Amanda Moore reveals her undercover journey into far-right extremism, starting at the Stop the Steel Rally (Nov 2020) and escalating through CPAC, Matt Gaetz fundraisers, and January 6th, where she witnessed Proud Boys, QAnon shifts like mocking Marjorie Taylor Greene, and election denialism tactics—including Dominion Inc. demonization and school harassment. School board attacks weaponized CRT with baseless claims like child sex trafficking, electing anti-public education candidates in Virginia. Younger voters, swayed by messaging from figures like Josh Hawley, risk a "perfect storm" of conspiracies merging into broader populist threats, though Moore insists faith—not fringe theories—holds ultimate power. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello, I am one guy who likes to sit around and worship the altar scene and talk a little bit about Alex Jones.
And if Jordan were here, I would imagine that right about now I'd be getting just incredibly surprised by him asking me if I had a bright spot.
And if he were here, I would tell him that my bright spot today is actually, it's something that maybe a little delayed being a bright spot, but there's a new season of Survivor upon us.
It started a couple weeks back.
Me and my friend Angela Lampsbury have been watching the season.
There's a lot of problems with Survivor still.
I think they have added too many bells and whistles.
I think I've made this point in the past.
Too many convoluted rules about idols that only have power at a certain point.
It's a mess.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you don't understand these Byzantine rules that Survivor has added, good for you.
I'm rambling a little bit.
That's what happens when I'm sitting here alone, I suppose.
So, I wanted to put out a little special Sneaky Snake episode today, and in Jordan's absence, we thought to take the opportunity to have a chat with somebody who folks have requested that we have a chat with, and someone who I think is a very interesting person, and so I sat down and had a little chat with Amanda Moore, and we will be getting into that in just a moment.
But before we do, I would like to take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks.
On that note, let us jump to this interview that me and Amanda did, and we will catch you on Friday for another episode.
We will see you then.
Hello, folks.
How do you do?
Joining me today in Jordan's absence...
I thought there was somebody who I wanted to have a conversation with, somebody who I found very interesting and thought might be relevant to a lot of the topics that we cover on the show.
So I'm thrilled to be joined today by Amanda Moore.
I feel like for most people, it's probably not a healthy thing, but given your particular path and trajectory, maybe it's appropriate for you to enjoy the show.
You know, I think, so my plan was just to go, like, I went to the South and Steel rallies and I was just, like, there.
Like, I was taking pictures and, like, tweeting about it.
And for the second South and Steel rally in December of 2020, my cast asked me to record some audio since I live here and they knew I was going to go anyway.
And so then, I was like, well, I'll go to the third one, and I'll just see.
Maybe I can sell the auto to another podcast.
Maybe I can write whatever.
And then we started the Capitol.
So I was like, oh, no.
So it kind of just kept escalating.
So I only ever meant to kind of go to things and be in and out and not have a personality.
But when I was at CPAC, which is a mainstream Republican event, A Nazi recruited me to help his grassroots organization get more congressmen.
So yeah, it seems like it was, you know, being around and then people coming up to you and sort of being like, hey, you want to dip in a little further?
It seems like that is a lot of the sort of people you hear who fall down these rabbit holes, or people who don't have those support structures, people who maybe have gotten some...
Weird politics and the people around them are tolerant of it or just have had enough of it.
And then they find the people who will accept them, you know?
I mean, it's a crass way to say it, but it is true.
During COVID, especially here, I mean, I know the rest of the country was different because I traveled all around the country during COVID, but here, like...
You know, people like D.C. had one of the highest mask compliance rates in the country.
So people wearing masks outside, like, well into the summer of 2020.
I mean, it was all very much like if somebody didn't do the rules or didn't do what was socially acceptable, I mean, you definitely were like, you know.
I guess something that I'm kind of interested in is early on, when you started to notice that you're getting enmeshed in some of these circles, what sort of goal did you have with the undercover?
Was there a, like, I'm going to find criminal activity or information?
I mean, at first, like I said, once the guy talked to me at CPAC and was like, "Hey, we have this group," I was still like, "Whatever." And then I Googled him, and I realized his group is actually working in Congress.
They are actually helping write stuff with Congress.
