WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.960 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I'm your host. 00:00:02.080 --> 00:00:04.419 And today we are sitting in front of a stack 00:00:04.419 --> 00:00:08.220 of sources that is, well, it's quite frankly, 00:00:08.300 --> 00:00:10.759 a little overwhelming. It's a heavy stack. It 00:00:10.759 --> 00:00:13.679 really is. We've got court documents. We've got 00:00:13.679 --> 00:00:16.539 psychological studies. We've got archives of 00:00:16.539 --> 00:00:19.539 deleted Internet threads. And we've got political 00:00:19.539 --> 00:00:22.660 analysis stretching from, I mean, all the way 00:00:22.660 --> 00:00:26.640 back in 2016 to where we are now in 2026. And 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:28.460 it's a heavy topic. There's no way around that. 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:30.579 There isn't. We are tackling a subject that I 00:00:30.579 --> 00:00:33.409 think a lot of us think we know. You know, we've 00:00:33.409 --> 00:00:35.549 seen the headlines. We've seen the memes. Maybe 00:00:35.549 --> 00:00:37.770 we've even had an uncomfortable Thanksgiving 00:00:37.770 --> 00:00:40.530 dinner or two because of it. Right. We are talking 00:00:40.530 --> 00:00:43.649 about QAnon. But the goal today isn't just to 00:00:43.649 --> 00:00:45.670 say, hey, look at this wild conspiracy theory. 00:00:45.770 --> 00:00:48.170 The goal, based on the materials we have, is 00:00:48.170 --> 00:00:50.750 to really decode the machinery behind it. Exactly. 00:00:50.750 --> 00:00:53.250 Because if you just dismiss it as crazy people 00:00:53.250 --> 00:00:55.350 on the Internet. Yeah. You miss the actual story. 00:00:55.570 --> 00:00:57.789 You miss the how and the why. And the story is 00:00:57.789 --> 00:01:00.619 so much bigger. Yeah. So much bigger. The story 00:01:00.619 --> 00:01:02.859 isn't just about what they believed. It's about 00:01:02.859 --> 00:01:05.900 how a massive, decentralized, interactive storytelling 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:09.140 event, essentially a game bled into reality, 00:01:09.340 --> 00:01:12.659 hijacked global politics and completely rewrote 00:01:12.659 --> 00:01:14.540 the worldview of millions of people. It's the 00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:16.640 ultimate example of the Internet is real life. 00:01:16.819 --> 00:01:19.060 I mean, it doesn't get more real than this. It 00:01:19.060 --> 00:01:20.920 really doesn't. And honestly, looking at the 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:22.540 timeline we're about to cover, it's terrifying 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:26.120 how fast it'll happen. Yeah. So here's our mission 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:28.680 for this deep dive. We're going to try and answer 00:01:28.680 --> 00:01:31.819 the question. How did a cryptic user on an anime 00:01:31.819 --> 00:01:34.299 message board claiming to be a high -level government 00:01:34.299 --> 00:01:37.379 spy convince normal people, we're talking teachers, 00:01:37.519 --> 00:01:39.980 nurses, grandmothers, that the world is run by 00:01:39.980 --> 00:01:44.040 a satanic cabal? And the big question, why, despite 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:47.400 every single prediction failing, does this narrative 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:50.000 still stick? Why is it so powerful? And we're 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:51.840 going to look at the cost, because this wasn't 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:54.700 free. No, there was a human cost, a profound 00:01:54.700 --> 00:01:57.760 human cost in violence, in broken families and, 00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:00.239 you know, in the erosion of truth itself. So 00:02:00.239 --> 00:02:02.739 let's unpack this. The sources are really clear 00:02:02.739 --> 00:02:05.459 on this point. To understand QAnon, you can't 00:02:05.459 --> 00:02:08.539 start with Q. No, you can't. You have to start 00:02:08.539 --> 00:02:10.719 with the prequel. You have to go back to 2016 00:02:10.719 --> 00:02:14.180 to a pizza place in Washington, D .C. Pizzagate. 00:02:14.379 --> 00:02:17.139 Pizzagate. This is the foundation. It's the blueprint. 00:02:17.500 --> 00:02:21.000 Without Pizzagate, there is no QAnon. So set 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.840 the scene for us. It's the 2016 election. Tensions 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:27.360 are incredibly high. Off the charts. And WikiLeaks 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:31.400 drops this huge cache of emails from John Podesta, 00:02:31.539 --> 00:02:34.819 who is Hillary Clinton's campaign chair. Now, 00:02:34.819 --> 00:02:36.379 I've looked at these emails in the source material. 00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:39.419 They are. Honestly, they are aggressively boring. 00:02:39.620 --> 00:02:41.659 They're so mundane. They're purely administrative. 00:02:41.740 --> 00:02:43.479 It's what are we ordering for lunch? It's can 00:02:43.479 --> 00:02:45.560 you make this meeting? It's fundraising logistics. 00:02:45.939 --> 00:02:49.039 Just the day to day grind of a political campaign. 00:02:49.300 --> 00:02:51.580 But this is where we see the birth of a very 00:02:51.580 --> 00:02:54.259 specific mindset, a mindset that drives everything 00:02:54.259 --> 00:02:56.419 we're going to talk about today. Yes. The mindset 00:02:56.419 --> 00:02:58.800 of do your own research. Which sounds good on 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:00.139 paper, right? We should all do our own research. 00:03:00.379 --> 00:03:03.379 Ideally, yes, of course. But in this context, 00:03:03.620 --> 00:03:06.259 research meant something very different. It meant. 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.939 Starting with a conclusion that these elites 00:03:09.939 --> 00:03:12.939 are evil monsters and then forcing the evidence 00:03:12.939 --> 00:03:15.020 to fit that conclusion no matter how absurd. 00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:17.560 It's working backwards from the answer. Precisely. 00:03:17.800 --> 00:03:21.939 So these internet sleuths on Fortan and Reddit 00:03:21.939 --> 00:03:25.199 started combing through Podesta's emails. They 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:28.000 saw references to cheese pizza or pasta or walnut 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:29.879 sauce. And instead of thinking, oh, they're having 00:03:29.879 --> 00:03:32.560 a campaign lunch, they thought, what? They decided 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:35.139 it was code. They developed this whole lexicon. 00:03:35.550 --> 00:03:38.310 They theorized that cheese pizza stood for CP, 00:03:38.550 --> 00:03:41.129 which they took to mean child pornography. Okay. 00:03:41.229 --> 00:03:43.729 They decided pasta was code for something else, 00:03:43.750 --> 00:03:45.909 hot dog for something else. They built an entire 00:03:45.909 --> 00:03:48.129 secret language out of, well, out of nothing. 00:03:48.250 --> 00:03:50.650 And they centered this entire theory on a real 00:03:50.650 --> 00:03:54.030 establishment, Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor 00:03:54.030 --> 00:03:56.810 in D .C. And why that place? Its owner, James 00:03:56.810 --> 00:03:59.310 Elefantis, was a donor to the Democrats. And 00:03:59.310 --> 00:04:01.189 some of these email chains were about fundraisers 00:04:01.189 --> 00:04:02.870 that had been held there or were connected to 00:04:02.870 --> 00:04:05.069 them. So they drew a line. A very thin line. 00:04:05.469 --> 00:04:07.729 An incredibly thin line. And this wasn't just, 00:04:07.750 --> 00:04:09.930 hey, this place is suspicious. The sources show 00:04:09.930 --> 00:04:12.449 they built elaborate digital maps of the building. 00:04:12.810 --> 00:04:15.389 They were analyzing photos from its Instagram 00:04:15.389 --> 00:04:17.829 account. What were they looking for? They claimed 00:04:17.829 --> 00:04:20.310 there were underground tunnels, kill rooms, and 00:04:20.310 --> 00:04:23.110 dungeons beneath this pizza place where children 00:04:23.110 --> 00:04:25.889 were being held captive. They anorized the artwork 00:04:25.889 --> 00:04:28.389 on the walls, which was just local modern art, 00:04:28.490 --> 00:04:31.810 and called it satanic symbolism. It became an 00:04:31.810 --> 00:04:34.089 absolute frenzy. And this is the critical moment. 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:37.079 This is where the digital world crashes, I mean, 00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:40.160 violently into the physical world. Because on 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:44.060 December 4, 2016, Ann named Edgar Madison Welch 00:04:44.060 --> 00:04:46.899 decides he's seen enough online. Right. This 00:04:46.899 --> 00:04:48.980 is the moment it stops being a game. It stops 00:04:48.980 --> 00:04:51.620 being a thought experiment. Who was he? Welch 00:04:51.620 --> 00:04:53.920 is a father from North Carolina. He grabs his 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:56.740 AR -15 rifle and a .38 revolver, gets in his 00:04:56.740 --> 00:04:59.649 car, and drives all the way to D .C. He walks 00:04:59.649 --> 00:05:01.389 into Comet Ping Pong in the middle of the day. 00:05:01.490 --> 00:05:03.230 And there are people there. There are families 00:05:03.230 --> 00:05:06.290 there, people eating lunch, kids. And he walks 00:05:06.290 --> 00:05:09.730 in, armed for war. In his mind, he's a hero. 00:05:09.810 --> 00:05:12.110 He's there to save children. He's there to self 00:05:12.110 --> 00:05:14.769 -investigate. That's the term he used with police. 