Like countless others, I frittered away the better part of Jan. 6 doomscrolling and watching television coverage of the horrifying events unfolding in our nation’s capital, where a mob of President Trump supporters and QAnon conspiracy theorists was incited to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol. For those trying to draw meaning from the experience, might I suggest consulting the literary classic Moby Dick, which simultaneously holds clues about QAnon’s origins and offers an apt allegory about a modern-day Captain Ahab and his ill-fated obsessions.
Many have speculated that Jim Watkins, the administrator of the online message board 8chan (a.k.a. 8kun), and/or his son Ron are in fact “Q,” the anonymous persona behind the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that President Trump is secretly working to save the world from a satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals.
Last year, as I was scrutinizing the computer networks that kept QAnon online, researcher Ron Guilmette pointed out a tantalizing utterance from Watkins the younger which adds tenuous credence to the notion that one or both of them is Q.
We’ll get to how the Great White Whale (the Capitol?) fits into this tale in a moment. But first, a bit of background. A person identified only as “Q” has for years built an impressive following for the far-right conspiracy movement by leaving periodic “Q drops,” cryptic messages that QAnon adherents spend much time and effort trying to decipher and relate to current events.
Researchers who have studied more than 5,000 Q drops are convinced that there are two distinct authors of these coded utterances. The leading theory is that those identities corresponded to the aforementioned father-and-son team responsible for operating 8chan.
Jim Watkins, 56, is the current owner of 8chan, a community perhaps now best known as a forum for violent extremists and mass shooters. Watkins is an American pig farmer based in the Philippines; Ron reportedly resides in Japan.
In the aftermath of back-to-back mass shootings on Aug. 3 and Aug. 4, 2019 in which a manifesto justifying one of the attacks was uploaded to 8chan, Cloudflare stopped providing their content delivery network to 8chan. Several other providers quickly followed suit, leaving 8chan offline for months before it found a haven at a notorious bulletproof hosting facility in Russia.
One reason Q watchers believe Ron and Jim Watkins may share authorship over the Q drops is that while 8chan was offline, the messages from Q ceased. The drops reappeared only months later when 8chan rebranded as 8kun.
CALL ME ISHMAEL
Here’s where the admittedly “Qonspiratorial” clue about the Watkins’ connection to Q comes in. On Aug. 5, 2019, Ron Watkins posted a Twitter message about 8chan’s ostracization which compared the community’s fate to that of the Pequod, the name of the doomed whaling ship in the Herman Melville classic “Moby Dick.”
“If we are still down in a few hours then maybe 8chan will just go clearnet and we can brave DDOS attacks like Ishmael on the Pequod,” Watkins the younger wrote.
Ishmael, the first-person narrator in the novel, is a somewhat disaffected American sailor who decides to try his hand at a whaling ship. Ishmael is a bit of a minor character in the book; very soon into the novel we are introduced to a much more interesting and enigmatic figure — a Polynesian harpooner by the name of Queequeg.
Apart from being a cannibal from the Pacific islands who has devoured many people, Queequeg is a pretty nice guy and shows Ismael the ropes of whaling life. Queequeg is covered head to toe in tattoos, which are described by the narrator as the work of a departed prophet and seer from the cannibal’s home island.
Like so many Q drops, Queequeg’s tattoos tell a mysterious tale, but we never quite learn what that full story is. Indeed, the artist who etched them into Queequeg’s body is long dead, and the cannibal himself can’t seem to explain what it all means.
Ishmael describes Queequeg’s mysterious markings in this passage:
“…a complete theory of the heavens and earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.”
THE GREAT WHITE WHALE
It’s perhaps fitting then that one of the most recognizable figures from the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was a heavily-tattooed, spear-wielding QAnon leader who goes by the name “Q Shaman” (a.k.a. Jake Angeli).
“Q Shaman,” a.k.a. Jake Angeli, at a Black Lives Matter event in Arizona (left) and Wednesday, confronted by U.S. Capitol Police. Image: Twitter, @KelemenCari.
“Angeli’s presence at the riot, along with others wearing QAnon paraphernalia, comes as the conspiracy-theory movement has been responsible for the popularization of Trump’s voter-fraud conspiracy theories,” writes Rachel E. Greenspan for Yahoo! News.
