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Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listens to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speak during the third U.S. presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on October 19, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.

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Four years ago today, an anonymous 4chan user posted the following message:

Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 7:45 AM - 8:30 AM EST on Monday - the morning on [sic] Oct 30, 2017.

An hour later they followed up with some more detail about the operation, including predictions of massive riots organized in defiance and a claim that the national guard would be activated for duty across most major cities.

Needless to say, Clinton was not arrested thenor everbut these were the first of almost 5,000 messages posted by a user who became known as Q, and they inspired the conspiracy movement known as QAnon.

Four years later, the movements God-Emperor, former President Donald Trump, is out of office. Q went silent almost a year ago. An innumerable list of Qs predictions have failed to come true. But true believers are still holding out hope.

Happy birthday, Q, a Telegram user called AbsoluteConviction1776 wrote on Thursday. For your birthday bash this year, can we maybe celebrate with some arrests and the fall of the cabal? Would be great!!!

The post is signed from a grateful American patriot.

Over the last fours years, QAnon has changed completely: Initially, it grew slowly on sites like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit before exploding in popularity as it moved to mainstream sites like YouTube, Twitter, and, in particular, Facebook.

The way people now speak about QAnon has also changed dramatically. No longer are people dismissing it as a joke, a fringe conspiracy believed by a bunch of wackos. The FBI calls it a potential domestic terror threat, and following the Jan. 6 riots, it is seen as a serious threat to the integrity of U.S. democracy.

But its not just the U.S. where QAnon has spread.

In an indication of the global appeal of the movement, responses to the birthday message on Telegram came from users in the Netherlands and England, showing the movements international reach, despite its deeply U.S.-centric conspiracies.

QAnon groups have been found in 85 countries, intermingling with anti-vaxxer groups, sovereign citizens, and far-right extremist networks. In France, a QAnon group was behind a recent kidnapping of an 8-year-old girl.

The birthday message to Q, which has been viewed thousands of times and shared in one of the most popular QAnon channels on Telegram, is a testimony to the enduring nature of a conspiracy that spiraled out of all control and is quickly becoming part of mainstream politics in the U.S.

This week saw more than half a dozen sitting U.S. lawmakers and candidates for secretary of state sharing a stage with some of the QAnon movements biggest QAnon grifters and influencers, at the QAnon-focused Patriot Double Down conference in Las Vegas.

At that event it was revealed that a QAnon influencer has become central to the creation of a coalition of GOP secretary of state candidates who are eager to push a slew of voter-suppression measures.

And Trump himself, who has done as much as anyone to help QAnon fester and grow, by repeatedly failing to denounce it, is helping to boost QAnon-linked candidates ahead of the 2022 elections.

And no one has exemplified the rise and radical mainstreaming of the conspiracy more than Ron Watkins. Watkins was the administrator of 8kun (previously known as 8chan), an even more fringe website where Q began posting exclusively from early 2018.

As administrator, Watkins facilitated QAnons rise, refusing to do anything to stop the posts even after QAnon-inspired violence began emerging in 2019. Indeed many of those tracking QAnons evolution believe that it was Watkins and his father Jim, who took complete control of the Q account shortly after it moved to 8chan, and even wrote the posts themselves.

But Watkins moved out of the shadows and into the spotlight on Election Day 2020, when he announced he was retiring as 8kun administrator and was now a cyber security expert. In the year since, he has ingratiated himself into the right-wing MAGA community by pushing baseless election fraud conspiracies.

Watkins has been so successful that he is now running for Congress, and while his chances of winning are almost zero, the fact he believes he has a chance is a further testament to how mainstream QAnon beliefs have become.

As QAnon merges with mainstream American politics, and as followers of the movement continue to try and shed the QAnon branding because of its toxic associations, the future of the movement is in flux.

But as the QAnon conference in Las Vegas this week showed, four years after the first Q drop, theres still a huge amount of interest in the QAnon conspiracy theories, and people still believe. The movement has also found a home in the more extreme parts of the evangelical community, and given enough time, the movement could itself become a mainstream religious movement.

There is this old adage among folks who study religion that cult plus time equals religion, Ryan Burge, a pastor and an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, told VICE News.

Everything sort of started out as a cult, whether it be Christianity or Judaism or, you know, Scientology. If it hangs around long enough, it will eventually become a religion.