00:05:15.509 --> 00:05:19.250 He fires shots into a locked closet door because 00:05:19.250 --> 00:05:22.129 he thinks that's where the dungeon is. He forces 00:05:22.129 --> 00:05:25.269 the terrified staff and customers to unlock the 00:05:25.269 --> 00:05:28.110 back rooms. And what does he find? He finds nothing. 00:05:28.910 --> 00:05:31.730 He finds pizza dough, he finds tomato sauce, 00:05:31.990 --> 00:05:35.509 he finds kitchen supplies, and crucially, he 00:05:35.509 --> 00:05:38.449 finds no basement. The building didn't even have 00:05:38.449 --> 00:05:40.269 one. The building didn't have a basement. The 00:05:40.269 --> 00:05:42.089 core of the theory was physically impossible. 00:05:42.529 --> 00:05:44.730 So he surrenders. He walks out with his hands 00:05:44.730 --> 00:05:46.829 up, and you would think, logically, that this 00:05:46.829 --> 00:05:48.930 is the end of the story. The theory is tested. 00:05:49.410 --> 00:05:52.069 A guy with a gun went in and checked. There are 00:05:52.069 --> 00:05:54.970 no kids. Theory debunked. But that is not what 00:05:54.970 --> 00:05:57.040 happened at all. No. In the world of conspiracy 00:05:57.040 --> 00:05:59.220 theories, contradictory evidence isn't a reason 00:05:59.220 --> 00:06:02.220 to doubt. It's just proof of a deeper, more sophisticated 00:06:02.220 --> 00:06:04.939 cover -up. So what did they say online? The believers 00:06:04.939 --> 00:06:07.319 didn't say, oh, we were wrong. They said it was 00:06:07.319 --> 00:06:09.740 false flag. Or the police were in on it. Or, 00:06:09.819 --> 00:06:11.839 my favorite, they moved the kids right before 00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:14.399 he got there. This is a key dynamic we're going 00:06:14.399 --> 00:06:16.740 to see over and over today. The theory is completely 00:06:16.740 --> 00:06:19.720 unfalsifiable. Exactly. But there's a consequence. 00:06:19.939 --> 00:06:23.199 A real one. After the shooting, Reddit, Twitter, 00:06:23.319 --> 00:06:25.540 and other mainstream platforms finally cracked 00:06:25.540 --> 00:06:28.019 down. They banned the Pizzagate subreddits. They 00:06:28.019 --> 00:06:30.160 said, okay, this is getting people almost killed. 00:06:30.279 --> 00:06:33.180 Enough. So the community was homeless. Briefly. 00:06:33.339 --> 00:06:36.579 But you can't kill an idea by banning a forum. 00:06:36.740 --> 00:06:38.560 The idea was already out there. They just migrated. 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:40.920 They went to the fringes of the internet, specifically 00:06:40.920 --> 00:06:45.160 to 4chan. 4chan. The Wild West. The absolute 00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:47.600 Wild West. For those who don't know, it's an 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:49.759 anonymous image board with virtually no rules. 00:06:50.139 --> 00:06:52.620 No moderation to speak of. It's chaotic. And 00:06:52.620 --> 00:06:54.600 on the poll board, that stands for politically 00:06:54.600 --> 00:06:57.500 incorrect, these displaced Pizzagate believers 00:06:57.500 --> 00:06:59.860 started congregating. They formed new threads. 00:07:00.199 --> 00:07:02.879 They called them HTG, which stood for Human Trafficking 00:07:02.879 --> 00:07:05.920 General. So they kept the core idea alive. So 00:07:05.920 --> 00:07:08.040 you have a pre -existing army of people. They 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:11.040 are angry. They are suspicious. They are absolutely 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:13.639 convinced that the elites are trafficking children. 00:07:13.819 --> 00:07:16.620 And they are all gathered in one place, waiting 00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:18.930 for a leader. They were dry tinder. They just 00:07:18.930 --> 00:07:21.730 needed a spark. And that spark came on October 00:07:21.730 --> 00:07:25.310 28, 2017. The first drop. The very first drop. 00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:27.589 A new user appears in these threads. They don't 00:07:27.589 --> 00:07:30.110 call themselves Q yet. The first signature is 00:07:30.110 --> 00:07:33.209 Q Clearance Patriot. Let's talk about that name 00:07:33.209 --> 00:07:36.050 for a second. Q Clearance. That's a real thing, 00:07:36.129 --> 00:07:38.170 right? It's not just made up. Oh, it's very real. 00:07:38.209 --> 00:07:40.170 It's a Department of Energy security clearance 00:07:40.170 --> 00:07:43.449 level, a very high one. It grants access to top 00:07:43.449 --> 00:07:45.949 secret restricted data, specifically regarding 00:07:45.949 --> 00:07:48.839 nuclear weapons and materials. So immediately, 00:07:49.060 --> 00:07:51.939 just by choosing that name, this user is establishing 00:07:51.939 --> 00:07:54.279 a kind of authority. They are saying, I'm not 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:56.000 just another guy in a basement making things 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.259 up. I'm in the room. I have the nuclear codes. 00:07:58.560 --> 00:08:00.779 Precisely. It's an immediate appeal to authority. 00:08:00.939 --> 00:08:02.740 It makes people sit up and pay attention. And 00:08:02.740 --> 00:08:05.399 the first post was not vague. It was the very 00:08:05.399 --> 00:08:08.060 specific, very high stakes prediction. I have 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:10.060 the text here. Let's break it down. It says HRC 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:12.319 extradition already in motion effective yesterday 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:14.879 with several countries in case of cross -border 00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:17.660 run. So HRC, that's Hillary Rodham Clinton. Right. 00:08:17.759 --> 00:08:21.040 And it continues. Passport approved to be flagged 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:25.819 effective 1030 at 12 .01 a .m. A specific date 00:08:25.819 --> 00:08:28.939 and time. Expect massive riots organized in defiance 00:08:28.939 --> 00:08:32.120 and others fleeing the U .S. to occur. USMs will 00:08:32.120 --> 00:08:35.200 conduct the operation while NG activated. Ms 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:37.700 for Marshals, NG for National Guard. And then 00:08:37.700 --> 00:08:41.100 this part. Proof check. Locate an NG member and 00:08:41.100 --> 00:08:44.139 ask if activated for duty 1030 across most major 00:08:44.139 --> 00:08:47.259 cities. It's a bold swing. It's testable. Usually 00:08:47.259 --> 00:08:49.460 horoscopes and psychics keep things vague so 00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:51.139 they can't be pinned down. This is a concrete 00:08:51.139 --> 00:08:53.809 prediction. And spoiler alert for anyone who 00:08:53.809 --> 00:08:56.929 was alive in 2017, Hillary Clinton was not arrested 00:08:56.929 --> 00:08:59.409 on October 30th. No. There were no riots. The 00:08:59.409 --> 00:09:01.389 National Guard was not activated. Nothing happened. 00:09:01.470 --> 00:09:03.990 He was a complete and total dud. Now, historically 00:09:03.990 --> 00:09:07.669 on 4chan, when an anonymous poster makes a prediction 00:09:07.669 --> 00:09:10.090 like that and it fails. They are mocked. They 00:09:10.090 --> 00:09:11.610 are laughed off the board immediately. We've 00:09:11.610 --> 00:09:13.710 seen it before, right? The sources mention FBI 00:09:13.710 --> 00:09:16.509 -anon and C -anon. Exactly. People had tried 00:09:16.509 --> 00:09:18.529 to do the same thing before, this insider persona. 00:09:18.889 --> 00:09:21.049 But they fizzled out the second their info proved 00:09:21.049 --> 00:09:23.309 fake. They were gone. So why are we talking about 00:09:23.309 --> 00:09:26.389 Q? Why didn't Q just disappear on October 31st 00:09:26.389 --> 00:09:28.730 like all the others? Because Q changed the rules 00:09:28.730 --> 00:09:31.389 of engagement. When the prediction failed, Q 00:09:31.389 --> 00:09:34.429 didn't apologize. Q didn't stop posting. Q just 00:09:34.429 --> 00:09:36.789 kept going, but changed the style completely. 00:09:37.009 --> 00:09:39.970 How so? Q moved from just giving news or predictions 00:09:39.970 --> 00:09:44.429 to creating a game. A game. Yes. This is what 00:09:44.429 --> 00:09:47.129 game designers call an ARG, an alternate reality 00:09:47.129 --> 00:09:50.830 game. Or you might hear the term LARP, live action 00:09:50.830 --> 00:09:53.830 role play. Q started posting cryptic clues. Well, 00:09:53.830 --> 00:09:56.509 kind of clues. Strings of numbers. Blurry photos 00:09:56.509 --> 00:09:58.590 taken from a plain window that people would try 00:09:58.590 --> 00:10:00.870 to geolocate. And a lot of Socratic questions. 00:10:01.090 --> 00:10:02.929 Things like, why does the media never mention 00:10:02.929 --> 00:10:05.649 this? Who benefits? Follow the money. Follow 00:10:05.649 --> 00:10:08.070 the white rabbit. Exactly. That was a huge part 00:10:08.070 --> 00:10:10.549 of the lexicon. Q stopped telling them the answer 00:10:10.549 --> 00:10:12.090 and started telling them to find the answer. 00:10:12.509 --> 00:10:15.460 Q used the phrase, here are the crumbs. You bake 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:18.259 the bread. That is brilliant in a terrifying 00:10:18.259 --> 00:10:21.620 way. It is. It's psychologically incredibly sticky. 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:25.259 Because if I just tell you a fact, you might 00:10:25.259 --> 00:10:27.639 believe me or you might not. But if I give you 00:10:27.639 --> 00:10:30.919 a puzzle and you solve it. You own it. You own 00:10:30.919 --> 00:10:33.899 it. If you're the one who connects the flight 00:10:33.899 --> 00:10:36.940 logs of Jeffrey Epstein to a timestamp on a Trump 00:10:36.940 --> 00:10:40.120 tweet to a line in an old movie, you feel a rush 00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:42.429 of dopamine. You feel smart. You feel like you 00:10:42.429 --> 00:10:44.850 discovered it yourself. It flatters the user. 00:10:44.990 --> 00:10:47.830 It says, you are smarter than the sheep. You're 00:10:47.830 --> 00:10:50.669 not just a passive consumer of news. You are 00:10:50.669 --> 00:10:53.169 an investigator. And that created the community. 00:10:53.370 --> 00:10:55.330 They call themselves bakers. They would take 00:10:55.330 --> 00:10:59.429 these cryptic drops and spend hours, days analyzing 00:10:59.429 --> 00:11:02.649 them, creating these elaborate charts and diagrams. 00:11:03.559 --> 00:11:06.299 decoding what they called kill codes. So it wasn't 00:11:06.299 --> 00:11:08.399 just reading content. It was participating in 00:11:08.399 --> 00:11:10.740 a massive multiplayer intelligence operation. 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:13.179 That's exactly how they saw themselves, as digital 00:11:13.179 --> 00:11:15.779 soldiers in an information war. So the failure 00:11:15.779 --> 00:11:17.980 of the Hillary prediction didn't matter in the 00:11:17.980 --> 00:11:19.960 end. It didn't matter at all because the game 00:11:19.960 --> 00:11:22.480 was too fun to stop playing. And the narrative 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:24.659 that emerged from this game, well, that's where 00:11:24.659 --> 00:11:27.179 we get into the core mythology because it expanded 00:11:27.179 --> 00:11:30.279 way beyond just Hillary Clinton. Let's try to 00:11:30.279 --> 00:11:33.080 map out this mythology. Because to an outsider, 00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:35.299 it just looks like a random collection of every 00:11:35.299 --> 00:11:38.679 conspiracy theory ever. You know, JFK is alive, 00:11:39.139 --> 00:11:42.279 5G towers cause disease, vaccines are a plot. 00:11:42.899 --> 00:11:45.980 But there is a core structure, right? A central 00:11:45.980 --> 00:11:49.200 story. There is. At its heart, it's a classic 00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:52.000 dualistic narrative. Yeah. It's good versus evil. 00:11:52.100 --> 00:11:54.879 It's a holy war. So let's start with the evil, 00:11:55.039 --> 00:11:57.919 the cabal. Right. The central tenet of QAnon 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:01.879 is that the world... for centuries has been secretly 00:12:01.879 --> 00:12:04.539 controlled by a satanic cabal. Who's in this 00:12:04.539 --> 00:12:06.799 cabal? It's a who's who of their political and 00:12:06.799 --> 00:12:09.580 cultural enemies. Top Democrats, so the Clintons, 00:12:09.580 --> 00:12:12.419 Obama, Biden, Hollywood celebrities like Tom 00:12:12.419 --> 00:12:14.700 Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and... 00:12:14.919 --> 00:12:16.980 Globalist business leaders George Soros and Bill 00:12:16.980 --> 00:12:18.840 Gates are always at the top of that list. But 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:20.960 the accusation isn't that they're just, you know, 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:22.940 greedy or corrupt, which is a common political 00:12:22.940 --> 00:12:25.679 attack. No, it goes much, much darker than that. 00:12:25.720 --> 00:12:27.840 It's incredibly graphic. The accusation is that 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:29.860 they are, and this is their belief, Satan -worshipping, 00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:32.840 cannibalistic pedophiles who systematically traffic, 00:12:33.019 --> 00:12:35.529 torture, and murder children. It's not just political 00:12:35.529 --> 00:12:38.830 disagreement. It's a charge of absolute ultimate 00:12:38.830 --> 00:12:42.269 moral evil. And that's the point. It completely 00:12:42.269 --> 00:12:44.950 dehumanizes the opponent. You can't negotiate 00:12:44.950 --> 00:12:47.470 with someone who eats children. You can't compromise 00:12:47.470 --> 00:12:49.470 with them. You have to destroy them. It's an 00:12:49.470 --> 00:12:52.259 existential battle. OK, so that's the villain. 00:12:52.399 --> 00:12:54.679 Who is the hero in this story? Donald Trump. 00:12:54.820 --> 00:12:57.799 Of course. In the QAnon lore, Trump isn't just 00:12:57.799 --> 00:13:00.440 a reality TV star who stumbled into politics. 00:13:00.500 --> 00:13:04.039 No, he was specifically recruited years in advance 00:13:04.039 --> 00:13:07.090 by a group of loyal military generals. they call 00:13:07.090 --> 00:13:09.710 them the white hats, to run for president for 00:13:09.710 --> 00:13:12.169 one single purpose. To take down this cabal. 00:13:12.289 --> 00:13:15.289 To take it down from the inside. This recontextualizes 00:13:15.289 --> 00:13:17.750 his entire presidency for them. Completely. If 00:13:17.750 --> 00:13:20.190 you were a Q follower, every time Trump did something 00:13:20.190 --> 00:13:23.009 that looked chaotic or maybe incompetent or just 00:13:23.009 --> 00:13:25.490 plain confusing to the mainstream media, you 00:13:25.490 --> 00:13:28.070 didn't see chaos. No, you saw strategy. You saw 00:13:28.070 --> 00:13:31.110 5D chess. Trust the plan. Trust the plan. That 00:13:31.110 --> 00:13:34.090 was the mantra. That phrase was everywhere. If 00:13:34.090 --> 00:13:36.730 he fired someone, it wasn't because... of a disagreement. 00:13:37.029 --> 00:13:39.470 It was to clear the board for the next phase 00:13:39.470 --> 00:13:42.370 of the operation. And if he tweeted a typo, I 00:13:42.370 --> 00:13:45.669 remember Kafei. Kafei was a huge one for them. 00:13:45.710 --> 00:13:48.210 To you or me, it's a funny typo. To them, it 00:13:48.210 --> 00:13:51.549 wasn't a mistake. It was a coded message to the 00:13:51.549 --> 00:13:54.289 Patriots, a signal that the plan was in motion. 00:13:54.649 --> 00:13:57.490 It made the entire belief system bulletproof 00:13:57.490 --> 00:14:00.289 against any external criticism. In the endgame, 00:14:00.389 --> 00:14:02.509 what was this all building towards? What were 00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:04.570 they waiting for? They were waiting for the storm. 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:06.899 or sometimes they called it the event. The storm, 00:14:07.139 --> 00:14:09.299 where does that come from? It comes from a real 00:14:09.299 --> 00:14:13.240 -life quote from Trump himself. Back in 2017, 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:17.200 he was at a photo op with military leaders, and 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:20.059 he gestured to them and said to the press, you 00:14:20.059 --> 00:14:22.139 know what this represents? Maybe it's the calm 00:14:22.139 --> 00:14:24.649 before the storm. And a reporter asked, what 00:14:24.649 --> 00:14:26.669 storm, Mr. President? And he just said, you'll 00:14:26.669 --> 00:14:29.049 find out. And Q took that and ran with it. Ran 00:14:29.049 --> 00:14:31.210 with it and built the entire eschatology around 00:14:31.210 --> 00:14:34.370 it. The storm was the prophesied day where the 00:14:34.370 --> 00:14:36.309 military would finally step out of the shadows. 00:14:36.590 --> 00:14:38.789 They would arrest the thousands of cabal members 00:14:38.789 --> 00:14:41.629 en masse. And then what? Military tribunals, 00:14:41.669 --> 00:14:44.870 executions. They believed it would all be televised. 00:14:45.110 --> 00:14:47.570 And then after this violent purge would come. 00:14:48.110 --> 00:14:51.370 The Great Awakening. A utopia. A utopia. A world 00:14:51.370 --> 00:14:54.389 where debt is wiped out, diseases are miraculously 00:14:54.389 --> 00:14:56.850 cured with hidden technologies, and the world 00:14:56.850 --> 00:14:59.029 finally knows the truth. I want to dig into the 00:14:59.029 --> 00:15:01.110 vocabulary a bit more because if you were online 00:15:01.110 --> 00:15:05.090 between 2017 and 2021, you saw these hashtags 00:15:05.090 --> 00:15:09.350 everywhere. The big one. WWG1WGA. Where we go 00:15:09.350 --> 00:15:12.250 one, we go all. It sounds very profound. It sounds 00:15:12.250 --> 00:15:14.960 very, I don't know, almost... biblical or something. 00:15:15.159 --> 00:15:17.019 It has that weight to it. It sounds like something 00:15:17.019 --> 00:15:19.740 from a founding document. But it's not. No. It's 00:15:19.740 --> 00:15:22.220 from the 1996 Ridley Scott sailing movie White 00:15:22.220 --> 00:15:24.480 Squall. The movie with Jeff Bridges. That's the 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:26.799 one. It's a line he says to his crew of students. 