Episode 123: International QAnon (The Netherlands) feat Marc-André Argentino
Pilled hip hop, the Fall Cabal "documentary" and legal weed. Travis spoke to dutch reporter Rudy Bouma and examines the country's forays into QAnon. Then we speak to Marc-André Argentino about the emergence of the conspiracy theory in over 80 countries around the world.
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Welcome, listener, to Chapter 123 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the QAnon International The Netherlands episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
This week, we are beginning what is undoubtedly an ongoing investigation into QAnon on the international stage.
First stop, The Netherlands.
Even though New Amsterdam was eventually renamed New York, the Dutch are a huge part of the European colonization of North America and were serious competitors to the English when it came to self-enrichment, genocide, and butter.
Years later, unsurprisingly, the Dutch were some of the first in line when it came to embracing the various conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon and its community.
Today, The Netherlands hosts a stable of characters promoting the Q lifestyle as an alternative to watching the mainstream news.
One of them, Janet Osbard, also gave us the gift of content by releasing Fall of the Cabal, also known as just Fall Cabal, a movie responsible for red-pilling people over here in the United States en masse.
So, Travis has prepared a segment on the matter, including clips from a conversation he had with Dutch journalist Rudy Bouma, followed by an interview, of course, with repeat guest Marc-André Argentino, in which we discuss his extensive research into international QAnon.
But before all that...
First up, viral 4chan hoax tricks presidential electors and pro-Trump media.
Credit goes to Alex Kaplan at Media Matters for reporting this one.
Earlier this month, Texas urged the Supreme Court to throw out the election results in states that went to President-elect Biden.
On December 11th, the Supreme Court rejected the case.
That same evening, an anonymous user of 4chan's poll board posed as a Supreme Court clerk and claimed that they overheard the justices arguing.
Specifically, they claimed that Chief Justice John Roberts was yelling things like, are you going to be responsible for the rioting if we hear this case?
It's obviously all bullshit.
The following day, Hal Turner, a white nationalist radio host with a long history of spreading false claims and hoaxes, posted the story on his site, claiming it came from, quote, a source deep inside the U.S.
Supreme Court.
In actuality, Turner just copied the 4chan post.
But it didn't stop there.
On December 14th, the day the Electoral College delegates met to cast their votes, Texas elector Matt Patrick gave a speech in the state legislature in which he repeated the story.
But in his version, John Roberts is swearing for some reason.
Yeah, because he's bad to the bone.
But when a Texas case was brought up, he said he heard screaming through the walls as Justice Roberts and the other liberal justices were insisting that this case not be taken up.
And the reason, the words that were heard through the wall when Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were citing Bush versus Gore from John Roberts were, I don't give a about that case.
I don't want to hear about it.
At that time, we didn't have riots.
So what he was saying was that he was afraid of what would happen If they did the right thing.
And I'm sorry, but that is moral cowardice.
I think I heard through the wall or someone else heard through the wall.
Really? Yeah.
Just someone else.
What was heard through the wall about a person I can't name.
Just I mean, you're right.
He's in the Texas state legislature getting just hopping mad about bullshit.
You invent a thing, you read a thing, a fictional story on 4chan, and you get furious about it.
Something that's supposed to be a serious place.
This is like a new conservative formula.
If true, then I'm furious.
And they just get furious.
But that's not all.
The pro-Trump news outlet Newsmax promoted the hoax in several segments.
A Newsmax host called the 100% bullshit made-up story from 4chan a bombshell report.
Listen to this, a bombshell whistleblower report alleging Supreme Court Justice John Roberts voted against hearing the election lawsuit that was brought on by the state of Texas, not on the merits, but because he was worried about riots.
One important takeaway from this incident, I think, is that even, like, QAnon went away forever.
That would just create, like, a QAnon-sized hole that would be replaced by Supreme Court Clerkinon or whatever else.
There's just an endless stream of bullshit on these anonymous web forums, and people want to believe them, so.
In a way, 4chan and 8chan are kind of this competition to come up with suggestions for how to fill the spiritual void.
What could take up this empty hole inside us?
And they come up with all kinds of fantastic shapes.
Most of them we refuse outright because these people are crazy.
But if you get enough people that are hyper-intelligent and off-balance, just spitballing, eventually you're going to find something.
And it's like, well, actually, this fits just great.
And I think QAnon was one of those things.
For my next story, QAnon continues to thrive on Facebook despite ban, according to a report.
Yeah, they're not going to keep us down.
I called this one that Travis and Marc Andre and all of their cohorts would fail.
Fail.
So all the way back on October 6, 2020, Facebook cracked down on QAnon content on their site, banning thousands of pages and groups that promoted the conspiracy theory.
But they were not able to ban their resolve.
So it's been over two months, so it's fair to ask, how effective was that crackdown on actually curbing QAnon content?
And according to a new report from the anti-extremism organization Institute for Strategic Dialogue, not very effective at all.
That report titled The Boom Before the Ban finds that baseless QAnon conspiracy theories continue to be spread by several personal Facebook pages.
Yeah.
One of the super spreaders is a man named Larry Cook, an anti-vaccination activist who started sharing QAnon conspiracy theories earlier this year.
In the month after the ban, Larry Cook continued to make and share videos that included QAnon explainers for newcomers and claims that the government was running a secret detention camp.
I like this Larry Cook guy.
Though Cook was banned by Facebook in mid-November, he still has an account on Instagram.
You know that even if we ban all the regular like chatting structures, they would just go to like Facebook marketplace
and list like the truth for zero dollars.
No, they would go to like Venmo or something and spread and comment on people's payments, you know, they would take
over a social media website.
Whatever is left, they'll take it over.
