Digital Threat Digest - 12 May 2022
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, daily SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, misinformation, and online harms.
To round out the week, an update on QAnon believers and the real world harm they are doing, and what happens when you overcook ‘Baked Alaska’.
Q the vigilantes
In many previous editions of this newsletter, I’ve spoken about the conspiratorial movement in the US known as ‘QAnon’. It’s a complex and ever-evolving ideology that's difficult to sum up in anything short of a 3,000-word essay, but essentially, they believe the world is run by a deep-state, global Jewish cabal – and that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex-trafficking ring out of a pizza place in D.C. For years, they were seen as a bit of a joke – conspiracy nuts believing that some dude posting messages on forums with the signoff ‘Q’ was a White House insider and close friend of President Trump. But then they started causing real-world harm. In 2017, Edgar Maddison Welch took it on himself to expose the Clintons’ ‘pizzagate’ (the child sex trafficking conspiracy), going to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in D.C., fully armed to ‘liberate’ the children in its basement. Of course, there were no children there. In 2019, a man killed his brother in Seattle because he was so deep in the conspiracy world and QAnon that he thought his sibling was a lizard. In 2021, QAnon believers made up a large percentage of those who stormed the Capitol building. Earlier this year many of the attendees of the People’s Convoy donned Q shirts and flags. And now? Well, now they are at the Mexico/Texan border playing vigilante with migrant children.
Switching out the Q-branded merchandise for blacked-out American flags, QAnon believers have been approaching children crossing the border and asking them about their families and their reasons for crossing the border. Oh, and they hand them Let’s Go Brandon shirts to wear and get the children to pray with them. A strange ‘welcome to America’. But why? Well, in the words of one of the leaders known as Mr Frank: “they are being trafficked, sex trafficked. That’s the No. 1 trade […] The money, that’s where it is now”. It should go without saying that this is simply not true; most people found illegally crossing the border are those who paid smuggler groups to get them across; not people who are being carted around against their will.
Whether intentional or not, what these ‘vigilantes’ are doing at the border is three-fold. Firstly, they are disrupting Border Control officers and making it harder for them to do their already intensely complex jobs. Secondly, they are fundamentally radicalising migrant children—with their politically charged apparel and conspiracies—as soon as they step foot on American soil (on livestreams, Mr Frank stated, “we are building our little army, so get ready”). Thirdly, they are using the children to create powerful internal propaganda to further their far-right ideology domestically as they livestream, upload photos of their ‘work’, and call for others to join their mission. Public defender Margo Cowan called the actions by the group, “illegal and extremely dangerous”.
This affects us in the digital space as well, not only because we endure all the content and propaganda put out by these groups but because this type of real-world action (while currently non-violent) paves the way for more support for the ideology. Mr Frank and the other QAnon-ers down at the border are extremely active across both mainstream social media as well as on unregulated alt-tech sites such as Rumble and Gab. Not to mention their presence on private, encrypted chat services like Telegram. So, just be careful what you are reading out there – what may look like an act of humanitarian aid for migrants at the US-Mexican border may be something much more sinister.
‘Baked Alaska’ bakes himself
Finally for this week, a short update on the trials for the 6 January insurrection.
This week, Anthime Gionet took to the stand to give his plea. He was one of the first to get charged after he livestreamed his participation under the screenname ‘Baked Alaska’. During the livestream, he verbally assaulted Capitol police officers and called for the occupation of the building, screaming, “We ain’t leaving this bitch!” to the delight of his viewers and fellow insurrectionists. Originally, he was charged with the federal crime of entering and/or remaining on restricted grounds without lawful authority as well as the criminal charge of disorderly conduct. Luckily for him, his lawyers managed to reach a plea bargain wherein the federal crimes would be dropped.
But then he shot himself in the foot (metaphorically) yesterday (11 May) when he decided to ‘stand up for the truth’ during his plea testimony in which he said, while trying to enter a guilty plea, “I believe I’m innocent”. And, within seconds Judge Emmet Sullivan set a trial date for March 2023. The plea deal is still on the table for the next 60 days, but ultimately the damage has already been done. Not to mention if Baked Alaska goes for the plea deal now, he will undoubtedly be accosted for bending the knee to the system by his fellow far-righters who have been out in force on Telegram praising the ‘bold move’.
We will likely see some growing conspiracies around this court case (and the J6 ones to come), as Gionet claims that federal prosecutors threatened to slap more federal crimes onto his charge list. What they actually said was that if the case did go to trial and they continued investigating his role in the insurrection they could not be confident that they would not find more incriminating evidence – something that should be common sense and is certainly not a threat.
More about Protection Group International's Digital Investigations
PGI’s Social Media Intelligence Analysts combine modern exploitative technology with deep human analytical expertise that covers the social media platforms themselves and the behaviours and the intents of those who use them. Our experienced analyst team have a deep understanding of how various threat groups use social media and follow a three-pronged approach focused on content, behaviour and infrastructure to assess and substantiate threat landscapes.
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