Documentary filmmaker Kirby Ferguson and The New York Times has some good advice about how to deal with the QAnon conspiracy theorists who live and thrive among us.
Are their theories ludicrous? Of course they are. They are also deceptive and dangerous and they can be dangerous people.
The best way to deal with misinformation is by providing correct, documented correct details. That’s not hard with QAnon’s fantasies.
Don’t ignore them. Misinformation spreads rapidly in this social-media driven world.
This spread of misinformation began with an anonymous poster who called himself “Q,” based on the “Q” clearance that is a high security level issued by the U.S. Department of Energy.
I had such a clearance when I worked for the House Committee of Science and Technology from 1985-87. I was required for admission to nuclear power plants and facilities like Los Alamos in New Mexico, which the committee worked with extensvely.
Did this spreader of misinformation actually have such a clearance? Let’s hope not but it is possible that he did at some point.
Does this mean what he is saying might be true?
No way. No pedophile ring exists within the Democratic party or among liberal groups. I’ve worked with both parties, both philosophies.
So what’s his purpose?
To cause trouble, much like Alex Jones of Infowars, who spreads misinformation as a living.
“Q” claims Donald Trump is an instrument of God who is leading the fight against the eval Satanic devil worshipers that he claims exit in Washington, yet mutliple investigations of such claim have never found a single instance that such groups exist in or around Washington.
We have a lot of strange folks in our nation’s capital but nothing close to the claimed pedophiles that Q claims is kidnapping child and selling them off to sex trafficers.
As Ferguson points out in his documentary, Social Media companies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have cracked down on QAnon but more work is needed to spread correct information to discredit what is being spread by the conspiracy theorists.