They'll find a way.
Life finds a way.
Have you ever seen those little plants that grow through the asphalt cracks?
That's right, motherfucker.
They didn't know we were seeds.
Other accounts that remained active on Facebook included those run by yoga and wellness coaches who share QAnon content and false claims like tying the COVID-19 vaccines to a vast government conspiracy theory.
The report found that QAnon is promoted on Facebook internationally as well.
Three of the ten most active communities posting QAnon content on Facebook were German language groups.
You know, I'm glad you skipped Germany and went straight to the Dutch.
That would be such a depressing beginning to the international episode, admitting how much the Germans love this shit.
Yeah, the Dutch was more interesting to me.
Yeah, it's more subtle.
And they have a good rapper.
I mean, the Germans don't have their Langue de France yet.
Maybe one day.
For my next story, Trump considered naming QAnon lawyer Sidney Powell special counsel.
Isn't this kind of like one of those reports where it's like we heard that he was discussing it and it got printed in like print media?
Well, this was reported by Politico, Axios and The New York Times.
And the main players in this didn't deny the main details.
OK, fair enough.
OK.
On the evening of December 18th, Trump reportedly met in the Oval Office with QAnon promoting lawyer Sidney Powell, despite the fact that Trump team fired Powell like last month.
In that meeting, Trump discussed the possibility of appointing Powell as White House special counsel to oversee an investigation into the baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in last month's election, as well as the possibility of giving her a security clearance to pursue her work.
Oh, that would be so cool.
We need way more queued on people with active security clearances.
Just go and get the information you need.
And you can actually leak from inside the government then, because you have the access, so you can become your own queue effectively.
That would be a really fun one.
It's interesting to me that somebody could watch Sidney Powell's performance over the last three weeks, four weeks, and go, you know what?
She deserves a promotion.
Because because at this point, I mean, it's loyalty and she has that.
Oh, she never dropped it.
She's willing to piss off the Republican establishment to make sure Trump gets stuff overturned, even if it risks losing stuff like Georgia.
I mean, she doesn't give a fuck.
Of course he loves her.
Yeah.
She's risking her legal career because people are talking sanctions because she's pushing all this bullshit in the courts.
Also, we talked about how what looked really bad right before she got fired was Rudy, not her.
I mean, she said dumb shit, but she looked fine.
Also present that evening was Powell's most famous client, General Michael Flynn.
See, I'm telling you, they're getting the whole crew back together.
Everyone who got pushed off the island.
I want Gorka back in this fold.
Let's get them all back.
This is worrying to me because it does seem like, we talked before about the possibility that Trump is going to try and LARP QAnon into reality, and now he's like bringing all these QAnon people into the Oval Office and talking about their ideas.
We've talked about QT, but this is the closest you're going to get.
Everybody's actually- We're getting closer and closer to Trump just doing the, my fellow Americans, the storm is upon us tweet.
QAnon in the Netherlands.
We are recording this episode a few days before Christmas, which means it's time for me to think about the Netherlands.
Now, before I started research for this episode, to me, it was a country best known for high-quality drugs, Vincent van Gogh, trials of international criminals, and Sinterklaas, the legendary figure that was partly the basis for Santa Claus.
Yeah.
In the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is portrayed with a long, wavy white beard, a red and gold pointy pope's hat, and riding a white horse.
Instead of elves, Sinterklaas is assisted by a Moorish man named Black Pete.
Black Pete is typically portrayed by white Dutch people wearing blackface.
Yeah, Schwarzepitz is what they call it.
Yeah, this is apparently a source of controversy in the country.
Oh, really?
Apparently?
Yeah.
You can't tell why?
I mean, France also has awful stuff like this.
Like we have this for a very long time.
We had like a powdered, like kind of chocolate banana drink.
And the front was just an absolute racist caricature, just horrifying racist caricature, giant printed on every box available at every supermarket.
Yeah, I was saying, you know, considering our own history, it is kind of like a miracle that Black Pete wasn't included in the American conception of Santa Claus, because that could have happened very, very easily.
The Netherlands also happens to have a very active QAnon community.
Amongst all European countries, the Netherlands ranks third for most QAnon activity on Facebook and Instagram, according to analysis by the BBC.
The two top QAnon countries in Europe are the UK and Germany.
To try and get a better handle on QAnon in the Netherlands, earlier this week I spoke to Dutch reporter Rudi Bouma.
I'm a reporter at a public television current affairs program called News Hour, which is comparable to BBC Newsnight.
It's a daily current affairs program on Channel 2.
And we also pay attention to conspiracy theories, disinformation and those kinds of topics.
That's one of my specializations.
I'm the reporter who's doing that.
Rudy Bouma told me that he first noticed the growth of QAnon in the Netherlands when it started showing up at anti-lockdown protests.
I noticed QAnon slogans at anti-lockdown protests late spring, early summer I would say.
But there were also a few significant incidents around politicians who were harassed by QAnon fans.
Most noticeably this summer when a Christian Democrat parliament member was chased by a group calling him a satanist and deep state and things like that.
And also protesters yelled pedophile to our Minister of Health.
So we also saw QAnon move from online to real life.
The harassment of politicians is apparently a departure from the normally relaxed and civil political culture in the Netherlands.
For example, the Dutch Prime Minister was often photographed riding his bike to work without security.
But the growth of conspiracy theories has eroded Dutch civility over the past year.
Like Bouma mentioned, one of the most famous incidents involved conspiracy theory-driven protesters confronting the politician Pieter Omtzigt in the street.
Your wife said it herself.
So how is it possible that it's not like that now?
Do you always talk to everyone?
Yes, do you always talk to the people?
