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Q Anon: When Wild Conspiracy Went (sort of) Mainstream · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just getting conspiratorial
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: here on Stuff you should know the podcast.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: That's right, the episode we wanted to do so much
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: that it sat in our folder for four.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Years I believe it was. Yeah, the very beginning of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, I would say, probably.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's do it.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: We are. I gotta say, it's gonna be nice to
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: see that removed from my desktop. It's just been sitting
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: there for so long.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Just staring at you. That que like a big blinky,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: winky eyeball.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Yes with a one single eyelash attached. So we should
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: probably say at the outset to anybody tuning in that
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: who is like part of the q and No movement?
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: We're going to approach this as if everything the QAnon
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: movement believes is not true or made up, not from
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: the perspective of people who believe in the QAnon movement,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: although we'll explain a lot of the same stuff. I
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: just don't want anybody to, you know, get five minutes
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: in and be like, what is this, you know.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a fair CoA And yeah, I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: mean that's just the deal.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we're taking the anthropological stance.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, so let's dive in, shall we.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Well let's give a little bit of a definition for
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the three people who've never heard of QAnon.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, what I'm hoping is is that there's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of people like me who actually probably I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: probably knew more about it than some people even, but
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of people probably just sort of knew a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: little bit or know a little bit about what this
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: thing was slash is m M, but you know, didn't
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: really know much about it, and it's just good to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: know about stuff. So hopefully that'll brighten some corners of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: your life as well.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and one thing I kept running into while researching
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: this is that there's a lot of families that have
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: been torn apart, families, friendships, sure, because people will go
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the friends and family
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: that are like, that's not true get left behind because
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: they haven't woken up yet. So yeah, I can really
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: mess things up. So possibly there's some people listening to
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: this who have lost friends or family that might be
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: a little wiser to it might be able to try
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to get their friend or family member back afterwards. Who knows.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the final CoA I guess is that some
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of this stuff is so outlandish that it's hard to
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: not laugh.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: But it's not funny at all.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It's dangerous and scary and sad. So if I might
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: laugh at something or giggle, it's not that I don't
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: take it seriously. That it's a serious kind of thing
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: that's happened.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of like not even kind of. It
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: very much trapes us into the territory of high camp,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: but is not at all being ironic or campy. It's
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: just just approach this as like everything we're gonna say
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: is believed seriously by people in the QAnon movement. And
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: then sorry, CoA Number five, we're probably going to get
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: a lot wrong. This is an incredibly expansive, ever evolving
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: movement conspiracy theory that you know, we're not We're going
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: to walk right past some stuff where we might misspeak
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: here there, but hopefully the general contours and outlines we're
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: going to we're going to get to be able to
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: get across.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Correctly all right onward.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: So this whole thing The q Andon movement is a
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: online conspiracy theory that essentially the world is run by
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: a cabal of global elites, mostly liberals, Hollywood typesment high
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: government officials, and that they do all sorts of nefarious things,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: which we'll get into in a second. But one of
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: the things to understand about this first is that a
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: lot of it is rooted in some really old existing
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, in particular a lot of anti Semitic ones
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: that have been around for centuries. In particular, the blood
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: libel is one that Jews for like a thousand years essentially,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: maybe longer, have been persecuted, executed, massacred because of rumors
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: that they steal Christian babies and kill them and use
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: their blood to make leaven bread or unleavened bread for Passover,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: and that stuff gets around and people get all up
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: in arms and scared about their kids being kidnapped, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: then the next thing you know, Jewish people are dead
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: because of this blood libel. That's part of it. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: although Jewish people are targeted in some quarters, you don't
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: have to be anti Semitic to be a queue not
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: member necessarily, right.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Other things that it echoes from the past are something
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Another anti Semitic conspiracy,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: basically the tired trope that there's a global Jewish cabal
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: kind of running the world, running the banking system, plotting
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to overthrow the gentile governments of the world. We mentioned
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Henry Ford and our Henry Ford podcast was a believer
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: in this kind of thing. And versions of this, versions
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: of the Blood Libel have been sort of wrapped up,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: given a new, brand new shine coat of wax, and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was trotted out as QAnon, which is and you know,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Dave helped us with this many years ago, and thankfully
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Dave didn't quit his job and he's still around to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: help us out more.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: But it's a catch all.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: This conspiracy that you said is very vast, very wide ranging,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but mostly has to do with these power or full
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: liberal elites that are some are pedophiles, some are Satan worshippers.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Some they claim literally eat children. And we're talking about
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the Clintons, of course, and we're talking about Tom Hanks
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: and Oprah Winfrey and George Soros and Ellen DeGeneres and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: even the Dali Lama.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Pope Francis. So anybody who's even remotely left
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: leaning who holds power in the world, especially in the
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: government or you know, pop culture, they are probably a
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: part of this secret cabal. And it checks all the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: boxes for pearl clutching. They run the world, They worship Satan,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: their pedophiles, and their cannibals. Can you think of a
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: worse group of people than that. I can't think of
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: any other thing you could throw at the at the
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: wall to see what would stick. Like, that's as bad
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: as anything gets. So the idea behind QAnon? What else
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: could I've been trying to think? Give me something.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Else, maybe Philadelphia sports fans.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, now we're gonna get some hate mail, man, And.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: That's where the hate mail is gonna come from. So
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: I'm just getting brotherly love.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and batteries. So the whole thing, though, is
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: that these people who are Satanic, pedophile cannibals, thank you.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: People new to the podcasts are gonna be like, what's
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: wrong with that one guy?
