legal battles. After witnessing the Christchurch and El Paso Shootings, which placed 8chan in the sights of international media attention, Brennan decided he’d had enough of his creation and told the NY Times in an interview that the site should be taken down to prevent further terrorism.
Meanwhile, QAnon began to pick up steam and attract unprecedented interest. Still, no one had any clue as to who was behind its continued perpetuation, but Brennan told us that while he thinks the originator of it was likely a troll on 4chan, a leaked tripcode on 8chan provided the biggest clue to the puzzle so far.
“When the tripcode got leaked and it moved to 8chan, the reason that happened was because 4chan does not allow any trolling of an outside target,” Brennan said. “What people outside don't tend to know is that 4chan banned GamerGate, and they were about to ban Q. So basically, I believe that whatever troll was managing it, probably Paul Ferber, moved it to 8chan and started posting the ‘Q drops.’”
Despite their ownership of 8chan, Brennan said he didn’t think the Watkins were involved in QAnon back then, but added that there were two specific moments when he thinks they first took over. The first time traces back to Ferber, who claimed that Q was stolen from him after he lost access to the /cbts/ (Calm Before The Storm) board he created. “Ferber lost control of Q, and his claim is that Ron Watkins stole it.”
The most compelling reason that Brennan thinks Jim and Ron Watkins are behind QAnon stems from events in late 2019 when 8chan was taken offline for three months. “That is when I no longer had any doubt that the Watkins were behind it,” he said. “A third-party Q would have moved to another imageboard — but this ‘Q’ did not, and this ‘Q’ locked himself into 8chan by using what they call a ‘secure tripcode,’ which is a total misnomer that is ridiculous.”
Brennan explained that by using this tripcode (a unique hash generated when one posts on an anonymous imageboard), Q is essentially using a user account on 8chan, denoting that “only Q posts on 8chan can be trusted” and other aggregators are merely copying these. “For me, that sealed the deal — the Watkins’s are Q.”
Continuing his fight against both 8chan and the Watkins, Brennan eventually found himself appearing before a Filipino court where he spoke out against Jim in an effort to thwart his plan for absconding from any legal repercussions in the U.S. by becoming a citizen of the Philippines. “I didn't want him to become a citizen because I thought that there were going to be legal consequences for 8chan, so I didn't want him to basically abscond from the U.S. Congress.”
His efforts proved successful, and Jim Watkins’ citizenship was delayed. In an act of retaliation, Jim then responded with a cyber libel complaint against Brennan, which resulted in a hectic escape from the Philippines in 2019.
“I escaped with hours to spare. If I had not escaped in time, I would have been put in indefinite immigration detention until the case was done, and that could have lasted years,” Brennan said. “I probably would have died in immigration detention because it is just one big room. It doesn't have a ceiling. It's just a tarpaulin that's full of rats.”
He ultimately secured a flight back to the U.S. after some clever maneuvering and legal aid from his lawyer, where he’s continued to battle the Watkins and prove their involvement in QAnon. Jim and Ron Watkins have maintained their innocence in the conspiracy throughout all this, but their continued perpetuation of it, as well as the creation of the “Disarm the Deep State” super PAC (which buys ads on the Watkins’ various websites), alludes to the opposite.
We asked Brennan based on all his experiences over the years who he thinks Q’s true identity is, and what the Watkins’ role in the conspiracy is. What he told us is that it’s possible either Jim, Ron or one of their colleagues are truly Q, but even if they’re not, Jim is directly profiting from it both in terms of money and political influence.
“The main way he's profiting is the super PAC. He's also profiting through merchandise,” Brennan told us. “Jim likes Q because he's flexing his political muscles, and Q is something that certain congresspeople are even believing. So, he sees it as a way for him to kind of get mainstream, American political control.”
Whether any legal repercussions will come from this are unknown, but just last month, Jim Watkins did appear before Congress where he testified while adorned with a “Q” pin fixed prominently on his shirt collar. The conspiracy has also continued facing scrutiny from social media platforms, with everyone from Twitter and Facebook to Reddit and even 4chan cracking down on its spread.
In the end, Brennan told us that he thinks the whole debacle should be viewed as a federal conspiracy to impersonate a federal official. “I have had some positive contact with different congresspeople, and fingers crossed that that brings me somewhere because that's really what I'm looking to do in 2021, to have an investigation started here about the impersonation and how it is an actual conspiracy.”
QAnon is just one of the many conspiracy theories that’ve achieved widespread attention in the last decade or so, and even if the truth is ever revealed, it certainly won’t be the last. The sheer attention QAnon has gotten in 2020 alone places it among the most significant conspiracies of all time and still appears to show little in the way of fading into obscurity.
While he admitted to being pessimistic about conspiracy theories ever falling out of fashion, Brennan does see a way out of their endless cycle.
“My idea is that what we really need to do at this point is put more say into the people who are actually working at these platforms and less into the people that own them,” he said. “The whole fiduciary duty thing is what's causing a lot of issues. They feel like they can't massively ban users like they need to. I think that more unionization in tech is what we need. More tech workers, the people who are actually running these platforms, having a say in the administration.”
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