Episode 162: The Swarming of School Board Meetings
QAnon supporters, GOP operatives and people riled up by masks and vaccines. We explore the different factors behind the invasion of school board meetings, which have seen an increase of Americans yelling for 3-5 minutes about a variety of right wing grievances and conspiracy theories. Plus Jake brings us a very spooky story about using an inkjet printer: "Enemy of the Board".
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Welcome, listener, to Chapter 162 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the QAnon School Board Invasion episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Free speech!
Americans invented it, and everyone agrees it's really cool.
But what if nobody around you wants to listen to your syphilitic brain endlessly paraphrase Dan Bongino?
What if, in some way, you could become Dan Bongino instead?
Enter School Board Meetings.
This new media platform is basically a room of people forced to listen to your free speech for three to five minutes at a time, a guaranteed triggerable audience, many of them on the edge of psychological collapse due to their intense investment in their child's future.
Don't have a kid in that district?
Or even a kid?
Or even live in that district at all?
Who gives a shit?
Show up, put your name down on the sheet, and take your shot, King.
School board meetings are essentially open mics for amateur right-wing social media pundits.
Succeed and a low-resolution video of you screaming about pedophiles, critical race theory, and the Illuminati could net you followers on social media or even a feature on national media platforms ranging from InfoWars to Fox News.
And that is the nectar of the gods.
This week, Travis will attempt to track the recent right-wing mobilizations that have turned school board meetings into pugilistic arenas where Americans wield free speech against each other in the never-ending culture wars.
We'll be taking a look at the institutions, political figures, and media personalities who seeded and stoked the movement, and why the school board meeting format has attracted a hive of conspiracy theorists, eager to yell at other people both online and off.
After that, Jake has dug deep in the microfiche archive once more and unearthed a story for the listeners' enjoyment.
But before all that, QAnon News!
Well, first of all, I want to wish a happy Red October to those who celebrate.
May this be the reddest October yet.
This is the third annual one.
Yeah, I've put up all my decorations.
I've got a little guillotine hanging over the fireplace.
Mm-hmm.
I think that it's interesting that they called it Red October because at this point they are literally hunting for a Red October.
They cannot find it.
It is gone.
It is off the sonar.
For my first story, Facebook whistleblower says that company knew their product pushes people towards QAnon.
So the big tech news over the past week concerned a former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower named Francis Hagan.
She leaked tens of thousands of internal documents which she says show that Facebook knows that its platforms are being used to spread hate, violence, and misinformation, and that the company has tried to hide evidence of this fact.
The contents of these documents were reported in a multi-part investigation in the Wall Street Journal called the Facebook Files.
Most intriguingly for us, Hagen says that Facebook knows that users who follow pages for mainstream news outlets and mainstream politicians are pushed into extremist content like QAnon because it gets a high level of engagement.
Here's what she said in the recent 60 Minutes interview.
So Facebook has done experiments where they take brand new accounts.
So Facebook has said before, you're complaining about the misinformation you're seeing.
It takes two to tango, right?
You know, you picked your friends, you picked the topics that you engage with.
Don't just blame us.
It's on you.
So they've taken new, brand new accounts.
So no friends.
And all they've done is follow Donald Trump, Melania, Fox News, and like a local news source.
And then all they did was click on the first 10 things that Facebook showed them.
Or if Facebook suggested a group, they joined that group.
So they're not doing any conscious action here.
There's just one thing going.
And within a week, you see QAnon.
Within two weeks, you see things about white genocide.
And you can say, how did that happen?
Why are these the things that Facebook is choosing to show you?
And it's because those things get the highest engagement.
Now, this isn't really a surprising or new finding.
Journalists have been talking about this for years, how Facebook not just allows the QAnon content on the platform, but has worked to actively push people who maybe didn't click on any extremist content right into QAnon by recommending it in emails, in app recommendations.
But what is new, I suppose, is that Facebook is getting heat for it.
Bigger, more mainstream way.
She's actually testifying to Congress at the moment.
Will this have any impact whatsoever in the future on how Facebook does business?
