Q&A: Documentary Unravels Twisted Knots Of QAnon Movement

The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was predictable, if you were following message boards on shadowy corners of the Internet.

"Yeah, I thought Jan. 6 was going to be really bad," Cullen Hoback, director of the documentary Q: Into the Storm, told NPR in a recent interview. "I got hardly any sleep the two nights before it. I was very anxious going into that day."

Hoback followed the growth of the QAnon movement for three years and unravels the twisted knots of the conspiracy theory in a six-part series on HBO. He focuses on the interpersonal drama between those behind the website 8chan (later 8kun), where an enigmatic "Q" posted false conspiracy theories that convinced millions that there were nefarious Democratic actors involved in child-trafficking rings.

Spurred on by former President Donald Trump's false allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that he lost to President Biden, many Q believers were among a larger group of anti-government extremists who stormed the Capitol Jan. 6 in protest of the usually ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes affirming the election result.

The drama in the film develops incrementally, as the inner workings of the dark web are explained for an audience unfamiliar with this world — which includes Fredrick Brennan, who created 8chan; and Jim and Ron Watkins, who later