A national poll by Hope Not Hate has found that six per cent of the UK population claim to support the QAnon conspiracy movement – with more agreeing with the claim that Jews use their disproportionate power against the wider population.

The study also found that more than a quarter of people agree with statements associated with the movement’s views.

The QAnon movement – which began on online forums in October 2017 – alleges that many authority figures including Hillary Clinton are members of a Satanic paedophile ring. George Soros and the Rothschilds are alleged to be part of a global “cabal”, said to harvest a mythical drug, adrenochrome, from the blood of children – an overt blood libel.

It has also fostered mistrust in public institutions and has claimed that the pandemic is a manufactured form of population control.

According to Hope Not Hate, “antisemitic tropes are inherent to the theory, and there is scope for the far right exploitation of the developing UK scene due to significant overlapping narratives.”

Seven per cent of respondents claimed they strongly agree – and a further 10 per cent agreed – that “Jews have disproportionate control of powerful institutions, and use that power for their own benefit and against the good of the general population”. Only 46 per cent of those asked actively disagreed with the statement.

Twenty five per cent identified with the statement that “secret Satanic cults exist and include influential elites”, while 26 per cent believed “elites in Hollywood, politics, the media and other powerful positions are secretly engaging in large scale child trafficking and abuse”.

Twenty nine per cent agreed with: “Regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organisations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together”, of which 43 per cent comprised of 25-34 year olds.

The online movement has already become a cause for concern in the United States, where the FBI have regarded it and the related Pizzagate conspiracy (which alleges Democrats ran a paedophile ring out of a Washington DC pizza restaurant) were “very likely” to drive groups and individual extremists “to carry out criminal or violent acts”.