Do you always talk to everyone?
What do you mean?
Is it normal that you talk to the people?
He's just kind of getting chased by some lads with half beers.
They've just spotted him and just went and kind of harassed him as he walked.
But they're getting into his face.
They're blocking his path.
It's very confrontational.
It's intimidating.
It's very inspirational.
I mean, intimidating.
Umsec later told Bloomberg that he was bewildered by the confrontation.
It all felt very threatening and it did not seem like they were open to a conversation.
People are calling you a pedophile Satanist. It's like, oh, let's talk this out. You don't
seem very open to a back and forth on this issue. This paranoia even affected small towns.
In the Dutch town of Almelo, someone wrote QAnon rhetoric in chalk outside the town hall.
It said, in Dutch, we are ruled by satanic pedophiles.
You know, I have to say, it was awfully thoughtful for the vandals to do their graffiti in like washable chalk.
Like, our QAnon vandals, like, they went into, like, a Catholic church and then they fucked up the altar, but in Netherlands they just do, like, chalk that can be, like, washed off with a hose.
Real quick.
Reporters were also targeted by hostile conspiracy theorists.
According to the Dutch broadcaster NOS, its journalists dealt with verbal abuse and garbage being thrown at them.
In one incident, a person urinated on an NOS van.
This continual harassment was so bad that NOS decided to remove its company logo from all news vans to prevent them from being targeted.
These sorts of incidents made Dutch public officials take the threat posed by QAnon seriously.
Four times a year, the country's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism publishes a terrorist threat assessment for the Netherlands.
The most recent report, published in November, warns about the radicalizing effects of social media and conspiracy theories.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, expressions of social dissatisfaction have increased both online and offline.
Some of the groups and individuals involved have found common ground rejecting the authorities or government policy.
This sentiment is rooted less in ideological motives than in feelings of injustice, strong discontent, or a different perception of reality.
In addition, people who have a long-standing distrust of government, science, and traditional media can now see their ideologies confirmed in conspiracy theories and disinformation.
Social media play a facilitating and mobilizing role in this regard and add further fuel to the fire.
Alongside the diverse, law-abiding upper layer of activists, there is also a radical undercurrent in which staunch distrust of the authorities can lead to extremist conduct.
This is so, I mean, it really makes me think because, you know, a lot of the issues that QAnon brings up, we talk about how they broadly have the right feeling about things, that things are corrupt and things are wrong, and then, but what people do to defend the system Broadly against that is they put them all in one thing, right?
So, here they're listing three different things.
Distrust of government, science, and traditional media.
It's like, I'm sorry, but two of those are fine.
And the science thing?
That's on you.
That's your educational system that should be fucking taking care of it.
But the two others?
Distrust in government?
How would they have that?
Distrust in media?
How dare they?
How dare they with the history of all these countries?
I mean, I don't know.
That's where I think I block up on this because it's just too easy to tie them together and be like, they don't trust any of this stuff.
Yeah, I get what you're saying.
There's concern that because people are, you know, calling, you know, journalists Satanists and that's a reason to like criminalize or sort of like make or stigmatize all criticism of the media or something.
Well, even within the group of people who call them pedophile and Satanist, you'll have maybe 20% calling them pedophiles and Satanists, and the rest don't.
They're just like, you're corrupt, you're lying to us, you're bought and paid for, and that's the part they don't want to listen to, and it's very easy to put the clip in of the person saying Satan, pedophile, even if the rest of the critique was decent, or if the animus comes from a place that is actually informed.
At least one Dutch QAnon follower is attempting to penetrate the world of business.
The Dutch public relations professional Ronald Heister, along with UK QAnon promoter Martin Geddes, created a consulting company called Bossmaker.
This consulting company is dedicated to helping businesses through the Great Awakening.
The idea is that the events prophesied by QAnon, such as the collapse of the mainstream media and the mass arrest of the political and cultural elite, will have a big impact on businesses in all industries.
They're basically trying to be the McKinsey & Company for QAnon.
Yes.
But instead of things like accelerating the opioid epidemic, Bossmaker will supposedly help guide your business through the risks and opportunities that will arise in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's execution.
Their website reads, Here's how Ronald Heister describes Bossmaker.
Top open source intelligence analyst Martin Geddes and I will discuss why it is crucial for you, as a private individual, a corporate or civic leader, or as a professional advisor, to have the proper insight on the unprecedented, unfolding geopolitical situation.
A situation that will change everything in your corporate and private life.
If it wasn't a contentious term, Bossmaker would be subtitled The Great Awakening for Business.
Dutch QAnon has also had an impact on the worldwide growth of the movement.
Most significantly, the country has given the world the Dutch conspiracy theorist Jeanette Ossibard, who created the 10-part video series Fall of the Cabal.
Now, Fall of the Cabal is probably responsible for radicalizing more people into QAnon than any other video.
It was mentioned on the pier by Jessica Prim.
Yes.
And it's been mentioned many times by promoters and people in New Age circles that have switched over.
Yeah.
Whenever people talk about like, you know, what was it that radicalized you?
It was either like Joe M's videos or possibly, you know, Out of Shadows or Fall of Cabal.
Yeah.
The first words out of Jessica Prim's mouth when she pulled down the window to talk to the cop was, have you seen Fall of the Cabal?
And she's just crying.
Even though Fall of the Cabal isn't very well produced, it may have been successful in part because of its gripping introduction.
We are about to witness one of the greatest events in human history.
The world as we know it is crumbling before our very eyes, and the majority of the world population is not aware of it.
Power structures that have been in place for thousands of years are taken down as we speak.
