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April 22, 2021 - QAA
01:03:45
Episode 139: Mother, Anon feat Charlotte Callanan & Vera Bergengruen

What happens when your mom starts believing in QAnon? Charlotte Callanan is a young woman from Australia who has been in this exact situation for 4 years now. She speaks to us about the process of finding out about her mother's beliefs, educating herself on the conspiracy theory and attempting to find some peace despite a series of painful arguments plaguing their close relationship. Time reporter Vera Bergengruen also drops by to explore her recent article about QAnon candidates winning local elections. ↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓ https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Follow Charlotte: https://twitter.com/evilsocialisttt Find her podcast: https://twitter.com/SMOKOpodcast Follow Vera: https://twitter.com/veraMBergen/ QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by Pontus Berghe

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Time Text
What's up QAA listeners?
The fun games have begun.
I found a way to connect to the internet.
I'm sorry boy.
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 139 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Mother Anon episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Great to speak with you again, listener.
This week, we're exploring what it's like to live with QAnon in your family, through the lens of a daughter whose mother has been an adherent of the conspiracy theory for the last four years and counting.
Her name is Charlotte Callinan, and she lives in Melbourne, Australia.
We'll be speaking to her about her path coming to grips with the conspiracy theory and attempting to maintain a relationship with her mother, despite profound disagreements over their respective beliefs.
But before all that... QAnon News!
For my first story, conspiracy theorists and assorted cranks gather for a conference in Oklahoma.
So last week, thousands of people gathered at Rima Bible College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma for the two-day Health and Freedom Conference.
Speakers included General Michael Flynn, Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviezel, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and QAnon promoting lawyer Lynn Wood.
Caviezel was there to promote his new movie, Sound of Freedom.
In that movie, he portrays Tim Ballard, the founder of the controversial organization Operation Underground Railroad, which purports to help save children from sex trafficking.
That organization has also been criticized for lacking transparency and exaggerating the role in helping trafficking victims.
For example, Operation Underground Railroad claimed that it rescued a 17-year-old girl named Liliana who, according to court testimony, actually escaped by herself.
So Tim Ballard has stolen valor from a teenage sex trafficking victim.
Great people, great organization.
During that conference, Caviezel praised Ballard as someone who was saving children from being andrenochromed in D.U.M.M.S.
That is the Deep Underground Military Bases.
Tim, you're playing the role of Tim Ballard, and Tim is actually continuing to save kids.
I mean, you're making a movie about it, but this is what he does.
He was supposed to be in the room with me right here in Tulsa, but he's down there saving children as we speak, because they're pulling kids out of the darkest recesses of hell right now, in dumps and all kinds of places.
The adrenochroming of children.
That is so bad.
That is so bad.
He knocks on three conspiracies at once.
He goes, they're pulling him out of hell, dumbs exist, and the adrenochroming is what he did.
Yeah, he turned it into a verb, which is new to me, I gotta say.
The best part is that they didn't just let that adrenochroming line slide.
He was asked to elaborate, and elaborate he did.
You said, you said a word a minute ago and I want to clarify what that word was because you said a word and I want to make sure that you said adrenochrome.
Yeah.
And a lot of people here, there's about 4,500 people here.
There's about a half million people streaming online.
We're having some cyber attacks.
That feed's been going on and off.
But you said that word, and by a show of hands, who's heard that word before in this building?
Could you please explain, to the extent that you want to or not want to, what that is?
Because some people have never heard that before, and we need to discuss that.
Essentially, you have adrenaline in your body.
I'll just simplify it.
And when you are scared, you've produced adrenaline.
If you're an athlete, you get in the fourth quarter, you have adrenaline that comes out of you.
If a child knows he's going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline.
And they have a lot of terms that they use that he takes me through.
It's the worst horror I've ever seen.
The screaming alone, even if I never, ever, ever, ever saw it.
It's beyond, and these people that do it... There'll be no mercy for them.
This is one of the best films I've ever done in my life.
The film is on a level of...
of Academy Award level.
It sounds to me like Ballard, because he said, you know, all these other things that he's told me about.
So it seems to me that Ballard is feeding Caviezel all of the QAnon bullshit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
And he's, like, he's, like, traumatized.
He's trembling.
He has difficulty explaining this stuff because it's so horrifying to him.
So fucked up.
I think he sounds like he really thinks it's real.
The Adrenikov stuff is so baffling to me.
Like, we have that, you know, don't talk to me until I've had my adrenochrome mug.
And it's funny because that's one of the most ludicrous, obvious bullshit beliefs that QAnon believers have.
Like, it's like there's no substance to it, but it still persists.
You got a crowd full of people cheering, screaming, yes, no mercy for the adrenochrome farmers.
Yeah, and it seemed like about 20% of the crowd raised their hands when they asked, you know, does anybody know what that means?
Also, this makes me very concerned that the movie itself is going to be a QAnon movie.
Yeah.
It's disturbing enough when it's just online.
I don't know, just seeing just a crowd of people just getting worked up over Adrenochrome adds a, I don't know, a new kind of level of dread for me.
Yeah, the guy's like, there's half a million people tuned in.
Give, give him that shit.
Feed him that red pill, boyo.
Yeah, this reminds me of like when we went to that the first QAnon basically meeting that was only had like 80 people in DC all the way back in September of 2019 and Gene Ho was talking about, we know all about the adrenochrome and everyone's ears perked up and they cheered because that was the shit that they wanted to hear.
Lin Wood, for his part, gave a full-throated endorsement of Q2 loud applause.
They've accused me of being a QA non-conspiracy theorist.
Why?
Because they're telling you that I am a bad messenger.
They're trying to attack me because they can't attack Q. Because Q is the truth!
This is about the children, for God's sakes.
Send this videotape.
Send it to Hollywood.
Hey, Clay, send it to the House of Windsor.
Hey, Clay, send it to Bill Gates.
Send it to the damn Illuminati!
Let them hear the truth!
And whatever they do to me, I don't fear them at all.
Send it to the Vatican.
Send it to the politicians, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, the Bushes.
Send it to those people because they are involved in child sex trafficking.
It's time to tell the truth to America.
We're cooked, boys.
This is it.
That is the purest televangelism that I've seen when it comes to QAnon.