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: It's hard to even get that sentence out.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: It is thanks man, that they run the world. They
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: run things, and it all happens below the surface. Everything
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: that normies like you and I and probably most of
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: the people listening to this podcast believe is true. Is brainwashed.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: We've been brainwashed by the mainstream media to be given
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: this line that things are the way they seem, when
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: in reality, things are not at all the way they seem.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: There's a Satanic worshiping cult running the world, and they're
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: doing all sorts of terrible things. Those of us who
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: don't believe in QAnon just haven't awakened to this idea
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: yet of what's actually reality.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Right, So that's one part. Those are the bad guys.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The good guys, or rather the good guy is former
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: president and twenty twenty four candidate Donald Trump, who, according
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: to QAnon and the theory, was picked, handpicked by the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: leaders of the US military to fight these evil forces,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: and everything that he does and tries to do is
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: in service of that mission. Anything working against him, even
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: within his own party, as part of the deep state plot,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and they are all awaiting what's known or what they
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: call the storm, which is when Trump reveals who he
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: is and what he has done to fight these evil forces,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: declares martial law, and everyone that has been a part
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of that secret cabal is rounded up by the military
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and tried and convicted and killed, at which time that
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the Great Awakening will occur, in which Trump and the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: QAnon supporters are a lot of his heroes around the world.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will bring about the founding of a
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: right wing authoritarian regime that Trump will lead. This is again,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: this is what they believe is going on. So when
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump became president, for some reason, he had to
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: play along with this great charade that the liberal leftist
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Satanists were producing, rather than I don't know, just being
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: overt about what his mission was. So that means that
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: since he had to play along, he had to leave
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: little like he had to give little winks and nods
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and leave what are called bread crumbs, which are little
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: bits of information or little clues that the QAnon community dissects, discusses,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: argues over. And what that's called is baking. They take
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: the breadcrumbs and they bake it, and when they finally
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: come to some sort of consensus or somebody comes up
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: with the best craziest interpretation of it, that becomes basically
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: the QAnon canon, and that spreads throughout social media, and
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: then the QAnon movement just gets that much more solidified
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: that much more extensive, and because of these tweets on
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: social media, some people say, well, what the heck is
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: everybody talking about, and we'll go look this stuff up
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: and very often fall down the rabbit rabbit hole and
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: become q andon members themselves.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: That's right, So are we done?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yep? That was it. That's everything you need to know
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: about QAnon. Everybody.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's just read six ads and go home.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: There's two more things I wanted to add about this
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: global Satanist pedophile cannibal elite that's running the world secretly.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: They are also suspected by some to be actual lizard people,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: which is a direct ripoff of the the mini series
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: from the early eighties. And then, secondly, the reason that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: they sacrifice the kids that they sexually abuse is because
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: they're after they're adrenochrome, which.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is pretty fun.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Metabolis. Adrenochrome is metabolized adrenaline. It's oxidized adrenaline, and according
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: to QAnon, it's like the elixir of life. So these
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Satanists are sacrificing kids to get their adrenochrome and drinking it,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and they're they're staying forever young and vital. And there's
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: a few things wrong with this one. It seems to
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: be based on a misinterpretation of what adrenochrome does and
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: where you get it, based on fear and loathing in
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Las Vegas, because Hunter Thompson has basically a throwaway intimation
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: that the adrenochrome that he does and goes on a
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: crazy trip over it can only be gotten from the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: adrenal gland of a live human.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right, And that is not true. It's synthesized
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: in a lab. You can it's it's available. That is
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: not true at all. So none of that is true.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I think we'd laid the foundation pretty well,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Like that's essentially the greatest broad strokes of what people
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: in QAnon believe is going on in reality.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: That's right. Should we take a break?