00:15:26.919 --> 00:15:30.100 It's literally on the movie poster. But for QAnon, 00:15:30.220 --> 00:15:32.980 it became this sacred oath of unity. It reinforced 00:15:32.980 --> 00:15:36.100 that digital soldier identity. We are in this 00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:38.159 together. It's amazing how they pull from pop 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:40.399 culture. And then there is a term that I think 00:15:40.399 --> 00:15:42.139 creeps people out the most. We have to talk about 00:15:42.139 --> 00:15:45.799 adrenochrome. Yes, we do. Because this is what 00:15:45.799 --> 00:15:48.620 connects the Cabal theory to the child trafficking 00:15:48.620 --> 00:15:51.539 theory. It's the mechanism. What on earth is 00:15:51.539 --> 00:15:54.220 adrenochrome, according to them? Okay, so in 00:15:54.220 --> 00:15:56.980 the QAnon mythology, adrenochrome is the reason 00:15:56.980 --> 00:15:59.600 the elites are trafficking children. The theory 00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:02.259 is that they torture these children because extreme 00:16:02.259 --> 00:16:06.679 fear and pain caused the adrenal gland to flood 00:16:06.679 --> 00:16:09.220 the body with adrenaline. Okay. They believe 00:16:09.220 --> 00:16:12.259 that if you then harvest this adrenalized blood, 00:16:12.700 --> 00:16:14.860 which they call adrenochrome, and you drink it 00:16:14.860 --> 00:16:17.159 or inject it, it acts as a kind of fountain of 00:16:17.159 --> 00:16:20.120 youth. It extends your life. It gives you a psychedelic 00:16:20.120 --> 00:16:22.679 high. It grants you power. It sounds like a vampire 00:16:22.679 --> 00:16:25.659 myth. It's a modern vampire myth. It's grotesque. 00:16:25.659 --> 00:16:27.360 But let's look at the science here because this 00:16:27.360 --> 00:16:28.799 is where a hard fact check is really important. 00:16:29.500 --> 00:16:31.399 Adrenochrome is a real chemical compound. So 00:16:31.399 --> 00:16:34.460 it does exist. It exists. It is simply oxidized 00:16:34.460 --> 00:16:37.019 adrenaline or epinephrine. It's what happens 00:16:37.019 --> 00:16:38.879 when adrenaline breaks down. But the effects, 00:16:39.059 --> 00:16:42.129 the life extension, the high. It has absolutely 00:16:42.129 --> 00:16:44.789 no rejuvenating or hallucinogenic properties. 00:16:45.070 --> 00:16:48.830 None. If you ingested it, the scientific literature 00:16:48.830 --> 00:16:50.809 says it wouldn't make you high. It would probably 00:16:50.809 --> 00:16:52.690 just give you a headache or make you nauseous. 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:55.429 And most importantly, you do not need to torture 00:16:55.429 --> 00:16:58.350 children to get it. You can just buy it. You 00:16:58.350 --> 00:17:01.649 can buy it from a chemical supply catalog. Laboratories 00:17:01.649 --> 00:17:04.109 use it for certain types of research, like testing 00:17:04.109 --> 00:17:07.130 for schizophrenia or blood clotting. It's synthesized 00:17:07.130 --> 00:17:10.059 in a lab. It's a pink powder. It is not some 00:17:10.059 --> 00:17:13.099 magical elixir harvested from fear. So where 00:17:13.099 --> 00:17:15.720 did the idea come from? Why do millions of people 00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:17.920 believe that Hillary Clinton drinks this stuff? 00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:20.359 Again, it's from fiction. Not a medical journal. 00:17:20.539 --> 00:17:23.500 No. It's from Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist. 00:17:23.960 --> 00:17:26.859 In his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he 00:17:26.859 --> 00:17:29.519 writes a scene where his character takes adrenochrome. 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:33.839 He describes it as this terrifying, potent psychedelic 00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:36.259 derived from the adrenal glands of a living human. 00:17:36.519 --> 00:17:38.579 But he made it up. He admitted it himself. In 00:17:38.579 --> 00:17:40.660 the DVD commentary for the movie adaptation, 00:17:41.099 --> 00:17:43.579 he says he completely fabricated it. It was a 00:17:43.579 --> 00:17:45.839 satirical exaggeration of the drug culture of 00:17:45.839 --> 00:17:49.079 the 1970s. So QAnon took a plot device from a 00:17:49.079 --> 00:17:51.480 drug fueled satirical novel and treated it as 00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:54.099 top secret medical intelligence. That's exactly 00:17:54.099 --> 00:17:56.539 what happened. It's fascinating how the lines 00:17:56.539 --> 00:18:00.079 blur for them. Movie quotes become sacred texts. 00:18:00.299 --> 00:18:03.660 Fictional drugs become real conspiracies. It's 00:18:03.660 --> 00:18:05.740 like they built a new reality out of pop culture 00:18:05.740 --> 00:18:08.160 scraps. It speaks to the demographics, maybe. 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:10.539 These are people who consume media. They understand 00:18:10.539 --> 00:18:13.140 these tropes. It feels familiar to them in a 00:18:13.140 --> 00:18:14.819 strange way. It's a story they already know. 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.400 Speaking of demographics and spread, we need 00:18:17.400 --> 00:18:19.279 to talk about how this moved from the dark corners 00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:22.519 of 4chan to, well, to my aunt's Facebook feed. 00:18:22.740 --> 00:18:26.289 Because 4chan is... The user interface is terrible. 00:18:26.509 --> 00:18:28.750 It's deliberately hostile. It's anonymous. It's 00:18:28.750 --> 00:18:31.430 full of pornography and racial slurs. It's not 00:18:31.430 --> 00:18:34.170 user -friendly at all. No, your aunt is not browsing 00:18:34.170 --> 00:18:36.809 4chan. But she is browsing Facebook and Instagram. 00:18:37.150 --> 00:18:39.450 And this is where the mechanism of spread comes 00:18:39.450 --> 00:18:42.049 in. You had a layer of middlemen, of entrepreneurs 00:18:42.049 --> 00:18:44.470 really. We call them aggregators. So like apps 00:18:44.470 --> 00:18:48.009 and websites. Yes. Developers built sites like 00:18:48.009 --> 00:18:51.349 Qmap .pub or apps for your phone like Qdrops. 00:18:52.119 --> 00:18:54.660 These tools did something very important. They 00:18:54.660 --> 00:18:57.599 scraped the raw posts from 4chan and later 8chan, 00:18:57.799 --> 00:19:00.099 and they stripped away all the offensive context. 00:19:00.279 --> 00:19:01.859 They cleaned it up. They cleaned it up. They 00:19:01.859 --> 00:19:04.099 stripped away the porn, the slurs, the chaos, 00:19:04.279 --> 00:19:07.920 and they presented the Q drops in a clean, slick, 00:19:08.119 --> 00:19:10.279 professional -looking interface. Like a news 00:19:10.279 --> 00:19:12.700 feed. Exactly. It looked legitimate. It looked 00:19:12.700 --> 00:19:14.539 like a news source. You could get push notifications 00:19:14.539 --> 00:19:18.019 on your phone, new draw from Q. It made the content 00:19:18.019 --> 00:19:21.460 accessible to normies, regular people who would... 00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:23.779 never venture onto an image board. And the social 00:19:23.779 --> 00:19:26.119 media algorithms, I assume, helped this along. 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:27.960 They helped immensely. You have to remember, 00:19:28.099 --> 00:19:30.740 platforms like Facebook and YouTube are designed 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:34.059 to do one thing. Keep you on the platform for 00:19:34.059 --> 00:19:36.539 as long as possible. Maximize engagement. Right. 00:19:36.619 --> 00:19:38.759 And what is more engaging than a mystery thriller 00:19:38.759 --> 00:19:40.839 where the stakes are literally the fate of the 00:19:40.839 --> 00:19:43.200 world? So if I watch one video about a conspiracy 00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:45.799 theory, the algorithm says, hey, you might like 00:19:45.799 --> 00:19:48.619 this QAnon video. Or it's even more subtle than 00:19:48.619 --> 00:19:51.039 that. The source material shows that if you are 00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:54.440 in a natural parenting group or an anti -vax 00:19:54.440 --> 00:19:58.220 group or even a yoga group, the algorithm identifies 00:19:58.220 --> 00:20:00.700 that you are someone who is skeptical of mainstream. 00:20:01.490 --> 00:20:03.329 You're a certain kind of customer. You're a certain 00:20:03.329 --> 00:20:05.390 profile. So it starts suggesting other groups. 00:20:05.750 --> 00:20:07.869 Maybe it suggests a group about... Saving the 00:20:07.869 --> 00:20:10.529 children. And this leads us directly to Pastel 00:20:10.529 --> 00:20:13.130 QAnon. This was a term I hadn't heard until I 00:20:13.130 --> 00:20:15.549 read the stack, but it explains so much about 00:20:15.549 --> 00:20:18.490 what happened in 2020. It was a massive and deliberate 00:20:18.490 --> 00:20:21.069 rebranding. In the beginning, QAnon was very 00:20:21.069 --> 00:20:24.710 male, very aggressive, very military, all camouflage 00:20:24.710 --> 00:20:28.210 and skulls and eagles. Pastel QAnon was the softening 00:20:28.210 --> 00:20:30.549 of the image to appeal specifically to women, 00:20:30.670 --> 00:20:33.819 particularly mothers on Instagram. Explain the 00:20:33.819 --> 00:20:35.680 aesthetic. What does that look like? Think of 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:37.500 the standard influencer aesthetic you see on 00:20:37.500 --> 00:20:40.700 Instagram. Soft beige filters, pretty cursive 00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:43.880 fonts, great lighting, a nice photo of a latte 00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:46.940 or a yoga pose, or a well -decorated living room. 00:20:47.099 --> 00:20:50.740 But the caption isn't about coffee. No. The caption 00:20:50.740 --> 00:20:53.019 says, Did you know there are thousands of children 00:20:53.019 --> 00:20:55.279 trapped in underground tunnels right now? We 00:20:55.279 --> 00:20:57.660 have to wake up and save them. It's a bait and 00:20:57.660 --> 00:21:01.400 switch. A jarring one. It's a Trojan horse. And... 00:21:01.660 --> 00:21:04.660 The key to this was hijacking the hashtag, hashtag 00:21:04.660 --> 00:21:07.119 save the children. Which is a real charity. A 00:21:07.119 --> 00:21:09.539 real, legitimate charity that has done great 00:21:09.539 --> 00:21:12.940 work for a century. But in 2020, QAnon followers 00:21:12.940 --> 00:21:15.859 flooded that hashtag. They completely took it 00:21:15.859 --> 00:21:18.420 over. So if a well -meaning mom logs on and she 00:21:18.420 --> 00:21:20.460 wants to help children, she searches that hashtag. 00:21:20.799 --> 00:21:23.500 And she is instantly bombarded with QAnon propaganda 00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:26.500 disguised as inspirational lifestyle content. 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:29.519 She sees a post from a mommy blogger she trusts, 00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:32.200 someone she's followed for years. and that blogger 00:21:32.200 --> 00:21:35.259 is now talking about the cabal. And it bypasses 00:21:35.259 --> 00:21:37.500 your critical thinking filters. Completely. Because 00:21:37.500 --> 00:21:39.920 it's framed as protecting children. Who doesn't 00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:42.140 want to save children? It's a universal moral 00:21:42.140 --> 00:21:44.400 good. And if you question it, they have a built 00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:46.539 -in defense. Oh, you don't believe this? What, 00:21:46.599 --> 00:21:49.880 do you support pedophiles? Exactly. It weaponizes 00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:52.839 empathy. It takes a mother's most powerful instinct, 00:21:53.079 --> 00:21:55.220 the instinct to protect the innocent, and it 00:21:55.220 --> 00:21:57.960 channels it into a radical political delusion. 00:21:58.569 --> 00:22:00.789 It was an incredibly effective recruitment tool. 00:22:00.950 --> 00:22:03.190 There's also a geopolitical angle here that we 00:22:03.190 --> 00:22:05.450 can't ignore. The sources mentioned the Sufan 00:22:05.450 --> 00:22:08.250 Center report. It wasn't just organic grassroots 00:22:08.250 --> 00:22:11.609 growth. No, not at all. We have very clear evidence 00:22:11.609 --> 00:22:14.089 from intelligence agencies and researchers that 00:22:14.089 --> 00:22:16.369 foreign state actors, specifically Russia and 00:22:16.369 --> 00:22:19.869 China, were amplifying QAnon narratives online. 00:22:20.369 --> 00:22:22.410 Why would they do that? I mean, do they believe 00:22:22.410 --> 00:22:24.390 in Q? Oh, no, they don't care about the narrative 00:22:24.390 --> 00:22:27.009 at all. They care about the chaos. It's classic 00:22:27.009 --> 00:22:28.730 information warfare. It's a playbook they've 00:22:28.730 --> 00:22:31.069 used for decades. So what's the goal? The goal 00:22:31.069 --> 00:22:34.569 is to weaken your adversary from within. If Americans 00:22:34.569 --> 00:22:37.210 are at each other's throats fighting about imaginary 00:22:37.210 --> 00:22:39.930 satanic cabals and stolen elections, then we 00:22:39.930 --> 00:22:41.890 aren't unified. We aren't paying attention to 00:22:41.890 --> 00:22:44.769 actual geopolitical threats. It erodes social 00:22:44.769 --> 00:22:47.430 cohesion. It was a very low cost, very high reward 00:22:47.430 --> 00:22:50.400 way to sow discord in the United States. It's 00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:52.700 a sobering thought. We were tearing ourselves 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:55.400 apart and foreign intelligence agencies were 00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:57.599 just standing back and pouring gasoline on the 00:22:57.599 --> 00:22:59.619 fire. That's a perfect way to put it. But I want 00:22:59.619 --> 00:23:01.460 to get to the mystery that I think everyone asks 00:23:01.460 --> 00:23:05.400 about. After all this, who is Q? The million 00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:08.079 dollar question. For years, the speculation was 00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:10.900 wild. People thought it was General Michael Flynn. 00:23:11.519 --> 00:23:14.900 Or John F. Kennedy Jr., who they believed faked 00:23:14.900 --> 00:23:16.740 his own death. Some even thought it was Trump 00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:19.720 himself. Right. Or a team of rogue CIA agents. 00:23:19.859 --> 00:23:22.180 The theories were as grand as the conspiracy 00:23:22.180 --> 00:23:24.980 itself. But the forensic evidence, the actual 00:23:24.980 --> 00:23:27.759 data, points to something much more, I don't 00:23:27.759 --> 00:23:30.180 know, banal. Is that the right word? Banal, but 00:23:30.180 --> 00:23:32.880 fascinating. We have two separate teams of computer 00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:35.640 scientists, one French, one Swiss, who perform 00:23:35.640 --> 00:23:38.140 what's called stylometric analysis on the entire 00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:41.670 corpus of Q -drops. Stylometry. Sounds fancy. 00:23:41.789 --> 00:23:44.250 Break that down for us. It's basically linguistic 00:23:44.250 --> 00:23:47.509 fingerprinting. Everybody has unconscious habits 00:23:47.509 --> 00:23:50.549 in how they write or type. Do you use among or 00:23:50.549 --> 00:23:53.309 amongst? Do you put two spaces after a period? 00:23:53.490 --> 00:23:56.009 Do you use certain misspellings or turns of phrase 00:23:56.009 --> 00:23:58.509 consistently? When you have thousands of posts, 00:23:58.609 --> 00:24:01.150 thousands of data points, these patterns become 00:24:01.150 --> 00:24:03.650 a unique fingerprint. So you can match the writing 00:24:03.650 --> 00:24:06.349 style to a known author? With a very high degree 00:24:06.349 --> 00:24:09.250 of statistical confidence, yes. And what did 00:24:09.250 --> 00:24:11.289 the fingerprint show? It showed that there were 00:24:11.289 --> 00:24:13.970 likely two main authors over two distinct periods. 00:24:14.210 --> 00:24:17.130 Okay, carried one. The very early days on 4chan, 00:24:17.309 --> 00:24:20.269 the first few months, the writing style is a 00:24:20.269 --> 00:24:22.670 near -perfect statistical match for a man named 00:24:22.670 --> 00:24:25.940 Paul Ferber. And who is Paul Ferber? He is a 00:24:25.940 --> 00:24:27.980 South African software engineer and, crucially, 00:24:28.099 --> 00:24:31.140 a moderator on the poll board where Q first started 00:24:31.140 --> 00:24:32.920 posting. He was one of the very first people 00:24:32.920 --> 00:24:35.819 to hype up Q. He started YouTube channels and 00:24:35.819 --> 00:24:38.279 websites dedicated to decoding the drops almost 00:24:38.279 --> 00:24:40.180 immediately. So the theory is he just started 00:24:40.180 --> 00:24:42.680 it himself. The theory is that he started the 00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:45.670 LARP. Maybe to drive traffic to the board, maybe 00:24:45.670 --> 00:24:47.670 just to have fun and see what would happen. A 00:24:47.670 --> 00:24:49.890 kind of digital prank that got out of hand. But 00:24:49.890 --> 00:24:52.490 then you said the style changed. Yes. Around 00:24:52.490 --> 00:24:56.490 the time the Q posts moved from 4chan to a different, 00:24:56.609 --> 00:25:00.210 even more lawless website called 8chan, the voice 00:25:00.210 --> 00:25:03.329 shifted significantly. The vocabulary, the sentence 00:25:03.329 --> 00:25:05.779 structure. Everything changed. And the second 00:25:05.779 --> 00:25:08.079 author? The stylometry points directly to Ron 00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:10.500 Watkins. Ron Watkins. We know that name. We do. 00:25:10.779 --> 00:25:13.039 He's the son of Jim Watkins, the man who owned 00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:15.940 and operated Achan. Ron was the site administrator. 00:25:16.380 --> 00:25:18.259 He was the one running the website day to day. 00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:20.640 This makes perfect sense from a technical standpoint, 00:25:20.799 --> 00:25:23.000 right? Because Q used something called a trip 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:25.380 code. Right. A trip code is a kind of digital 00:25:25.380 --> 00:25:28.279 signature on these anonymous boards. It's a password 00:25:28.279 --> 00:25:30.380 -protected code that proves the person posting 00:25:30.380 --> 00:25:32.460 today is the same person who posted yesterday. 00:25:33.109 --> 00:25:35.210 It authenticates the user. But if you are the 00:25:35.210 --> 00:25:38.170 administrator of the entire website. Like Ron 00:25:38.170 --> 00:25:40.509 was, you control the database. You know all the 00:25:40.509 --> 00:25:42.349 passwords. You can take over anyone's trip code 00:25:42.349 --> 00:25:45.390 whenever you want. So the theory is that Ron 00:25:45.390 --> 00:25:47.970 Watkins saw this queue phenomenon taking off 00:25:47.970 --> 00:25:50.190 and essentially hijacked the account from the 00:25:50.190 --> 00:25:52.769 original poster to drive traffic and engagement 00:25:52.769 --> 00:25:55.390 to his own failing website. And there is that 00:25:55.390 --> 00:25:58.470 incredible moment in the HBO documentary queue. 00:25:59.150 --> 00:26:01.230 Into the storm. I remember watching it and I 00:26:01.230 --> 00:26:03.670 literally stood up off my couch. The Cullen Hoback 00:26:03.670 --> 00:26:05.809 documentary. It's the closest we will probably 00:26:05.809 --> 00:26:08.289 ever get to an actual confession. Describe that 00:26:08.289 --> 00:26:10.029 scene for anyone who hasn't seen it. So it's 00:26:10.029 --> 00:26:13.109 the final episode. The filmmaker, Cullen, is 00:26:13.109 --> 00:26:16.009 interviewing Ron Watkins. Ron is talking about 00:26:16.009 --> 00:26:18.250 his time running 8chan and his crusade for what 00:26:18.250 --> 00:26:21.410 he calls free speech. And he makes a slip. He 00:26:21.410 --> 00:26:23.819 just he slips up. What does he say? He says, 00:26:23.900 --> 00:26:26.119 I've spent the past three years teaching normies 00:26:26.119 --> 00:26:28.160 how to do intelligence work. It was basically 00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:30.380 what I was doing anonymously before. And then 00:26:30.380 --> 00:26:32.900 he stops. He freezes. You can see the gears turn 00:26:32.900 --> 00:26:35.700 in his head. He realizes he just said what I 00:26:35.700 --> 00:26:38.160 was doing anonymously. He tries to backtrack. 