{"id":4173,"date":"2020-05-19T06:02:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T22:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/?p=4173"},"modified":"2023-01-01T05:16:53","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T21:16:53","slug":"morrisons-china-push-feeds-local-qanon-theorists-who-say-satanists-rule-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/morrisons-china-push-feeds-local-qanon-theorists-who-say-satanists-rule-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Morrison\u2019s China push feeds local QAnon theorists who say Satanists rule world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call for an investigation into China’s handling of the coronavirus has provided fresh content for Australian conspiracy theorists<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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David Hardaker<\/a><\/span> and Kishor Napier-Raman<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

May 19, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Falun Gong rally in Sydney on August 24, 2019. (Image: AAP\/Jeremy Piper)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison\u2019s focus on China\u2019s handling of the coronavirus has garnered the support of Australia\u2019s leading proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory who tweets under the name Burn Notice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week Burn Notice \u2014 who is also a Morrison family friend \u2014 endorsed Morrison\u2019s role in pushing for the inquiry by retweeting a post about it to his carefully-curated Twitter feed, where he has 35,000 followers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Keira<\/a><\/span><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Editor’s note<\/span> (I’m blocked by Keira)<\/p>\n

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China has emerged as a central preoccupation for the US-based QAnon conspiracy theory, which has as its central tenet that the US is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles acting as a deep state.<\/span><\/p>\n

The movement has expanded its remit to include opposition to COVID-19 lockdown regulations, as well as vaccines, under the rubric of individual freedom. It holds US President Donald Trump to be the anointed one to cleanse the world through the coming of \u201cthe storm\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

QAnon adherents endorsed Trump\u2019s early position that the virus was a hoax, that it posed little threat to the United States and that it was essentially a deep state operation aimed at derailing his reelection.<\/span><\/p>\n

An analysis presented in The Conversation <\/em>reports<\/span><\/a> that the movement\u2019s anonymous leader Q first posted about COVID-19 on March 23 and described it as a Chinese bioweapon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s escalating attacks on China over COVID-19 have also led to a deepening relationship between QAnon and the Chinese dissident movement Falun Gong which has a strong media presence in Australia through daily online publication The Epoch Times<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reports in authoritative US outlets The Atlantic<\/a><\/em><\/span> and NBC News<\/span><\/a> point to an alliance of convenience, which emerged last year and has strengthened as Trump has sought to blame China for concealing its knowledge of the source and spread of COVID-19. The president claimed to have seen evidence that the virus emerged from a lab in Wuhan \u2014 in other words that COVID-19 is a bioweapon, as stated by Q.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Falun Gong movement, through its New York-based company

was considering<\/a><\/span> severing its sister city relationship with Kunming in China over the pandemic, locals found their letterboxes flooded with copies of the paper. <\/span><\/p>\n

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What is the real influence, though, of QAnon?<\/span><\/p>\n

A survey<\/span><\/a> by the Pew Research Centre in the United States conducted in February and March showed that around a quarter (23%) of respondents had heard or read a lot or a little about QAnon, with 3% saying they\u2019d heard or read a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pew\u2019s headline conclusion is that QAnon\u2019s conspiracy theories have seeped into US. politics but most people still don\u2019t know what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Australia, Burn Notice (whose Twitter handle is @BurnedSpy34) now has more than 35,000 twitter followers \u2014 an increase from just over 20,000 supporters when Inq <\/em>reported<\/a><\/span> in October on his relationship with the prime minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

Insert –<\/span>  PM’s links to QAnon<\/span><\/a> –<\/span> End of Insert<\/span>
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Inq<\/em> revealed Burn Notice\u2019s claims that he influenced Morrison\u2019s 2018 parliamentary apology to victims of institutional child sex abuse by having him use the controversial term \u201critual abuse\u201d<\/a><\/span>. (Ed’ link)
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Burn Notice is the alter ego of Tim Stewart. His wife is a close personal friend of the prime minister\u2019s wife, who has been employed by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Burn Notice adopted his Twitter identity on the same day Morrison became prime minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

He refused to speak with Inq <\/em>for this story, alleging we would distort his words.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Related<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Marise Payne calls for global inquiry into China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n
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Australia started a fight with China over an investigation into COVID-19 \u2014 did it go too hard?<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Everything you want to know about Australia-China trade war but were too afraid to ask<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n

About the Authors<\/p>\n

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David Hardaker<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reporter @d_hardaker<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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David has an extensive career as a journalist and broadcaster, primarily at the ABC where he worked on flagship programs such as Four Corners, The 7.30 Report, Foreign Correspondent, AM and PM. He spent eight years reporting in the Middle East and can speak Arabic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Reporter <\/span>Kishor Napier-Raman<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before joining Crikey<\/em> in 2018, Kishor was an editor of the University of Sydney\u2019s student paper Honi Soit<\/em>, an intern at The Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> on the state news beat, a casual legal reporter for Justinian and the Gazette of Law and Journalism, and a research assistant at the Australian Human Rights Commission. In his spare time, he is completing a law degree at the University of Sydney. Kishor will be covering issues with respect to immigration, race and religion.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call for an investigation into China’s handling of the coronavirus has provided fresh content for Australian conspiracy theorists David Hardaker and Kishor Napier-Raman May 19, 2020   A Falun Gong rally in Sydney on August 24, 2019. (Image: AAP\/Jeremy Piper)     Prime Minister Scott Morrison\u2019s focus on China\u2019s handling of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,301,113,3,164],"tags":[141,403,153,158,160,161],"class_list":["post-4173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australias-move-to-the-right","category-corruption","category-foreign-policy","category-political-issues","category-the-pm-and-the-qanon-conspiracy","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-morrison","tag-qanon","tag-scott-morrison","tag-tim-stewart"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}