Soon we'll be shown evidence of an elite plan, so evil, so all-encompassing, that people will be shocked to the core.
This documentary was made to help you deal with what's coming.
Is it a good thing?
Oh, yes.
It's the best thing that could possibly happen to us.
If you listen to this podcast, you're probably already familiar with the conspiracy theories promoted in The Fall of Kabul.
It goes over everything from anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to adrenochrome to Bill Gates conspiracy theories to the Seth Rich conspiracy theory and a lot more.
Part 10 of the video series even promotes the JFK Jr.
lives conspiracy theory.
So it just goes all out.
Alcibard was mostly unknown in Fringe, even in the Netherlands, until this video was released.
This is despite the fact that Alcibard has been publishing conspiracy theory content for decades.
According to her own account, she never thought about conspiracy theories at the beginning of her life.
In the 1980s, she studied language and literature at the University of Rønneden, after which she started a translation and communications consultancy.
But all that changed in 1994 when she saw what she believed to be a UFO crop circle.
This experience, which she had in the town of Witten, changed her profoundly and she became obsessed with crop circles.
As we often see with conspiracy theorists, Alcibard's obsession hurt her personal life.
In a 2019 documentary, Alcibard said this.
My parents said, you have gone mad.
I had a lot of problems with family.
Lost friends.
They always made the same jokes on birthdays.
Getting roasted by your friends on your birthday.
Man, that's rough.
They're calling me, again, a loser!
Why have they waited till today, the day of my birth?
Happy birthday, Janet!
You're a fucking loser!
To phone me over and over, ridiculing me.
Soon after Ossibard got pilled, she joined an organization called the Dutch Center for Crop Circle Studies.
She wrote books about crop circles and gave guided tours of supposed crop circle sites.
And in 2005, she became the chair of the organization.
But all of this was a mere lead-up to her production of the Fall of the Cabal movie, which earned her worldwide fame in the conspiracy theory world.
As the press started to scrutinize her, she responded by being hostile towards reporters.
For example, after the journalist Chris Klomp wrote about her earlier this year, Oseberg told her followers to bombard him with messages.
This resulted in the journalist receiving a ton of messages wishing death on him, threatening sexual violence, calling him a pedophile, you know, pretty, pretty standard fare.
Apparently, many of these messages are in bad Dutch, so they don't translate very well.
But one of the messages roughly translated to, you are a dirty cancer pedophile.
When I see you, I will fuck you so you no longer walk.
Whore's child.
According to Rudy Bauma, Janet Alcibard is known for being eccentric and temperamental.
Well, according to people around her, she's got a pretty much of a temper.
Walks away when asked critical questions.
Attacks journalists online.
Connects journalists, some of them to pedophilia.
Walks around naked at a campsite where she writes her stuff and where she works.
Arrests people with plans to build a UFO landing spot.
So you can't really say she is taken seriously at all in the Netherlands.
But yeah, as you were mentioning her false cabal.
Videos, although looking a little bit amateuristic, I might say, are, yeah, watched millions and millions of times.
She's running her own nudist colony?
Yeah, and also she's trying to build apparently a UFO landing site at her kind of cabin where she lives.
We should have her on the podcast, but, like, go to her.
Sure.
Field trip.
Like in the United States, a handful of celebrities in the Netherlands jumped on the QAnon bandwagon.
For example, the Dutch former soccer player Brian Roy is a QAnon promoter.
During an appearance on a British QAnon podcast, Brian Roy said that he got pilled after watching the conspiracy theory film Zeitgeist on the recommendation of UK pop singer Robbie Williams.
Nice.
Well, the moment I thought something is totally off here in this world was the moment that I saw on Facebook Robbie Williams.
That was in 2000, I guess.
12th and he told something about you should see you guys you should see this
movie It has a totally different view on society.
And that was Zeitgeist.
The classic conspiracy film, Zeitgeist.
That and Loose Change, old school, brings back memories.
In the realm of pastel QAnon, Rudy Bauma told me that Dutch Victoria's Secret model Doutzen Kroes frequently promotes conspiracy theories on Instagram.
And one of our famous models, which is Doutzen Kroes, she used to be Uh, one of the models in the, um, uh, the, the larger ratios or Victoria secrets.
Um, she has also turns conspiracy thinker on Instagram.
She is a little bit fake about it, but she is also, um, well, um, posting.
Words like, I think it was The Great Awakening, stuff like that.
She doesn't really explain it, but she flirts with it as well.
But the most significant Dutch celebrity QAnon promoter is the rapper and television presenter
Frans Christian Frederiks, better known by his stage name Lange Frans.
Rudy Bauma told me that the music of Lange Frans has always had a conspiratorial bent.
But in 2020, the rapper pivoted right into QAnon.
And he's a pretty famous rapper in the Netherlands.
He raps in the Dutch language and well, it's probably pretty popular for many years now.
He had been speaking about all kinds of conspiracy theories like 9-11 and stuff like that for a longer time.
But this spring he released a track called Lockdown Falkenbaal.
Welcome to the coolest festival.
slogan, when we go one we go all in the lyrics and also mentioning in his lyrics
Jeannette Ossenbaard, the Dutch producer of the Fall to Cabal documentaries.
Yeah, Lange Frans, Benji op de Beat. Welkom op het aller lijpste festival. Je hebt geen kaartje nodig want je bent
er al. Dit is de Fall van de Cabal.
Where we go one, we go all.
There's something hanging in the air, it's the Lentefest.
Loose screws, no more interest.
Do you feel it?
Gold, honest as the knowledge was.
The ball won't go around the world any longer.
Lange Frans also has his own podcast in the Netherlands.