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:41.740 He stammers and says, but never his cue. And 00:26:41.740 --> 00:26:46.000 then what's his reaction? He laughs. He lets 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:49.430 out this nervous. almost smug little laugh. He 00:26:49.430 --> 00:26:51.549 looks right at the camera and he smiles this 00:26:51.549 --> 00:26:54.269 big awkward smile. It's a total you got me moment. 00:26:54.940 --> 00:26:57.180 He all of it winks at the camera. It's chilling. 00:26:57.339 --> 00:26:59.599 It's absolutely chilling. Because if that is 00:26:59.599 --> 00:27:02.039 true and all the forensic and circumstantial 00:27:02.039 --> 00:27:05.400 evidence says it is, it means this global movement, 00:27:05.559 --> 00:27:08.400 this thing that incited riots and ruined lives 00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:10.700 and broke families. Basically, a guy in the Philippines 00:27:10.700 --> 00:27:12.720 trying to promote his message board. It strips 00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:14.940 away all the mystique. It wasn't a military intelligence 00:27:14.940 --> 00:27:17.559 operation. It wasn't a team of patriots. It was 00:27:17.559 --> 00:27:20.480 a message board admin with a God complex. A bored, 00:27:20.680 --> 00:27:23.720 cynical webmaster. And that leads us to the real 00:27:23.720 --> 00:27:27.279 world. Because whether it was a game to Ron Watkins 00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:29.880 or Paul Ferber, it was not a game to the people 00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:31.940 reading it. No. And this is where we have to 00:27:31.940 --> 00:27:34.039 talk about the violence. Because the rhetoric 00:27:34.039 --> 00:27:37.059 of QAnon was war. It was never just a discussion. 00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:41.220 It was explicitly the language of war. General 00:27:41.220 --> 00:27:43.599 Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security 00:27:43.599 --> 00:27:47.380 advisor, leaned into this hard after he was pardoned. 00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:50.940 He called the followers digital soldiers. He 00:27:50.940 --> 00:27:53.819 even led them in taking an oath. He made it official. 00:27:54.220 --> 00:27:56.140 And when you tell people they are soldiers and 00:27:56.140 --> 00:27:58.319 you tell them the enemy is literally killing 00:27:58.319 --> 00:28:01.359 and eating children, violence isn't just possible. 00:28:01.400 --> 00:28:04.200 It becomes logical. It becomes a moral imperative. 00:28:04.619 --> 00:28:06.240 You have to think about it from their perspective. 00:28:06.559 --> 00:28:09.599 If you truly believed 100 percent in your heart 00:28:09.599 --> 00:28:11.779 of hearts that your neighbor was kidnapping and 00:28:11.779 --> 00:28:14.019 eating babies, what would you do? You'd kick 00:28:14.019 --> 00:28:15.859 down their door. You would feel obligated to. 00:28:15.960 --> 00:28:18.079 You'd be a monster if you didn't. And we see 00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:19.700 this play out time and time again. We've got 00:28:19.700 --> 00:28:21.819 a list of incidents here in the notes, and it's 00:28:21.819 --> 00:28:23.779 just heartbreaking. We mentioned the pizza guy, 00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:26.359 Edgar Welch. Yeah. But there was also the Hoover 00:28:26.359 --> 00:28:28.559 Dam incident. Right. Matthew Wright. Matthew 00:28:28.559 --> 00:28:31.339 Wright. In 2018, he drove a homemade armored 00:28:31.339 --> 00:28:34.019 truck onto the Michael Kelly and Pat Tillman 00:28:34.019 --> 00:28:36.880 Memorial Bridge right by the Hoover Dam. He blocked 00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:39.960 all traffic. He'd welded steel plates to a pickup. 00:28:40.359 --> 00:28:43.740 He had an AR -15. He had a handgun. And he was 00:28:43.740 --> 00:28:46.650 holding up signs. He was demanding the release 00:28:46.650 --> 00:28:49.289 of the OIG report, the Department of Justice 00:28:49.289 --> 00:28:52.190 Inspector General report, that QAnon followers 00:28:52.190 --> 00:28:54.529 had been hyped up to believe would expose all 00:28:54.529 --> 00:28:56.910 the deep state crimes. He was ready to have a 00:28:56.910 --> 00:28:58.869 shootout with police over a government document 00:28:58.869 --> 00:29:01.250 he heard about on an anonymous image board. He 00:29:01.250 --> 00:29:02.869 truly believed he was starting the revolution. 00:29:03.269 --> 00:29:05.569 He was eventually arrested after a 90 -minute 00:29:05.569 --> 00:29:07.970 standoff. He wrote letters from jail, signed 00:29:07.970 --> 00:29:10.789 Patriot. He threw his entire life away for a 00:29:10.789 --> 00:29:12.950 lie. Then there's the murder of Frank Kelly. 00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:15.400 This one is so bizarre because it involves the 00:29:15.400 --> 00:29:17.960 actual mafia. Frank Kelly was the reputed boss 00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:20.500 of the Gambino crime family, a real -life mob 00:29:20.500 --> 00:29:24.380 boss. In 2019, a young man named Anthony Camillo 00:29:24.380 --> 00:29:26.359 shot him dead in front of his house on Staten 00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:29.519 Island. Was Camillo a rival gangster, part of 00:29:29.519 --> 00:29:32.400 a mob hit? No. He was a construction worker who 00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:34.680 had fallen deep down the Q rabbit hole. When 00:29:34.680 --> 00:29:36.299 he showed up for his court appearance, he had 00:29:36.299 --> 00:29:40.440 Q and WWG1WGA scribbled on his hand in pen for 00:29:40.440 --> 00:29:42.099 the cameras to see. And what was his motive? 00:29:42.569 --> 00:29:44.930 His defense attorney said Camilla believed Frank 00:29:44.930 --> 00:29:47.289 Calley was a key member of the deep state and 00:29:47.289 --> 00:29:50.089 that by killing him, he was helping Trump protect 00:29:50.089 --> 00:29:52.890 the country. He thought he was a secret agent. 00:29:53.029 --> 00:29:54.869 He thought he was going to be pardoned by Trump. 00:29:55.029 --> 00:29:57.210 It shows the reach of this thing. It touches 00:29:57.210 --> 00:29:59.970 every corner of society, from mommy bloggers 00:29:59.970 --> 00:30:02.849 to the mob. But the story that haunts me the 00:30:02.849 --> 00:30:05.329 most from the source material is Matthew Taylor 00:30:05.329 --> 00:30:08.430 Coleman. This one is. This is the darkest it 00:30:08.430 --> 00:30:10.849 gets. And I think it's important to share this 00:30:10.849 --> 00:30:14.069 specific story to understand the total catastrophic 00:30:14.069 --> 00:30:16.849 break from reality that can happen. Coleman was 00:30:16.849 --> 00:30:18.589 a surf instructor in Santa Barbara, right? Yeah. 00:30:18.630 --> 00:30:21.230 The sources say, by all accounts, a normal, loving 00:30:21.230 --> 00:30:24.170 dad. Yes. Ran a surfing school with his wife. 00:30:24.349 --> 00:30:26.829 Seemed perfectly normal. But he started spending 00:30:26.829 --> 00:30:29.950 hours and hours deep diving into QAnon and some 00:30:29.950 --> 00:30:33.130 adjacent, even stranger theories about reptilians 00:30:33.130 --> 00:30:35.450 and secret bloodlines. And he became convinced 00:30:35.450 --> 00:30:38.960 that his wife possessed serpent DNA. Yes. and 00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:41.180 that she had passed this demonic DNA onto their 00:30:41.180 --> 00:30:43.279 children. His two kids, a two -year -old and 00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:46.400 a ten -month -old baby. In August of 2021, he 00:30:46.400 --> 00:30:48.559 put them in his van. He told his wife he was 00:30:48.559 --> 00:30:50.960 taking them camping. Instead, he drove them to 00:30:50.960 --> 00:30:53.940 Mexico. He took them to a field, and he killed 00:30:53.940 --> 00:30:56.099 them both with a spearfishing gun. It makes you 00:30:56.099 --> 00:30:58.950 sick to even say it. When the FBI caught him 00:30:58.950 --> 00:31:01.009 at the border, he didn't deny it. He confessed 00:31:01.009 --> 00:31:03.609 immediately. He told him he had to do it. He 00:31:03.609 --> 00:31:05.130 said he was saving the world from the monsters 00:31:05.130 --> 00:31:07.109 they were going to become. He believed he was 00:31:07.109 --> 00:31:09.809 the hero of the story. That is the ultimate tragedy 00:31:09.809 --> 00:31:13.650 of this gamification. It's not a game. It completely 00:31:13.650 --> 00:31:16.589 overrode the most basic biological instinct a 00:31:16.589 --> 00:31:19.849 human has, the instinct to protect your own offspring. 00:31:20.130 --> 00:31:22.269 The narrative became more real to him than his 00:31:22.269 --> 00:31:24.589 own children. And all of that violence, all of 00:31:24.589 --> 00:31:27.150 that radicalization, it all culminated on one. 00:31:27.240 --> 00:31:30.559 day, January 6th, 2021. The Capitol attack. The 00:31:30.559 --> 00:31:33.220 insurrection. We all saw the footage. And it 00:31:33.220 --> 00:31:35.539 was impossible to miss the influence of QAnon. 