“Elon is an Anon”: QAnon community celebrates Elon Musk’s “Follow the White Rabbit” tweet
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have celebrated Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeting a phrase that has been regularly invoked in the community, taking it as evidence that he supposedly supports the conspiracy theory in some manner.
On December 12, Musk tweeted, “Follow” next to a rabbit emoji. The wording with the emoji would seem to be referring to the phrase “follow the white rabbit,” a reference to the classic fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was repopularized by The Matrix film franchise and subsequently adopted as an online rallying cry in the early days of the QAnon movement. The conspiracy theory’s central figure, “Q”, repeatedly referenced the “white rabbit” and the story directly in posts.
QAnon figures, who were already primed to believe that Musk was an ally, hyped Musk’s “clear Q reference” as some kind of green light, along with a follow-up tweet from Musk in response to a scene in The Matrix about choosing between taking a blue pill and a red pill (which has been embraced in the far-right as so-called “red-pilling,” referring to a process by with individuals come to support far-right ideas). Adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory claimed Musk has been “keeping with the Q Comms” and was “on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies,” with some believing the tweet may already be referring to a Q post.
One QAnon influencer even pointed to Musk’s posts as supposed evidence that “Elon is an Anon” because “he’s directly quoting Q with the Follow the White Rabbit tweet.”
The QAnon community’s excitement for Musk’s tweet comes as Musk has pushed claims of child trafficking on Twitter and blamed Twitter’s leadership, including targeting Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who was forced to flee his home due to threats. It also comes as more QAnon accounts have come back or at least attempted to come back to Twitter in the midst of Musk taking over the platform.