Nearly half 49 percent of people who support QAnon said they agree with an old antisemitic theory that the rise of liberalism has "equipped Jews to destroy institutions, and in turn gain control of the world," according to a survey.
A poll conducted by Morning Consult, and published Monday, found that 49 percent of QAnon supporters agreed with the claims in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious hoax document created in Russia in the early 20th century which helped spread the falsehood about a Jewish conspiracy to control the world.
The survey also found that 78 percent of American adults who agree with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion also backed the QAnon claims that there exists a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles involving leading Democrats and the Hollywood elite.
In comparison, 32 percent of right-leaning adults and 11 percent of left-leaning adults agree with the antisemitic claims shared by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Experts have previously noted the link between the extreme QAnon beliefs and antisemitic conspiracy theories dating back centuries.
The QAnon belief that there existed a "deep state" fighting against Donald Trump echoes the antisemitic trope that Jews secretly control the world's media, banks and governments.
Another theory from QAnon is that members of satanic cabal torture and kill children in order to harvest the chemical adrenochrome from them and gain vitality—another claim which has links to the "blood libel" falsehoods.
"Although we wouldn't say initially that QAnon had antisemitic tropes, very quickly it became apparent that there was a strain within QAnon belief that articulated some of these very clearly antisemitic tropes," Joanna Mendelson, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told Morning Consult.
Mendelson also notes that after being purged from several mainstream social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, many QAnon advocates have now moved to less moderated apps such as encrypted messaging service Telegram, which she described as a "lion's dens for extremist ideology."
One area of concern is the hugely popular QAnon profile GhostEzra, who has more than 339,000 subscribers on Telegram.
GhostEzra attracted such a large following by frequently sharing a host of wild and unhinged conspiracy theories, ranging from the falsehoods about the 2020 election, claiming the earth is flat, to stating Joe Biden is actually dead and the person in the White House is being played by actor James Wood.
In recent weeks, GhostEzra has started to share extreme antisemitic content almost daily on Telegram, including Holocaust denialism and encouraging his followers to watch a 12-hour-long neo-Nazi propaganda film.
Arieh Kovler, writer and former head of policy and research for Britain's Jewish Leadership Council, tweeted in May that GhostEzra's account "might now be the largest antisemitic online channel" in the world.
Mendelson added to Morning Consult: "When you remove QAnon communities from Facebook and the like, like that, you're pushing them into more extremist spaces.
"Now, I do think that it stops them building their audience in the same way that they were able to use the algorithms of Facebook and YouTube to build their audience over the last number of years."
Elsewhere, the survey found that QAnon followers (63 percent), right-leaning adults (64 percent) and believers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (65 percent) are almost equally as likely to believe that Joe Biden only won the election because of voter fraud.
When asked if the GOP officials who correctly say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election are "part of the cover-up," a total of 73 percent of Protocols believers agreed with the statement, compared to 66 percent of QAnon supporters and 61 percent of right-leaning adults.
Nearly the same number of QAnon believers (42 percent) and those who agree with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (46 percent) also believe those who stormed the Capitol building on January 6 were actually doing it to protect the government, rather than undermine it.
"You can't overstate, really, how much QAnon had a role in what happened on January 6," Aoife Gallagher, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's Digital Analysis Unit, told Morning Consult. "QAnon had been pushing voter fraud claims well before last year."
The Morning Consult poll was conducted between April 26 and 27 among 1,001 U.S. adults.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
