A potential key to identifying 'Q'—the purported persona at the center of the growing QAnon movement—has been hiding in plain sight for years on a Filipino pig farm, experts tell ABC News.
-- perpetrated by alleged 8chan users finally forced him to reckon with the real-world consequences of anonymous online hate.
"If Trump loses, I think that how a lot of people are going to view it is: the deep state has won. Trump has lost. Our god, essentially, has been crucified," he said. Because,"Trump is -- for many of them -- a god, and they are going to punish Democrats on the other side with political violence. That's what I see happening."
Brennan went on to repeatedly describe Watkins on social media as"senile,” and in October, 2019, Watkins filed cyber-libel complaint against Brennan in the Philippines, according to Philippines court records provided by Brennan. Last fall, Watkins arrived to testify before a closed-door session of the House Homeland Security CommitteeHe peddles his own"Q" merchandise online and cross-promotes a shape-shifting core group of QAnon influencers who profit through books, videos and other QAnon merchandising, while assisting the wider spectrum of followers in deciphering the posts.
Watkins said that by the fall of 2019, when his statement was composed, 8chan had banned nearly 48,000 users, deleted more than 132,000 posts and 92 discussion boards -- which organize discussion topics by subject matter. The letter also noted that 8chan had complied with 56 U.S. law enforcement requests at that point in 2019.
Tom Riedel, N.T. Technology Inc.'s current president, told the digital site Splinter in a 2016 email that Watkins was a porn pioneer, who"figured out a loophole in Japanese censorship rules," according to Splinter."Adult material in Japan has to be censored, but ... Japanese people could access content that resides outside of Japan. Bingo.
Yet, in a previously unreported development in January, the Philippines Bureau of Immigration's Investigations Division determined that James Watkins was a risk to the public interest, a designation called an"undesirable alien," according to Philippines immigration records obtained by ABC News.
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