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about pizza
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: right after this. All right, we promised talk of pizza.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: That's because you can't talk about q and on without
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: mentioning a bit of a precursor to QAnon, which was Pizzagate,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: that is to say, in twenty sixteen, and this is
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: we should say that the first QAnon sort of activity,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: which are called q andon drops started in twenty seventeen
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: kind of what like October. And this is in twenty
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: sixteen when the Democratic Convention servers were hacked and emails
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: were published on Wiki leaks, and one of them kind
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: of rose to the top, which was an email from
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton's twenty sixteen campaign chairman,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: in which he put forth, Hey, there's this pizza place
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: called Comet Ping Pong in the DC area here, and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: we should hold a fundraiser there. I don't know if
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: he said this in the email, but the fact is
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that his brother was a regular there and said, hey,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: this is probably a good place to do that. They
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: got pretty good pizza, they got a bunch of ping
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: pong tables. It's a good place for people to meet up.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And that was found in I guess exposed, which is
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: kind of a funny way to say it on four Chan,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: where people started saying, oh, well, that is the HQ.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Basically that's ground zero for where this elite cabal is
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: meeting and they are sacrificing children in the basement of
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: that place. There is no basement to that place, but
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: who cares about that? That was what was put forth
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: on four Chan and hashtag pizzagate started spreading like wildfire.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Surprisingly, yeah, and the fact that there is no basement means,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: according to like qann thinking, that means that it's hidden.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And even if we don't have any proof it's there,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: because the fact that it's being used by this secret
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: cabal and it's hidden is proof that it's there. Right,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: That's the kind of circular thinking that keeps these things going,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: and in Pizzagate in particular with Comet ping Pong, within
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: a month October twenty ninth was the first post about
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: how this is this is one of the home bases
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of this child sex trafficking that this cabal engaged in
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: October twenty ninth was the first post. By December fourth,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a little over a month later, a man so riled
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: up by the idea that Comet ping Pong was a
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: hub of child sex trafficking drove a few hundred miles
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: from North Carolina to DC and showed up with at
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: comment Ping Pong with the AR fifteen and shot up
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: a door to get the door open.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: He also had a handgun on his side. Nobody was hurt.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: People got out of there, very quickly. He kind of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: wandered around the place alone for about twenty minutes. I
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: couldn't get in that door shot it up, told authorities
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: that he was self investigating Hillary Clinton's pedophile.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Ring, and that was that. He went to jail. Is
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: now out of jail.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I think he went for a few years, interestingly sentenced
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: by Kintaji Jackson Brown who now sits on the Supreme Court.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Oh really, side note, huh, Yeah, but that was it basically,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: But you know, that was Pizzagate, and it was a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: precursor to what would follow in October twenty seventeen when
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Q first, I guess revealed himself but not really.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so I think. Yeah. The first drop was
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: October twentieth seventeen on four Chan, which is an image
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: board which is like you post images and then people
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: comment on them and conversations breakout, and in particular, four
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Chan was known as like one of the really dark
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: recesses of the Internet. And on this image board a
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: guy named Q Clearance Patriot, and the first post read
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: open your eyes many in our government worship Satan. That
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: was the first Q drop that ever came out. In
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: October twenty seventeen.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: That's right. And Q clearance.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: You know what QAnon means is Q clearance is a
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: top secret clearance utilized by the Department of Energy, specifically
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: meaning you have access to nuclear the nuclear weapons program.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: And the anon comes from just a sort of a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: regular thing that would be people on four Chan who
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: claim to be like part of the FBI, like FBI,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: non ciaann like whitstler blowing kind of thing. So q
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: anon became the name and claimed to be a intelligence officer,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: a very high ranking person within the US government who
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: had direct evidence of this satanic pedophile cult and very
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: clear approvable knowledge that Donald Trump was on a secret
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: mission from the US military to reverse all this.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Right, and so between October twenty seventeen and sometime in
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty, the Q drops amounted to I guess more
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: than five thousand, and they were really really cryptic. They
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: were not like, hey, this is going on comet ping
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Pong is actually a hub of child sex trafficking. They
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: were very cryptic, and so that just lent themselves to
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: be dissected and discussed and thought about and interpreted and misinterpreted.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And so there's an example of one from September twenty eighteen.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: This would be shortly after the whole thing started, and
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: it said panic in dc LL talking equals truth revealed,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Tarmac bc LL talking equals truth revealed Comy HRC email case.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: And it goes on and on and it mentions Hussein,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: which is how Q always referred to Barack Obama.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Thanks for shortening this, by the way, Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: And it just it keeps going on. But the last
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: line is Faiza brings down the house? When do bird sing?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: And what the what the focus was on was the
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: at the time, the Hillary Clinton email server scandal that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Loretta Lynch was the Attorney General at the time, and
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: she met on a tarmac and in private with yeah, yes,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: with Bill Clinton on a plane and it was a
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: huge scandal and everybody's like, what were they talking about
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: really and all that. So that's what this Q thing reference.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: So that was the kind of stuff that they would say,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: like like using just people's initials, just really cryptic, short
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: staccato statements or questions and like that was it. It
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: would they would just go away, and then people would
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: just go crazy trying to figure out what it meant that's.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Right, and really like get into the deciphering. I think
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that was part of the oh geez. I don't even
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: know if fun is the word to use, but maybe
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: they were having fun. But part of the whole experience,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I guess is the best way to say it, is
