They're all around us... it could be your
neighbor,
your co-worker, your uber driver, your
creepy uncle.
They seem normal, look normal... they are anything but normal.
After work, these true patriots take to their keyboards and query the internet to uncover the
evil workings of the marxist cabal,
and fight the apostates,
all in an effort to make America great again, freeing it from the grasp of evil.
They
are
QAnon
In a nutshell, the Q movement believes
the world is controlled by a small group
of deep state liberal elites, the cabal, who are also secretly engaged in an international pedophile ring.
Donald trump is an outsider who was privy to the corruption but did not take part in it.
Once elected, he set in motion a plan to drain the swamp and bring the evil and corrupt cabal to justice.
To do this, Trump needs the help of true patriots who do long hours of research online,
connecting the dots to uncover the truth and spread awareness of the cabal and its misdeeds.
Q is a whole world of crazy, the pinnacle of conspiracy thinking in the Trumpian era,
and it's going mainstream.
I find Q fascinating, if not frightening, and I know someone who is deeply involved in it.
I wanted to understand this movement. I
took a deep dive, interviewed a Q follower,
and in this video I want to answer some Qs about what Q is, what they believe,
how much influence they have in politics today, and if they are a cult,
and we will debunk some Q proofs.
To make things easy, i will use "he" to talk about Q.
But i should clarify that nobody really knows who Q is. If it's a he or she, or more than one person.
When I think of Q, I imagine a paranoid narcissistic neckbeard sort of guy
who lives in his grandma's basement.
But, nobody knows. Could be a troll, though i don't think that's the case.
Could be Melania.
Also, I struggled over what to call Q's
followers.
In Q they call them "anons". I thought of
calling them "q followers" or "q members",
but i ended up going with "Quebies".
So, without further ado, let's dive in.
Qanon was born in a dark, shady corner of the internet,
the "politically incorrect" board of 4chan.
4chan of course being an anonymous message board where people gather to discuss a range of lovely topics,
from white supremacism, to
incels, to conspiracies.
A common thing to see on 4chan are posts from people claiming to be intelligence community insiders.
Most, or all, of course, aren't and they just want attention.
However, in 2017, one such post appeared from someone who would later be referred to as "Q".
Q's post predicted that Hillary
Clinton would soon be arrested.
He asked pointed questions about George
Soros and the puppet masters
pulling strings in washington and around the world.
Q's posts were promoted by other conspiracy theorists
and they began to gain traction.
In the years since, he has posted
thousands of "Q drops", as they are called,
first to 4chan, then 8chan, then 8Kun.
Q drops can include photos, videos, or links to articles.
Though, a lot of the time, they are just text. Q drops are often riddles or a string of questions
that are not highly detailed and are highly open to interpretation.
A typo, a skipped line, an acronym... these all have meaning. They are clues.
Quebies are supposed to dig through news articles to piece together the puzzle.
Q drops are written to make them seem
important and secretive,
as Q is supposedly an intelligence insider who has direct access to Donald Trump
and to highly classified information.
Q rhetoric is also full of signals and
insider phrases like "take the oath"
or WWG1WGA,
which stands for "where we go one we go all"
Quebies believe that Q drops
often contain misleading information and questions
that purposefully point people in the wrong direction.
This is meant to throw off enemies and people who aren't really there to learn.
It's also a handy way of dismissing any unexpected outcomes, as well as any criticism.
There is a long list of things that Q promised which didn't pan out,
and they dismiss these inconvenient truths by saying that those claims were wrong on purpose,
to find the leaks, to identify enemies, or they'll say that the mainstream media is lying,
or that trump really is succeeding and we just don't know it because it's classified.
All of this, the cryptic speech, the questions, the insider talk...
Makes Q confusing. Understanding Q is confusing.
This is supposedly all by design. It's a barrier to entry,
not only to scare off wannabes and trolls, but to enlighten the Quebies.
Dave Hayes, the author of Q chronicles,
says Q uses the socratic teaching method,
which involves asking questions to draw out a student's underlying ideas and logic and to get at a greater truth.
To say that Q is some socratic master
is fucking absurd.
Q speaks in questions because it is safer than outright stating something that could later be quoted as wrong.
His posts are designed to give an air of importance and enigma.
They draw people into a connect the dots scavenger hunt that is
made to make them see patterns where there aren't any.
They are designed to make you think, for example,
that the 2017 meeting between Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman
was more than just a business deal.
That because a week later, the very moderate Mohammed bin Salman led an investigation into corruption,
well, Kushner was clearly on a mission for Trump to drain Saudi Arabia's swamp.
And of course, Hillary Clinton is relevant here because of course Saudi Arabia allows child brides,
and so they are obviously a hub for liberal pedophiles to come and abuse children.
