Jewish human rights organization warns about threat of QAnon

The Simon Wiesenthal Center released a report Tuesday detailing the origins of the QAnon conspiracy theory and warning about its anti-Semitic nature.

The organization named after the Nazi death camp survivor highlights just how much of the theory can be traced back to other well known conspiracies.

“[T]here is very little original about QAnon’s conspiratorial core,” the center wrote in a blog post. “QAnon perpetuates the canard that has been retold for hundreds of years of the Rothschilds controlling banks along with the baseless blood libel against the Jewish people.”

Followers of QAnon believe, without evidence, that a secret cabal of Democrats and Hollywood elites are engaged in large scale child trafficking and pedophilia.

They also also believe that President Trump is working with the military to expose and execute that shadowy network.

The Wiesenthal report points out the conspiracy theory is also deeply anti-Semitic.

The theory casts Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros as the puppeteer behind politicians and takes inspiration for its “global cabal” from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fake document historically used to smear the Jewish community, the report says.

The report also warns about the theory’s rapid spread despite efforts by social media to reel it in.

“QAnon continues to grow in popularity, even as its pages, groups and accounts are removed from mainstream social media, and pushed into alternative spaces like Parler,” the report reads.

It points to a recent Pew Research Center which found that awareness of QAnon among American adults has doubled since March.