Donald Trump is not the only one to have seen his personal Twitter account suspended on Friday, January 8: several hundred profiles linked to the Qanon conspiracy movement were also closed in the same movement.
The theory propagated by Qanon postulates that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a pedophile cabal that secretly controls the US government, and even the world. When the Capitol was invaded on Wednesday, January 6, many pro-Trump demonstrators wore the symbols linked to this movement, which spread widely in the United States in 2020 thanks to confinement, but also to the electoral context.
On January 8, almost all of the movement’s influential figures lost their account, starting with retired Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn, an admired figure of Qanon. The account of Ron Watkins, a former administrator of the 8kun unmoderated board, and suspected of being one of the people behind the figure of “Q”, has also been deleted. Just like those of conspiratorial “influencers” very followed, including “Praying Medic” or, for French speakers, that of the Quebec conspiratorialist Alexis Cossette-Trudel.
Attorney Sydney Powell, who has been leading a massive disinformation campaign since Donald Trump’s defeat claiming that a massive voting machine fraud took place during the election, also had her account deleted. On the same day, Dominion Company, one of the leading distributors of voting machines in the United States, announced that it was filing a complaint against Mr.me Powell for libel – the company is seeking more than $ 1 billion in damages.
An unprecedented but late wave of deletions
Twitter did not explain in detail the reasons for this spate of QAnon-related account closings. But in the posted statement explaining why Donald Trump’s account was ultimately suspended, Twitter mentions in particular the “Plans for new armed demonstrations that have already started to proliferate on Twitter and elsewhere, including plans for a new attack on the Capitol on January 17”.
This is not the first time that Twitter has carried out a massive deletion of accounts linked to Qanon – in July, the social network had closed some 7,000 accounts, but these closures had largely spared the movement’s most popular figures. The January 8 series of deletions is generally considered late by movement specialists. “Twitter finally decided to use the ax rather than the scalpel”, writes the journalist specializing in Qanon Travis View.
Some of the activists whose accounts have been censored have taken refuge on the unmoderated, pro-Trump social network Parler, which appears to be experiencing some disruption in the face of an influx of users and messages. Lawyer Sydney Powell denounces censorship “Fascist” and calls on Donald Trump to declare a state of emergency.
The Talk app was removed on January 8 from Google’s app store, and Apple threatens to do the same if the social network does not provide proof, within 24 hours, that it is in a position to moderate the calls for violence, many on this platform.
