"Qanon" is a STRAWMAN
?? Theory ??
The MSM will not / cannot debunk Q so they create something they can debunk, Qanon.
That's my deep thought for today.
/carry on
The term you are looking for is not strawman, it's conflation... but we get your point.
MSM conflate Q and the anons into "Qanon" in order to associate Q with the batshit crazy things some anons have published (flat earth, chemtrails, reptilians, etc. etc). And then the MSM themselves go batshit crazy with their gaslighting, propaganda and other assorted stupidity in order to try to incite hysteria targeting the "Qanons".
Setting something up in order to discredit it isn't conflation though.
No, strawman arguments are sort of similar, but they use analogies to form the link between two topics. They then discredit the weak strawman they have created in the hope that people will extrapolate that to implicitly discredit the other main topic as well.
Conflation attempts to merge two separate topics, generally a valid one with an already discredited one, so that people think they are two parts of the same thing. This is a better description for what the MSM is doing with "Qanon".
Sort of? This is exactly what the MSM is doing. Qanon is the analogy for all things Q. Discredit one, discredit both.