The podcast is in Dutch, so while listening to it, I was only able to make out the occasional phrase, like the laptop of Anthony Wiener, FBI, and satanic blood-drinking elite.
Nice.
And Anthony Wiener's laptop, which has been in the possession of the FBI, the police and the army for a year, of course.
There are also super tax things on it.
And this is also something that I hoped for a long time that it was not true.
But the stories that come out, through various means, are that we are ruled by, and I can't put it any shorter than this, a bad, satanistic, blood-sucking elite.
God, damn Dutch is such a beautiful language.
I mean, I think this is kind of like the beauty of being a modern conspiracy theorist.
Since it's global, I can go anywhere in the world to where the pill people are and say the word, like, frazzledrip, and they'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Their eyes will light up.
I'll have made a new friend.
Ah, frazzledrip!
Frazzledrip, the universal language.
Lange Frans invites on other conspiracy theorists onto his podcast, like Janet Asibard.
In fact, Rudy Bauma told me that the rapper's conversation with Janet Asibard generated some controversy because they fantasized about killing the Prime Minister.
This episode became controversial here because together they fantasized about let's say the necessity of stopping our Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his corona policies and they then both said they well they like fantasized about killing him but also saying they didn't want to kill him themselves because they wanted to keep their karma clean or something like that so there was Picked up and made headlines here in the Netherlands.
Lange Frans also helped organize a Save the Children rally in the Netherlands.
This was part of the Save the Children rallies and marches that were held in countries all over the world.
These rallies, of course, were designed to provide a soft front for QAnon, allowing them to promote QAnon theories without actually admitting that they are QAnon rallies.
Rudy Baume asked Lange Frans about QAnon at the Save the Children rally.
But since this was supposed to be a soft front, Langefrans, of course, responded by saying this.
I'm not going to talk about that at all.
You are being very annoying right now.
I'm just telling you that we are not going to talk about.
I'm leaving.
I don't like this at all.
There are always two minds.
It'd be like, we need to get the word out.
We need to red pill the world.
But then like, so this is a QAnon rally?
I don't want to talk about it.
Shut up.
Go away.
Being very annoying right now.
In October, Lange Frans' YouTube channel was removed.
YouTube said it was because of repeated violations of the community guidelines.
Lange Frans, of course, claimed that he was being censored and that he was banned because he was recently mocked on the Dutch satirical show Zonda met Lubach.
So they made fun of me so I got banned?
Yep, yeah.
Lange Frans was far from the only Dutch QAnon promoter who got the ban hammer from social media.
In early November, Twitter removed at least 90 Dutch accounts that supported and shared conspiracy theories by QAnon.
Also like in the United States, QAnon in the Netherlands intersects with mainstream politics.
Rudy Bouma told me that a far-right member of the Dutch parliament appeared on Lange Frans' podcast.
Actually, he invited a Dutch politician on the far right, Wiebert N. van Haga.
And this politician obviously was also criticized because, yeah, he was a guest in such a podcast filled with a lot of conspiracy theorists.
Because he is not only doing QAnon stuff, but well, he's probably every conspiracy theorist in the Netherlands probably has been a guest in his podcast.
He's doing like all kinds of stuff.
Doesn't have a good reputation anymore, but nevertheless, one of our parliament members talked to him for an hour or so.
Tragic that Viberen van Haaha is gaining such political power.
There has been a cozy relationship between the Dutch far-right party Forum for Democracy and QAnon.
The party leader of Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, has frequently retweeted QAnon accounts and promoted other conspiracy theories.
And this is significant because this is not a totally marginal party.
There are over a dozen political parties represented in the Dutch Senate, but in 2019 Forum for Democracy won a plurality of votes in the provincial elections.
That gave them more Senate seats than the Prime Minister's Liberal Party, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy.
However, the conspiracy theories that fueled that party's rise also led to its downfall.
On November 21st of this year, a Dutch newspaper published screenshots of conversations among members of the youth wing of the Forum for Democracy party.
One party member praised the economic policies of the Nazis.
Oh.
I mean, that's what Candace fucking Owens did over here.
Others made overtly anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks.
It was later revealed that the party expelled five whistleblowers who raised concerns about the rhetoric.
One of the Forum for Democracy members who was elected in that 2019 landslide election also revealed that party leader Thierry Baudet promoted coronavirus conspiracy theories.
Specifically, Baudet claimed that George Soros introduced coronavirus to steal our freedoms.
Yeah, he introduced it.
The ploy, he explained, was meant to accomplish what, quote, Hillary Clinton and the pedophiles failed to do.
These revelations caused the far-right party to collapse.
Senators stepped down, party members tore into Baudet for his poor leadership,
and Baudet himself resigned as party chairman and leader for the 2021 election campaign.
Now, even though QAnon has caught on in the Netherlands, this shows to me that the Dutch
still have kind of an underdeveloped conspiracy theory culture when compared to ours, you know.
There are no consequences for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories here.
There are actually rewards.
Yes, exactly.
In 2018, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz said that a migrant caravan was being financed by George Soros, and he did it on Twitter.
Not like in a private conversation.
And then last month, he was reelected with two thirds of a vote.
So the idea that a politician could face political consequences for privately saying that George Soros is the Jewish puppeteer for everything that bad that happens in the world is kind of mind blowing to me.
Studying Dutch QAnon was fascinating because I'm not very familiar with the Dutch culture or the political system, but I was able to recognize how QAnon infected that culture and political system.
Celebrities acting as advertising towers for QAnon, how conspiracy theorists gained huge audiences thanks to QAnon, the Save the Children rallies, and the far-right exploiting and promoting QAnon are all things we've also seen in the United States.