“As Q has become increasingly hands-off, giving fewer and fewer messages to his devotees, QAnon leaders like Angeli have gained fame and power in the movement,” Greenspan wrote.
If somehow Moby Dick was indeed the inspiration for the “Q” identity in QAnon, yesterday’s events at The Capitol were the inexorable denouement of a presidential term that increasingly came to be defined by conspiracy theories. In a somewhat prescient Hartford Courant op-ed published in 2018, author Steven Almond observed that Trump’s presidency could be best understood through the lens of the Pequod’s Captain Ahab. To wit:
“Melville is offering a mythic account of how one man’s virile bombast ensnares everyone and everything it encounters. The setting is nautical, the language epic. But the tale, stripped to its ribs, is about the seductive power of the wounded male ego, how naturally a ship steered by men might tack to its vengeful course.”
“Trump’s presidency has been, in its way, a retelling of this epic. Whether we cast him as agent or principal hardly matters. What matters is that Americans have joined the quest. In rapture or disgust, we’ve turned away from the compass of self-governance and toward the mesmerizing drama of aggression on display, the masculine id unchained and all that it unchains within us. With every vitriolic tweet storm and demeaning comment, Trump strikes through the mask.”
EPILOGUE
If all of the above theorizing reads like yet another crackpot QAnon conspiracy, that may be the inevitable consequence of my spending far too much time going down this particular rabbit hole (and re-reading Moby Dick in the process!).
In any case, none of this is likely to matter to the diehard QAnon conspiracy theorists themselves, says Mike Rothschild, a writer who specializes in researching and debunking conspiracy theories.
“Even if Jim Watkins was revealed as owning the board or making the posts, it wouldn’t matter,” Rothschild said. “Anything that happens that disconfirms Q being an official in the military industrial complex is going to help fuel their persecution complex.”
Rothschild has been working hard on finishing his next book, “The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything,” which is due to be published in October 2021. Who’s printing the book? Ten points if you guessed Melville House, an independent publisher named after Herman Melville.
Brian you have become a joke.
Your effort at neutral commentary is now over. You are just another leftist advocating foe communism.
Fuck off already!
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.
Great quote in reply, Brian!
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”
— Voltaire
Please explain how he’s advocating for communism you dumb inbred
You’re nothing more than a traitor to the United States!
…more intolerable than fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare!
Also, what is “foe communism”? Typo, should be “for communism”? Or did you mean that Mr. Krebs is a faux communist?
This cult of personality has been seen before.
Yes, Hitler is now a fair comparison. Same hate and rhetoric for political enemies. Even using the same boogeymen like communism.
Who did he blame for burning the Reichstag? The Communists. What did Hitler’s followers fear would have too much power in government? The communists.
The more you claim a fairly moderate liberal government is “communism destroying America”… the more you sound like a literal Nazi.
Now that Trump has orchestrated his first FAILED COUP ATTEMPT… history would be rhyming that he will be arrested, jailed, and write his Mein Kampf.
This has all happened before in 1923.
Has your facebook page been deleted ?
Yes. I deleted myself a year ago.
I am totally amazed at how many people I know who have 1. never had 2. or once had but later chose to delete or deactivate their Facebook accounts. I was nanny to some children who are now 18-30 years of age and I used to keep in touch with them via Facebook, even when they were little kids and technically not old enough to have their own Facebook accounts. Now? Every single one of them has chosen to delete or deactivate their accounts. Their mothers and I still communicate via Facebook, but the now-grown kids and I all keep in touch via email and text messaging.
Same with my university schoolmates, who were all 18-25 years old and mostly upper-income young adults. We were required last year to have our own Facebook accounts for a business class in order to understand how we would be expected manage and navigate social media during a public relations crisis. Each one established an account until the end of the semester, and then every single one of them rushed to close their accounts. I still communicate regularly with these people via email and text messaging but they all hate Facebook.
I’m convinced that Facebook will not last into the next generation if so many people find them distasteful or irrelevant.
I hope you are correct. I’m saddened that FB has lasted this long. They need a competitor that’s not evil.
Seems inevitable that a non-evil competitor, would grow, and become evil.