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: deciphering these message messages, chatting with each other on what
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: everything means, what these initials are, who everyone is, and
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: just to get that kind of robust conversation going on
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: these dark corners of the web, initially dark corners, and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: eventually the mainstream social media of the World Wide Web.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, like I said, four chan is considered one
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: of the darker backwaters of the web, and then it
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: moved on to eight chan, which became eight kun or
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: eight kun, and it just kept getting darker and darker
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and darker the places these Q drops were happening. But
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: then eventually, like I said earlier, people would start tweeting
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: about this stuff, and all of a sudden it spread
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: out from the darker parts of the web to the
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: more mainstream parts of the web, and then the actual
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: mainstream media started reporting on it. So this thing spread
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: far and wide, and the more far and wide its spread,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the more believable the whole thing became you know, like
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: you'd see it everywhere and people were talking about it seriously,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: so it was kind of easy to fall down a
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: rabbit hole the further along this whole thing went, just
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: because there was more and more information to be found
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: down those rabbit holes.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, as scary as it is, all
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of a sudden and you're at home for the pandemic,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: you have a lot of more time on your hands.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: You're or maybe you know, lost your job or something
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: which would have been awful, and have more time on
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: your hands, and all of a sudden, you're reading things
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: like you don't know what four chan is or eight
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: chan maybe, or how to get there, And all of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a sudden, you see something on Facebook or Instagram or
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: one of the close to seventy million tweets referencing QAnon
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: related hashtags and.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Phrases over a three year period.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you're thinking like, oh, well, this
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: is this is if I'm seeing on Facebook, which is
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: where I also see pictures of my kid's soccer team.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: So that makes it.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Bona fide and believable, which is in itself kind of
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: sad that that's as far as it goes research wise,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and people digging into that kind of the truth.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Of the matter. But that's what happened.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Well. People also went to the trouble of essentially compiling books,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: creating lengthy documentaries all supporting these QAnon theories and explaining
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: them and busting them out, sometimes grabbing actual, verifiable, real
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: world examples and interpreting them differently and putting the whole
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: thing together. And so the fact that there's a documentary
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: on this legitimizes it to a lot of people too,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: So there was it just became legitimized weirdly in some
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: really weird, questionable ways. And again, all of this, the
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: entire thing was in service to the idea that Donald
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Trump was secretly fighting this cabal and he would bring
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: about the storm one day and people like Nancy Pelosi
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: would be executed live on TV. And people were really
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: psyched about that idea.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, I mentioned the pandemic because that's when
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the biggest spike and QAnon activity took place. In March
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which is
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a think tank, did some investigating about just like spikes
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and activity and stuff, and March of twenty twenty is
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: when it really really took off, of course, when unique
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Facebook users jumped one hundred and sixty one percent from
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: year over year basically, and Twitter discussion of q and
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: on increased what was at one hundred and thirty nine
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: percent over the month as well, So that's where it
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: started and really got going there.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: So when you are on social media and you see
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: there's hashtags like WWG onega where we go one, we
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: go all, but there's a bunch of them. One in
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: particular was kind of hijacked from a legitimate anti child
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: trafficking group. It's hashtag saved the Children. And the reason
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: that it was hijacked was because this is part of
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: the mission of QAnon is to stop sex trafficking of children, right,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: which is great, but that is one way that a
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: lot of people were kind of innocently brought into the
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: QAnon sphere. They were looking up save the children hashtags
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: because they were concerned about sex trafficking, and they ended
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: up on some tweets or on Facebook accounts of people
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: who are like, now that you're here, let us explain
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: who's actually doing the sex trafficking. It's Nancy Pelosi and
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and that's the rabbit hole
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: that they started to fall down through hashtags like that.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And it even got so far as
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the online retailer Wayfair. I guess one of the rumors
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that got going on q via QAnon was that if
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you were cabinet shopping on Wayfair, then that was a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: secret sort of portal into children shopping. Instead of cabinets,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: it was actual children. And the other thing we didn't
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: mention about Pizzagate is that when John Podesta and his
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: email was talking about cheese pizza, it was really child pornography.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: So it's like things like that were getting twisted around
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and served to a willing audience.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that whole thing, like ten thousand dollars cabinets with
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: female names that just got translated into well, Wayfair's a
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: sex trafficking site. And one of the first posts I saw,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: the person led it with my spidey sense is tingling,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: and that's how it just took off. Somebody's spidy sense
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: was tingling. There was a weird price for a cabinet
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: and a girl's name, and that's all it took. So
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: that's how that stuff spreads, It's how it takes root
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: and that's just the thinking that people have with Q nine.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: There's all the clues are everywhere, and nothing is what
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: it seems.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: So we mentioned how presidential candidate Donald Trump was the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: supposed savior for all this sex trafficking and everything that's
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: going on, and this became clear.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: If you ever, you know, saw.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump rallies then or now still, I'm sure you
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: would see like Q posters and Q T shirts and
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Q flags and stuff like that. To be sure, we're
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: not saying that Donald Trump was like, hey, everybody, I am.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: That guy, by the way, and.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Literally got involved in this when he was asked though
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: directly over the years, specifically in August of twenty twenty,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: they asked him point blank, you know, are you courting