And when I messaged him, I was like, "Yeah, I'm very interested in helping you." He's like, "Well, I have this contact at the Hungarian embassy, so you guys can be done." And so I was like, oh my god, am I actually doing this edition?
So I mean, it became like, yeah, I was like, this is, you know, at some point, people are like, oh, you should write about it.
I was like, I'll probably write some long-form article or something.
And then it started to be like, okay, well, obviously, I think there might be criminal charges here.
This is definitely something that voters should know about, every congressperson that's running.
Obviously, this is much more than a long-form piece now that I have to write.
And so it's just kind of like all over the place, but I didn't really, I still didn't really have a plan other than get as much information as possible and then sort it out later.
And a lot of that was, like, they don't have media, they don't allow media, and they don't, they don't, if they live stream, something gets taken down, so that's, like, lost, the lost QAnon chronicles of 2021 that I was recording, so that was a little different.
So yeah, a whole year of experiences that you've had.
That's obviously going to be more than a single piece.
As you're describing it, you know, you're going to these sort of more mainstream conservative areas, you know, whether it be the CPAC or I guess you could call Stop the Steal stuff like fairly mainstream now.
And then the QAnon stuff.
And so there's sort of multiple threads and they kind of...
How much overlap did you experience between that kind of those worlds?
I'm 33 years old and everybody I was hanging out with in the fascist world was like probably my age, a little older, a little younger, like roughly in my age group.
Cuban and stuff was way more like boomers.
And so there wouldn't be like that kind of overlap.
The overlap that I would see would be like Turning Point USA.
Which is meant for mainstream young Republicans.
Like, the fascists that I was hanging out with would go there and recruit people.
Like, obviously, they got me at CPAC.
They would be happy to use the QAnon people, for sure, which they talked about extensively.
I think a lot of it's like the age difference, where if the stuff I was going to was free.
So if I was going to, like, maybe free QAnon stuff, or like if I was more on the West Coast, where there's like all those rallies in LA.
Where they do skew much younger.
I probably would have seen more crossover, but just the way it worked out.
Well, on January 6th, I actually, I messaged a friend of the show, Mike Rothschild, and I was like, this is the first time I've seen a guy in a 3% shirt talk to a guy in a QAnon shirt.
They're like grilling hot dogs before we stormed the Capitol, you know?
And so that was a lot.
And then like 3%ers were handing out water bottles at a QAnon event I went to.
They were like, Providing, like, security and, like, services for us.
And, like, this is not my first, like, I've never been undercover, but because of the way I look, it's pretty easy for me just to walk into the wrong side of the protest.
So, like, Laura Loomer had a big rally in D.C. A few years ago, and I literally walked out of my office on the wrong side of the building and ended up at it, and I was like, oh, guess I'm recording this now.
And, like, you know, there wasn't that, like...
I mean, there's just...
I've never seen anything like that mesh into people, because people make fun of the QAnon people, you know?
Even the people in those, like, those right-wing circles are making fun of that, yeah.
That kind of bums me out, but pretty expected, I would think.
You experienced, I guess, what you're describing as kind of being an intentional people who are maybe more extreme going to places like Turning Point, like CPAC, in order to maybe find people who would be receptive to their more extreme message.
This is an intentional strategy that you see people using, I take it.
Like, I have audio with literal Nazis talking about how, yeah, we're going to just start going to, you know, young Republican stuff, and we're going to say, yeah, I'm a nationalist.
Yeah, like, I'm, you know, obviously, like, I'm a white nationalist.
That's what I would tell people because I had to explain why I'm not there and I'm just sad.
I want at least eight white babies.
I think the guys are mostly in their early 30s.
There is that.
Below that, in age range, you have...
APU, the American Popular Student, which is a spinoff group of GRIPERS who are like, "Nick Quintus is too toxic." And then you have the obviously of Nick.
So the Turning Point USA banned Nick, banned a handful of GRIPERS.
And then APU isn't welcome, but plenty of those guys go to Turning Point USA events.
And then above that, you have the group I was with, who's just straight up given a booth to be an exhibitor.
So one of the things that I wanted to bring up is kind of like related to the stuff that we kind of go over on this show is I feel like my sense of things is that there's like Alex and his sort of propaganda world and then the sort of waters that you were swimming in were they're related in as much as there's Hard right extremism and a lot of the same ideas and
a lot of the same desires for the world.