The profit motive is too strong. You can’t expect to amass millions of users without either making them a paying customer, or an unwilling product.
I hope you are right….FB is evil.
That was fantastic!
And isn’t there an entire chapter in Moby Dick that more or less glorifies the color white? Hmm…
You obviously haven’t read it.
Well “glorifies” may not be quite the right word, but there definitely is a whole chapter dedicated to the symbolism around the color white.
Yes, I have read it. It was some years ago, so my memory is not perfect, but I do speak from memory and not a quick Google search. Whiteness is a theme throughout, and not just the color of the whale.
How frustrating that even a brief lighthearted comment is met with a false accusation. Whenever I post anything online (which is seldom) I am reminded why it is best to stay away from social media.
Interesting seeing how white is the absence of colour
Black is absence of color.
White is an even combination of all colors.
I stand corrected, I have used that incorrectly for many years.
If you can clear a week from your calendar, I’d love to read your commentary on this shortlist of conspiracies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories
TV Guide blurb for the upcoming horror mockumentary: “The Great White Whale stalks another deranged Captain, who spits his last breath — as did Ahab and Khan Noonien Singh before him — for hate’s sake.”
I greatly appreciate you looking into this, thanks a lot for your work into something that will definitely draw the irrational ire of some people.
Watching the “mob of Trump supporters”, as you call them, in Washington DC was still an improvement over a year of watching the many mobs of PANTIFA and Burn Loot Riot as they lay siege on American cities.
The vast majority of the Trump supporters were protesting peacefully. And before anyone says that the Pantifa/BLM looting/rioting was limited to only a few people and impacted only isolated businesses and property, let’s not forget that cars were torched, buildings were looted and destroyed, and upwards of 30 Americans were murdered.
So, if you think that responding that it’s unfair to blame everyone at the BLM protests for the actions of the few, remember that the EXACT same logic can and should be applied to the vast majority of Trump supporters. It was but a handful of people who invaded the Capital while the majority of the Trump supporters in Washington DC were there to protest PEACEFULLY.
Correction: Burn Loot Murder <= Burn Loot Riot
Ed, the left will never like us — in fact, they hate us with a passion of a thousand suns. Watch O’Keefe’s latest video, get a dose of encouragement from JayFivekiller, and live your best life. Peace!
Racist!
Why can’t you stick to security? I have already given up professional sports as they can’t seem to focus on their mission (playing ball). Everyone has an opinion, but what most fail to realize — just because you have a public forum doesn’t mean people care about your opinion on political matter and current events.
That’s the trouble with echo chambers.
Demanding that you are not exposed to opposing political ideas.
Krebs has always covered stories involving the deep dark recesses of the web to uncover the hidden world of the Internet. This story is valid.
Sorry if the reality of the Qanon cult questions your political preconceptions, but that is just your bubble bursting.
Wow – I joined for the network security, and now I’m getting lectured. Where was this for BLM and antifa when they were destroying everything? I guess that’s ok right Brian?
This is probably the fastest list I’ve ever subscribed then unsubscribed from.
Do not lie, you weren’t “subscribed”.
Just another Qanon sockpuppet account feigning outrage.
Your fake cancel culture won’t work here.
I like when you write security related articles…. you are good at it. Please, stay away from politics. I don’t need another CNN, ABC, Foxnews etc…
To the comments from people upset with the politics discussed on this blog… they had no problem with Brian Krebs other articles that involved politics, until it disagreed with their personal politics.
They only object because they voted for Trump and the cognitive dissonance is catching up to them. When you join a cult of personality… they take disagreement personally. They are to blame for worshiping Trump. They backed themselves into this corner and now they are triggered by his loss.
stay away from politics, please…..
Thanks for looking into this and providing good information.
It certainly won’t help convince them now that you’ve quoted someone with the last name Rothschild.
Clearly losing my audience as well. I’ve noticed you are now inserting your viewpoint into your articles rising. Keep your liberal political spin to yourself. It was solid journalism I started here with years ago. Now it is clear that you’ve been absorbed by the mock journalism opine mob that is consistent with al of the other noise out there.
Peace.
It is not a credible threat that you will stop reading Krebs. Why? Because this is an anonymous forum where anyone can claim to have been a long time reader, but are now going to stop. It is more likely that you are a first time reader brought here because Qanon trolls are syndicating the blog trying to rile up opposition.