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: these QAnon followers? He said he didn't know anything about it,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and then quote, I heard that, but I heard that
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: these are people that love our country. I understand they
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: like me very much, and it's gaining a popular larity.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: When they followed up with a question about him being
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the savior from child sex traffickers, he you know, that's
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: when I feel like he probably had a choice to
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: directly say, like this is a ludicrous conspiracy. But he said,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you know, is that supposed to be a bad thing.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: If I can help save the world from problems, I'm
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: willing to do it. And the QAnon crowd ate this
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: stuff up and they thought it was, you know, him
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: sort of secretly saying that he is on their side.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: When he would wear a pink tie, which is a
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: color associated with the movement, they would say, that's him
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: signaling to us another little breadcrumb that he's leaving for us.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Stuff like that.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There's also a very famous press conference a speech
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: he did in the White House in twenty seventeen where
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: he used two hands to drink from a bottle of
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Fiji water and he did it twice during this speech
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: and people like remember that. Yeah, people made fun of
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: him for it, like what's wrong with you? How do
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: you not know how to drink out of a bottle
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: of water? But the qan On support were like, yes,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: that a breadcrumb. Yes, the q and On supporters are like, yep,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Fiji is a huge hub for sex trafficking. It's a
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: destination and a hub, and he's pointing it out to us.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: He's letting us know he knows what's going on. That's
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: what it was translated to. And that's one of the
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: explanations that a lot of people gave for why it
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: started to take off. Is it came along when Donald
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Trump was early in his presidency and was getting pummeled
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: from every which way. So this was kind of a
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: way to transform that, to transform the weird awkwardness into
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: this is what's really going on, He's actually sending us signals.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, Trump started to sort of openly
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: post q and on theories, where before he danced it
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: around a little more. After he had founded his own
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: social media gathering place, I guess, Truth Social, where he
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: started using q and on words to refer to himself
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: like he was a martyr. He literally reposted a Q
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: draw up. They played a q and on song WWG
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: one WGA at one of his rallies, and.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Over the years.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four, here's the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: stat I was looking for. Trump reposted q andon content
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: more than eight hundred times on truth Social, so he
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: definitely amplified the message. I guess we could say in
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the kindest.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Way, Yeah, I did the math. That's a q andon
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: repost every one point three six days, so that's a lot,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: and that's a complete turnaround. I read somewhere Chuck that
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: at some of his rallies in twenty nineteen, he was
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: trying to distance himself from q and On so much
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: that there were people who went to his rallies who
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: reported that the Secret Service as they were going through
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: the metal detector was like, turn your shirt on inside
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: out because they were wearing a q Andon shirt. They're like,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: we don't want to see those at the rallies anymore
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: because it's just such bad there's such a bad name
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: associated with it that Trump didn't even want to be
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: associated with it. But then something happened in twenty twenty two.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: It's almost like he stopped and actually listened to what
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: they were saying at QAnon and he was like, oh, okay,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I really do like that, and he fully embraced it,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: like you said, yeah.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing is, when you're dealing with a
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: false conspiracy like this that's based on the idea of
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: a deep state and secrets, there's no turning it around.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: You can't prove it wrong.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Even if he came out and fully denounced it, which
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: he never did.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: They would then just say, you know.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: That he's got to do that because it's all part
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: of the big secret. So it's one of those sad
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: cases where it's born out of paranoia and untruth such
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: that you can't you can't truthify it, like no amount
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of truth will get the most ardent believers to think
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: that they're not right.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: No, for sure. And one of the things that I
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: saw also that explained it, in addition to like paranoia, anger,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing, as you kind of hit upon
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: it earlier when you were questioning, like is it fun?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: And I think it definitely is fun for a lot
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of people because it's I saw it described as hazardous
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: participatory civics, so like the people in their way are
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: participating in the machinations, the secret machinations of the government.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: So I think it is thrilling and fun in a
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: lot of ways too. I don't think it's one hundred
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: percent negative or angry or ragy. I think that for
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: people in the q Andon movement there's a lot of
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: positivity to it too. And I think there's one other
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: thing to mention about QAnon people here, Chuck, especially the influencers,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: they are well aware that their beliefs look totally crazy
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: to people in the mainstream, people like you and me
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: who just believe things are the way they seem they are.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: But to them, we just haven't woken up to reality yet.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: So there's not like there's not like just a total
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: loss of perspective and self reflection. It's just been inverted
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: in a way like you're the one that's deluded, not me.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: That's right, all right, So I think we should take
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: another break. We'll come back in a second and talk
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: about who this q person might be and stop your
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: emailing because Hazardous Participatory Civics is the best band name
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: that we've ever had. We'll be right back.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of people in the q andon
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: movement who've tried to guess who q is. One of
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the big candidates was the Trump's first national security advisor,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Michael Flynn, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and we'll get to
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: him again in a minute. But if you don't believe
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: that QAnon's real, there's some really good candidates for who
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: posted these q andon drops, And crazy enough, it seems
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: to have been two different people, and the second group
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: of people rested control of q andon away from the
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: guy who originally started it.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this story gets a little confusing. Is there
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a way we can simplify this a little bit?