Seriously, that's what it's like.
Q theories are an excellent study in
logical fallacies.
that logic is post hoc ergo procter hoc.
I was highly curious about the origin of the name Q,
given that there is a character in star trek named Q that has the power to control time, space, and reality.
He is all-knowing, omnipotent, and hides his true motivations.
He is also bored and has nothing to do, so he manipulates lowly humans
because he has the power to do so.
Q: "Games? Did someone say games? To the game!"
Now i don't know about you, but that sounds pretty dang apt to me.
Star Trek Q sounds a lot like what conspiracy Q thinks he is,
an all-knowing, omnipotent manipulator
who, in actuality, is a villain.
If Q had named himself that, well, it would certainly lend credence to the theories that some people have
that Qanon was started as one big troll.
However, unfortunately, the name Q comes from a november 1st, 2017 post
where the anonymous intelligence insider reveals that he has "q-level clearance",
which apparently is a totally real thing.
The essence of Q ideology is that there is a fight going on between good and evil in politics.
Good vs. evil, corrupt vs. honest, christian vs. atheist, family values vs. deviance and abuse.
Evangelicalism and Christianity are major aspects of Q.
Q rhetoric is full of biblical and religious references.
Dave Hayes says that god directed him to Q through his dreams,
and another Quebie told an atlantic writer the same thing.
Documentary filmmaker Arthur Jones
explained that one purpose of Q is to
justify supporting Trump despite his
sinful nature.
Conspiracy theories are popular because
they serve a purpose.
They simplify problems and identify who
to blame.
The world is complicated and issues are complex and hard to grasp,
and people fear what they don't understand. If you can break these issues down into black and white
and make a villain that is unquestionably evil, who you can blame for all your problems,
then you can feel more reassured more in control.
Nowhere is this more clear than within Q ideology.
Q video: "...or why you never seem to be able to get out of debt, why there is poverty, division, and crime."
"What if i told you there was a reason
for it all? What if i told you it was done on purpose?"
If this sounds familiar, that's because Q has just rebranded the old illuminati, new world order theories.
And it has the anti-semitic George Soros
cliche.
The core elements of this belief system
have been around forever.
Democrats and some moderate republicans are the new illuminati, according to q.
And to make everything as
simple, as black and white as possible,
the evildoers in this story are not only
corrupt, they are pedophiles.
It doesn't end there, though, they have also found the fountain of youth.
According to Qanon, liberal elites take a
drug called adrenochrome,
which is a chemical that is supposedly
secreted from the brains of young people,
the younger the better, when they are
under intense duress, like sexual abuse.
I shit you not, Qanon believes adrenochrome is extracted from the brains of abused children,
and taken as a drug by liberal elites to stay young and boost energy.
This doesn't really line up with their sleepy joe narrative,
or the fact that democrats are aging at the same rate as everyone else,
or that adrenochrome is a neurotoxic chemical.
Or that you can't extract drugs from human beings...
This whole idea is fucking insane,
and some twisted asshole actually
made up this disturbing story.
The last q-spiracy i'll describe is the
storm.
"the storm is coming!", when trump will
demolish the two-tiered system of
justice that allows evildoers to get away with their crimes.
And troops will round up corrupt democrat pederasts and lock them up in guantanamo bay,
And secure 12 more years in office for
orange julius.
Apparently, the storm has already begun,
with the arrests of
Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, and many more are to follow.
This is Q's apocalyptic prophecy.
There is a coming revolution, a coming apocalypse,
and trump is america's savior who is supposed to bring that apocalypse.
So, i guess trump is like jesus?
Q rhetoric and propaganda
does kind of give off that impression.
Q could be dismissed as just another big
fat stinking load of conspiracy horseshit,
if it wasn't dangerous. but it is.
Q has not gone away, despite being proven wrong so many times.
If anything, Q is getting more powerful.
They have a collection of literature, they have websites, and merchandise that makes somebody money,
and now they have politicians who pander to them for support.
Just recently, General Flynn tweeted "taking the oath", which sent ripples of excitement through the quebie community.
Q is a growing movement that opposes reason, rationality, objectivity, truth, and nuance.
It promotes a duality of good versus
evil, and when there is pure evil,
the only good thing to do is to fight it.
In 2016, a year before Q was conceived, a man drove to washington dc from salisbury, north carolina.
He parked outside Comet Ping Pong,
grabbed his ar15 and his revolver,
and walked into the pizza restaurant.
Conspiracists who believed in pizzagate believed that,
behind a door in that restaurant was a staircase that led to a basement where a pedophile ring led by
Hillary Clinton would regularly abuse children.
Edgar Welch fired his gun inside the restaurant, but luckily no one was hurt.
He did get to open that door,
and he found that it was just a utility closet.
