The mysterious person behind a new and rapidly growing online disinformation network targeting followers of the far-right cult QAnon can be revealed as a Berlin-based artist with a history of social media manipulation, a prominent anti-racism group said.
Since former US president Donald Trump left the White House, QAnon’s vast online community has been in a state of flux as it comes to terms with the reality that its conspiracy theories — such as the former US president being destined to defeat a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles — amount to nothing.
That might explain why significant numbers have turned to a new far-right network, found mostly on the Telegram messaging app, that is growing quickly globally and has amassed more than 1 million subscribers so far this year.
Called the Sabmyk Network, like QAnon it is a convoluted conspiracy theory that features fantastical elements and is headed by a mysterious messianic figure. Since its emergence there has been widespread speculation about who that figure might be. The person who first posted as “Q” has never been positively identified.
This week the British anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate plans to unmask Sabmyk’s leader, who it said is 45-year-old German art dealer Sebastian Bieniek.
It said that Bieniek — who has not responded to questions from the Observer — has a history of creating online conspiracies and even wrote a book in 2011 called RealFake that detailed a campaign to deceptively promote his work.
However, Hope Not Hate said that the speed of Sabmyk’s growth serves as a warning of the opportunities for manipulation that exist on social media, particularly unregulated alt-tech platforms such as Telegram.
“His success in developing such a huge audience is a reminder that the QAnon template of anonymous online manipulation will continue to pose a threat in the years to come,” said Gregory Davis of Hope Not Hate, which is publishing its annual report into the far right today.
Since Dec. 21 last year, when Sabmyk was supposedly “awakened,” more than 136 channels in English, German, Italian, Japanese and Korean have sprung up, adding tens of thousands of followers on a daily basis.
Much of Sabmyk’s content is designed to appeal to QAnon followers; it features COVID-19 mask skepticism, anti-vaccine conspiracies and false assertions that last year’s US election was stolen from Trump.
Some is also designed to actively recruit Britons: One Sabmyk channel, the British Patriotic Party, uses the same branding as anti-Muslim group Britain First and posts about London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Other channels are titled London Post and Liverpool Times, as well as the Great Awakening UK, a reference to a well-known QAnon trope predicting a day of reckoning in which Trump would rise against his liberal enemies.
Among the clues used to identify Bieniek are posts saying that the messiah Sabmyk can be identified by specific marks on his body.
One post said that Sabmyk would have “17 V-shaped scars” on his arm, the result of a “prophetic ceremony at the age of 24.”
Hope Not Hate has found a since-deleted section on Bieniek’s Web site recalling a 1999 art exhibit in which, aged 24, he cut V-shaped wounds into his arm for 16 days in a row.
Attempts to connect Sabmyk to Trump have been made, including a clip that splices together instances of the former president saying “17,” and a doctored image showing him with a Sabmyk pamphlet in his suit pocket.
Bieniek has created countless false identities to promote his career as an artist, the Hope Not Hate investigation found.
The group also said that his German Wikipedia page has been deleted at least four times, most recently in January.
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