The line, yeah, the Q is the truth, it's about the children, got this crowd on their feet.
For my next story, FBI Director Chris Wray promises unclassified threat assessment of QAnon soon.
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Senator Martin Heinrich asked FBI Director Wray why the Bureau had not yet released a threat assessment of QAnon.
Wray responded by saying that his staff is working with Heinrich's staff to get that unclassified report out shortly.
Heirich also asked Ray about speculation that Q is really Ron Watkins and asked for possible legal consequences for people who promoted QAnon.
Ray seemed to sidestep the question.
Here's how he responded.
You're no doubt familiar with some of the public speculation that Q is really Ron Watkins, the administrator of the Internet Image Board.
8-Khan, formerly known as 8-Chan.
Whether or not Watkins is Q, he and his father clearly are responsible for hosting these sites and co-opting, furthering the QAnon conspiracy phenomenon.
You know, given the prominent role that QAnon did play in the January 6th attack on the Capitol, what are the potential legal repercussions for those who might be primarily responsible for either propagating For propagating these sorts of dangerous and, in some cases, violent messages in these forums.
Well, I think your question starts to raise different legal theories.
We obviously, again, have to be careful to be focused on violence, threats to violence, and things that violate federal criminal law.
That doesn't mean that rhetoric isn't a societal problem.
that doesn't need to be addressed.
But from the FBI's perspective, from a law enforcement perspective, we try to be very careful to focus on violence, threats of violence and associated federal criminal activity.
It sounds like to me, like people really want basically Ron and Jim Watkins prosecuted for something.
Problem is, is that it's not a crime to be a QAnon promoter.
It's not it's not a crime to platform hateful ideas.
So he's trying to say no, no, whoa, we're just focused on basically on the QAnon promoters who are or QAnon followers who are using this ideology to as a pretext to commit violent acts.
Our next story concerns the election of QAnon followers to local offices.
Local QAnon politicians are nothing new.
In fact, in December of 2018, a San Juan Capistrano City Council member, Pam Patterson, straight up recited a QDrop on the City Council floor.
But since then, the number of people elected to local government who are QAnon followers has swelled.
That's the topic of the recent Time Report, QAnon Candidates Are Winning Local Elections, Can They Be Stopped?
by Vera Bergengruen.
We're joined now by Vera to discuss what she learned.
Vera, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So what made you first interested in the popularity of local QAnon candidates?
So my background is more, I'm a national security reporter, you know, I've covered the Pentagon and all kinds of, you know, domestic extremists has been my more recent beat.
So I kind of came in a little bit from that end.
But in the fall, I just became fascinated by the way that, you know, all this information we were seeing about voter fraud, about COVID, it was all being, you know, really starting to be echoed by local officials, by state legislators, by people who kind of really gave it this Patina of credibility, where basically, you know, they were the more they repeated something, the more it sounded true to a lot of the people in their communities.
But the thing is about about that kind of stuff, is that a lot of it could be technically feasible.
I mean, in terms of voter fraud, in terms of COVID.
And so I was trying to figure out, you know, are we really seeing something new in term, you know, what's the most outlandish thing that local officials could be saying to that that would cause people to push back?
Yeah.
And obviously there was a lot of QAnon conspiracies that were kind of really starting to blend into more regular right-wing conservative talking points.
You know, when we saw instances like the mayor in Squim, Washington, who, you know, was like a, it was a national story.
I just started thinking, you know, this, I bet this is much more widespread than we think.
And I wanted to find just a bunch of examples that kind of showed us a trend that would Tell us something more interesting about it, beyond the fact that some people tend to retweet, hit the retweet button, and then kind of apologize for it, right?
So that's kind of how I became interested in it.
The thing is, once it started, I was going to write about one or two examples.
And once I started looking into it, I mean, I had dozens and dozens of examples.
Every time I asked any of these people, they would give me 20 more names of people they had noticed sharing, you know, straight up, just, you know, and again, not just people who retweeted something, but people who clearly Since 2017, really early on on their social media, clearly were pushing and promoting a lot of these conspiracies.
And once I put them all together, I think it did kind of show a pretty compelling picture about something that we kind of knew was happening.
But, you know, again, kind of gives us really the whole lay of the land.
Yeah, your article had a lot of really disturbing examples of the kind of phenomenon you're talking about.
There was one case in particular I was interested in.
It was the QAnon follower Katie Williams, who was elected to the seven-member board of the Clark County School District in Nevada.
So what can you tell us about her political career?
Yeah, so, I mean, the people I ended up kind of looking at for this in terms of local QAnon officials fell into two camps.
There was just kind of local people who happened to run the November who, you know, were kind of the true believers, I guess.
People who you could tell were really reading these things and reading the Q drops and having opinions and encouraging other people on social media.
And then there was the people who clearly liked to promote some of it almost opportunistically just because, I mean, I don't want to call it trendy, but it was kind of trendy at a certain point in that in certain right wing circles to say, you know, wafers trafficking children and things like that.
And so that's where this woman, Katie Williams, falls in.
She's an interesting case because, you know, it's hard for me to believe that she really believes any of this.
And after, you know, it kind of came more to light and became a political problem for her.
Her spokes people, you know, told me that, you know, she was, Just spreading these things as a joke.
But, you know, to backtrack, she's a former Miss Nevada.
She's 30 years old.
She ran for the school board in Las Vegas and won.
And she has a very just aggressive social media presence, very Trumpian.
She went viral last March for tweeting at AOC just kind of You know, provoking her about COVID and saying, I'm going to crowded restaurants.
And so her social media presence just overall, you know, she's kind of making fun of transgender athletes.
She's baiting Democrats.
She's tweeting at Biden.
So she's doing a lot of those things.
And in between all of that, there was a lot of QAnon content.
And it's very blatant.
It isn't it's not really, you know, she was straight up just spreading, you know, the wafer conspiracy.
Talking about how wearing masks makes it easier for child sex traffickers to get away, using hashtags and kind of going all in on that.
And so what's happening with a lot of these officials like her, it's so blended with just broader conspiracies, broader right-wing content, that it's almost hard to figure out if she's actually, you know, a straight-up conspiracy theorist or whether she's just kind of putting some of that in because clearly it's popular with some of the people who support her.
