On September 8, just after Queen Elizabeth II passed away, far-right online influencers and other users started peddling rumours about the late queen.
Much while every prominent person’s passing always sparks a slew of frauds and myths, the Queen’s passing sparked even stranger speculations than normal.
Numerous obviously false assertions and illogical theories have gained ground, ranging from a doctored photo of Meghan Markle sporting a shirt reading “The Queen Is Dead” to QAnon influencers claiming that Donald Trump knew the Queen would pass away and warned his supporters in a coded message before it occurred.
There was an explosion of false conspiracy ideas in the QAnon group.
Adherents of QAnon, the far-right movement built on the bogus idea that there is a deep-state cabal of people traffickers that only former President Donald Trump can stop, have been spreading a variety of unfounded claims.
Early in September, a QAnon influencer attempted to decipher one of Trump’s all-caps Truth Social posts and said that the post time indicated that there would be a “major week ahead.” The post was posted by at least one well-known QAnon influencer who has more than 40,000 followers.
It was “quite intriguing” that the Queen passed away “1776 days” after the initial Q drop, according to a QAnon influencer with over 230,000 Telegram followers who made a message that seemed to connect QAnon to the monarch’s passing.
(They didn’t go into detail about what it was supposed to represent.) With the addition of fireworks emotes, another QAnon influencer with over 40,000 followers shared a photo of a “Days Between Two Dates” calculator with the same message.
In the meanwhile, a post on the far-right, QAnon-themed Great Awakening forum received hundreds of likes and also seemed to imply that the Queen’s death was either sinister or unusual.
A QAnon Telegram page published a message with the false claim that Princess Diana, who passed away in 1997, is “coming out of the shadows” to become the next queen.
The article was shared by a phoney Mike Flynn Telegram account, which has over 29,000 followers.
Others in the QAnon movement propagated the erroneous rumour that Queen Elizabeth II passed away years ago.
A social media influencer with more than 18,000 followers published a post in which they blatantly claimed that the Queen had already passed away and that “they have now chosen to make it public.”
Other unfounded conspiracy theories target Meghan Markle and refer to vaccinations.
Unfounded assertions and rumours that the COVID-19 vaccination killed the Queen were another conspiracy theory that gained traction on social media. Several fact-checking agencies refuted the assertion.
A regular target of royalists who have long painted her as a criminal attempting to split apart the British royal family, Meghan Markle was the subject of several popular conspiracy theories or untrue accusations.
On Twitter, a photo of Markle sporting a blouse with the lyrics to The Smiths’ “The Queen Is Dead” went viral. The post criticised Markle for doing so after the Queen’s passing.
However, a reverse image search revealed that the picture was altered; in the real picture, Markle is seen wearing a white blouse and a gray-white coat, according to AFP’s Fact-Check.
Numerous others made irrational claims that Markle was wearing a microphone during the Queen’s burial ceremony at Windsor Castle, claiming only what looked to be wrinkling in her clothing as proof.
The passing of well-known people often serves as fodder for conspiracy theories and far-right groups, who try to take advantage of a significant event and distort it to fit their own reality.
Actress Anne Heche’s recent death, for example, was almost quickly incorporated into conspiracy theory legend.
The Queen seems to have provided an unusually rich wealth of information for conspiracists to further their theories as one of the most well-known figures in the whole globe.