But it seems like that's a completely separate group.
There are names that ring out in the communities that you were talking about that have nothing to do with Alex and Infowars.
And they probably, I'm guessing, think that Alex is a joke.
And somebody was like, you know, we make fun of the big red man.
I guess he says the frogs are turning gay, and he's like, what's happening?
The frogs are turning gay.
And we have a moment where we also applaud for Alex Jones.
And like, there is this like, and I don't think it's fake.
It's like, you know, oh, like, he's like, you know, basically, like, I think there's a lot of recognition that like, he paved the way for people to kind of be who they are.
And so even if you think some of his ideas are like, silly or stupid, or he's like an out of such movement, it's like, well, he's also done.
So he like, gets some respect.
I can't really think of a comparison to the left that we have, but I know that we have these people.
Yeah, and I was also thinking of a lot of people who, I mean, everyone that I knew who was a fascist, everybody's like, yeah, we did January 6th.
It was us.
It was cool as hell.
I would do it again tomorrow.
It didn't go far enough.
And I actually think that Alex Jones' involvement in creating the atmosphere in which January 6th happened really, like, led to some goodwill because people are pretty forgiving when they're like, oh, you know, he's calling it a conspiracy.
He's calling it this or that.
It's like, well, cast him, you know?
And so, I think that kind of helped him in a way that I didn't really expect.
Even if it is, you know, I want to talk to you about how China stole the election and I have forensic, you know, at least it's sincere that he thinks that that's what's going on.
So one question I thought of is, I think, and this is something that I talked with Bill Ogden, one of the lawyers in the Sandy Hook case, like sometimes being Exposed to a ton of material on a kind of a regular basis makes you question a little bit of your preconceived notions or, like, the ideas you go in with.
I was wondering if there's any point that you can think of where you questioned, like, maybe these people are right or onto something.
So I think part of why maybe this didn't happen to me is because...
I wasn't leading one life undercover, but, like, there would be things I would say to Cuban people about things that, oh, yeah, I believe, yeah, sure, of course there's children out of the Getty.
And, like, that's the kind of stuff that you can't say to, like, a 28-year-old normal fascist because they're going to be like, what's wrong with you?
And so I was already having to do all of this, like, mental gymnastics where I'd have to overanalyze stuff and be like, okay, and if I...
I would hear news, I would literally have to think, how would a Q person respond to this?
And how would a fascist person respond to this?
And so instead of adapting one mindset or listening to one thing for so long, I was kind of listening to things that sometimes conflict with each other.
And I think that probably helped because it was constantly...
You know, I might listen to Alex Jones talk about a topic.
And so there would be times, too, where I would hear stuff from the QAnon side of things where I would have to be like, what the fuck are they talking about?
And I would have to Google it just to understand where they're coming from because it's like, how are we even getting here?
And so I think that also was helpful because it's like I have to see the real world answer to whatever they're saying.
I feel like it would be tough not to just succumb to thinking of QAnon as kind of randomness because so much of whatever the belief is You could just have any belief.
You'd think.
At least I think that most people view it that way.
Do you think that there is more of a set system for the things that they believe than randomness?
But then he was like 6 million, and I'm like, okay.
So he's like, but you know, more people are dying from Fauci's Holocaust because the current gas chambers are the ER rooms.
And everybody's like, what?
So that's what he's, like, going into, like, you know, it's not COVID that fills your lungs with fluid, it's remdesivir, and he's intentionally done this, and it's all bullshit and lies.
But it's like, it's like a comedian, like, doing a test set, but it's, you know, these conspiracy theorists, like, trying things out.
I think I have a sense, and this is a completely uneducated sense, but I feel like the people are definitely responding to whatever YouTube videos they watch or whatever creator, their version of things.
But whatever their creator believes, that has a slight bit of randomness to it.
I've only heard that ever from one weird guy on YouTube named Stephen Kelly who believes that he has mental ninjas or he calls them Jedi who go down into the Getty to do battle with the demons and stuff down there.
I've never heard that being a more popular theory.
I'm excited to hear that the Jedi are getting some help.
So, you know, like if you go to a conference, people who like go to them for their jobs, you know, they travel, they fly out somewhere, they're on their work dollar, they go out to the bar, they get really drunk, like a club or something.
