footprint into the real world. Here is " Nightline"
co- anchor, juju Chang. Reporter: Boston,
Massachusetts, a rally protesting the flu vaccine
mandate. But here it is, a Q symbol. Greeting the
president at the airport. And here at
a blue lives matter rally in Brooklyn. Q is
everybody. It's a movement. Reporter: A
wild, conspiracy- based movement known as qanon.
They first appeared at trump rallies in 2018.
Tomorrow the headlines will be massive protests.
Reporter: Their profile growing
over the last two years. Culminating with this moment
in the white house two weeks ago. The president being
asked directly inside the briefing Thank you very
much. Reporter: About those qanon The crux of the
theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the
world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and
cannibals. Does that sound like something you are
behind? I haven't heard that, but is
that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? I
mean, you know, if I can help save the world from
problems, I'm willing to do it. Reporter: The letter Q
may be one of the least- used letters in the English
language. But for followers of
q- anon, it's a doorway into something called the deep
state, a baseless idea that claims a secret, powerful
network is working to promote its own hidden evil
agenda and that Donald Trump is doing all can he to
stop them. The movement leaping to
headlines in the news. It's called q- anon, a fringe
conspiracy theory. Qanon's grown so fast. Reporter:
And it's caught fire with followers all over the nation,
inspiring a few to take dangerous actions. With cops
are after mow. Reporter: Uploaded on social media,
leading them to be charged with major crimes. It's also
attracting would- be politicians. Q is a patriot. He is
someone who is very much, loves his country.
Reporter: Marjorie Greene
received a congratulatory tweet from the president.
The broad narrative is that the world is controlled by
satan- worshipping pedophiles, and they control
everything, including the media and entertainment and
politicians. Reporter: He has been tracking
the group and hosts his own podcast, called
the q- anon anonymous podcast. There's nothing
wrong believing crazy things, there's conspiracy
theories about big foot and area 51. The problem is
these people are being radicalized in the sense that it
becomes a major part of their life. Reporter: Followers
believe Q is an actual figure or figures within the U. S.
Government, holding q- level security clearance. Q is
a real clearance level within the energy department,
but from there, the story leaps into dark and
outlandish places. For example, they say Q
communicates with them by posting cryptic ciphers
online because he has access to the deepest darkest
secrets in the U. S. And wants to expose them. This
includes wide, fake theories of prominent politicians
running a child sex trafficking ring or that JFK Jr. Was
assassinated by Hillary Clinton. But
a right wing watch group
claims these claims have now begun impacting reality.
What the movement does is take that grain of truth,
work it and twist it into their existing world vow and
narratives. It's a movement that has wrin spired some
of its followers to commit egregious criminal actions. So
trump's statements about q- anon speaking favorably
of them, I fear as having watched this for so long is
incredibly dangerous. Reporter: Qanon's debunked
theories have gained so much traction that Twitter
and Facebook have been forced to take action,
removing thousands of accounts off their platforms.
Though a recent analysis alleges
some are trying to reform pages under code names.
Give us a sense of how popular you think is now. It's
very difficult. There's really no reliable poll about the
size of the qanon community.
There's a presence in 71 countries. In a memo, the FBI
described the group as a potential domestic terror
threat, citing several acts of violence linked to
followers, including when an armed man in an armored
vehicle blocked a highway near the Hoover dam. He
eventually pled guilty to terrorism charges. Do I think
they're starting to cross a line? Their ideology and
rhetoric are becoming more violent. Reporter: Eric
Jackson is a former FBI agent who specialized in
terrorism. There's a form of terrorism that I think is
broadly referred to as lone- wolf terrorism, right? Is
qanon that type of inspiration potentially? I think they
are. What makes that individual difficult and where
qanon may be a foundation for those type of
individuals, they're operating beneath the radar.
They're using a social media to gather
the ideology. Reporter: Most recently, some people
who appear to be Q followers have taken matters no
their own hands. If you drul believe they are doing
these satanic, evil things. On June 9th, this video was
posted to his Facebook. Once the facts are
out, that was just a theory that's
a fact. Reporter: Two days later. I'm not driving like a
mad man. Reporter: He gathered his children into a
vehicle, allegedly throwing their mother out of the car
after convinced she was trafficking their children and
sparking an hour- long chase with police which he live
streamed on Facebook. Come and
get us! Reporter: He calls out, asking president
trump for help. Donald Trump, I need a miracle or
something. Somebody cue in and help me. Reporter:
He was eventually stopped, arrested and charged with
three counts of felony reckless conduct. It's a dramatic
escalation for a movement that first found its footing
four years ago in 2016, stemming from the absurd
and false story known as pizza- gate, when this
Washington, D. C. Pizza parlor became part of a
conspiracy saying that the Clintons were running a
trafficking ring. It's
a lot of the founding ideas that qanon
has built on can be traced back to pizza- gate.
Qanon came along and built a, you know, kind of
pizza- gate on steroids. Reporter: The theory then
found a home on 4chan in 2017,
spreading like wildfire who anticipated predictions,
suches a the one that predicted Hillary Clinton's
eminent arrest. They
developed a lot of excuses as to why Q's predictions
always failed. They say for example misinformation is
necessary. They think Q is trying to trick this global
cabal. It involves the whole space
force, possible alien life, like pedophiles,
and it seeks to tie all that together. Reporter: We first
met Melissa Dietrich at this trump rally in August
2018. Melissa has voted for Obama in the past. But at
the time they dabbled in the early stages of qanon,
building a following of 20, 000 on social media.
They're cryptic messages that require a certain level of
a lot of times we rely on people we call the anons.
If you believe like we do, we think humanity is at stake
here. Reporter: Now the movement has manifested
into our nation's green, that GOP candidate for
congress from Georgia posted this video about Q in
2017. And he's on the same page as us. And he is
very pro- trump. Reporter: Green reversed her pro- q
stance last month saying once she started finding
misinformation she decided she would choose another
path. This should be the of make
California great again. Reporter: But a few
congressional candidates still give qanon credibility.
He is fighting an uphill battle for a congressional seat.
Do you believe in this conspiracy theory that there is a
satan- worshipping global cabal who are pedophiles
and that that is somehow covered up fwhi deep state?
So I give the allegation credibility. I don't know if this
is true or not. I feel my responsibility as a
congressional candidate is to know everything. What's
on the horizon, what are people thinking? I started
checking into it, and a lot of it, I agreed with. And there
are some fringe elements I don't agree with. Reporter:
Do you ever feel it's irresponsible to support qanon's
conspiracy theories? Everything
you said there is not true. There is evidence to the
contrary that some of these things alleged are true.
And I would say what's really intriguing to me is--
Reporter: I guess just because sex trafficking is real
doesn't mean the conspiracy theory around it is. Well, I
think there's plenty of evidence out there. I keep
getting sent heinous videos all the time of
children being trafficked. Reporter: The difference is
not that child sex trafficking doesn't exist,
but that there is a a deep state conspiracy that
is trafficking in these young children. I don't have a
doubt in my mind that this exists, and I would say that
those who deny it exists, prove mow wrong then,
if I'm right and the Q crowd is right about this,
then I'm so thankful that they're shedding light on this.
At this time. And that, if that's the great awakening,
then so be it. Reporter: For a movement built around
trump as a savior- figure. The president's refusal to
publy disavow the group seems to be a rallying cry.
When he makes little statements, little overtures, little
retweets that seem to affirm something, I believe it.