I mean, that's the really kind of the most disturbing element of it is that is that you would imagine like being a deranged conspiracy theorist would be a political liability.
But it seems like some of these local candidates at least are treating it like an asset because the QAnon community is a constituency that they can appeal to.
Right, that's definitely what's happening.
And it's really happening across the board with people you can tell don't believe it themselves.
And when they're called out on it, they kind of tend to go and shrug it off and say, oh, I was being, I think she called, you know, Katie Williams, the Las Vegas school board member, said she was being sarcastic.
And, you know, she's, you know, I'm just being satirical.
I clearly don't believe any of this stuff.
You know, you would have to be crazy to believe that stuff.
But then she doesn't really outright, you know, denounce it either.
That's kind of where we really start noticing why this is important.
It's not just that there's local officials who believe crazy things, it's that, you know, they're making it a platform and they're making it, it makes it easier for them to get elected.
There was also the case of a former UFC champ, Tito Ortiz, who is a QAnon follower who ran for a city council seat in Huntington Beach, California.
What exactly happened there?
Speaking to a lot of people in his hometown, you know, Huntington Beach became kind of this hotbed for anti-COVID protests.
They, you know, had lots of anti-mask protests and all of that.
And you can tell that just the people who live there, you know, there's definitely, it attracts a certain kind of crowd too.
But he, you know, former UFC fighter, big, big Trump guy, you know, was always just, you know, super MAGA in that whole crowd.
But he suddenly starts, you know, pops up and he has an online merchandise store.
He's a pretty well-known guy.
He has an online merchandise store and starts selling, you know, where we go on, we go all t-shirts.
And, you know, he's kind of modeling them on the beach, you know, these tank tops.
And, you know, it's just, that's just, you know, that is, I think people looked at that, didn't even know what to do with that.
You know, what is he, is it just, he's kind of a kooky guy.
So, you know, what's he trying to do with this?
And he was, you know, tweeting a lot of those conspiracies as well.
He was running for a city council seat in Huntington Beach.
You know, kind of on the platform of I'm going to save this town from being burned down by Black Lives Matter activists.
And he was blending a lot of that with some QAnon stuff and ended up getting elected with the most votes in the city's history.
That puts him next in line to be the next mayor.
So he's not just a city council member.
Next year, he's going to be the mayor.
The way it was described to me, he's a hometown boy.
You know, he's somebody who grew up there.
You know, he came from modest means and went and became a national fighting champion.
And then, you know, so people think of him as kind of a success story in that sense.
And so it didn't, what happens with a lot of the people I profiled is it doesn't really, the conspiracy stuff is just kind of...
Tangential, but the other stuff eclipses it.
But he's just out there and, you know, the other city council members are freaking out because they're telling me, you know, we have all these businesses and people, you know, people who want to do business with, ultimately their job is a legislative job.
They're not cutting ribbons.
They're trying to make this, you know, laws and, you know, and city council decisions for the city.
And they're saying, we've got all these businesses who want to come in, but they don't want to deal with someone who's QAnon.
They don't want to be associated with this crazy QAnon guy.
So we're losing businesses.
It's going to really negatively impact our city.
You know, they can't meet in person because he refuses to wear a mask.
So they're still doing Zoom meetings.
It's just this bizarre situation where half the town seems, you know, they got over 400 emails and these like very emotional Zoom city council meetings where people are kind of sobbing and saying, you know, I used to be proud of growing up here.
What has happened to our city?
But then more than half the city seems to support him.
They say, you're just going after him because he's conservative.
You tried to cancel him.
So it's just this bizarre kind of impasse where the QAnon stuff is part of the problem, but the real fight seems to be over almost something different, if that makes sense.
It seems like the struggle now is strictly a power struggle, which is an interesting development for QAnon because it was always a PR job until we started dealing with politicians who were able to develop actual tangible power with the electorate and have sway.
After Biden's inauguration, which just kind of seemed to topple the key tenet of the whole conspiracy, there was, you know, you followed all these forums and these telegram groups and there was this big kind of, you know, we're not going to wait for Trump to save us.
We're going to go and take back power.
We're going to start at the local level.
And I quote some of this in my story.
But, you know, I was just reading dozens of posts of people specifically saying we, you know, No one wants this job.
It sucks.
But we're, you know, just suck it up and go get a school board seat, a city council seat.
We need to start locally and build this kind of political base.
I have a hard time imagining that this is going anywhere.
In your report, you also talk to some people who are basically reacting to the rise of QAnon in their communities.
So, like, what are what are people doing to sort of handle the fact that all of a sudden there are these people with bizarre beliefs making some very serious decisions in their local communities?
Right, there was that great bit about the teenager who was like 19 years old who realized, yeah, that there was somebody on his school board who was like completely red-pilled.
Right.
No, it's wild.
I mean, honestly, almost everyone, the first trend I noticed was that it was the teenagers, you know, when it comes to school board, it was the teens who were, they were beyond pissed off.
Like, they don't understand why the adults Don't care.
And you know, and some of these are in slightly more conservative communities, but they are just saying, listen, this woman is straight up saying, you know, the pain is coming and the apocalypse, you know, all these really ridiculous things.
And this person is one of the seven people making decisions about my education.
And the adults just kind of, you know, this one teen in Grand Blanc, Michigan, got so annoyed that no one was paying attention that he went to this local school board meeting on Zoom and kind of read off this, you know, he's like, listen, adults, you know, the FBI says QAnon is a domestic terror threat, you know, this is a crazy person.
And you can tell all their faces, they just kind of, you know, okay, moving on, you know, they don't, they don't, the recall process is complicated.
And like, imagine in a 6000 people town, it's probably kind of lots of local drama.
But yeah, the teens are definitely, the young people seem to have less of a tolerance for this, which might be, I guess, maybe a silver lining in this.
But the local communities do seem very split.
It's been fascinating, the reaction to the article, because, you know, I kind of just stalked some of these local Facebook groups where people just, you know, go off on tangents.
And it kind of seems to have brought, like, even more QAnon supporters out of the woodwork.
And then all these neighbors are horrified.
They're like, you know, Maureen!
No!
