- Filmmaker Cullen Hobart believes he has uncovered the true identity of the QAnon movement's "Q."
- 8kun message board administrator Ron Watkins appeared to slip up during an interview with Hobart.
- It was long speculated that Watkins was posing as the shadowy "Q" and had written many QAnon posts.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A documentary filmmaker believes he has finally uncovered the true identity of "Q," the shadowy figure behind the extremist QAnon movement.
Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of the 8kun message board, slipped up during an interview with Cullen Hobart, the filmmaker behind the HBO series "Q: Into the Storm."
In a recorded interview, Watkins spoke to Hobart about how he shared claims about voter fraud in the wake of Trump's 2020 election loss. Watkins let down his guard for a moment, giving Hobart what he argues is key evidence that Watkins and "Q" are the same person.
"It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching normies how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before, but never as Q," Watkins said to Hobart.
Watkins then tries to backtrack, grinning and clearing his throat, saying: "Never as Q. I promise. I am not Q."
"Ron had slipped up: he knew it, and I knew it - and after three tireless years of cat-and-mouse," Hobart said in the video.
It was long speculated by those investigating the QAnon movement that Watkins, the site's administrator, was the one posing as the shadowy "Q." The possibility that Watkins was himself the author of more than 4,000 messages from "Q" that had been posted on the 8kun message board since 2017 has also been floated.
Watkins and his father, Jim Watkins, who owns the 8kun message board, have claimed on multiple occasions to have back-channel access to "Q," allegedly a high-level operative and prophet privy to the inner workings of the US government.
One of the biggest conspiracy theories propagated by QAnon - a movement born on online fringe message board 4chan - was that Trump was fighting a "deep state" cabal of pedophiles.
"Q" continued to post in the persona of a Trump-administration insider on 4chan, but moved in 2018 to 8kun (formerly known as 8chan), the message board run by the Watkins father-son duo that was known for being a forum oft-visited by gunmen involved in mass shootings and other violent extremists.
QAnon has since evolved into a dangerous movement and gained traction in the mainstream media - as many Trump supporters who participated in the Jan 6 Capitol riots said they were inspired and influenced by their unshakable belief in "Q."
It has proved almost impossible to identify "Q," as 8kun operates primarily based on absolute anonymity. Each 8kun user does not have an account with their name attached, unlike common social networking sites like Facebook. Users are instead assigned a tripcode, a sequence of code that identifies them as a unique user.
This means that a poster's identity cannot be ascertained or linked to their tripcode, so Watkins duo could have easily covered up the fact that they were the ones using the "Q" tripcode - and with that, the "Q" identity - all this time.
But with this level of anonymity, any hints as to who "Q" actually is have been buried. Until now.
Speaking to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on AC360, Hobart said: "There was a lot of 'lore' around (Watkins) in QAnon, and he's also one of the admins of the site where Q posts. I thought that it was possible that he would know more about Q than anyone else."
Hobart added that he thought Watkins wanted the "credit" for QAnon but continued to deny that he was "Q" for fear of the legal ramifications.
"I'd always been waiting for that moment where Ron would slip up. I think it happened as the result of super-optimism, where he had gotten away with it for so long, and he wasn't really watching his words," Hobart added.
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