Ron Watkins

Ronald Watkins (born April 18, 1987), also known by his online pseudonym CodeMonkeyZ, is a site administrator of the imageboard website 8kun (formerly known as 8chan). He has played a major role in spreading the discredited far-right QAnon conspiracy theory,

Activities 8kun

8kun, which was formerly known as 8chan, is an imageboard website that has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, child pornography, racism, and antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. It was home to the proponents of the Gamergate controversy beginning in 2014,

In 2014, after seeing an Al Jazeera America documentary about 8kun creator Fredrick Brennan, Watkins told his father about Brennan. 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 8kun. Ron Watkins began working on the site every day.

Role in QAnon

QAnon is a discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against former President Donald Trump, who is battling them. According to conspiracy theory expert Julian Feeld, QAnon adherents see Watkins as "the technical brain behind the platform where Q posts". Feeld has said that despite Watkins' lower profile in the movement compared to his father, he has "played just as big a role in the... movement's growth".

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.

Fredrick Brennan was quoted in a June 2020 article in The Atlantic saying, "I definitely, definitely, 100 percent believe that Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins, or was hired by Jim or Ron Watkins." 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. 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".

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. It was later determined that security researcher Aubrey Cottle 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. 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.

Watkins and his father were interviewed over several years for Cullen Hoback's six-part HBO docuseries about QAnon and the identity of Q, titled Q: Into the Storm. In the final episode of the series, Watkins said in an interview, "It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before, but never as Q." Watkins then smiled and corrected himself, saying "Never as Q. I promise. Because I am not Q, and I never was". Hoback viewed this as a freudian slip, and concluded from this interview and his other research that Ron Watkins is Q.

On February 19, 2022, The New York Times reported that linguistic analysis of the Q posts by two forensic linguistic teams indicated that Paul Furber was the main author of the initial Q posts, and Ron Watkins took over in 2018. Watkins again denied being Q, and published on Telegram a sonnet rebutting the claims.

Attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election

After resigning from his 8kun position in November 2020, Watkins worked to build his reputation among those attempting to overturn the results of the presidential election.

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.

On January 8, Twitter suspended accounts that were "solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content", including Watkins'. In addition, the accounts of Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn were also suspended.

On January 20, 2021, QAnon followers struggled to reconcile that Joe Biden had been inaugurated with their beliefs that Trump would still become president, or that there would be a "Great Awakening" or "the Storm": a day on which Trump and military allies would gather their political opponents for execution. Watkins appeared to be one of the figures abandoning the theory, posting on Telegram, "We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able." QAnon researcher Travis View warned against believing Watkins, pointing to his past claim that he had quit 8kun to focus on his woodworking only to "[fill] the vacuum of Q by spreading conspiracy theories".

In October 2021, Watkins appeared at a conference called For God & Country: Patriot Double Down in Las Vegas, where he called himself a "digital Rosa Parks", comparing his bans from mainstream social media to Parks' bus arrest.

Bid for Congress

In October 2021, Watkins filed a statement of interest with the Arizona Secretary of State to run for the United States House of Representatives in Arizona's 1st congressional district as a Republican. He officially announced his run for Congress with a video in which he called Democratic incumbent Tom O'Halleran the "dirtiest Democrat in the D.C. swamp".

Watkins campaigned mostly through Telegram; he hired conspiracy theorist podcaster Tony Teora as a campaign manager and associated with a local sovereign citizen activist. In January 2022, he appeared at a school board meeting in Scottsdale, where he accused "communist creeps" in school boards of indoctrinating children with "transsexual propaganda" and critical race theory and of taking away parental rights by "teaching our children that they can be vaccinated without parental consent".

In February 2022, it was reported that Watkins' campaign had raised just above $33,000, some of which was in the form of a loan from his father. Watkins also entered into polemics with Arizona senator Wendy Rogers, whom he accused of botching the Maricopa County election audit. Rogers responded by calling Watkins a "weirdo" and mocking his fundraising efforts. She later said she would enact a "ceasefire" with Watkins.

In the voting, on August 2, 2022, Watkins came in last among 7 candidates to the Republican primary, with less than 4% of the votes.

Personal life After high school, Watkins moved to China. in October 2021 he moved to Arizona.