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QAnon Is 4 Years Old and Believers Are Still Waiting for Hillary Clintons Arrest - VICE

In 'State of Terror,' Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny have pointed messages : NPR's Book of the Day : NPR

In 'State of Terror,' Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny have pointed messages : NPR's Book of the Day The bestselling author Louise Penny is a prolific writer of mysteries and thrillers but for her latest book, she decided to bring a partner into the fold, a novice to the world of mystery-writing: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Their book, State of Terror, brings readers into a world in which a president picks a former rival to be his secretary of state (sound familiar?) and she must then contend with what Clinton calls one of her greatest fears: nuclear-armed terrorists. In this interview, Penny and Clinton discuss the messages they hope readers take away from the book.

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In 'State of Terror,' Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny have pointed messages : NPR's Book of the Day - NPR

Former President Bill Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were spotted sporting long pants and long faces while strolling on a Hamptons beach this week.

The sullen-seeming couple was covered up as they walked on the sand in sunny Amagansett on Tuesday, with Bill wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and a baseball cap and Hillary dressed in baggy blue pants, a long-sleeved top and hat.

The seaside stroll took place shortly before the release on Sept. 7 of the FX limited series Impeachment: AmericanCrime Story, chronicling the former presidents sex scandal involving then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Executive producer Brad Simpson recently told Deadline he doesnt think the former first couple will watch the show.

No one, as far as we know, from the Clinton camp has seen this series, Simpson said. Of course, Im curious what they would think.

Simpson added of Hillary, I dont imagine she will watch, no matter how emphatic we are to her.

The Clintons were in the Hamptons celebrating Bills milestone 75th birthday, according to reports.

On Saturday, he umpired several innings of an Artist and Writers Charity Softball game in East Hampton.

Other big-name politicians have been seen around the Hamptons in recent days, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul having attended an event in Southampton last weekend, days before she took her oath to replace Andrew Cuomo.

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Hillary and Bill Clinton spotted in the Hamptons

The seventh episode of Impeachment: American Crime Story reveals a character it was probably difficult to imagine taking a back seat when the series first began: Hillary Clinton. Played by four-time Emmy winner Edie Falco, the then-first lady is seen only in brief glimpses in the first half of the season, as the affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinskyand its aftermathtakes focus. But in the seventh episode, titled The Assassination of Monica Lewinsky, the story breaks in the press. In one striking scene, Bill Clinton wakes up his wife and tells her what he claims is the truththat he and Lewinsky never had an affair at all.

On this weeks episode of the Still Watching podcast, Falco tells Richard Lawson about her approach to playing one of the most famous women on the planet, and why her performance is a possible interpretation of what could have been happening in Hillary Clintons mind in those tumultuous early days of 1998.

Listen to the episode above, and find a partial transcript of the Falco interview below. You can subscribe to Still Watching on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Richard Lawson: Theres a lot to talk about but were starting a lot of these interviews asking people what they remember from that time. Were you someone who paid a lot of attention to this whole story?

Edie Falco:I did not, actually. Had I been, then, who I am now I would havein so far as being a bit of a political junkie. But I was less so, at the time. So, I was aware of it. It was in the air but I was not fully cognizant of it, no.

Which, I guess, would make it interesting to delve into the world of this show. Im curious about when this opportunity presented itself. What were your reasons for wanting to be part of this and play this role specifically?

Lets see. Quite some time before I did it, more than a year, it was mentioned to me that Ryan Murphy was interested in using me and I didnt know what that meant. There were a lot of things floating around at the time and then, they said, he wanted to speak with me. We spoke on the phone and at that point, I realized I am actually considering playing Hillary Clinton. I wonder if I gave that enough thought, frankly, but of course, its daunting for anybody but also because I am someone who respects her so much and cannot imagine the pressure of just being who she is in the public eye. I guess I stepped in it a little, not really knowing when or if it would happen. There were a lot of questions in the air. At a certain point when I was going to fittings, I realized, holy crap, I really am doing this.

Now, youve played real people before but maybe none quite as well known as Hillary Clinton. Are you someone who does a lot of research, are you watching videos to get speech patterns right? How is your approach to playing someone who weve all heard speak and maybe seen in person many times?

Right. The truth is, I have played a lot of real people. This is, of course, the highest profile real person Ive ever played but the truth is, I would way prefer not to play a real person. Its not something I enjoy as much because in a perfect world, were telling a story not necessarily a story that people know with people that people know. So, they come in with some preconceptions as to what the story will be like and what the people will look and sound like. I prefer to start the whole thing with a blank slate. You dont know these people and you dont know the story and so, I can create all of it out of my imagination. So, given all of that, I agreed to do this job but Hillary Clinton, in particular, is someone who has been imitated and impersonated on every platform by every person who does such things.

So, without giving it a ton of intellectual thought, I definitely didnt want to do that. I didnt want to be another person they could put on a reel of all the people who have played Hillary Clinton. So, I was way more interested in just telling the story from the point of view of a woman, intelligent, thoughtful, married to the president and what the story was like for her.