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I can. You want me to try, well, sure, well, let.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Me set up the players first, and then you can
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: simplify what happened there. What everyone seems to think is
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: that the current Q even though and we'll get to
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: how much Q is around these days at all a
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: little bit later. But the last Q or whatever most
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: recent was a father and son team named James and
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Ronald Watkins, internet entrepreneurs, Americans living in the Philippines, where
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: they ran owned and ran eight chan, which was that
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: message board that originally hosted.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: That Q account.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: The other guy that we need to mention here is
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: a guy named Frederick Brennan. He was the original creator
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: of eight chan, but left those boards when it became
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: clear that it was just a home for the worst
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: stuff on the Internet.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, and he turned into the greatest critic and largest
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: source of information about who really is Q because he
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: knew the watkinses.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: That's right, And now maybe if you can explain how
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: it was the mantle was unwillingly passed.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what people think is that the first guy
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: who actually was Q was a South African man named
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Paul Ferber who was intensely interested and fascinated by American
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: politics and conspiracy theories. And they think that he's responsible
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: for the first Q drop up to sometime in twenty eighteen,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: that he was the original Q. The whole thing started
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: on four chan, but very quickly migrated to eight chan
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: because of apparently Q's account got hacked and he had
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: to create a new account, so he moved to the
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: more anonymous, more secure eight chan and started posting there.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: That's right, And he started posting on a message board
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: called CBTs Calm before the storm, and he owned that
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: sub board, Paul Ferber did, so that was his sub board.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that means that he could see who
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: was posting it, could see like their actual metadata, right,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So he was the only person who could verify that
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Q was Q. Same thing when they transferred from four
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: chan to eight chan. He was the only person who
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: could verify that this was actually the same guy, same
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: IP address. So believe me, everybody, it's the same Q.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: So go ahead, Q essentially is what they were saying.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, in twenty eighteen, Q
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Paul Thurber said, hey, q'sq's account got hacked again, everybody,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: so we're gonna have to start a new account. But then,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: probably very much to Paul Therber's surprise, Q joined in
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: and said, actually, no, my account hasn't been hacked. Paul
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Thurber's been compromised. So I'm going to start posting it
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: a new board. This would be a board that Paul
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Thurber had no authority or administrative duties over, but Jim
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and Ron Watkins did. So now they were the only
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: ones who could verify he Q was. And so they
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: think that with that transition, and because they had administrative
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: domain over eight chan, they took Q away from Paul
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Thurber and started posting his Q themselves.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, this was the second time
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: that account had been hacked. I do want to mention
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: also that the first time it was hacked, they it
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: was found out that the password for Q originally was
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Matt Block, which I just think is hysterical one of the.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Few laughs were going to get here.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the reason that the Watkinses wanted to sort
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of wrestle that away was because at some point Thurber
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: started appearing on some right wing conspiracy like YouTube shows
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that YouTube programs, so it was getting
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: out there in a more mainstream way, and the Watkinsons
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: were like, hey, this is you know, we can turn
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: eight chan into a real conspiracy hotbed for the online
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: right wing space, and so they saw an opportunity basically right.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: So it gets way more intricate than that. Like Fred
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Brennan has really gone into great detail to dig up
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that all this happened, and we're
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: not going to go into it here, but suffice to
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: say that most people agree that he's probably right about this.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: That it started out as Paul Ferber and then turned
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: to Ron Watkins, and the whole thing went until about
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: June twenty twenty and then stopped, and those seemed to
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: be the canonical Q drops, and then they picked up
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: again in I think twenty twenty two, and as we'll see,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: those kind of got ignored because the community had changed
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: so much in those eighteen months without Q dropping Q drops, right,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: But in the meantime the movement had taken over. I
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: saw it described as it didn't need Q anymore. It
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: had become its own. What was I saw written as
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: the world's first open source cult where anybody could add
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: or subtract, or debate or help create this again ever
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: evolving mythos of what was really going on in the
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: world with Donald Trump at the center of the whole thing.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: And the problem with that is is that it made
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: it out of the darkest corners of the Internet to
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: the mainstream Internet, to the mainstream media, and then into
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: real life to where it very frequently Yeah, I think
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: you could use the word frequently disturbed individuals who had