I mean, I don't think so.
I mean, I'm really too jaded to have any hope at this point after talking about this for years and the way in which Facebook is warping the minds of vulnerable people.
This is a lot like in Looney Tunes when people are hungry and they look at somebody and they become a big chicken drumstick.
Facebook is looking at the same awful posts that you are, but they just see a giant engagement thumbs up.
And what may have been a coincidence, the day after that interview aired, Facebook and its other apps, Instagram and WhatsApp, went down for like five hours.
I think, I didn't check on this, but I think it's maybe the biggest outage like ever.
The company later said that the outage was due to configuration changes on the backbone routers, whatever
that means.
People in the QAnon community, however, were convinced that it was the beginning of the long-awaited
"Ten Days of Darkness" or evidence that the military had seized the Facebook or something like that.
Yeah, everybody had a reason for the outage.
Nobody was mentioning just sheer incompetence, which I thought was interesting.
There was always, you know, some sort of connected scheme.
QAnon School Board Invasion So let me ask you boys, have you two ever actually attended
a school board meeting as an adult?
No.
No.
Well, unsurprisingly, you're basically still children yourselves.
But I have attended a few.
And let me tell you, they're normally really, really dull.
I mean, to give you an idea of how school board meetings usually go, I'm going to play you a clip from a 2019 school board meeting from a random district I found in New York state.
I really resent that you're holding over us that you're fertile.
The Budget, Fiscal Program, and Legislative Team met on Thursday, November the 8th.
I believe Mr. Mecca attended this meeting.
Do you have a brief report you could share with us, Mr. Mecca?
Sure.
Those are two meetings that are back-to-back, so there are two separate reports, even though they're attached, you'll see as one.
In the Budget and Finance meeting, we looked at the first draft of the 2019-20 budget and there is going to be leadership restructuring.
There will be an executive director who will be there, point eight, and an associate director So I wanted to present this because this is the baseline, basically.
This is what you should normally expect when you show up to a school board meeting.
People talk about facilities.
They talk about budgets.
You're in a meeting sometimes talking about future meetings is mind-numbingly dull.
Right.
I mean, you've got kind of some ill-fitting sport coats.
You've got motivational posters in the background.
Yeah, yeah, right.
You know, open MacBooks.
This shit for two hours or more, basically.
Just disassociating, wishing you were doing something else.
So, um, now historically school boards, like they have been places where some conflict has occurred, you know, as, as any kind of government business, uh, might, it might happen.
But however, in recent months, it seems as though school board meetings have been a lot more dynamic.
They've been sounding a lot like this recent school board meeting at the Prince William
School District in Virginia.
So proud you have a kid?
Absolutely.
This is your kind.
These are your adults.
Yeah.
I was gonna say, this is the world you've brought your spawn into.
A lot more indiscriminate yelling, basically a serious battleground for the culture war.
Now, most frequently, these clashes in school boards are over things like critical race theory or masks.
These incidents are part of a broader push by QAnon followers and other people poisoned by disinformation online to get involved in local politics.
Beyond just showing up for school board meetings, this also involves running for the school board or even becoming a precinct committee person.
Now, how did this happen?
I thought QAnon was about watching Donald Trump destroy the cabal with military intelligence, not screaming at a low-level bureaucrat about masks.
After spending some time researching the issue, I've determined that the invasion by school boards is part of a broader campaign by conspiracists to get involved in local politics.
And this campaign might be attributed to a complex set of factors that involve GOP political operatives, the destabilizing effects of the pandemic, and the general realization that yelling during your allotted time at school board meetings is a lot like posting.
The three men who are perhaps most responsible for this sudden interest in local positions are General Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and a little-known Arizona Tea Party activist named Daniel J. Schultz.
The role of Bannon and Schultz was recently documented by ProPublica in a report headlined, Heeding Steve Bannon's Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP and Reshape America's Elections.
Here's what they discovered.
For many years, Dan Schultz has been pushing a bottom-up campaign to reform the Republican Party that he calls the precinct strategy.
