Ron Watkins

8chan, also called 8kun, is an imageboard website that has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings.[10][11][12] It was home to the proponents of the Gamergate controversy beginning in 2014,[13][14] and in 2018 became a central part of the QAnon conspiracy theory when "Q", the anonymous figure claiming to be a high-level government official with Q clearance, began exclusively using 8chan to post their messages.[15][16][17][18]

In 2014, after seeing an Al Jazeera America documentary about 8chan creator Fredrick Brennan, Watkins told his father, Jim Watkins, about Brennan.[16][1] The imageboard had recently taken off in popularity after it was adopted by proponents of the Gamergate controversy, and Brennan was having trouble keeping up with server costs.[13][14] The elder Watkins contacted Brennan to offer a partnership, and in 2014 Brennan moved to Manila in the Philippines to work for him. In 2014, Jim Watkins became the official owner and operator of 8chan.[1] Ron Watkins began working on the site every day.[16] Brennan remained the site administrator until 2016, at which time he relinquished the role and Watkins took up the position.[1]

Watkins was responsible for the creation of a cryptocurrency through which 8chan posters can pay to have their posts listed prominently through a program called "King of the Shekel".[13]

On November 3, 2020, the day of the United States presidential election, Watkins announced on Twitter that he was resigning his position as site administrator. He told journalists he wanted to spend more time woodworking and writing a book about constitutional law.[7][2] His resignation was described as "abrupt", and fed doubts among some QAnon adherents about the movement.[19][7] Some have questioned the veracity of his resignation.[6][4] Conspiracy theory researcher Julian Feeld said, "His 'departure' from 8kun is highly suspect and possibly just a PR move more than anything else... It allows him more freedom as a right-wing operative, specifically around the various voter fraud conspiracy theories."[4]

After resigning from his 8chan position in November 2020, Watkins worked to build his reputation among those attempting to overturn the results of the presidential election.[2] He spread conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems, the creators of some voting machines used in the election. He posted videos on Twitter of a Dominion employee using one of the machines, falsely stating that the employee was pictured tampering with election results. The employee received death threats as a result, and a noose was found hanging outside his home.[2][20]

Watkins was named as an expert witness in a lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell, a lawyer and conspiracy theorist also involved in challenging the election results.[2] In his affidavit, he claimed that based on his reading of the online user guide for the Dominion software, it might be "within the realm of possibility" for a poll worker to manipulate votes. According to The Washington Post, Watkins described himself in the affidavit as "an information security expert with nine years of experience as a 'network and information defense analyst' and security engineer", and did not mention that his experience mostly came from his work with 8chan.[6]

Watkins was interviewed multiple times about Dominion on the pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN), which introduced him as a "large system technical analyst".[4] His comments on electoral fraud were also reported by other right-wing outlets, including The Gateway Pundit.[3]

Watkins earned a large following on Twitter following the election, where he used the name "CodeMonkeyZ".[2][21] In the month of November he nearly doubled his follower count to 400,000, and by early January had more than 500,000 followers.[2] Trump had retweeted Watkins five times between Election Day and January 6, 2021, and Foreign Policy described Watkins as "an integral part of Trump's post-election messaging".[3] After the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol building, Twitter cracked down on accounts that were "solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content". Watkins's account was among the accounts Twitter permanently suspended on January 8, as were the accounts belonging to Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.[22][23]

Numerous journalists and conspiracy theory researchers have connected Ron, Jim, or both Watkinses to Q, an account run by an unknown person or group of people, whose posts are the basis of the QAnon conspiracy theory.[9]

Watkins and his father were two of only a few people who could verify that posts on 8chan were from the "real" Q, which also contributed to theories that they were behind the persona.[33]

Fredrick Brennan quoted in The Atlantic in June 2020 said, "I definitely, definitely, 100 percent believe that Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins, or was hired by Jim or Ron Watkins."[31] In an interview on a September 2020 episode of the podcast Reply All, Brennan explained that he believes the Q account was originally operated by someone else, but that Watkins and his father took control of the persona, most likely around December 2017.[34] PJ Vogt of Reply All has said he discussed Brennan's theory with other journalists who write about Q, and that "some of them think it's likely, everyone agrees it's more than plausible".[35] Both Watkinses have denied knowledge of Q's identity.[30][31]

A verified account on Parler claiming to be Watkins made several posts on November 15, 2020, appearing to confirm theories that his father was Q.[21] It was later determined that Aubrey Cottle, a security researcher and co-founder of Anonymous, had taken advantage of Parler security flaws to change the name of an already-verified Parler account, giving it the appearance of belonging to and having been verified as Watkins.[36] This incident led to a feud between Watkins and Parler investor Dan Bongino, with Watkins publicly criticizing Parler's security on Twitter and describing the service as "compromised". Bongino responded by tweeting insults at Watkins.[37][38]