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: fallen down the QAnon hole acted out in real life violence.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Not just the comet ping pong guy from North Carolina.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: There's a whole slew of people who have engaged in
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: real world violence because of what they learned about from QAnon.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: There was one case I remember hearing about this when
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, this guy pled guilty to terrorism charges
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: because he got an armored truck and blocked the road
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: crossing the Hoover Dam with two assault rifles and had
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a sign that said release the OIG report, which was
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: referring to the quote unquote real Mueller report that QAnon
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: believers thought provided basically kind of exposed Hillary Clinton's criminal
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: activities because I mean, there were a lot of people
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: that they targeted, but the Clintons and especially Hillary were
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: obviously because she ran against Donald Trump, but she was
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: kind of squarely in the crosshairs for them.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was at the time people were chanting lock
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: her up, like she was very much in the crosshairs
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: for sure. And Obama still was too. He had just
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: finished being president after all when this whole thing started.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: One of the most puzzling acts of violence to me
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: in the real world based on QAnon was the assassination
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: of a Gambino mafia boss named Francesco Frankie Boy Cali,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: and he was killed by a Quanon supporter who believed
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: he was an agent of the deep state, like a
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: high up agent of the deep state. I could not
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: find anything about what that guy's rationalization was for that.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: But this is the first time since nineteen eighty five,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: This is a twenty twenty one, I think, the first
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: time since nineteen eighty five that a mafia boss had
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: been assassinated and it was by a QAnon adherent.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just really bizarre.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: But if anybody knows why that guy killed him because
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: of that, like I would love to hear it.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I don't understand or not understand,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: but I'm really curious about, is whoever Q is Watkinson's
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: or not? Like what was their endgame here? Like did
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: they really and do they really really believe this stuff?
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Or is it Are they just bad.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Actors who have a sick I don't know, not sense
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of humor, but maybe sense of humor to try and
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: start something like this, or was it financially related or
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: do they really believe that it's just that's That's the
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: one thing I wish I could find out that we'll
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: probably never know.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: I know, and I don't know, but I suspect that
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: they don't believe it. I mean, if they're posing as Q,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't think that they actually believe it,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: you know, well.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Right, because they're not secret government higher ups that really
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: have this information obviously, But I mean, do they really
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: believe Tom Hanks is killing and eating children?
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: No? I don't. I don't think so. Again, I don't
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: know the people. I don't know enough about him to
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: really definitively say, but just don't know. I don't think
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: that makes.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: It even more sad somehow that it is stretched from
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: the darkest reaches in the Internet to literal suburban parents
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: who had too much time on their hands between soccer pickups.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a really sad, disturbing act of violence
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: based on QAnon that happened in twenty twenty one where
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: a man from California killed both of his children, a
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: baby and a toddler, with a spear gun because he
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: believed that they had gotten reptilian DNA from their mother.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Because remember, lizard people are walking among us. So he
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: said that he knew what he was doing was wrong,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: but it was the only way to save the world.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: And it was because of QAnon. He murdered his two
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: children because of QAnon. And like Paul Pelosi is another one.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: He was beaten with a hammer by a guy who
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: was driven by q and on motivation. Like the idea,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I'm with you if the idea that these guys were
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: just doing it for lulls and because they were nihilistic
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: or even for money, and that it translated into real
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: world violence like that is just it's abominable for sure.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: That's right. Are we done?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: No, We've got to give a little bit of an update. Okay, okay,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: all right, well, I'll start. So there was a really
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: big problem because Trump was always in charge as part
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: of the QAnon mythos. No matter what was going on,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: Trump was in control, is the way they said it. Well,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Trump was obviously supposed to be re elected in twenty twenty,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: but he wasn't. And so in following with tradition of
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: kind of prophetic cults, the people in QAnon just essentially
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: were like, Okay, well, this is all just part of
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: the act. This is trust in the plan, and they
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: kind of rationalized it in all sorts of ways, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: that's kind of part and parcel for what they've been doing.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Like the assassination attempt of Trump in Pennsylvania led to
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a huge crisis initially among QAnon followers because because that
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: clearly demonstrated Trump wasn't in control if he was getting
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: shot at, and some people were like it was stage
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: and other people are like, no, no, no, we got it.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: This is proof positive that Trump has been anointed by
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: God to bring the storm to overthrow the Satanic cabal,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: because how else could he have not been shot in
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: the head by the assassin's bullet. And so I saw
