QAnon, adrift after Trump’s defeat, finds new life in Elon Musk’s Twitter

Among some QAnon devotees, Musk has become a figure of prophecy on par with Donald Trump

Updated December 14, 2022 at 12:30 p.m. EST|Published December 14, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST

A supporter of Donald Trump holds a QAnon sign outside of the former president's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., last month. (Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)

8 min

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

The billionaire has spread bogus theories about the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to his 120 million followers, and he called for the criminal prosecution of infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. He has thrown around baseless accusations about adults sexualizing children, helping stir up an angry online mob against Yoel Roth, a former Twitter safety executive Musk praised in October for his “high integrity.”