00:31:35.660 --> 00:31:37.980 We saw the Q flags everywhere. We saw the T -shirts. 00:31:38.099 --> 00:31:41.240 We saw Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman, in his 00:31:41.240 --> 00:31:43.839 fur and horns carrying a spear, standing at the 00:31:43.839 --> 00:31:45.960 vice president's podium in the Senate, leading 00:31:45.960 --> 00:31:48.500 a prayer. But we have to understand their mindset 00:31:48.500 --> 00:31:51.019 that day. They weren't just rioting to riot. 00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:53.180 They were there because they thought something 00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:55.819 was supposed to happen. They were waiting. They 00:31:55.819 --> 00:31:58.660 were waiting for the storm. They truly believed 00:31:58.660 --> 00:32:01.779 that once they breached the building, that was 00:32:01.779 --> 00:32:04.339 the signal. The trap would be sprung. What did 00:32:04.339 --> 00:32:06.259 they think was going to happen? They thought 00:32:06.259 --> 00:32:08.460 the military, which they believed was secretly 00:32:08.460 --> 00:32:11.759 loyal to Trump, would emerge. They thought they 00:32:11.759 --> 00:32:14.700 would conduct mass arrests of Mike Pence, Nancy 00:32:14.700 --> 00:32:17.319 Pelosi, and all the other traitors. They thought 00:32:17.319 --> 00:32:19.740 Trump would be declared president for life. They 00:32:19.740 --> 00:32:22.400 thought it was the final victory. And then night 00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:24.829 fell. Night fell. The police eventually cleared 00:32:24.829 --> 00:32:28.069 the building. Congress reconvened, shaken but 00:32:28.069 --> 00:32:30.930 determined. And they certified Joe Biden's victory. 00:32:31.150 --> 00:32:33.430 The cognitive dissonance for those people must 00:32:33.430 --> 00:32:35.269 have been off the charts. You can see it in the 00:32:35.269 --> 00:32:38.109 chat logs from that night on platforms like Telegram 00:32:38.109 --> 00:32:39.950 and Parler, which we have in the source material. 00:32:40.250 --> 00:32:43.910 It's pure panic and confusion. Where is the military? 00:32:44.250 --> 00:32:47.170 Why isn't Trump acting? Trust the plan. Did we 00:32:47.170 --> 00:32:48.930 get played? You would think that would be the 00:32:48.930 --> 00:32:52.549 end. The final undeniable public failure. The 00:32:52.549 --> 00:32:56.029 prophecy failed. The leader left office. Game 00:32:56.029 --> 00:32:58.089 over. But that's not how cult dynamics work. 00:32:58.849 --> 00:33:02.250 When a doomsday prophecy fails, the believers 00:33:02.250 --> 00:33:05.390 often become more devout, not less, in order 00:33:05.390 --> 00:33:08.289 to rationalize the failure. They double down. 00:33:08.549 --> 00:33:11.630 And the movement didn't die. No, it mutated. 00:33:11.630 --> 00:33:13.190 It went underground for a bit and then it went 00:33:13.190 --> 00:33:15.990 global. This is the international mutations section 00:33:15.990 --> 00:33:18.750 of our notes. And I find this absolutely fascinating 00:33:18.750 --> 00:33:21.559 as a study of culture. How does a conspiracy 00:33:21.559 --> 00:33:24.339 theory that is so deeply rooted in American politics 00:33:24.339 --> 00:33:28.119 resonate in Germany or Japan? It adapts. That's 00:33:28.119 --> 00:33:30.339 the power of what you might call a big tent conspiracy. 00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:33.380 Right. It's so vague and sprawling that it can 00:33:33.380 --> 00:33:35.640 absorb local grievances and local histories. 00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:37.319 Take Germany, for instance. The Reichsberger 00:33:37.319 --> 00:33:39.680 movement. Exactly. Citizens of the Reich. These 00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:41.559 are people who believe the modern German state, 00:33:41.720 --> 00:33:44.089 the federal republic, is illegitimate. They think 00:33:44.089 --> 00:33:45.849 it's just a corporation set up by the Allies 00:33:45.849 --> 00:33:48.190 after World War II and that the German Empire 00:33:48.190 --> 00:33:50.990 still secretly exists. So they merged their theory 00:33:50.990 --> 00:33:54.390 with QAnon. They merged it seamlessly. They saw 00:33:54.390 --> 00:33:57.230 the deep state as the same force occupying their 00:33:57.230 --> 00:33:59.910 country. They believed that Donald Trump was 00:33:59.910 --> 00:34:03.069 coming to liberate Germany too and restore the 00:34:03.069 --> 00:34:05.170 Reich. And this wasn't just online LARPing. There 00:34:05.170 --> 00:34:08.150 was a real coup plot. A very real, very serious 00:34:08.150 --> 00:34:11.730 coup plot. In December 2022, German police conducted 00:34:11.730 --> 00:34:14.070 one of the largest raids in their history. They 00:34:14.070 --> 00:34:16.050 arrested dozens of people, including a man named 00:34:16.050 --> 00:34:19.230 Prince Heinrich XIII, a minor aristocrat they 00:34:19.230 --> 00:34:21.210 planned to install as the new leader. And what 00:34:21.210 --> 00:34:24.250 was their plan? Their plan was to storm the Reichstag. 00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:27.559 the Parliament building, arrest lawmakers, and 00:34:27.559 --> 00:34:29.760 trigger a civil war. They had bought weapons, 00:34:29.980 --> 00:34:32.460 they had former soldiers in their ranks, and 00:34:32.460 --> 00:34:34.340 they were heavily influenced by QAnon ideology 00:34:34.340 --> 00:34:37.340 about the storm. And then in Canada, we have 00:34:37.340 --> 00:34:40.119 the Queen of Canada. Romana Didulo. This is a 00:34:40.119 --> 00:34:42.840 spinoff that went totally rogue. She is a Filipino 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.480 -Canadian woman who rose to prominence on Telegram 00:34:45.480 --> 00:34:48.199 after Q went silent. She just stepped into the 00:34:48.199 --> 00:34:50.760 power vacuum. And what was her claim? She claimed 00:34:50.760 --> 00:34:53.400 to be the secret queen of Canada. secretly appointed 00:34:53.400 --> 00:34:55.840 by the same white hat military alliance that 00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:58.179 appointed Trump. And people believed her. Thousands 00:34:58.179 --> 00:35:01.260 of people. She amassed a cult -like following. 00:35:01.900 --> 00:35:04.539 She would travel the country in an RV with her 00:35:04.539 --> 00:35:07.719 followers. She started issuing decrees. Decrees 00:35:07.719 --> 00:35:10.460 about what? She told her followers that because 00:35:10.460 --> 00:35:13.750 she was queen, all debts were canceled electricity 00:35:13.750 --> 00:35:16.250 and water were now free you didn't have to pay 00:35:16.250 --> 00:35:18.530 your taxes or your mortgage so people just stopped 00:35:18.530 --> 00:35:20.010 paying their bills they stopped paying their 00:35:20.010 --> 00:35:22.170 bills they stopped paying their mortgages and 00:35:22.170 --> 00:35:24.610 of course the power companies cut them off the 00:35:24.610 --> 00:35:27.590 banks foreclosed on their homes they lost everything 00:35:27.590 --> 00:35:29.920 and when they complained to her She told them 00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:32.599 it was their fault for not having enough faith 00:35:32.599 --> 00:35:35.639 in her decrees. She gaslit them completely. And 00:35:35.639 --> 00:35:37.920 she got violent, too, didn't she? Her rhetoric 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:40.739 became incredibly violent. She encouraged her 00:35:40.739 --> 00:35:43.039 followers to try and arrest police officers. 00:35:43.219 --> 00:35:46.179 She called for shoot -to -kill orders against 00:35:46.179 --> 00:35:48.260 nurses and doctors who were administering COVID 00:35:48.260 --> 00:35:51.360 vaccines to children. It just shows that once 00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:54.059 you remove the anchor of reality, there is no 00:35:54.059 --> 00:35:57.119 bottom. The delusion can go anywhere. I want 00:35:57.119 --> 00:35:59.179 to zoom out for a second and ask the big why. 00:35:59.699 --> 00:36:02.360 Why this particular story? We've seen conspiracies 00:36:02.360 --> 00:36:06.079 before. JFK, the moon landing, 9 -11. But this 00:36:06.079 --> 00:36:09.800 one feels different. It feels almost religious. 00:36:10.340 --> 00:36:12.320 That's because it is religious in its structure. 00:36:12.820 --> 00:36:15.099 And to understand that, we also have to understand 00:36:15.099 --> 00:36:19.500 that QAnon is not new. It is a remix, a rebranding 00:36:19.500 --> 00:36:22.360 of a very old and a very dangerous hate story. 00:36:22.519 --> 00:36:24.099 You're talking about the blood libel. The blood 00:36:24.099 --> 00:36:26.329 libel. This is an anti -Semitic myth that dates 00:36:26.329 --> 00:36:28.789 back to the Middle Ages. The lie was that Jewish 00:36:28.789 --> 00:36:30.789 communities were kidnapping Christian children 00:36:30.789 --> 00:36:33.150 and using their blood to bake matzah for Passover 00:36:33.150 --> 00:36:36.309 or for other dark rituals. It's the exact same 00:36:36.309 --> 00:36:38.590 plot as the adrenochrome story. It is identical. 00:36:38.730 --> 00:36:41.130 You just find and replace the nouns. Replace 00:36:41.130 --> 00:36:43.170 Jews with the globalist cabal, which for many 00:36:43.170 --> 00:36:46.489 is just a modern code word for Jews anyway. Replace 00:36:46.489 --> 00:36:49.829 ritual with adrenochrome harvesting. It's the 00:36:49.829 --> 00:36:52.429 same monstrous lie, just updated for the Internet 00:36:52.429 --> 00:36:55.070 age. And it also draws heavily from the Protocols 00:36:55.070 --> 00:36:58.429 of the Elders of Zion. Absolutely. The Protocols 00:36:58.429 --> 00:37:01.489 was a fabricated text from the early 1900s created 00:37:01.489 --> 00:37:04.210 by the Russian secret police that claimed to 00:37:04.210 --> 00:37:06.909 reveal a secret Jewish plot for world domination. 