So that made me curious about why QAnon seems to cross borders so easily, and how much QAnon has spread across the globe.
To get a better handle on international QAnon, I've invited Marc-Andre Argentino, a PhD candidate from Concordia University, Canadian, and three-time podcast guest.
Yeah.
Marc-Andre, thanks again for coming on the show.
Thank you very much for having me.
You've been tracking the international growth of QAnon, so how many countries have a QAnon presence according to your data?
Right now, I'm up to 85 countries that have a QAnon presence, though I'll caveat that that some of these countries have this presence because of European expats.
So if we take, for example, something like Martinique, it's going to be mostly, you know, French expats living and they're talking about French politics rather than more of a domestic audience in some of the cases.
I mean, it sounds like your people are just pilling the world, Julian.
So, in this episode, we specifically covered, like, Dutch QAnon.
So, what has your data uncovered about, like, the growth of QAnon in the Netherlands?
I think QAnon Netherlands plays an important role within the QAnon circle, even before, like, looking at the politics themselves, which is, you know, the documentary, it's Fall Cabal, is from a Dutch conspiracy theorist.
But I think, similar to the U.S., what I've seen is You know, QAnon has tied itself to the political right in both the Netherlands and in the US.
If you're looking at the election that recently happened in the Netherlands, you really saw candidates that were echoing or that were Donald Trump-like having a Dutch base that were linked to QAnon.
And you've seen that as well with the anti-mask protests or, let's say, the children protests that are happening in the Netherlands this summer.
They're all Carrying along a mixed bag of domestic content as well as QAnon.
That's kind of what we've seen in the Netherlands.
Yeah, it seems like this is something that we see a lot.
It's like QAnon is just sort of like an add-on to like the far right.
It's like a plug and play, a way to like energize the far right in any country it infects.
No, it is.
And in the Netherlands, it was initially Geert Wilders that was really finding that QAnon base.
But even now, one of the candidates in the Prime Minister's race that is being called the Dutch Donald Trump.
Thierry Baudet?
Yeah, his name has been appearing a lot recently on Dutch QAnon Telegram.
They're not very big channels.
You have about six, seven thousand people there, but it's still a decently active community.
And it's kind of representative of I think the type of populations that are present in the Netherlands.
It doesn't take a lot of conspiracy theorists to have an impact on the narratives and the conversations, especially on social media.
So are there any factors that contributed to the growth of QAnon in Europe specifically?
Because this is something I often get when I tell people international QAnon.
It's like, why would people in Europe, for example, latch themselves on to a movement that's fixated on Donald Trump, what they think is an entirely American phenomenon?
I think it's important to realize that it's no longer just fixated on Donald Trump.
When we were talking about the early QAnon stuff in 2018, 2019,
it really was this perception that Donald Trump was going to travel to other
countries and liberate them from the deep state.
But the narrative has shifted in the past 12 to 15 months where a lot more of the international QAnon communities
believe that the US was the first country to awaken to their deep state,
but every other country has a deep state of their own and they need to awaken to
fight it.
And now this is kind of how you break away from the necessity of Donald Trump
and it really blends into more the domestic political landscape.
So you still have this role where it's a typical experience.
You have the Deep State, they're all satanic pedophiles.
You're taking the traditional NWO conspiracy from the 90s and blending it in with QAnon and international politics now.
And this is how they're surviving.
But the core features are still there.
It's still an apocalyptic movement.
They still think that Q-drops are applicable to international countries.
They're really obscure ones that don't necessarily mention American political actors.
Some of them reference content that could be interpreted to Dutch politics or German politics or Australian politics.
You don't necessarily need to have that American lens.
And you're still seeing that, you know, you're still have a responsibility as an Anon to awaken most people, more people to your cause and help them fight the Deep State and it still answers those needs.
It feels sometimes that this stuff travels along the lines of globalization, but also austerity.
Countries that have experienced austerity from basically both parties.
Both parties, you know, proposing to them a future that has less opportunities than in the past.
Are we seeing a kind of like first reactionary push against something that is going to cause these countries to go down this path?
Because it is surprising that QAnon has worked much, much better in the developed countries.
The United States, France, the Dutch.
I mean, these are people that are at the core of the old empire and also at the core of the project of globalization.
I think you have to have the bandwidth to participate in conspiracy theories.
And it's kind of like this.
It's a luxury belief in a way that if you have real struggles and you're in a quote unquote comfortable state, conspiracy theories might be a way for you to benefit from this.
But let's be honest, in places like In the countries in the Global South where you're suffering a lot more, conspiracy theories might not be the necessity or the exit that you'll need, because you're not trying to scapegoat someone for your problems, but it's actually more about survival, and believing conspiracy theories does not provide you that survival factor.
It really is in these industrialized wealthy countries, because it's a luxury and a first world problem in a sense that, oh, I'm, you know, I'm at home and I lost my job because of the pandemic, but the pandemic was created by a deep state world order that's trying to control the population, right?
It makes more sense from that perspective.
But don't you think like in a first world country where collectivist decisions like we're all going to take a vaccine are just kind of given to you vertically from a top down structure, things that used to perhaps be a project of a society now feel like edicts from this kind of ivory tower.
And do you think that that dynamic in these developed countries has also contributed to it?
Because I don't buy that it's only people who have the extra time.
I think that conspiracy theories can fester in any environment, even with people under extreme duress who work long days and don't have as much leisure time.
But it does seem to be taking more in these countries where we are experiencing more of a project of social control, rather than countries that are more chaotic, where the top-down structure is hit and miss or inconsistent, you know?
It makes sense in that way as well, but the reason why I'm talking about it from the perspective of suffering and like the luxury of being from these global countries is, you know, the suffering that people have gone through in a global pandemic is not something a lot of us experience on a day-to-day.
