QAnon has a new obsession: Huggies diapers.
Over the last week, the cult’s latest baseless conspiracy theory—that Huggies diapers feature secret symbols linked to pedophilia—went viral after a QAnon influencer on Twitter, recently reinstated on the platform by Elon Musk, tweeted out the wild claims.
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The conspiracy theory racked up millions of views, going viral so quickly that the diaper company was forced to publicly denounce it. But despite this denial—or maybe because of it—the conspiracy continues to percolate on social media sites like Telegram, Reddit, and Truth Social.
The conspiracy theory began last week when a QAnon supporter who uses the screen name “Vincent Kennedy” and has over 265,000 followers, tweeted a picture of a Huggies diaper featuring the character of Simba from “The Lion King.” The picture had circled a number of symbols that feature on the diaper design, alongside the caption: “Once you truly awake you ain’t going back to sleep.”
While the reference will be lost to anyone except those deep down the QAnon rabbit hole, Kennedy was referencing the similarity between the symbols on the diaper and those featured in an FBI document from 2007, published by WikiLeaks that claims certain symbols, like triangles and circular swirls, were used by pedophiles to identify their sexual preferences.
These same claims were made during the Pizzagate conspiracy, which preceded QAnon, when conspiracists claimed that local Washington DC businesses were using these logos in their brands. Despite these claims being widely debunked, the conspiracy resulted in a man firing an assault rifle inside a DC pizza restaurant where he believed children were being held.
“Care to comment on why you clearly have symbols on your diapers that the #FBI has recognized as those used by #pedophiles?,” one prominent QAnon account with over 77,0000 followers tweeted.
Huggies, and its parent company Kimberly-Clark, responded directly to Kennedy’s claims, writing: “Kimberly-Clark and Huggies take the safety and well-being of children seriously. Our products and its designs are in no way meant to represent anything other than fun and playful designs.”
But the company’s response didn’t stop the conspiracy theory from spreading. To date Kennedy’s tweet has been shared and liked over 45,000 times and the picture has been viewed over 5.4 million times.
The conspiracy quickly spread within the QAnon community which has been reinstated on Twitter in recent months, and also moved to TikTok. Media watchdog Media Matters for America found that videos on the platform about this conspiracy theory had been viewed almost 1 million times.
On fringe QAnon message boards, users took Kimberly-Clark’s denial as proof that the company knew what it was doing all along.
“It makes me sick to see that so many of these pedo companies so blatantly advertise what they support! Boycott them!!” one user on the Great Awakening board wrote.
The conspiracy theory also spread to Reddit, Telegram, and Truth Social, where it has continued to gain traction in recent days. On Tuesday morning, it crossed the Atlantic, when well-known UK far-right figure Tommy Robinson posted the same picture in his hugely popular Telegram channel with the caption: “Absolute filth.”
The situation echoes the conspiracy that went viral in 2020 baselessly claiming that the furniture maker Wayfair was involved in human trafficking because one QAnon supporter noticed that storage lockers for sale on the company’s website all had girls’ names, and tweeted about it.
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