Q came in, propped up the already popular pizzagate theories, and took off from there.
Even before the Q movement began,
its beliefs had driven a person to violence,
and he wouldn't be the last.
In 2018, a quebie was arrested with bomb-making materials.
He planned to bomb the illinois capital to spread awareness of the new world order.
The same year, a heavily armed quebie was
arrested for blocking traffic in an armored truck.
Also in 2018, a man killed 11 people and wounded at least six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
He followed the Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory.
That may not be Q, but it's another example of the consequences of believing in these
good versus evil conspiracies.
In 2019, a quebie plotted a raid with other quebies to kidnap her son from protective custody.
Another lured a mob boss to come outside
his home and shot him dead,
apparently believing that the mob boss was a member of the deep state.
Another quebie put a sword through his brother's head, killing him.
Another was arrested after kidnapping her two kids, who had been placed in their grandparents custody.
Several of these acts were cited in a 2019 FBI memo that classified qanon as a
domestic terrorist threat.
It says that conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists are a growing threat.
"The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories will likely emerge, spread, and evolve
in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists
to carry out criminal or violent acts."
Q forums online have been shut down numerous times for inciting hatred and promoting violence.
In my own forays into the Q forums, i saw a lot of comments like
"what can i do to fight to save my country?", people who were very eager to act, to help bring the storm.
It would only be natural that this turns violent, especially if trump loses the election to someone
they believe is part of the cabal.
Q would be happy if trump stayed in office indefinitely,
and i can only imagine what they might do when it's his time to get the f**k out.
But Q is also dangerous because the
movement can sway politics.
Nobody really knows how many quebies
there are.
All i can say is too many. They can be
seen screaming at people in department stores,
Q Karen: "because i'm a blonde white woman?"
"I was hired to be the qanon
spokesperson"
They may have Q bumper stickers and flags, they review books on amazon,
and they are numerous enough that
politicians want to earn their support.
For conservative politicians, an easy way
to get votes is to pander to Q.
Doesn't take much, just a tweet with a signal phrase like "take the oath"
and quebies will believe that you are on the side of good, you'll put those pedos behind bars.
A media matters report found that in 2020, dozens of congressional candidates had embraced qanon.
Trump has retweeted q supporters so many times,
he's invited them to the
white house and to speak at his rallies.
And Eric Trump couldn't possibly be less blatant about his love for Q.
Okay, moving on... is Q a cult?
It certainly appears that way to many
people.
The short answer is maybe, I think probably not,
but it has many characteristics of a cult that certainly are concerning.
When evaluating if a group is a cult, we can look to the BITE model.
BITE stands for behavior, information thought, and emotional control.
Doing a full BITE model analysis on Q would take a while, but i think it warrants a quick look.
As far as behavior control goes, Q ranks pretty low.
They don't dictate a person's clothing or relationships,
but they do certainly push followers to
spend lots of time researching.
When it comes to information control, Q ranks much higher.
They distort information, they demonize liberal and centrist media sources,
they distinguish outsider versus insider information,
and they use propaganda. they have
lots of propaganda.
Now on to thought control.
They fit some of these to a tee.
Black and white thinking, good versus evil,
adopting the group's map of reality,
us versus them...
this is exactly what Q does.
And lastly, we have emotional control.
This one is less clear, but i do think Q uses emotional control to a degree.
They play off fear, fear of losing status, fear of losing freedom of religion,
and fear that the country is being run by criminals.
They talk about pedophilia so much because it's an emotional topic,
there is no greater evil.
You are supposed to feel hate and loathing for the enemy so you'll fight them.
So, Q rings pretty highly in information and thought control, but less in behavioral and emotional control.
I think you could definitely argue that Q is a cult.
Perhaps one reason I hesitate to call it that is that it implies that quebies are
indoctrinated victims, and I just don't want to give them that justification.
Quebies claim to be righteous, god-fearing, america-loving people who value life.
They say so constantly.
Yet they promote politicians who harm,
they spread around flawed and harmful misinformation.
Q's message is MAGA, America was great and is now being destroyed by liberals and minorities.
To that i say, when was America more great?
Jim Crow? When women would be blamed for rape and were expected to stay home and make babies?
Q takes this inclusive, love everyone stance,
but their rhetoric is filled with barely-concealed racism, anti-semitism and ultra-nationalism.
They oppose world peace. They oppose global peacekeeping institutions like the WHO, NATO and the UN.
They want everyone in America to be God-fearing,
and that means fearing their god.
They divide america
into two sides, patriots and traitors,
and in order to make it onto the patriots list, you have to be very conservative and share their beliefs.
Q looks for evil where there is none,
creates problems and misdeeds where there aren't any,
and they turn away from a preponderance of evidence of real corruption and real wrongdoing.