You too, you know, and it seems like, you know, for a lot of people, especially with school boards, you know, lots of parents just, it seems like an obvious case.
We don't want a conspiracy theorist making decisions for our kids.
But there's tons of people who basically just said, you know, it's become very meshed with Conservatism with fears of cancelled culture, and they're just saying, you know, what's wrong with patriots who support the Constitution?
You know, we're just gonna, you know, basically, you wouldn't be saying anything if this was a socialist.
And it is resurfacing a lot of really interesting conversations.
I mean, in none of the cases that I profiled in half a dozen, all of those people are still in office.
They haven't recalled any of them.
It's basically just very complicated.
If you draw, you know, it's complicated to do so.
Where do you draw the line about what people are allowed to believe and say?
And local elected officials have always held kind of crazy beliefs.
So I think people just, it's this kind of new phenomenon where people don't, you know, it's not like a KKK member or something that I think nowadays would be easier to push out.
They just kind of don't know what to do.
And it's mainly the kids who say, you know, we're fighting the good fight over here.
And one more thing about it is that once they have these positions, they're not massively powerful, but they do have some say.
So, for example, a school board member in this town, you know, none of the teachers were going to speak up against it, because she kind of has a say over their jobs, right?
Or in the city council, some people don't want to speak out against it either.
They all kind of, you know, the middle of a pandemic, they're trying to just get things get schools and cities back on track.
And they kind of don't want to engage in a lengthy, politically fraught battle to kick out this one kooky person.
So the fight is definitely really, I mean, it's these communities are really torn up about it.
But at the same time, you know, what we do see with people like Tito Ortiz or Katie Williams, who's the Las Vegas school board member who's 30, I mean, it's the younger candidates who are really kind of cynically grifting off it.
And the younger community members who have a much lower tolerance for it, but then all the older community members who mainly have the power are the ones who just conflate QAnon with just Republicanism and conservatism and Trumpism.
So for them, it's just another wing of the Republican Party.
And why would you, you know, kick someone out for that?
So I think that's something we're going to keep seeing.
But I think one of the most important things, I mean, the reason this is a story beyond just kind of gawking at People who are saying crazy things is that you know that it does seem again from my somewhat shorter term perspective that the acceptance of conspiracy theories as a political opinion is just has grown a ton and that's where it's really a problem.
Well, terrifying stuff.
That Time Report, again, is QAnon candidates are winning local elections.
Can they be stopped?
And I recommend everyone go out and read it.
Vera, thank you so much for hanging out with us.
Is there anything you'd like to plug before we let you go?
If you want any more of this content, you can follow me on Twitter.
It's Vera M. Bergen.
But thanks so much for having me.
Thank you so much.
Mother.
Anon.
Charlotte Callinan is a young woman living in Melbourne, Australia, who first heard about QAnon from her mother, with whom she has a close relationship.
That was four years ago.
Charlotte, welcome to the show!
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for agreeing to speak with us.
I know that it can be kind of touchy when it comes to matters of family.
Yeah, definitely.
So could you just describe a bit your life and background, and then also the relationship you had to your mother before the arrival of QAnon?
Me and my mum were definitely really close sort of from I'd say the age of like 16 upwards.
She was a single parent so I think some of the responsibility does end up being shared by the older sibling so that definitely brought us closer.
And just the level of openness that we had in our relationship and how candid we could be with each other I think Some parents or some other, you know, children might even cringe by the things that we would tell each other and things that we would be so comfortable speaking about.
Like, you know, anything I was doing late at night that I would, that a normal child would have lied maybe to their parents about, we didn't really have that sort of relationship.
So I definitely appreciated that.
And growing up, you know, what kind of activities did you take pleasure in and what was your mom like in her life?
My mum was really, really dedicated actually.
I played a lot of sport, a lot of basketball.
I was very competitive in running as well, so every weekend she would be driving me to this, that and the other, to different basketball games, different running events.
So yeah, I think she was really dedicated as far as a parent's concerned.
She worked sort of odd jobs, like she was working in offices for a while and doing different almost managerial roles within the office.
And so was there a point where, you know, your politics and your mom's politics before the arrival of QAnon grew to become different?
No, definitely not.
Me and my mum's politics were very similar.
I think we're both very liberal, both very empathetic at heart.
And so we had very similar beliefs, like sort of the refugee issue, she was happy to let them in.
Even just general lower economic struggles, she was very empathetic to those sort of things.
It wasn't really until QAnon that our politics did start to grow apart.
And you mentioned to me the Nibiru Cataclysm, and that's a kind of apocalyptic belief system based around the idea that we narrowly avoided the end of the world.
It's not really scientifically based in fact, and you told me your mother was into that before QAnon.
Yes, I remember before anything happened with Trump, like before anything in regards to the election went down or QAnon or anything happened, she did bring to me this Nibiru, which was a meteor that was maybe going to come to Earth.
I don't think Mumbleton the extent, maybe, that she was convinced that this meteor was going to hit Earth, but she seemed relatively indifferent to it at the end of the day.
When it didn't happen, it was something that just faded away, didn't really think about it again.
Do you think she, in general, is predisposed to conspiracy theories, or do you think that she had her feet mostly on the ground?
I think she was relatively grounded, definitely.
She was raised Catholic, so I don't know whether that sort of environment would have necessarily assisted someone with developing that innate critical thinking that's required for this sort of information overload that we've got happening at the moment.
But also, I think a lot of people are predisposed to conspiracies just due to the general economic and psychological struggle of living an everyday life.
It really does give them something to look forward to and chase after and be hopeful for.
So I think to some extent, yeah, my mum probably is predisposed, but I would also say that that feature is not necessarily unique to someone who's involved in QAnon.
What I'm saying is that my mum probably shares characteristics with a lot of people that probably aren't in QAnon or just didn't find that route.
Right, of course.
During that period of time when your mom was into Nibiru stuff, and then in the period after, leading up until QAnon entered your lives, would you say that you fought with her about world events sometimes and had arguments?
No.
I mean, I'd say at that point my mum was relatively apolitical.
She definitely voiced views for, say, the big yes vote that we had for marriage legalisation.
Like, she was so cool with that.
But overall, she wasn't really very interested in politics at that stage.