In Schultz's view, Democrats are pushing a radical Marxist agenda.
Now, my knowledge of political theory, I'll admit, could be better.
But I'm pretty sure that self-described radical Marxist may take issue with this claim.
But this is what this group said in a promotional video.
Shultz further believes that the efforts of Democrats are being ineffectively countered by weak rhinos or Republicans in name only.
The root of the problem, he believes, lies in an often overlooked but crucial component of party politics, the GOP precinct committees in each state.
The position of precinct committeeman isn't very glamorous, but it establishes a direct link between a political party and the voters in the election district.
And the position can wield a surprising amount of power and influence.
Responsibilities of the precinct committee officers might include facilitating voter registration and absentee ballot access, leading get-out-the-vote outreach efforts, distributing campaign and party literature, promoting the party generally, and addressing voter concerns.
And perhaps most crucially, They can also vote on party leadership and endorsement of party candidates.
So if party leadership is weak, it's only because the precinct committees are staffed with people that allow them to be weak, in Shultz's view.
According to Shultz, the path forward is simple for conservatives who are unhappy with the GOP.
Take over the precinct officer positions one by one, and from there, take over the party as a whole.
Here's how a promotional video on Schultz's website describes the precinct strategy.
Precinct committeemen help elect county chairmen, officers, and even delegates to the RNC.
There are over 400,000 committeemen seats across the U.S.
But what the GOP establishment doesn't want you to know is that 200,000 of those seats are vacant.
We need America First patriots to fill these seats.
It's time to fight and kick the rhinos out.
Help take back our party.
You can make a difference.
And PrecinctStrategy.com will show you how.
Take action now.
Be a warrior.
Help save this great country.
Did I see silver face paints on that guy?
Silver face paint, they show a Spartan warrior, the common imagery of the modern right.
What I found really remarkable about this strategy is that as a method of acquiring political power, it's really down to earth.
It doesn't involve magical thinking or hoping for a military coup or Trump doing some sort of incredible 5D chess.
It's about operating within the existing party structure from the bottom up.
It's also about collective action.
many people individually who might not have a lot of power influenced by themselves, each doing something that adds up
to a significant change.
Right, it's like.
It's like QAnon got them riled up.
QAnon got the juices flowing and created this intense desire to see change or experience the changing of the country to whatever way that they saw fit.
And when Q didn't deliver on any of its promises, all they were left with was this empty void and the motivation to go out and do something that they always could have done But the anger wasn't there, you know?
Dan Schultz has been advocating for this strategy for more than a decade, but he never got much traction with it.
He got some attention in 2015 in a Breitbart article, but he's been mostly left to his own devices to promote it.
In recent years, he's been producing YouTube videos and even a self-published book titled, How to Get into the Real Ballgame of Politics Where You Live to Help Donald J. Trump Make America Great Again.
Very specific title.
Very succinct title.
Christ, everyone's doing the Amazon thing where you list like every adjective related to your product.
Doing SEO.
But with this book, he failed to get Trump's attention.
On a podcast episode released just a few months ago, Dan griped about how little attention he had received for his strategy.
His strategy is just doing politics.
Like America is like reinventing doing basic politics.
This is it boggles my mind why Donald Trump hasn't figured this out.
You know, I sent him my book.
It's probably in a box somewhere on a shelf.
I did get a nice, you know, form.
Thank you for your gift from him.
That was in 2019, I think.
I tried to, you know, I wrote article after article.
I did video after video.
They're all on YouTube about how to get involved and how he could become the recruiter-in-chief, but he never did any recruitment.
He never talked about it.
I don't understand why.
I hope he changes.
I hope I can get this message to him, but so far I've failed miserably.
Sounds like he's having some self-esteem issues.
Well, you know, I mean, again, he's had this strategy in his pocket, again, for a decade.
Since, like, the Obama years.
He's, like, he's had this plan he thought was really cool, and he tried to push it a million different ways, and it just never caught on.
Until now.
As the ProPublica report found, Dan Schultz's luck turned around when he appeared on the podcast Steve Bannon's War Room.