You know, we've never really had political strife and economic strife and a health crisis all happening at once.
But if you're in certain parts of the global South, that is your daily reality and you've developed mechanisms To navigate that space that doesn't require conspiracy theories, whereas for, you know, your typical, let's say, white elite male in his 20s to his 30s or in his 40s or in his 50s, who's gone through a wave of conspiracy theories in his younger years, you know, returning to that past or adopting this type of conspiracy narrative makes a lot more sense because you're not used to navigating difficult and complex scenarios of suffering.
And, you know, something like a conspiracy will provide you an easy answer that you don't have to make more difficult Decisions and adaptations.
And I think that's where, where the difference is.
It's not necessary that you don't have time, but it's that you don't have the mechanisms because you're so you're used to living a more comfortable life.
And it also feels like there's basically no friction for some of those people until there is.
They don't actually have to be confronted by reality at any point.
They can grow up in a bubble in their school, in a bubble of wealth in the first world country, in a bubble of entertainment, in a bubble of online expressing of yourself, your true self.
And so eventually it's like, yeah, there's almost no friction there.
Of course they're not developing the same stuff that's functional because in a world where you need The result of your actions to, you know, accomplish something, you know, like you said, in a third-world country where it can be a life and death or survival is on the line, then, yeah, you are confronted with reality.
And I think that in the West, in some of these countries, people are often not confronted with reality, and then when they find out that this system is rigged or unfair, they freak out and they go straight to some of the more extreme stuff because they're just not used to thinking that their system is a fucking disaster.
Whereas someone in a third-world country is like, oh yeah, the government's totally corrupt, and like, oh yeah, the US tried to basically take over our country at one point in the past.
They're also awful.
They live in that knowledge, right?
Whereas QAnon people often, it feels like they're discovering it for the first time.
The government's lying to us!
It's hilarious, because it's like we said, they have had not much friction in their lives and not much use for political QAnon is really about a movement that's engaged in a power struggle, and that's why it's targeted and attractive to both elites and, you know, subordinate groups within our societies.
So, you know, you find that you have this real, like, oh, I'm a QAnon believer, I'm in this community, I have this sense of effectiveness and community that I might not get at home in my own social circles.
And then you have like 2020 that pops up and you have these unfair social and economic situations that fuels basically QAnon's populist resentment.
And this is when governments are unable or unwilling to challenge the inequality.
So during the pandemic where, you know, oh, I don't want to wear a mask, I don't want to be locked down, my business is closed, I can't have a job, I can't go to school, I can't see my friends, I can't go drinking at the beach like I do at festivals every summer, whatever it is, you know, the fact that you have this Governments that are trying to deal with a situation that most have never experienced or been prepared for, it fuels this resentment by people.
And this is why they're turning to conspiracy theories.
And it's why it's attractive to different demographics and populations.
This populist resentment is transnational.
It's not unique to the US.
It's something that's common in all these countries.
And this is what mobilizes them.
And you resent the government and the elites, and you want to demonize them and scapegoat them by using conspiracy narratives.
Interestingly, I mean, I think you can see the same gulf and the same kind of width of different life experiences in the original American Revolution.
You had people who wanted the revolution for very different reasons.
The workers who were enlisted to actually fight that war, they were under unjust circumstances.
And the landowners that wanted those people to go to war, they didn't want to pay the taxes of the English.
So to understand it in terms of the wealthy and the poor buying into it as a solution, You can see it as a project that would actually benefit them both.
I mean, one, it will never benefit, it's a lie, and they're being kind of, basically, used as cannon fodder.
And then, for the others, they will see financial benefit and increase in power, because they are basically in a geopolitical struggle on a higher level, and they want to defeat their enemies, and so they know, hey, take the populist power, point it at the other guy, and let them lose.
Who gives a shit what they're talking about?
QAnon?
Who cares?
So is there an example of international QAnon that has been especially worrying to you as you're researching this stuff?
I think the two biggest worries I have would be QAnon... Well, I'll be biased, I'm Canadian, so I am worried about QAnon Canada.
But it's not, you know, it's not the most... I guess it's not the most worrying yet.
But I think QAnon France and QAnon Germany are the two most...
Worrisome in my opinion.
Germany mainly because of the large, well, there's been some reporting recently about that, but the issue that they have with, you know, right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists actively participating in their police and military.
It's a similar pattern we have here in Canada.
France has been worrying me recently because QAnon France has organized itself similarly to what they were doing with Yellow Vests on Telegram, where every, like, region Which is assigned a number in France.
It basically now has its own telegram channel where people could communicate locally with other believers.
And in the past two weeks they've gone from just communication channels to a channel that people have been creating to say for those who want to move offline and actively participate in training and drills.
So there's been actually a couple of groups that were created.
It's basically called Le Grand Réveil Actif or Proactif or something like that.
And basically they want people to come training.
So they have this piece of land in the south of France where people are able to go do tactical field medic training.
They have a gun range, survival techniques, everything.
And the group has about...
400 members right now that are planning to meet and train and these are like ex-gendarmerie royale, ex-parachutists, military, infantrymen.
So there's people who actually have training and you know military acumen that are trying to organize offline and that's concerning in the sense that it's happening in France in a European country that has more Difficult access to like weapons and you wouldn't us and if it's happening in France, it's happening in other countries So it makes me wonder in countries that are not necessarily on telegram because it's mostly a European platform You know what's happening place like the US or Canada, which is likely having similar patterns of behavior so you're seeing that like in countries that are already there were QAnon is actively trying to train offline for more and
you know, physical action is concerning because QAnon France is also very Macron focused. They
don't really care about Trump, even though they watch the politics of it. It's really more about
their domestic politics and everything's going on. And that's how, you know, if you're already
frustrated, over years of yellow vest protests, you're already frustrated with the government.