I think Nibiru was just sort of almost like a stepping stone into the Bigger things that she's into now.
When you first realized that your mom was getting into a thing called QAnon, were you still living with her?
Where were you both in your lives at that point?
I actually do remember the exact moment that I realised my mum had sort of properly fallen down the rabbit hole.
At this stage, this is not when I first found out that she was sort of inkling towards Q. I knew for a really long time that she was interested in it, but She sort of gave off the impression that she just picked and choose like different things that she'd be interested in.
I had been listening to a clip by Alex Jones.
We were both moved out.
I was standing in my kitchen and mum was at home.
I had referenced this clip that Alex Jones brought up about drinking blood and drinking children's blood and I remember I brought that to her.
I was like, Oh, how crazy is that?
Right?
Isn't it lucky that you're not interested in that?
And then she proved me wrong.
Evidently, I turned around and was like, actually, I don't mind the baby drinking blood theory.
And I was like, Oh, great.
And so I mean, what what led you to send her Alex Jones?
Were you always just discussing kind of conspiracy theorists together?
Or was that already kind of part of the conversation where you were seeing if she was falling into QAnon?
I was definitely trying to gauge where she was at as far as QAnon, because I knew that she was interested in QAnon, but I think to some extent she did hide her level of belief in the conspiracy from me, because she knew that I wouldn't be cool with it.
That was a big shock to me, like I wasn't really ready to see her almost let go of reality a little bit in that sense.
So she responds to you, well, no, actually, Alex Jones here is maybe getting to something that's true.
At that point, do you kind of start to argue?
I mean, what happened in that moment in your reaction?
I remember laughing.
I remember initially thinking that she was joking.
And then when it really did sink in that it was, you know, something more Intense than I had initially anticipated.
That sucked.
That was really, really hard.
Sort of feeling like you've maybe lost someone that is possibly going to turn into a new person, and that's all great.
Politics isn't everything.
But at the end of the day, I had to re-examine who I thought my mum was, and that was a big job for someone What was I at that stage, like 19, 20?
Yeah, so it was definitely pretty hard to initially come to grips with the fact that she'd really taken hold of some of the more Interesting factors of QAnon, shall we say.
In the period, um, when you were still like, you know, kind of sharing videos like the Alex Jones videos and trying to understand how she, I mean, at that point you already realized that she was at least getting interested in conspiracy theories of a political nature.
I mean, was that in the context of Trump?
Can you give us a bit more context there?
Um, yeah.
So I knew that she, she would say this about Trump.
She would say, I don't love some of his policies.
I don't love the guy.
But I do love what he's trying to do, and in that she's referencing the anti-corruption, she was very much a Bernie Sanders supporter, so that wasn't really that surprising, per se.
Slowly, slowly, she did sort of start to... like, she was talking about Jeffrey Epstein very early, she was talking about the Clintons very early.
I mean, it happened so slowly.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what she was digging into.
I don't think at that point I knew too much about QAnon either.
So I was left just completely defenseless, especially with Trump.
It happened really slowly and it went from a, oh, you know, I just like his anti-corruption stance to, oh, you know, the Democrats are doing really bad things and he does have to put up that wall.
And then eventually it just did become sort of like a... it became much closer to adoration and admiration, which I wasn't comfortable with.
So that was a red flag.
There wasn't really one particular moment where I clicked into the fact that she was really setting up with QAnon.
Like, it sort of happened so slowly and she released little bits of information to me that I don't think I could say One moment where I realized that she was getting into QAnon.
She would mention QAnon, and I knew that she would drag bits and pieces from there, but I wasn't at that stage completely educated on what she was looking at.
So at what point did you start essentially saying, well, it looks like the specific thing that this is stemming from is QAnon, I want to find out more, how did that process come about, and then what did you do to find out more?
Well, it really was that moment when I mentioned Alex Jones, and she said, Oh, no, no, I don't like Alex Jones too much.
But then I mentioned the blood drinking and she was like, Oh, there's actually some, you know, evidence for that.
At that point, as I said, it's a really, really jarring, shocking, and quite crushing feeling to have to come to terms with something like this.
So the first place that I went was a Reddit page called QAnon Casualties.
I think I did, for a while, kind of fester in a little bit of misery, and I did find a little bit of a home there, just because it's nice to see Other people are suffering in the same way that you are with having to, you know, sort of try and cope with this almost crazy identity crisis that you don't even have control over.
Shortly after I sort of got into QAnon Casualties, I sort of started really looking around into other QAnon-based products.
So you guys, 100%, I could not even begin to think about what it would have been like not having you guys there, because there really was so little QAnon content that wasn't so black and white.
I really, really appreciated the fact That this podcast, or you guys, would dive in and pull out that little nugget of truth that my mum is talking about and then just chop off the excess.
Like, you know, this is crap, this is crap, this is crap, this is real.
Right.
So I think that really, it really just gave me a much better understanding of what I was coming into contact with and what my mum was really experiencing.
So yeah, would have been 100% lost if you guys didn't have this podcast, could not thank you enough.
Well, to be honest, we only dream that we might help somebody in any kind of way similar to this.
So it's very, it's an honor.
You cannot even begin to imagine.
And so you mentioned kind of, you know, there's that period where you're in shock, where you're angry, where you're very sad, a lot of grief.
And, you know, at what point did you and your mom start having more arguments?
At what point did you decide to push back in ways that, that, uh, that led you into these cycles of arguments?
I mean, I think the anger and the grief was a big part of that.
I wasn't really ready to come to terms with what my mom was presenting to me.
It's very difficult to argue with someone who is into QAnon, because Especially at that stage, I didn't really understand how I could counter these sort of arguments because a lot of it is maybe they present you with one fact and you can go back and debunk that and you show them, you know, this is incorrect for this reason.
But then it's almost like they generally tend to move the goalposts.
And so you can't really ever get them, it's very rare to get them to actually realize something and have it stick.
So that process of me not understanding that and trying really hard to break through and really like pushing at it, I was like, oh, if I show her this, it might turn her back.
If I do this, it might help.
That caused a lot of arguments because I just wasn't really ready to almost accept what was in front of me as far as my mom was concerned at that stage.
And what kind of changes did you observe in her behavior and her personality kind of before and after QAnon?