So at these events, the QAnon events.
It's like that, but instead you go to extra baptisms all night.
What?
Yeah, super cool.
I had a great time.
So I was at an illicit beachside baptism with Greg Locke and this other guy.
And we FaceTimed Lynn Wood.
And now there's like video of me on Lynn Wood's Telegram channel, like in the crowd chanting, we love you, Lynn.
It's so embarrassing.
People were asking if we hung out, people were asking the guy who had FaceTime on wood, like, okay, so, like, tell us all about it, and people were like, does he know if Hillary's been executed?
And that was the thing, too, is a lot of the people that I knew when I was libertarian became Oath Keepers and Cowboys and Paper Sinners.
I mean, when...
When Michael Brown was killed, I mean, that's where these militia groups really, I think, made national news probably for the first time.
And I really remember, I mean, I remember them from before, but I don't remember them making news the way they did when they were, you know, in St. Louis, in Baltimore.
And then when Trump became, I mean, so I was like already, like by the time the transition election happened, I was like, absolutely, I'm done with this party.
That's one of the things that I find really interesting.
Who is it?
Webster Tarpley, I believe, wrote a piece around the time Trump was running about how libertarianism and Ron Paul fandom was a doorway to fascism, basically.
I was in line to get a photo with General Flynn at the bar in May of 2021, and this mother-daughter duo in front of me turned around, and they did not say hello.
The daughter just goes, I'm my mom's last chance for grandchildren.
And her mom goes, yeah, her twin brother got vaccinated so we could keep going to college.
And I was like, I'm Amanda.
And that was the moment where I was like, Okay, so nobody's ever going to know I'm vaccinated.
Like, yeah, I mean, some of the things I heard just so bizarre, and then there'd be these weird times where it would be like, some would be like, COVID doesn't even exist.
But then, that was a pretty rare opinion.
I very rarely heard it, but when I heard it, it was always in a book, so I think it would be like, I literally almost died of it.
It's real.
And they'd be like, "But you could have just had the flip." And they'd be like, "Well, I couldn't taste anything." And they'd be like, "Well, your nose is stuck.
You can't taste." And it's a completely different experience.
And so watching people have little fights over whether or not COVID is real was always kind of very bizarre.
Did you run into many people who I've noticed a thing, and maybe it's just through Project Camelot stuff, but there's people, and David Icke too, I guess, but people who are like, you know what?
This whole thing has made me realize that science isn't real.
I'm sure many of your listeners have seen this car.
It's a red Mazda.
And it's got stickers all over it, the windshield, the windows, and the person who owns it ended up joining the QAnon cult that would form in Dallas later on.
Totally normal and believable, and JFK Jr. is really about to lie, but it is true that some of them do, and so I think that kind of stuff, I think it is now what JFK Jr. used to be.
Being in some of these worlds and these communities, we're coming up on the midterms, and you were around in what I would say is an election-heavy time to be embedded with these folks.
I literally sometimes I'm just like, how do you come up with this?
So that's fine.
But then it shifted to Audit every single election.
And not only that, but I remember people being like, I don't understand why we would audit elections where we won.
And I snapped one day and I was like, it's to undermine the entire electoral process so that we can say that we won everything.
And people were like, right, exactly.
I said the quiet part out loud.
People were like, yeah, duh, obviously.
And we would have People come in and teach us, like, okay, this is how I harassed my, like, fairly elected, low-level GOP, like, county chair out of office so that I could take over.
I don't know how commonplace it is, but I mean, it's like...
So at that point, what's the cure to that?
How do you solve harassing a woman's children because she's a rhino until she quits her job?
And it's like, maybe you do it through the court system.
But you know what?
We have a seven-year-old who has to go to court to point at a friend of Lynn Wood's and be like, "That's the man to follow the people on the bus!" And we're putting democracy on the back of a seven-year-old kid.
That's fucking crazy.
Or, you know, like, there's no intervention process, and private lawsuits from Spartmatic and Dominion can only go so far.
They can only target so many people.
They can't be, you know, at every jurisdiction, especially because a lot of these places didn't even use their voting machines.
And so, no one's offered a solution to combat this, so I don't really see how it gets better.
