Hilary Duff has appeared to respond to baselessQAnon conspiracy theories falsely claiming she's involved in child trafficking.- "Everyone bored af right now I know..but this is actually disgusting..... whoever dreamed this one up and put this garbage into the universe should take a break from their damn phone. Maybe get a hobby," she said in a tweet.
- QAnon theories attacking celebrities have only further amplified its reach, as people like Duff and Oprah Winfrey respond to the viral accusations, which have no basis in fact.
Hilary Duff has responded to outlandish conspiracy theories spread by the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that claimed she was involved in child trafficking.
In a May 23 tweet, the actress appeared to respond to the false claims, which began after a now-deleted tweet alleged a photo of her with her son, Luca, proved that she had been involved in the practice of selling children, according to The Daily Dot.
"Everyone bored af right now I know..but this is actually disgusting..... whoever dreamed this one up and put this garbage into the universe should take a break from their damn phone. Maybe get a hobby," she said in a tweet.
—Hilary Duff (@HilaryDuff) May 23, 2020
The photo that followers of QAnon — a movement centered on the conspiracy theory that there's a group of "elites" in the US who are out to get President Donald Trump and engage in pedophilia and child trafficking, among other things — used to attack Duff allegedly showed her son with "white markings all over his body." In the original Twitter thread, the user called this "a message to the devils of the elites that her son is for sale," The Daily Dot reported.
The QAnon movement's conspiracy theories targetting celebrities have only further amplified its reach, as figures like Duff respond to the viral accusations, which have no basis in fact. The theories about Duff participating in human trafficking are part of a larger trend among QAnon supporters, who continue to falsely allege that various famous people are involved in such crimes.
In March, Oprah Winfrey responded to a hoax claiming she had been arrested on human trafficking charges. Even the police department of Boca Raton, Florida, tweeted to clarify that it had not arrested Winfrey.
The QAnon movement has clearly made its way into the mainstream. Now, there's even a slew of lifestyle influencers on Instagram sharing this kind of misinformation, which stems from the fringes of the internet, with hundreds of thousands of followers. Plus, Trump continues to share theories on Twitter, like Obamagate, which is strongly linked to the QAnon community.
"When you've got the president of the United States promoting these themes and theories," Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher who tracks white nationalism and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, told Insider in a previous interview. "You can say that they're fringe, in terms of the competent, rational mind, but you can't say that they're out of the mainstream," said Reid Ross.
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