So, Hillary Clinton has been in my world, in all of our worlds, for many, many years and you cant help it. Its like, knowing the words to a song you dont remember ever having heard before. You know what I mean? Its just always been there and thats a little bit of my feeling about Hillary Clinton. So, I dont know. I didnt really want to go in there and make sure I sounded and looked and walked just like her. Between the hair and makeup and clothing, these people, who worked on the show, were so diligent and well sourced and hardworking. I felt well covered. But it was more, for me, about portraying her interior life.

Are you trying to show us something different about her, or is it really interior?

No. No, no. This is not my interpretation of Hillary. It is my interpretation of the writers and producers interpretation. You know what I mean? I am not telling the story or pretending to have pieces of the story that the public doesnt have. Im just a cog in a very large wheel. I guess, part of it was that, as I have grown up in a culture that knows this story, I certainly have had to wonder like, Maybe... I imagine other people have wondered like, What was that like? What was the home life of these two people while all of this was going on? How did she make sense of her husband, her place in this marriage, her place as a person in the American public or in the world public. And everybody knows whats going on in her family. Well, I just wanted to know, what were those conversations like? My God. And the truth is, we still dont know but this is certainly a possible interpretation. What some of those conversations were like, what the feeling in the home was like, that kind of thing. I think, the main reason I was interested in doing this was, to allow a possibility for what that might have been like.

Im curious, particularly, in this scene, in this episode, where Bill has come to Hillary and told her, Heres the news. This is whats out. And then later, she makes a decision. Can you talk me through a little bit, what do you think the characters mindset is? Why does she make that pretty big choice?

Again, trying to imagine, treading water in a situation like this where he is running. Hes got the most important job in the world, arguably, and she is his wife, a big part of his support system. This is an agreement she made. Yes, she agreed to be married to this man but this is an agreement she made to the world, to the country. So, it felt a little bit to me like, she needs to put out fires, right now, and how to deal with the long game, is another story. Do the next right thing, is what it felt like. She was just a little bit like, whack-a-mole. Ill take care of this then, Ill do this and Im sure mixed into all of that is, some idea of, what will this mean for our political future? Mine and his, together, mine and his, separately but I think, a bigger part of it was just, how do I get through this moment?

You have this incredible scene partner in Clive Owen. So, Im curious about that working relationship was like and if youd known him previous to this project?

No. We just met on the first day of shooting and it was funny because he said to me, Luckily, nobody knows who these people are so, were okay. I was like, clearly hes having the same trepidation I did as we stepped into this very daunting task. He was so lovely, such a nice smart, talented, kind man who took the job very seriously, was professional but also not unapproachable because of that. He was just great. I really quite liked him. Obviously, we work in very different ways.

He lives in London and he is British. So, between his accent and not having grown up in this country, he had a lot more ground to cover but he was definitely going for a much more accurate, physical portrayal of Bill, and its something, in the beginning, that I was concerned about. And I was basically told that its okay. As long as we play the truth of the scene, everyone will know who everybody is. And, and I dont know. I actually dont know if theres a rule about these kinds of things. You must look and talk exactly like them but if there was a rule about it, I was never really told it. So, the fact that we came from different places, I hope were still able to tell the story of these two people that people know.

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Edie Falco on Playing Hillary Clinton: Holy Crap, I Really Am Doing This - Vanity Fair

HILLARY Clinton has issued a warning over COP26 success one week before the Scottish climate summit.

As many as 30,000 people are expected to attend the event in Glasgow, with delegations coming in from all over the world.Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez, Emmanuel Macron of Franceand Canada's Justin Trudeau are amongst those expected. There was a question mark over India's Narendra Modi, but his attendance was confirned two days ago.

However, Russian president Vladimir PutinandChinese president Xi Jingping are not set to join America's Joe Biden and others.

In an interview with The Andrew Marr Show, Clinton today said she was "very disappointed" that "major emitters" including China and Russia will not be present.

The former US secretary of state said: "I think we will have an agreement, I think we will have a lot of countries showing up, saying 'we are getting serious, we have seen the results in our country, we have seen floods and droughts and terrible intense storms, wildfires everywhere'.

READ MORE:Scotland 'faces a four-fold Covid spike at COP26 in a best-case scenario'

"I think we will have an agreement, but if these three big emittersmost particularly Chinadon't come to the table, whether their leaders are there or not, and say 'we have got to be part of the solution', then it's not a failure for Glasgow, it's a failure for them and they are going to reap the consequences but so will we all."

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Hillary Clinton issues COP26 warning on The Andrew Marr Show - The National