And maybe they're, I mean, trying to think of a solution is probably Probably impossible.
Just the example you're giving, whether or not this happened exactly as it did, but the person following someone's kid's home and then they quit their low-level position, probably no one ever would hear about that.
There are tons and tons of offices that are in local levels that all kinds of nonsense could be happening around them.
Yeah, and a lot of it is targeting school boards and district chair.
And so, obviously, district chair, that position, whatever it's called, wherever people live, all different things are in places, but they are the beginning stepping stone for completely not delegating elections.
And I've been looking for it somewhere around me.
I have a little booklet teaching me, okay, if there's a rhino and you're in the position that you want, talk shit.
Talk shit about them to everybody.
Show up to everything.
You know, it's like a plan to beat them.
And, I mean, school boards, too.
Let's see what the school board elections.
Last year, in April, I was at an event, and Landon Starbuck was a speaker, and she's a right-wing propagandist, who's the wife of Robbie Starbuck, who's a congressional candidate, which is good.
And...
And she said, the Democrats want to teach your kids CRT because CRT makes children more susceptible to child sex trafficking.
And Democrats want to, you know, they want to sex trafficking their kids.
And they want them to be in gay porn.
And, you know, all of this, like, absolute nonsense.
And I was like, literally at the time, I was like, what?
This makes so little sense.
Like, nobody.
But everybody was all in.
And the whole thing was you have to run for school board.
You have to stop this stuff.
And so, like, watching, you know, what's anybody done about that?
That's probably a lesson that is very difficult to learn, is that stuff that sounds like it might be insane could be adopted by the entire GOP in six months.
Yeah, I mean, watching all the CRT stuff happen with the school boards, it was so well organized on the back end.
I mean, I literally don't know.
I made a spreadsheet of everybody, as many people who won elections in Virginia for school board that I could find.
And it was really exhausting because it took like hours of watching people debate because in like some podunk county with like a couple thousand people and I'm like, but talk about CRTs.
I had to like watch on Facebook their debates to figure out what people believe.
And like a lot of people that won in Virginia are like CRT is evil.
Some of them are like public schools are evil and so is George Soros.
Yeah, that makes me think of, if you go back to some of the episodes from around when QAnon was coming around, I very famously was like, this isn't a big deal.
This is just some dumb thing that's happening on a message board.
Boy, I was wrong about that one.
That seemed to me like there's no way people are going to buy into this.
I just, it's very frustrating to see all of these elected Democrats in Congress or whatever saying stuff like, oh, the GPP is just uneducated, Lauren Boebert.
And it's like, oh my God, are you like doing marketing for them?
Yeah, and a lot of media, and I mean, this one you've talked about extensively over the years, is like, I mean, they're essentially platforming stuff instead of like really, really, really dragging it or combating what people are saying.
And you'd think it'd get better because after January 6th, but it doesn't really seem to have gotten better.
Like, outlets still refuse to hire people who would be like, hey, that headline is a really bad headline.
The rise of right-wing populism and the under-30 or under-35 crowd.
I think people don't really...
Understand how impactful that publicly is.
I've seen stuff where shortly after I was docked, Josh Hawley gave a speech at the event I was supposed to be at where he was like, "Oh, we need more masculinity in society." And a lot of people on the left are making fun of it.
It's like, look at this guy.
He's not exactly like a lumberjack.
Who's even talking about masculinity?
He's talking about special family roles and a man being able to provide for his family and a woman being able to provide for his kids.
That's what he's talking about.
I don't know how that went over the heads of so many people.
Because, you know, like, they mean for white people, and they're number one.
And they also, you know, like, what, I mean, traditional family rules, but it's just like the environment in which this is all happening in their minds.
So, yeah, this is, yeah, it's not great.
Some of the candidates, you know, that they are, like, aligned with are, like, very open.
I mean, there was Joe Kent running in Washington State.
When I was at APU, part of his speech was, like, Joe Biden's, like, family planning bill or whatever doesn't go far enough.
We should, you know, like, we should get more money.
Like, why are we funding these wars?
You know, we could be funding, you know, if you have a kid, you get money, whatever.
People who are Republican, like, they're facing the exact same problems that we're facing the same age on the left, whereas we're priced out of the housing market.