Trump Says QAnon Followers Are People Who ‘Love Our Country’

Although a majority of Americans say they remain unfamiliar with the particulars of the movement — research shows that people who use social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit are more likely to be familiar with QAnon — those who study the behavior of fringe groups have warned of the power to produce extremism among followers.

QAnon is a larger and many-tentacled version of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton was operating a child sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. In December 2016, a man who said he was on the hunt for proof of child abuse was arrested after firing a rifle inside the restaurant.

QAnon supporters often flood social media pages with memes and YouTube videos that target well-known figures — like Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the actor Tom Hanks — with unfounded claims about their links to child abuse. Lately, activists have used anti-child-trafficking hashtags as a recruitment tool.

“It’s not just a conspiracy theory, this is a domestic extremist movement,” said Travis View, a host of “QAnon Anonymous,” a podcast that seeks to explain the movement. Mr. View said that Twitter and Facebook pages exploded with comments from gleeful followers after Mr. Trump’s comments.

Mr. View pointed out that the president answered the question by supporting the central premise of the QAnon theory — that he is battling a cabal of left-wing pedophiles — rather than addressing the lack of evidence behind the movement.

“They are very practiced at trying to interpret any comment from Trump as validation,” Mr. View said of the movement’s followers. “And Trump very coyly indicated he would help if he could.”

In recent weeks, platforms including Twitter and Facebook have rushed to dismantle a mushrooming number of QAnon-related accounts and fan pages, a move that people who study the movement say is too little and too late. On Wednesday, after a record amount of QAnon-related growth on the site, Facebook said it removed 790 QAnon groups and was restricting another 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts.