Tribune. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, social networks Twitter and Facebook have appeared in the US public debate as tools of subversion in the pay of “foreign agents” – primarily Russia – capable of destabilizing American democracy. . In early September 2020, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the main American platforms of the digital giants, Facebook and Twitter, claimed to have been the victims of new disinformation campaigns on their networks from Russia and were suspending a dozen accounts. The informational threat to national security came from outside and focused on “the Russian propaganda ecosystem”.
But the practices of disseminating and amplifying false information are not the prerogative of foreign powers identified by American institutional watch units (GEC). Other actors, non-state, have joined the campaign and the American public debate to scramble political messages, convey false information and call for insurgency if candidate Trump is defeated. Since 2016, experts who map information manipulation have observed the development of the conspiratorial QAnon Internet community. Ardent defenders of President Trump, its members claim that the latter is leading a crusade against the elites of the “deepstate” (the deep state) and against the Democrats whom they accuse of maintaining “a satanist pedophile network”. Their main targets are Joe Biden, and above all, Kamala Harris, the future vice-president.
QAnon, an ideal tool for subversion
With a large number of accounts on social networks, the QAnon movement is independent of traditional pro-Trump networks, and manages to spread its messages beyond the community. This “QArmy”, present in all discussion circles, has a capacity to mobilize which makes it an ideal tool of subversion for all opponents of American democracy. Beyond the American borders, the internationalization of the movement manifests itself in the digital sphere, where QAnon communities are developing in Japan, Brazil, England, France and Germany; by casting doubt on the institutions of these states, these infox distribution ecosystems could in turn represent a risk for all western democracies.
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