We always have had a, let's say, feisty relationship, like I think a lot of mothers and daughters could probably relate to.
So we've always had like a very strong open dialogue, shall we say.
Obviously, we were fighting a lot more and about lots of different things than we had been previously.
I personally Don't feel like my mom has actually changed that much since QAnon, you know?
I think she'd even admit this, she's always been a little bit crazy.
So as far as us fighting, that definitely increased.
The things that she would talk about and her focuses were different.
In that space of four to five years, like, she's changed a lot anyway, so it's very difficult to pinpoint what's been for QAnon and what hasn't been.
Of course.
Yeah, she's gotten a lot into, like, she does lots of meditation, she started getting into a lot of exercise around the same time.
Yeah, I think maybe I'm even possibly too close to the situation to really confirm what the differences have been.
Of course.
In the 60 Minutes documentary in which you featured, your mom claimed to have read all the Q drops.
Do you think that's accurate?
Was she visiting 4chan, 8chan, 8kun, or do you think she mostly used aggregators, Q influencers, YouTube, Facebook, that kind of stuff?
I actually asked her about this last night.
As I said, I spoke to her just to, you know, give her an idea of what kind of questions I was going to be asked and just discuss a little bit about like, what, you know, different things that she would or wouldn't be comfortable with.
And she did confirm, she didn't go anywhere near 4Chan, she didn't go anywhere near 8Chan.
She was, in fact, part of that 8Kun revival, when they came back online and it was mostly Q people that were there.
So the only time that she touched 8Chan was when it was Q dominated.
But aside from that, she does like the QTubers, or she does like the people who translate Q She does look at the Q-map and she obviously, she has previously been on 8chan but she generally does use aggregators and the influencers.
As far as whether I think she's read all of them, I personally wouldn't be surprised if she had.
I could see her definitely just treating it like a novel, going through it almost like she does different Like she has different almost like meditation books and stuff that, you know, they don't mean that much, but she likes to just go over them.
And you didn't notice that she started spending more time indoors on YouTube, isolated, staying up late at night.
This is something that a lot of other Q followers described during their descent in the rabbit hole.
No, definitely.
Yeah, she was quite the opposite, really.
I think it was maybe the company that she was keeping.
They both like QAnon.
And so I think they sort of lean on each other for that sort of thing.
She gets lots of exercise, she goes to the beach constantly.
As far as the shutting in aspect of it, it really wasn't something that Mum experienced, I don't think.
Maybe on a level that I possibly couldn't have seen, because I wasn't living at home at the time.
She loves exercise.
She always talks about going outside, getting sunlight.
She talks about how I'm pale whenever I see her.
That's classic mom stuff.
My mom is always telling me how my tan is doing, if I look tired, these are the first things I hear.
At any point did you start to hope that a specific real-world event unfolding, like the storming of the Capitol or Donald Trump losing the election and then not getting back in a couple months later, did you ever hope or think that those might change her mind?
As far as times where I thought a real life event would alter how my mum felt about QAnon, when Trump wasn't elected, I think there was a small part of me that was maybe hopeful that that would have an effect.
I had obviously done some research into it and I listened to your podcast about how they had that certain political conspiracy that went on for like 10 or 20 years or something ridiculous.
I think at that stage I was very prepared for the fact that this might be a permanent experience.
The only times that I ever really got invested in different real life events, sort of changing how she was feeling.
Maybe not necessarily real life events, but definitely generally trying to debunk the things that she was sending me.
I used to get really invested in thinking that that might change the way that she's thinking, but after going through that, by the time it had gotten to the election with Trump, I kind of knew that it could go either way.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Capitol.
In the 60-minute segment, your mom kind of alludes to the quite frequent QAnon belief that it was a false flag and that there were these kind of agents provocateurs coming in from the outside, and these far-left people kind of did an op on them.
And did you expect that?
At that point, were you already familiar enough with Q to know that they might swing that way?
Yeah, definitely.
Saw it coming from a mile away.
I thought it was obvious.
Yeah, I thought it was the obvious answer.
I wasn't surprised in the slightest when she said that it was, you know, Antifa or whatever.
And so you mentioned that Australian news in general—this is more of a macro question—has fostered conspiracy-minded people.
So how do you think that the mainstream media in Australia, you know, has made mistakes that you think might be pushing people down these rabbit holes?
I mean, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who lives in Australia that our media cycle isn't the most transparent.
There's been a lot of hate-stoking around Sudanese gangs, African gangs living out in the western northern suburbs.
That generally is completely false, so I think they're almost They're almost conditioning people with these completely incorrect narratives and then being surprised when they just go and select a completely incorrect narrative or ineffective narrative from somewhere else.
Another example that I can think of would be the way that we addressed immigration here.
There were almost Entire campaigns run around, like, stopping the boats, fearmongering around these refugees, and the reality was, especially with the fact that we were so focused on them coming in via boat, we had, what, five times the amount of illegal immigrants coming in via plane?
So this idea that we had to stop the boats and be so afraid that these, you know, refugee boats were coming to our shores, It essentially was completely made up.
It was artificially created, whether it was for political gain, for policy changes, etc.
I think it did really condition people to start Just buying into those sort of reactive, emotive stories that are supposed to prey on their insecurities as far as refugees or black people or whatever are concerned.
And I do think that those type of stories have now given way for more extreme people to take their place.
And so you kind of are entering this period where you start to argue more with your mom.
At what point did you decide, I would like to speak to the media?
Was that a thing that your mom decided before you, or how did you get to that point with her?
And at that point, when you decided and started that, were you still arguing with each other a lot?
Actually, the first piece of media I did, I found in QAnon casualties, that Reddit page that I referenced before.
There was a student that put out some feelers and she said, Hey, is there anyone that would like to speak about losing their family members to QAnon?
At that stage, I was very angry with Mum, like we were not in a good place.
So I think having someone talk about it and just having someone to have that full fledged conversation with was to some extent really therapeutic, because not many people knew what QAnon was, not many people sort of Had an understanding of what I was going through, so I think the process of speaking to, at this stage it was just like a student journalist, the process of speaking to her was actually really nice, I really enjoyed it.