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: that some people who kind of left QAnon after Trump
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: didn't get elected, came raging back into it after the
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: assassination attempt, and there were a lot of families that
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: were like, Okay, good my friend or family members back
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: and then oh god, there they go again. After the
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: assassination attempt.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I read a really sad article about the guy
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: who came into the pizza place about him getting out
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: of prison and marrying his girlfriend and having a kid,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and it was you know, it's just sad, wreckless guy.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I bet that's the kind of thing that
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: kind of follows you around for life.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I would imagine.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: One of the other things that happened post election, I
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: believe is Michael Flynn was a luminary. Remember, some people
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: thought he was Q and he was outed as saying
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: privately that he thought the whole thing was total nonsense
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: and that he believed actually it was a CIA psyop
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: to discredit the Right by making them look foolish and gullible.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: So the whole the community is very much fractured, but
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: it's still very much alive. There was a poll that
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: found that in May of twenty twenty one, fifteen percent
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: of people believed Americans I should say, believed QAnon beliefs
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: in some form or fashion. You would think that it
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: would have gone down since Trump didn't get re elected.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: In fact, it rose by eight points in twenty twenty three,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: two years later. So the belief in QAnon just keeps
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: spreading and spreading and spreading and becomes more and more mainstream.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: And it's even as it does, it gets kind of
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: divorced from QAnon and becomes just what people think about
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: things about reality.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I checked out, and I was just thinking in
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: my head, I was just hearing what a wonderful warl
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: by Louis Armstrong, over and over.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: That's a good. How am I not surprised that you
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: do a great Louis Armstrong?
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Oh he's easy.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: I would have guessed you did the izzy Hawaiian guys version.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Oh that's a fun one too.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Or no, he did somewhere over the rainbow. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: Somewhere over the rainbow.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: There's one o the things. Let's leave on a semi
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: positive note, Chuck. A couple of different places, I saw
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: people who were interviewed who had lost a friend or
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: family member or hung on to a friend or family
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: member while they'd fallen down the Q rabbit hole, and
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: the fact that they'd gotten him back, universally was because
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: that person stuck with them, let him know they didn't
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: agree with them, but they loved them nonetheless, and as
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: they put it, provided a soft landing place for the
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: people when they finally were like, this isn't real. I
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: can't believe that I've believed this for so long. Had
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: they were there for them without any kind of judgment
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: or cruelty or I told you so, And that helped
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: allow the people to kind of get back on their
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: feet in a very gentle manner.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of great websites and organizations that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: have now had to help people through this stuff, and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: like how do you help your family members and things
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: like that, like you were just talking about. Certainly one
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: place you can start is the Anti Defamation League website,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: but there are plenty plenty of places to go so
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: you don't just like argue with your family member and
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: tell them they're not using you know, rational thought with
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: stuff like this. You got you gotta you gotta try
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a different tack there, yep.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's all sorts of advice all over the internet.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So if you want to look go find it, uh,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: and be careful what you do look for there, be
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: careful of the hashtags you follow. And since I said that,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: obviously it's time for listener mail.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: That's right, a quick not correction, but just enlightening because
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: we've had a bunch of people write in already about
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: our glasses episode because we could not figure out why
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Livia titled her research four eyes bad.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: And this is from just one of them. Is from Marty.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, listen to the episode about glass as great
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: as usual. I've been wearing glasses for over forty years.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Regarding the phrase four eyes bad, I believe that as
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: a joke reference to the book Animal Farm by George Orwell.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: In the book, the animals use the phrase four legs good,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: two legs bad as they rise against the humans.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: That must be it. Love the show, longtime listener.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: That is from Marty Mishka from Omaha, Nebraska, parentheses living
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: in the Blue Dot, and I haven't read Animal Farm
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: in so long I completely forgot that, But I bet
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you are right on the money because that's a very
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Livia kind of easter egg.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a deep cut literary wise, So nice work, Libya,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: and who is that Marty?
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: That was Marty, But many people have written in and
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: we'll continue.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: To Yeah, thanks a lot, Marty, and thanks a lot
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: to everybody who's written in to let us know, help
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: us figure that out. We love that kind of thing.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: If you want to be somebody like that, you can
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: send us an email too, to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.