Wow if this many people are this upset about this article then America clearly has a bigger problem than it’s already obvious she has.
Too true.
The racists and bigots sadden me.
Speaking up is the right thing to do.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke
Thank you, sir, for your eloquent exposition of the likely connections between QAnon and Queequeg. I just ordered a Library of America copy of Moby-Dick from Powells. LoA publishes carefully edited, reputable texts that attempt to be true to the original (or “an original”) published edition.
No Bowdlerization for me!
First thanks for an interesting (imaginative?) take on the currently inscrutable. Second, kudos to you for your response to your first poster.
Last, and unrelatedly, the attempted whataboutery immediately above as to what occurred yesterday versus protests in 2020 are so absurd as to -almost- induce pity for those who find themselves compelled to make blatantly wrong comparisons to evade responsibility for attacks on the US government based upon lies. Online trolling means never having to accept loss-you just create another fantasy. Like gaming. Except that people die.
Hi Brian – I would love to see a write up from you on the Dominion servers. Either to prove there was hacking and manipulation of votes or not. If anyone could get to the bottom of it I believe it would be you. Due to the unfortunate events that took place at our Capital yesterday I think most people are ignoring the “why”. Why did this occur? In my opinion, it is because many of us do believe there was a considerable amount of fraud and no one is listening to our complaints. SCOTUS and the state courts wouldn’t even look at the evidence before throwing it out. In GA, where they actually did listen to and look at the evidence it was abundant. I would love to see an unbiased look at these machines from a person the majority of people in the technology industry trust.
> Dominion servers
Any theory about what effect the machines might have had on the outcome must explain how the paper trail can be subverted. Like many others, I inspected my voting slip to be sure that it printed my selections. Those slips were audited and confirmed for accuracy. Why were there no reports of printed slips not matching the voters’ choices?
In keeping with the nautical characters of today’s post, the Kraken report was a joke. Everything called out by the automatic associations from the 2 scan tools proved nothing about possible electronic vote manipulation.
Nice try, shill. Mail-in ballots.
Mail in ballots by definition have a paper trail and can be 100% hand audited.
https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020
37 out of 64 lawsuits had judges look over the evidence.
They dismissed the lawsuits anyway. Even after appealing, they were duly thrown out.
It’s not that evidence wasn’t looked at. It’s more that evidence didn’t ever even match the plaintiffs claim.
Lawyers didn’t plead fraud, and/or offered ridiculous evidence that didn’t show anything.
It’s like a plaintiff accusing murder, but making the judge a turkey sandwich in the courtroom.
Even the most conservative judges, (Trump appointed), are not entertaining their nonsense.
Only people not following the cases, or willfully closing eyes and ears… were thinking that cases were thrown out without looking at the evidence.
Brian, I’ve followed you for years and this is my first time commenting. You have been a true asset to me in my job over the years and I have enjoyed your writing, but lately, you have allowed your political bias to permeate your work. I now find myself trying to decide if the information you provide is worth the dose of liberal conjecture it comes with. Starting to think it is not.
Many Trump supporters for the first time are hearing something outside of their bubble, and getting outraged.
They thought an infosec blog would be a safe space and would not interfere with their political beliefs.
But there is nothing inherently political about debunking conspiracy theorists like the Qanon cult.
If Krebs was a medical technology journalist reporting on the origins of liberal’s anti-vaxxer theories in the Qanon culture… that would be fair game. Left or Right… conspiracy theories and outright lies need to be checked by any journalist who can.
If that triggers you, then you may leave.
I see you’ve upset a lot of fanboys here. I though it was an interesting article that points to some possibilities without declaring anything as definitive b/c after all there’s no hard proof. Nice light read, thanks
This is pertinent to cybersecurity, you dolts.
I have to agree, this is a conspiracy about a conspiracy. Can we stick to actual security blogs here. This is just annoying.
Thanks for this excellent article! And to those morons who cannot see the security risk that groups like Qanon pose then perhaps you are in the wrong line of work.
I don’t know or care about whatever this QAnon stuff is, but “Ishmael is a bit of a minor character in the book”?
What?
