A person dressed as Lady Liberty wears a shirt with the letter Q, referring to QAnon, as protesters take part in a protest, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash., against the counting of electoral votes in Washington, DC, affirming President-elect Joe Biden's victory. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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When that doesn’t work, followers of the sovereign citizen movement have reacted violently. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through Arkansas.
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The source for this date is the fact that 1933 was also the year when inaugurations were changed from March 4 to Jan. 20 — to shorten the lame-duck period of outgoing presidents. QAnon followers believe that Trump will become the president of the original republic, and not the corporation that they believe the 1871 act created. While there was some crossover between QAnon and the sovereign citizen movement prior to Trump’s election loss, the conspiracy theory has gained a lot of traction in recent days, as QAnon followers struggled to reconcile their beliefs with Biden’s inauguration.The crossover between the two groups was highlighted last November when Neely Blanchard, a QAnon supporter from Kentucky, was arrested on suspicion of killing Christopher Hallett, a sovereign citizen follower. Hallett was attempting to help Blanchard regain custody of her children at the time.The claims about the U.S. being a corporation have also begun to gain traction outside the main QAnon groups.“Can someone tell me why I’m 22 years old and I just learned that the United States is a corporation, not a country,” one TikTok user asked in a video posted over the weekend and viewed 47,000 times.In the comments, other TikTok users repeat the lie about Trump being inaugurated on March 4.In the wake of Biden’s inauguration, QAnon followers initially appeared despondent, lashing out that QAnon was a sham. But within days, and at the urging of the movement’s biggest influencers, QAnon followers started to come around, and begin to believe in “the plan” once again.