In February of this year, Schultz advocated for the strategy on the podcast, and then Bannon brought Schultz back on the show at least eight more times.
And this inspired listeners all over the country to put his ideas into action.
Which, by the way, means that much of this mess can reasonably be attributed to podcasting.
And listen, I understand that listening to podcasts can be a joyful way to learn wacky things while you commute or do chores.
But we need to ask ourselves, honestly, is this medium doing more harm than good?
Just something worth thinking about.
After Schultz received Bannon's blessing, he went on a whirlwind media tour, which included, most relevantly for us, appearing on several QAnon podcasts.
Schultz himself has called QAnon a joke, but he nonetheless has been very willing to appear on QAnon programs to spread this message.
For example, Schultz appeared on the podcast Dark to Light, which is hosted by crucial early QAnon promoter Tracy Diaz.
In that episode, Diaz praised the precinct strategy.
There are something like, he said, 200,000 open slots in the Republican Party leadership right now in local areas, in your state, in your precinct where you live, where you can take power there, sometimes by default.
And you will have a say in literally everything, including voting integrity, voter integrity, and changes to fix that mechanism at the local level, which will then trickle all the way up.
I'm already seeing what's going to happen here.
If you get one QAnon person that gets onto that board, they're going to annoy the shit Out of everybody else that isn't Q-Pilled, and they're gonna go, you know what, I'm not paid for this, fuck this shit.
They're gonna bounce, there's gonna be more open seats, more QAnon people are gonna come in, and boom, the world falls.
Now, it's worth noting that Tracy Diaz is not just an advocate of running for local officer, she's also a practitioner.
In April this year, she was elected to a GOP state executive committee in a county in South Carolina.
Schultz also appeared on the QAnon livestream Red Pill 78.
There, the host encouraged his viewers to follow through on the strategy.
What is the name of the position that elects the county chairman or the At a precinct level, the precinct captain.
What is that called?
And that's what you want to become.
Okay.
And just for the record, I saw two, maybe three people have done this.
And I know that we've got a lot of people out there who could go ahead and do this.
So I would challenge everybody in this next week, by next weekend, I want to see many of you going and doing this, finding out the information, determining if there are vacancies, and if you can go ahead and get on that vacancy.
Schultz also appeared on the QAnon livestream Patriot Soapbox, which was also crucial for mainstreaming QAnon all the way back in 2017.
In March of this year, Schultz appeared on a Patriot Soapbox show called Common Sense.
The host encouraged his QPilled viewers to get away from their keyboards and take action.
You cannot get anything accomplished by sitting behind a keyboard and just bitching about what the Republican Party has become.
You actually need to go out, do the legwork, and become a precinct chair.
Get involved.
If you don't get involved and get engaged, then if the party's stolen from you, you have nothing to be nothing you can be mad about because you did nothing.
Correct.
Absolutely correct.
100% correct.
There's only one way to do this.
There's only one way and we're not doing it.
So we've got to do it.
We've got to take over the Republican Party.
It's so scary too because this is hitting at like the exact right point.
You have QAnon believers who are Bitter and jaded that the storm did not happen in the way that they were told it would have.
They've been isolated from friends and family.
They're tuning into this kind of content specifically.
They're looking for something that will give their lives meaning since the storm didn't happen.
And boom!
Here are all of these grifters providing a solution to that.
Yeah, and I mean, I can't, I keep coming back to this.
This is as un-QAnon-like as it gets, because there's no baking going on here.
There's no speculating.
There's no prophecy.
It's about, oh, listen, if you want power, you need to get off your ass, get away from the baking, get away from the decoding, and take action on a local level in the way that you can do with your time and your resources, which is a sensible political tactic.
Now, there is evidence that fans of Bannon's show and the QAnon shows are listening.
ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon's campaign began.
At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers, or equivalent low-level officials, joined those county parties.
For example, in Maricopa County, Arizona, the number of Republican precinct officials jumped 45% since January to more than 3,900.
Whereas Democrats added just 10% more precinct officials, with just over 1,600 positions filled.