He is literally the narrator. The entire action of the Pequod and its ill-fated crew (of which Queequeg is a member who only appears intermittently after the early chapters) is delivered through the lens of Ishmael. Were you under the impression that Polonius was the main character of Hamlet as well?
In addition, Ron Watkins (or whoever that is) failing to recognize that the Pequod and Ishmael suffer opposite fates. The entire crew dies. Ishmael alone is saved. This confused allusion only supports the fact that QAnon are as wholly unfamiliar with the text as you are.
People here are suggesting you stay away from politics. Please stay away from literature as well. It is not your strong suit.
Literature snobs think there is only one way to interpret classic writings.
Brian, I thank you for being there, and thank you for this post. It is calming kind of comfort to think of yesterday’s events, the culmination of a corrupt and incompetent administration’s attempt to overthrow our tenuous democracy, in terms of classic literature.
OTOH, to see in these readers’ comments, proof that so many readers of your high-end security column fully support Trump’s lies and believe some of the most blatant conspiracy theories, is depressing.
Pew Research findings concerning the proportion of Americans who would prefer a “strong leader” instead of elections and our three branches checks and balances system, plus the last round of OECD research concerning basic literacy of adults in member industrialized nations, probably explains it. Ignorant, anxious/frightened/insecure, and functionally illiterate.
Trump is less a cause than a symptom.
It does my old heart good to see someone draw comparisons between you-know-who and Captain Ahab.
Though I interpreted this as written by Brian’s perhaps dominant & larger left hand, I appreciate the connection to Melville as it involves the whack-a-mole 8chan and a mention of “DDOS”. But alas no photos of black hoodie-clad lads as reported by some outlets?
Beyond that, certainly not one of Brian’s investigative gems.
You’re late, Chris. We could have used that big mind of yours investigating the hints Q left years ago.
Unfortunately, now you’re here struggling to grasp at what’s happening. Linking some weirdo wearing fur and carrying a spear/sign to anonymous postings on a message board as though Q instructed this actor (yes, he’s an actor) to play this part. There are no “QAnon leaders”.
You’ve not even bothered to delve into Q proofs, where Q posted something before or at the same time as Trump or other members of the administration. You see, Q has done this dozens of times. Something a guy running a pig farm in the Philippines or a rando message board guy in Japan isn’t going to be quite that lucky to accomplish. Your main proof to your claims seems to stem from this idea that Q didn’t post anywhere when 8chan was down (because of you, of course.) Q said all along (which you would know if you really bothered to investigate this) that he would only post on this site and nowhere else. For reasons also that should be obvious (being forced offline everywhere else.)
All of this would be clear as day to any journalists with a shred of credibility. Whatever credibility you have built up as it relates to network security is being squandered needlessly. Q has more credibility than you seem to understand and it’s not because we’re all sitting around trying to believe in wishful pipe-dreams.
It’s because Q has proven himself credible with hard facts. Understanding this requires a lot more effort than what you’ve put in. If you’re right… and it’s Ron… or some other guy, you haven’t proven anything beyond a vague allegation. Exactly what you claim “QAnon” is/does.
To prove yourself credible in this arena, you have a lot of work to do because millions of man-hours of OSINT investigations have already happened. You’re way behind.
Who is Chris?
Haha… 🙂
Having such a blunder in the very first sentence really destroys anything else Bill has to say.
He doesn’t even know who Krebs is… so the rest of his crackpot rant can easily be skipped knowing that he isn’t getting any smarter by the word.
Rabbit hole observed and respected!! Thanks for the amusement. I see some readers are taking things more seriously. What will we talk about for the next 4 years? Hope it’s boring.
I think one thing we can all agree on is when Mr Biden speaks you never know what he might say, which in itself is pretty amusing.
Wow, I mean wow the number of people here that probably consider themselves intelligent and are capable getting a network security job or admin position, can be such ignoramuses when it comes to life itself.
Why are you defending someone called Q-Anon?
Why are you still defending a traitor and the greatest threat to our democracy like Donald Trump?
Why are you doing whataboutism comparing how righteous protesters over black lives vs cult members who tried to overthrow our goverment? Look in the mirror. I’m guessing it’s something to do with not having enough social outlets in your life or maybe just good old fashioned racism.