00:37:07.630 --> 00:37:09.969 QAnon is just the digital interactive version 00:37:09.969 --> 00:37:13.219 of these old poisonous hatreds. But it also syncs 00:37:13.219 --> 00:37:15.500 up almost perfectly with a certain strain of 00:37:15.500 --> 00:37:17.880 American Christianity. Specifically, American 00:37:17.880 --> 00:37:20.800 evangelical Christianity. If you already view 00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:22.880 the world through the lens of spiritual warfare, 00:37:23.139 --> 00:37:26.019 of an active, ongoing battle between God and 00:37:26.019 --> 00:37:29.159 Satan, angels and demons, then QAnon makes perfect 00:37:29.159 --> 00:37:31.420 sense. It takes that spiritual battle and makes 00:37:31.420 --> 00:37:34.679 it physical and political. Exactly. In this framework, 00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:36.739 Donald Trump isn't just a political candidate 00:37:36.739 --> 00:37:39.829 you like. He's a messianic figure. A King Cyrus, 00:37:40.190 --> 00:37:42.650 an imperfect vessel chosen by God to fight evil. 00:37:42.750 --> 00:37:44.010 And the Democrats aren't just the opposition 00:37:44.010 --> 00:37:47.289 party. They are literally demonic entities, minions 00:37:47.289 --> 00:37:50.210 of Satan. It raises the stakes to cosmic proportions. 00:37:50.690 --> 00:37:52.909 It does. You can compromise with the political 00:37:52.909 --> 00:37:55.389 opponent on a tax bill. You cannot compromise 00:37:55.389 --> 00:37:57.269 with the demon who wants to eat children. It 00:37:57.269 --> 00:38:00.070 demands total war. This also explains the isolation 00:38:00.070 --> 00:38:02.880 we hear so much about. There's a subreddit called 00:38:02.880 --> 00:38:05.480 RQAnonCasualties. I've read some of the posts 00:38:05.480 --> 00:38:07.820 there, and they are absolutely heart -wrenching. 00:38:07.820 --> 00:38:09.980 They are devastating. It's just post after post. 00:38:10.219 --> 00:38:13.579 I lost my mom. I lost my husband. My sister won't 00:38:13.579 --> 00:38:16.099 speak to me. Not to death, but to the rabbit 00:38:16.099 --> 00:38:18.820 hole. The believers are encouraged to isolate 00:38:18.820 --> 00:38:21.159 themselves. Yes, because if your family doesn't 00:38:21.159 --> 00:38:23.320 believe, if they challenge you, it means they 00:38:23.320 --> 00:38:26.840 are asleep. Or worse, they are part of the system, 00:38:26.860 --> 00:38:29.440 part of the cover -up. The movement encourages 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:31.800 you to cut off anyone who challenges the truth. 00:38:32.019 --> 00:38:35.360 It creates a sealed environment, a classic cult 00:38:35.360 --> 00:38:37.940 dynamic. So let's bring this up to the present 00:38:37.940 --> 00:38:41.360 day. It is February 2026. The original Q account 00:38:41.360 --> 00:38:44.139 hasn't posted a real drop in years. The last 00:38:44.139 --> 00:38:46.559 time Ron Watkins was in the news was for a failed 00:38:46.559 --> 00:38:49.199 congressional run in Arizona. But when you look 00:38:49.199 --> 00:38:52.780 at the political landscape, did Q lose or did 00:38:52.780 --> 00:38:55.840 they actually win? That is the complex and disturbing 00:38:55.840 --> 00:38:58.980 part of this story's aftermath. The brand queuing 00:38:58.980 --> 00:39:01.199 on lost. It became toxic. You don't see the Q 00:39:01.199 --> 00:39:03.280 shirts and the big flags at rallies as much anymore. 00:39:03.460 --> 00:39:06.139 But the ideas. The ideas won. The ideas went 00:39:06.139 --> 00:39:09.340 mainstream. How so? The core concepts have been 00:39:09.340 --> 00:39:11.280 laundered and absorbed into regular political 00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:15.420 discourse. The idea of the deep state, that unelected 00:39:15.420 --> 00:39:17.179 bureaucrats are secretly controlling everything, 00:39:17.500 --> 00:39:20.099 that is now standard rhetoric. And the moral 00:39:20.099 --> 00:39:23.019 panics. The obsession with groomers in schools, 00:39:23.219 --> 00:39:25.679 the constant panic about child trafficking being 00:39:25.679 --> 00:39:28.300 an epidemic in every town that comes straight 00:39:28.300 --> 00:39:31.159 from the Q playbook. It's Pizzagate 2 .0. And 00:39:31.159 --> 00:39:33.519 of course, the election denialism. The belief 00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:35.719 that the 2020 election was stolen was a core 00:39:35.719 --> 00:39:38.719 QAnon tenet long before the election even happened. 00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:42.079 By 2024, it was a central plank of the Republican 00:39:42.079 --> 00:39:45.559 Party platform. The sources mention a PRRI poll 00:39:45.559 --> 00:39:48.659 from 2024 that is just stunning. Yes, the Public 00:39:48.659 --> 00:39:50.940 Religion Research Institute. It showed that nearly 00:39:50.940 --> 00:39:53.199 one in five Americans, almost 20 percent of the 00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:56.099 country. agreed with the core tenets of QAnon 00:39:56.099 --> 00:39:58.480 that there is a storm coming to sweep away the 00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:00.940 elites, that violence might be necessary to save 00:40:00.940 --> 00:40:03.239 the country. That is tens of millions of people. 00:40:03.340 --> 00:40:05.360 And with Trump's return to power in the 2024 00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:08.059 election, the source material says the adherents 00:40:08.059 --> 00:40:11.179 rejoiced. For them, it was the ultimate validation. 00:40:11.719 --> 00:40:13.559 They finally got what they were waiting for. 00:40:14.199 --> 00:40:17.519 In their minds, the Biden years from 2021 to 00:40:17.519 --> 00:40:21.099 2025 were just the pause. It was a test of faith, 00:40:21.260 --> 00:40:23.559 a necessary part of the movie they believed they 00:40:23.559 --> 00:40:26.119 were watching. Trump's return proved that the 00:40:26.119 --> 00:40:29.400 plan was real all along. So they don't need cryptic 00:40:29.400 --> 00:40:32.300 clues on 8chan anymore. No. Why would you need 00:40:32.300 --> 00:40:34.559 to decode crumbs when your hero is back in the 00:40:34.559 --> 00:40:38.159 White House? The subtext became the text. The 00:40:38.159 --> 00:40:40.940 fringe narrative became, for them, the political 00:40:40.940 --> 00:40:44.320 reality. It really reframes. how we think about 00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:46.380 truth and belief. We tend to think facts will 00:40:46.380 --> 00:40:47.980 win out in the end. We think, well, the date 00:40:47.980 --> 00:40:49.719 passed, nothing happened, so they'll stop believing. 00:40:50.260 --> 00:40:52.920 But this whole saga shows that a compelling story, 00:40:53.139 --> 00:40:56.099 even a horrifying one, is more powerful than 00:40:56.099 --> 00:40:58.139 a mountain of facts. It offers something that 00:40:58.139 --> 00:41:00.300 facts can't. It offers community. It offers a 00:41:00.300 --> 00:41:02.300 sense of purpose, of significance. It tells you, 00:41:02.320 --> 00:41:04.940 you are special. You're awake. You know the secret 00:41:04.940 --> 00:41:07.949 truth that the sheep don't know. That is a powerful, 00:41:08.010 --> 00:41:10.110 addictive drug. It is very hard to give that 00:41:10.110 --> 00:41:12.269 up and go back to just being a regular person 00:41:12.269 --> 00:41:15.110 in a messy, confusing world. So to wrap this 00:41:15.110 --> 00:41:18.429 all up, we've gone from a single anonymous post 00:41:18.429 --> 00:41:21.869 about Hillary Clinton to a global movement that 00:41:21.869 --> 00:41:25.170 reshaped politics, incited real world violence 00:41:25.170 --> 00:41:28.630 and broke countless families apart. It was collaborative 00:41:28.630 --> 00:41:31.449 fiction that bled into reality. It's a warning. 00:41:31.550 --> 00:41:34.719 It's a case study. It shows us that in the digital 00:41:34.719 --> 00:41:38.000 age, our shared reality is much more fragile 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:39.840 than we thought. And that leads me to my final 00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:42.059 thought for everyone listening. If QAdon proved 00:41:42.059 --> 00:41:45.059 one thing, it's that a rigorous shared understanding 00:41:45.059 --> 00:41:47.360 of the world can be dismantled by an anonymous 00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:49.940 person just asking questions and dropping a few 00:41:49.940 --> 00:41:53.400 digital crumbs. And it makes you wonder. Is the 00:41:53.400 --> 00:41:55.960 next Q already posting? The next Q won't look 00:41:55.960 --> 00:41:57.940 like Q. It won't have the same name. It won't 00:41:57.940 --> 00:41:59.840 be on a message board. It might be a TikTok trend. 00:41:59.980 --> 00:42:02.320 It might be a series of AI -generated influencers. 00:42:02.599 --> 00:42:04.900 It might even be a podcast. Are we already consuming 00:42:04.900 --> 00:42:07.239 the next set of crumbs and we just haven't realized 00:42:07.239 --> 00:42:09.480 it's a game yet? That is the question we should 00:42:09.480 --> 00:42:11.940 all be asking ourselves every single time we 00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:14.480 open our phones. On that cheery note, thank you 00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:16.619 for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious, 00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:18.300 stay critical, and check your sources.