And it doesn't come across in the articles that I've done, but as far as trying to resolve this QAnon thing, painting them up to be like terrorists or this or that is not helping anyone.
These people aren't just inherently evil.
Like, they got to the place, they got to where they are for a reason, whether that be through, you know, they're hopeful about something that it can bring, they're afraid or scared for their future.
And I think it's really obvious to anyone who is actually involved that isolating these people and shutting them away and saying, no, I don't want to speak to you about this or you're stupid or you're this or you're that, It's just going to cause more animosity.
It's never ever going to solve the problem doing it that way.
And speaking from experience, I tried that route, I promise.
How did you go from doing a couple of student interviews and some articles to ending up on 60 Minutes and having your mother join you?
I mean, honestly, I think they found me in the Reddit page, QAnon Casualties, and they also found the article of the girl that I'd done it with in New South Wales.
But bottom line, I have no idea.
I think sheer luck.
They just found my story, I think they liked it.
They really did want to go with the family angle and they were very clear on that from start to finish, so I was interested in speaking to them because, as you guys saw, I think it was a more interesting angle and an opportunity that doesn't really come up in Australian meter very often, to get a more in-depth look at QAnon.
And so how did you, you know, clearly you don't believe in QAnon, and your mom knows that.
How do you convince your mom to speak to both a mainstream media outlet, which is, you know, broadly detested by the QAnon community, but also appear in a piece of media where she knew that you would say that you didn't believe in the same things as her?
Well, as far as our belief system, I think this comes back to the open and honest relationship that we had with each other before.
She knows top to bottom that I'm, you know, a hardcore socialist.
She knows that I'm, you know, the enemy of the state in QAnon's eyes, that sort of thing.
So as far as her seeing me say that I didn't believe in her, I'll call them conspiracies for lack of a better word, for her to see that I didn't like those conspiracies wasn't, it's not groundbreaking to her, like she already knows that about me, she knows that I don't agree with what she said.
As far as convincing her to go on 60 Minutes, I actually gave her the option.
I said we had either the option of only myself doing it, or doing it with me and her, and I said it's completely in your control.
If you want to do it with me, great, I think it would be a really good experience.
I'm really excited to look back on it ten years from now because I think it's going to be really interesting.
So I said, if you want to do it together, that's great.
If you want me to do it alone, then I'll happily do that for you.
Or if you don't want either of us to do it, and you don't want it to happen again, then that was completely up to her.
I left the decision making up to her, because especially with something like 60 Minutes, that isn't necessarily big in my books, but it is a very large program, and a lot of people saw it.
So I was never going to put her in a position where she was uncomfortable with what we were doing, because that would just Yeah, no way.
So, but if she really believed, in a visceral sense, in a political sense, in an ideological sense, in QAnon, and you're an avowed socialist that QAnon people think, you know, that's evil, but your mom wanted to maintain a relationship with you, and you wanted to maintain a relationship with your mom, so do you think there's something almost, not fully aesthetic, but a side of her beliefs where it's aesthetic, and she's like, well no, of course I won't destroy my relationship to my daughter, you know, that's, As or more important to me than this?
Yeah, I mean, I think especially as Australians, we are notoriously politically passive.
Like, we do not like to ruffle the boat when it comes to this sort of thing.
Like, we're very much very happy and content to just sweep it under the rug.
So for a while, there was a little bit of sweeping under the rug, definitely.
But as far as, you know, where we place our political beliefs above our own personal relationship, Like, they're obviously always going to be intertwined, but at the end of the day, we do understand that even if one day we have a full-blown screaming match about Bill Gates and Alex Jones and blood drinking and whatever, the next day we're still going to come to each other and say, I love you.
Like, we'll still end that conversation by saying, I love you, just because we understand that it's just not worth it at the end of the day, really.
I mean, I think especially if my mom ever does decide to kind of...
You know, take a step back from QAnon and sort of hang the phone up on it.
I can't have her socially isolated.
Right.
Like, it's just not a possibility.
Even when we were at the worst of the worst, like, we were fighting so much, I always felt so guilty when I wasn't talking to her, because it's sort of like, even though we're fighting, I'm still just making sure that we are still connected.
Like, I don't want her to feel like she's lost me over something like this, especially if she ever does decide to turn around and go, okay, maybe I was wrong.
And so, how did you think 60 Minutes succeeded and failed in their depiction of your mother, yourself, and the relationship as a whole?
Well, look, I think there were different elements that did succeed and fail.
And to some extent, I don't blame 60 Minutes for this, because the Australian media cycle is really not that well-versed on QAnon, so to present a nuanced discussion of it could have been really difficult.
But as far as the positive goes, I did think she looked nice, like I was happy with the way they presented her and presented us.
There were a couple of dodgy cuts that she wasn't happy about, but overall it was pretty good.
And then, I don't remember who it was, that guy, as far as the bad ways that they presented it.
That guy who came out and said that they were gonna... Oh, what did he say?
He said they were gonna, like, load up their children, strap them with bombs, and send them into the Capitol, which is just so unnecessary, in my opinion.
It just wasn't... Yeah, it's just not called for.
It's, in my opinion, not very accurate.
They're not suicide bombers.
Like, they're just people, although they might be a bit confused, they're still, at the end of the day, they're not...
These evil aliens.
They're not here for us to demonize.
They're still people that we need to make sure.
aren't going to be further isolated or alienated from our communities.
Yeah, and it's not like when a white supremacist or a kind of white nationalist militiaman gets into QAnon when somebody like your mom gets into it.
You can't really throw those all in the same basket.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's completely, completely different situations.
In your final scene in the 60 Minutes segment, you're interviewed on the beach with your mom, and it appears there's been this kind of resolution between the two of you.
So how truthful is that depiction?
Overall, I'd say it's, you know, pretty accurate, albeit a bit cheesy.
We definitely are on much better terms than we were.
Like, we obviously still fight and bicker about some things, but they're generally nowhere near as passionate as they used to be.
And I think we're both in a better position to be able to handle ourselves more.
Which, you know, two, three years ago, I just definitely wasn't in the space to be able to handle it.
So yeah, I mean, overall, I think we do have a positive relationship.
Obviously, things can change in the future.
I don't know where she's going to pivot to next.
I've always said to her, as long as you're not organizing anything, I'm okay.
