Arieh Kovler Profile picture
Writer, political analyst, comms consultant. UK, Israeli, US. Politics, current affairs and technology. arieh@ariehkovler.com. https://t.co/IMhU6FoiIS

Jul 1, 2021, 11 tweets

The GhostEzra account first appeared on Twitter on December 27 2020. By Jan 6, it already had 18.7k followers. When it was deleted in the big post-insurrection ban-wave of Jan 8, it had accumulated 31.1k followers in just twelve days.

How did a new account grow so quickly? It was one of a series of Twitter accounts pretending to be Ezra Cohen-Watnick @EzraACohen, who many QAnon adherents believed to be Q. Note how GhostEzra's avatar was the logo of the DCS, where the real Ezra served.

The most well-known of these impersonators was EyetheSpy or E, who in turn spawned their own impersonators. A bunch of Twitter accounts claiming to be E were banned thanks to the real @EzraACohen and his lawyer @MarkSZaidEsq, but E believers were always looking for the next one.

Looking through the early GhostEzra posts, a lot of his themes are already there: A focus on Melinda Gates, the whole masked impersonators thing, claiming Seth Rich is alive.

But there's also loads of since-failed prophecies. And there isn't, yet, any sign of what would become GhostEzra's trademark on Telegram: no rabid antisemitism, no flat-Earthism.

Today GhostEzra's Telegram channel has 340k subscribers, a mix of normies, QAnon believers and neo-Nazis, which he feeds on a diet of antisemitism, holocaust denial and (for some reason) insisting every famous woman is really a biological male.

Obviously, the Jew-hating GhostEzra has dropped any pretence of being @EzraACohen. I also don't think it's the same person who was behind E/Eye the Spy either. The tone, content, etc is very different.

Did the person behind GhostEzra have other accounts before 27 December? Maybe. Probably. Were there any minor QAnon influencers who had their accounts deleted in the week of 20-27 December?

Ah, @Dragnet_News has an answer to this question:

GhostEzra's previous incarnation was EzraKCohen1. Account opened November 23, had 2k followers on December 1 and 10k by December 24.

GhostEzra/EzraKCohen1's first day: lame reply-guy stuff. I suppose everyone needs to begin somewhere.

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling