CBS
- QAnon recycled a 2020 false claim about Oprah Winfrey after her Meghan and Harry interview.
- Some believers of the baseless conspiracy theory discussed the claim on Telegram and Twitter.
- QAnon conspiracy theorists have a pattern of recycling scapegoats.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on CBS on Sunday night, the world was shocked by allegations of racism and bullying within the British royal family.
But for some believers of QAnon, the baseless far-right conspiracy theory alleging the existence of a "deep state" cabal of human traffickers, the focus was on Winfrey herself.
A Sunday night message in a QAnon Telegram channel that has nearly 200,000 subscribers posited whether Winfrey was wearing an "ankle monitor." The claim also circulated on Twitter, where users recycled a year-old fiction about the talk show host being arrested on human-trafficking charges.
QAnon resurging claims about Winfrey demonstrates the staying power of the movement's imagined "villains." Other figures who have become boogymen for QAnon believers – including Bill Gates, George Soros, and Hillary Clinton – also remain frequent targets of QAnon harassment and conspiracy theories. When one of these figures becomes newsworthy, QAnon followers will often repurpose their claims to fit the events of the moment.
Now, with the new interview special with Markle and Harry, Winfrey's name has appeared in the news and given QAnon another chance to revisit those claims – especially in a fraught time for the fledgling conspiracy-theory movement, as it seeks new material with Trump out of office.
Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese via Getty Images
Winfrey first emerged as a target for QAnon in March 2020 when the baseless claim that she was arrested for human trafficking in Boca Raton, Florida, went viral. The Boca Raton Police Department confirmed in a tweet that claims of her arrest were part of a hoax.
Winfrey addressed the bizarre allegations in a tweet. "Just got a phone call that my name is trending. And being trolled for some awful FAKE thing. It's NOT TRUE," she said. "Haven't been raided, or arrested. Just sanitizing and self distancing with the rest of the world. Stay safe everybody."
-Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) March 18, 2020
Like Winfrey, Chrissy Teigen has also emerged as one of these central QAnon conspiracy-theory targets in the last year. Both celebrities became embroiled in QAnon lore due to their alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein. But there is no evidence that either of them flew on Epstein's plane, USA Today reported, discrediting the QAnon claims.
When Teigen revealed in an Instagram post that she had a pregnancy loss, QAnon believers on several social-media platforms relentlessly harassed her, baselessly accusing her of being a "pedophile" and "eating kids."
And when Texas faced a statewide emergency amid a rare snowstorm and electrical outages, QAnon believers used Gates as a scapegoat, using his support for climate-change research to allege that he "blocked the sun."
Elise Thomas, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has researched conspiracy theories and disinformation, told Insider in a previous interview that once someone reaches a certain level of "infamy" in QAnon's "central cast of conspiracy villains," it can be extremely difficult to end that association.
Representatives for CBS and Winfrey did not respond to Insider's request for comment.