Like, as long as you're not going to protests and actively trying to spread this sort of thing, like, I'm all right.
So as long as she's just, it's almost like a hobby to her.
So as long as it sort of stays that way, then we'll be fine.
So this is probably not how your mom perceives it, but in your perception, what are the biggest obstacles to her potential shedding of the QAnon belief system?
I mean, I think there's a lot of investment that goes into committing yourself to something like that for a really long time.
Personally, if I put myself in her shoes, and I had to come to the realization that maybe what I'd been so sure about for so long wasn't accurate, that's a horrific realization to have to Even consider.
I could not imagine what it would be like to have to cut ties for QAnon with my mom.
It's been, what, a good three, four years of even just having a purpose of following this along.
To have to lose all of that, I think, would be a huge adjustment.
Not to mention, especially now that she's been on the media, maybe some of the social isolation that she might face at this point.
And so one question I guess I have is that Q hasn't posted since last December, and your mom is probably at least peripherally aware that there's a big theory going that, you know, Ron Watkins and his father were very deeply invested and involved in the operation.
How has she been taking these developing facts?
Because we have some people that say, well, QAnon is over, but how has she been processing it?
I mean, it's pretty much business as usual, to be honest, where currently I've got a running bet with her at the moment.
We've got until July of this year for the military to take over and there to be an overhaul, so all the arrests and the indictments and everything, they're coming out then.
The storm, yeah.
Yeah, so I think at this point she's sort of taken the mind of, it's bigger than Q.
Which obviously for the overall development of everything is concerning, because it means that there's no point of grounding or anything like that.
It could just, you know, at this point, if it's not directed by anything, then it could just become whatever it wants.
But I guess it's sort of always been like that anyway.
It's not like Q ever gave that much direction.
I'd say that Q not posting might stop people from Buying into it, but I'd be surprised if someone who was already following QAnon really cared that much if they stopped posting.
Mom certainly didn't.
This has been really, really fascinating and, you know, I really hope for you and your mom that things continue to go well and you continue to communicate and that hopefully, you know, maybe one day at this Lodges, change sometimes comes in very strange ways.
But yeah, all my love to you and to your mom, of course.
Thank you so much, guys.
It's been really fun.
I very much appreciate this.
I reached out to you on Twitter, and I'd reached out to a couple of other people that you had on the podcast, and I sort of went, oh, I don't know why I haven't spoken to the QAnon Anonymous podcast themselves.
I should thank them for all the information and everything they've given me.
And then to have you guys invite me on this is like truly still in shock.
It's not happening.
This is not real life.
It's really our pleasure.
Would you like to plug anything while you're here?
I have a new podcast coming out soon.
It's called Smoko.
So we'll be talking to different people from different walks of life about politics, entertainment, basically whatever I would like to share on that day is what we'll be talking about.
That's S-M-O-K-O.
Yes, it is S-M-O-K-O, Smoko is the Australian spelling.
Very much, the Smoko is quintessential Australian slang, just for anyone out there that doesn't know.
Follow us on Twitter, Smoko Podcast, Instagram, it's Smoko.xd, and the same thing on Facebook.
But yeah, thank you so much, guys.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
No, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your experiences.
Yeah, seriously, it was just really insightful and just wonderful to talk to somebody that's, you know, really, really dealing with this.
You know, a lot of times on the show we talk to people who are analyzing it or have been following it, either through a journalistic standpoint or analytical standpoint, and so to get to talk to somebody who is living this day in, day out, and has found a way To live day in, day out, and retain one's sanity, and retain the most important aspects, at least, of your relationship with your mom.
We're really grateful for you coming on and sharing your story.
Yeah, it's been really good.
I'm hoping it'll continue to stay the same way, but honestly, for anyone that is actually dealing with that, like, number one, hit me up.
I love hearing those sort of stories.
That's what got me into all of this.
But number two, like, Just do what you're comfortable with.
Don't push yourself if you don't feel like you're in a position to really handle someone in this state.
Don't put yourself through torture, because at the end of the day, you have to understand not only your relationship with this new person, but you have to understand how you feel about it.
And I think that's really important.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Please go to patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free and editorially independent.
We usually stream twice a week at twitch.tv slash QAnonAnonymous, and for everything else, we have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's fact.
And now, today's AutoCue.
Well, the deep state's the elites of the world.
The deep state's the people that have all the money.
Look what they've got planned for the world.
One world government.
No borders.
No sovereignty.
They're trying to take away people's free speech.
They're trying to take away people's right to protest.
When you say that people's speech is being suppressed, you feel as though you're being silenced?
I don't think anyone's intentionally silencing me, but we hesitate to speak out because people think you're crazy.
Do you think you're crazy?
No, I don't think I'm crazy.
I just think I know what I know and I'm pretty confident in the information that I've been given.
So, thank you.
Do I sound crazy?
I don't think I really knew what QAnon was for a long while.
And then, yeah, I sort of had to start looking into it a little bit more and was like, oh, OK, there's actually a lot to unpack here.
There's a lot going on.
Michelle's daughter Charlotte has had to do plenty of research herself to understand her mum's newfound views of a world where Donald Trump's political rivals harvest the blood of children.
I was like, oh, so you don't actually believe this, right?
And she was like, no, no, it actually happens if you do the research and you look into it.
And I was like, Okay, like yeah, sort of something much bigger than I'd anticipated really.
It's not every day that you find out that your mum thinks that there's youth serum being distributed to the higher powers in secret.
You look like besties there.
Yep, that's my mum, my best friend.
As her only daughter, Charlotte has always been very close to her mum.
I think we're definitely closer than most mother and daughter for sure.
But QAnon has taken a serious toll on their relationship.
She's almost like created a different realm.
It's a different reality really to the point where I just got frustrated because it's like I can't really have a conversation with you because we can't just agree on the basic principles of what's happening.
We would argue.
So we'd have discussions and sometimes they'd get a bit heated.
Sometimes they'd get a lot heated.
And she'd shut it down, we'd shut it down.
I think it was about two or three months before the election.
I was like, we're finished.
I need to not speak to you until this is done.
And even prior to that, every conversation we'd have would end into screaming or crying or this or that.
You just don't know anything anymore.
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