And now you have this movement and you're training offline.
That's a little concerning.
400 people, and they're all going to be just targeting Macron?
Pretty much. They hate him.
Okay, sounds... Cher Citoyens, je suis derrière vous.
So that's going to be a piece I'm writing right now for the early 2021 about this. It's not...
That's a little more concerning.
When a conspiracy theory group starts training, it's kind of what I spoke about with my buddy Ammar in the CTC Sentinel piece this summer, is that if you have people who want to become Who developed this, you know, military acumen and training to bring about the realization of QAnon's plan, that's when it gets scary, because it's no longer about the information war.
Anything that's happening right now, because it's a pandemic situation, it's really an unprecedented time.
An election, civil rights movements and protests, a pandemic, and like...
global chaos everywhere. No one's really gone through this.
For me, my biggest challenge year was the ice storm in 1998 when I was a kid and we lost
power for two weeks and I was stuck playing board games with no heat and no power
in my house.
But there is also the fraying of participatory democracy.
The feeling, I think, among many countries that it doesn't actually fucking matter who you
vote for because these people are all in an elaborate theater just kind of shuffling the
seats and you're just going to get increased pro-corporate law and increased tighten up
your belt for the rest.
And so I do think that we are at a kind of crisis point.
But like you said, if you also lock everybody in door, suddenly the government's telling you what to do at a time where there's already a crisis of trust in the government.
So that's a lethal combination.
It is, and I think, like, if we would have been talking, you know, a year and a half ago, I don't think we'd be, like, it wasn't the QAnon movement we have today, and I don't think Travis and I and you guys, right, we wouldn't all be concerned the same way that we are, and we wouldn't be looking at this...
The same way it would be easier to look at QAnon with humor in 2019.
Right now it's really becoming, we've all seen this move in turn extremist and accelerated because of the pandemic.
Because if it would just continue the trajectory it had in 2019, we'd still be focusing more on like, You know, yes, it's a threat, but it's a future threat.
There's potentials and it's kind of more like, you know, okay, let's see what happens.
It's not that serious.
Now we're all sitting around this table and we're all talking about this on like online and in articles and interviews like, yeah, this is a crisis now.
We've been talking about it for years, but we never expected it to accelerate to his end.
I don't think any of us could have said it's going to end up in 85 countries.
The worst part is that we're preparing ourselves now for essentially the first potential great disappointment or, you know, more like a great hangover.
And that's the period where things get grim because we know that this damage kind of happens to people around the people who are involved in it or to themselves in majority.
So, you know, I think those kinds of like... Yeah, I don't want to see what it looks like to have QAnon deaths of despair.
Yeah.
What do you know about how QAnon is sort of developing in the Global East?
I know QAnon in the Global East has had some growth.
Japan has seen a decent amount of growth, especially around the popularity of General Flynn.
I'm not the Japanese expert on QAnon, but I know it's one of their growing areas.
But also places like Korea, the Philippines, I have seen a huge amount of growth in those communities.
And by huge, I've seen them go from a few hundred to a few thousand.
thousand in the case of Japan it's it's you know 60,000 individuals that I've
seen about on social media so it's still a large segment of the population.
So we're going to see an anime Flynn. I honestly would not be surprised if
there is already some type of anime Flynn but honestly I think that anywhere
where there is these type of wealthy countries there's gonna be a capacity to
Japan has had, though, a huge history of conspiracy culture, so it doesn't surprise me too much that they're they're participating there.
But again, I'm not the the top expert.
Marc Andre, thanks so much for coming on the show and terrifying us yet again.
It's always a pleasure.
You guys could find me on Twitter at underscore M A Argentino.
Thank you so much.
Go follow the man.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
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Before we go, I want to thank my Dutch Twitter followers who all offered to help with this episode.
This includes Rudy Balma for his insight, Gert van Dijk for directing me to Dutch reporting about QAnon, and AtSpotTooTall on Twitter for some translation assistance.
You're very generous with your time.
And I would like to formally apologize on behalf of the United States for unleashing QAnon on your fine country.
And also taking America.
I mean, we could have had a Dutch... We could have had a Dutch utopia, you know?
We could be living like them right now.
It could be New Amsterdam instead of New York!
If you go up to Solvang, you'll get a little piece of what paradise could have looked like.
I don't want these towns where they give you, like, a wooden mug and you pretend to be German in America and just eat hot dogs.
Why not?
There's a great casino there, too.
It's pretty fun.
The Netherlands looks like a beautiful place and I hope I get the opportunity to visit one day.
It really is.
We're going to go there with the podcast.
If there's enough people listening to this over in the Netherlands, we'll come to your city.
It's very easy to attract us to Amsterdam.
A lovely city.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a fact.
and may the deep state protect you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
The deep state's roasting in a dumpster fire.
you you
POTUS nipping at their toes.
Fool's tribe carols swinging votes by a wire.
But folks stepped up to whistle blow.
Now everybody knows It's murky but old Sleepy Joe Had to make his treason right Finding lots of their lies all up low They'll find it hard to sleep tonight as we know We know Atlanta's gonna pay.
They loaded lots of votes and ballots in their suitcases.
While every maggots child was trained to spy.
To watch those democrats cheat the vote and lie, lie, lie, lie.
So, I'm offering this simple phrase.
Free trips for dirty rhinos too.
Oh, hey, Mitt.
Although it's been said many times, many ways, Marry Gitmus.
