Minor Tech and Counter-revolution

Tactics, Infrastructures, QAnon

Abstract

Following repeated assertions by QAnon promoters that to understand the phenomenon one must ‘do your own research’ this article seeks to unpack how ‘research’ is understood within QAnon, and how this understanding is operationalised in the production of particular tools. Drawing on exemplar literature internal to the phenomenon, it examines discourses on question of QAnon’s epistemology with particular reference to the stated purpose of ‘research’ and its difference to an allegedly hegemonic (or ‘mainstream’) episteme. The article then turns to how these discourses are operationalised in the research tools QAnon.pub and QAgg.news (‘QAgg’). Finally, it concludes by way of a reflection on how QAnon’s aggressively counter-revolutionary strategies and infrastructures can trouble the concept of the ‘minor’ in minor tech.