The evidence they have to back up their
claims is extremely weak.
They love numerology, they'll say,
"did you know there were 17 police cars
at roger stone's arrest?"
"and guess what the 17th letter of the
alphabet is!"
They will tell you there is undeniable
proof that Q is legit,
he has accurately predicted future
events.
There are a couple reasons that this is
complete bullshit...
As i said, the list of things Q got wrong
is very long and growing.
Q could make a thousand predictions, get 995 of them wrong,
and his followers will point to those five somewhat correct predictions and call it proof,
proof that he is an intelligence insider
with more knowledge than the public.
One such proof, as seen in this graphic,
is that Q knew long before the public
that John Durham met with Roger Stone.
Well, given that stone was arrested in January 2019,
and Durham was brought into the Russia investigation in May,
one could safely assume that the two
were meeting.
Or you could just do a little digging
and see that Stone and Durham meetings
were public knowledge as early as May, 2019.
What about this proof? Q apparently
predicted that a
rogue intelligence agent would hack trump's twitter a day before it happened.
With a little research we see that there
were already news articles published
about this before q posted.
And the hack was a rogue twitter employee, not an intelligence agent.
And how about this proof?
Q predicted that big news would be coming out about Flynn, right before big news came out about Flynn.
Coincidence? Well, right before Q made that post, the trial judge made a big decision in Flynn's case.
There were already multiple news stories
about it. Anyone could guess that more would follow.
Q predicted a voter ID push a year before it happened?
Nooooo, voter ID laws were already being widely discussed in 2018,
well before Q posted about it. It was known that this would be a hot button issue moving forward.
Now how about this... one major proof for the quebies is the seemingly significant fact that
Q has posted within a minute of Trump posting on twitter,
and he's done so a whopping 36 times...
out of the 5,000 times he's posted...
Is it proof? I don't buy it.
I looked into this, comparing the timestamps on Q's posts and the
miraculous trump tweets that supposedly came seconds later.
In some cases, the miracle is simply a
time zone issue.
I'm in pacific standard time right now,
and it's clear that
Trump posted this a full hour before Q.
The time stamps change depending on which time zone you're in,
and so these proofs can be manipulated that way.
In other cases the timestamps i saw were totally weird,
but clearly show that Q posted after Trump.
This watch photo really twisted some knickers.
It read 1:29, and a week later, the DOJ posted about Barr at 1:29.
Well, Trump tweeted at exactly the same
time the day prior...
I guess around 1:30 eastern time is a
common time to post.
This is really flimsy evidence to base
your entire world view on.
Q has gotten it wrong far far more
than he's got it right,
and looking into these proofs, i don't
think he's ever got it right.
These proofs prove jack shit.
Quebies continuously move the goal post forward.
In the beginning it was "Hillary Clinton will be arrested"
and when she wasn't, it was "John Podesta will be indicted"
and when he wasn't, it was "Trump will get those pedos, he's just being challenged and needs our help"
The fact that Q has survived and thrived this long shows just how susceptible people are to conspiracy theories.
I mentioned that people believe in this
stuff for a sense of clarity
and to have someone to blame.
I also think people are desperate for a cause.
The left has adopted social and environmental causes,
while the right has rejected those to protect power and profit.
So, if you're a conservative, what can you
root for?
Trump: "they're bringing crime, they're rapist"
"roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens"
"we have been under siege"
"they are really going after you, that's what it's all about"
"they try to erase your vote,
erase your legacy of the greatest campaign"
Tucker Carlson: "remember that
when they come for you"
"if you show weakness of any kind they will crush you"
Trump: "They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it"
On a more macro scale, I think Q
is a byproduct,
a side effect, of social change and post-truth.
We are going through a societal transition,
and that can be tough for the people who benefited from the old system.
The WASPS in this country are losing
some of their power,
so what we see is the reaction of a panicked, cornered animal.
Karens shouting at service workers,
politicians pandering to emotions,
and conspiracy ideologies that
seek to justify hating progress,
to make social transition the work of
evildoers and puppet masters who must be stopped.
Q will be with us for a while,
conspiracy thinking will be with us forever,
and it will thrive in our pseudo-intellectual, post-truth world.
I do think it's important to be aware of qanon and similar movements,
and to respond to their followers with facts and logic.
And get out and vote, vote for politicians that value truth and true american values
like diversity, equality, freedom, and
progress.
Quebies think that they are the true
patriots,
and i think that they don't even know what america is.
Oh goodness. She says please stop talking
about this.
okay, i agree.
Let me know in the comments if you have ever met anyone
who was involved in
Q or something similar.
I hope you guys found this video interesting, and if you did please remember to like and subscribe.
My name is Sarah Bethea and, as always, thank you so much for watching!
 
