Elon Musk has convinced QAnon conspiracy theorists that he is one of them with a single tweet. On Monday evening, Musk tweeted the word “follow” and a rabbit emoji, which QAnon world believes is a reference to their long-ago standby, “Follow the white rabbit.”
They think Musk is communicating with them.
“Follow the white rabbit” emerged in the early days of QAnon. The line, originally from Alice in Wonderland, also shows up in The Matrix, another of their cultural obsessions. QAnon followers use it as a code for “going down the rabbit hole,” which refers to doing deep dives into various corners of the internet looking for proof of the conspiracy theory.
Whoever played the part of Q, the supposed government insider whose posts gave rise to the conspiracy theory, asked, “Who are the white rabbits?” in multiple posts.
The conspiracy theorists were further convinced that Musk also believes that satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles control the world—the central tenet of QAnon—when he replied to someone posting a GIF of the red pill/blue pill scene from The Matrix by saying, “I think about this about this every time I take DayQuil or NyQuil.”
Unsurprisingly, QAnon followers went wild over Musk’s tweets.
“Elon keeping with the Q comms,” the Gen. Michael Flynn Telegram channel posted. Flynn is a hero to QAnon followers.
Several opined that the “double ‘Q’s'” in NyQuil and DayQuil from Musk’s reply to the red pill/blue pill GIF is another reference to QAnon.
A conspiracy theorist Telegram channel with 120,000 subscribers suggested that Musk’s tweet means that he is somehow going to get the 2020 presidential election nullified and former President Donald Trump reinstated and prove that there has been a conspiracy to silence both conservative and QAnon followers online.
“…[N]ow he’s directly quoting Q with the Follow the White Rabbit tweet…” they added. “Elon is an Anon.”
QAnon influencer Juan Q Seven put it more succinctly, writing, “BQQM. Follow The White Rabbit!”
One of the more mind-numbing elements of “proof” that QAnon followers found is that the timestamp on Musk’s tweet matches the date of one of Q’s posts about the white rabbit, which they take as further evidence that he was communicating with them. They seem not aware that tweet timestamps are based on one’s time zone.
Disinformation researcher Caroline Orr tweeted that Musk’s “follow the white rabbit” post has already inspired QAnon fans to link “it to adrenochrome, [John] Podesta, Hillary Clinton, child trafficking, Saudi Arabia, & more.”
Orr shared screenshots of posts in which conspiracy theorists make wild claims, such as that Musk’s tweet means he’s “in pursuit of disclosing who is leading the cabal.”
This isn’t the first time that Musk has winked at QAnon. In 2020, he tweeted, “Take the red pill,” another bat signal for both the far-right conspiracy theory and the conservative-leaning online world in general.
Musk is now claiming that his rabbit tweet was merely a reference to a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. QAnon world either didn’t get that memo—or are aware of the old QAnon adage “disinformation is necessary.”