In Brevard County, Florida, the County Executive Committee added a record 38 members in April and May, growing to an all-time high of about 200.
In Brown County, Michigan, the County Committee added 72 members this year.
The ProPublica story describes how this new crop of precinct officers is already having an impact across the country, but especially in Michigan and Arizona.
Here's what the story said.
In Michigan, one of the main organizers recruiting New Precinct officers pushed for the ouster of the state party's executive director, who contradicted Trump's claim that the election was stolen, and who later resigned.
In Las Vegas, a handful of Proud Boys, part of the extremist group whose members have been charged in attacking the Capitol, supported a bid to topple moderates controlling the county party, a dispute that's now in court.
In Phoenix, New Precinct officers petitioned to unseat county officials who refused to cooperate with the state Senate Republicans' forensic audit of 2020 ballots.
Similar audits are now being pursued by new precinct officers in Michigan and the Carolinas.
Outside Atlanta, new local party leaders helped elect a state lawmaker who championed Georgia's sweeping new voting restrictions.
And precinct organizers are hoping to advance candidates such as Matthew DiPerno, a Michigan Attorney General hopeful who Republican state senators said in a report had spread, quote, misleading and irresponsible misinformation about the election.
And Mark Fincham, A member of the Oath Keepers militia who marched to the Capitol on January 6 and is now running to be Arizona's top elections official.
When Bannon interviewed Fincham on an April podcast, he wrapped up a segment about Arizona Republicans' effort to re-examine the 2020 result by asking Fincham how listeners could help.
Fincham answered by promoting the precinct strategy.
Quote, the only way you're going to see to it that this doesn't happen again is if you get involved, Fincham said.
Become a precinct committeeman.
Some of the new precinct officers were in the crowd that marched to the Capitol on January 6th, according to interviews and social media posts.
One Texas precinct chair was arrested for assaulting police in Washington.
He pleaded not guilty.
Many of the new activists have said publicly that they support QAnon.
Organizers of the movement have encouraged supporters to bring weapons to demonstrations.
In Las Vegas and Savannah, Georgia, newcomers were so disruptive that they shut down leadership elections.
A local politics strategy is also being pushed hard by General Michael Flynn.
He even has a catchy slogan for it.
Local action has a national impact.
When I searched on Telegram, I found that his channel used the phrase local action over two dozen times this year.
So it's just a reoccurring theme in his message.
Local action, local action, local action.
Here's what the QAnon general said on Telegram on September 19th.
Be fearless, and don't wait for the next superstar to stand up and fight back against this health tyranny.
Each of us has our own inner strength to take the harder right path.
In your communities, at your local city council meetings, school board hearings, zoning board meetings, everywhere elected officials reside, we should be in there.
Ensuring that they are doing what we the people voted for them to do.
Get involved now.
No more waiting for someone else to do it.
It is our time, our moment in history, and our obligation to the next generation and the one after that.
Local action has a national impact.
In one instance, Flynn gave specific directions to his 300,000 followers on Telegram.
Attend a school board hearing to stop forcing our children to be indoctrinated by CRT or forced mask wear.
In another instance in August, Flynn linked to a video of a man yelling at the Sarasota school board in Florida over mask mandates, calling it local action at its finest.
This clip from that video shows the kind of civic engagement that Flynn is encouraging.
The false flag for kids is being run up to cover the truth, which is that this is political.
How dare you suggest that not only you have more authority than America's most popular governor, but also that you hold more authority over our kids than we parents do.
This is America, not North Korea.
Of course, it's worth mentioning that at least some of the targeting of schools over hot-button issues like masks is being astroturfed.
This can be seen in an anti-mask form letter circulated among members of a political non-profit funded in part by libertarian-oriented Charles Koch Institute.
The letter, which was acquired by the Washington Post, sounds like it was authored personally by a concerned parent towards a particular school, but it is actually a boilerplate letter distributed by the Independent Women's Network, which is a project of the non-profits the Independent Women's Forum and the Independent Women's Voice.
The network markets itself as a members-only platform that is free from censorship and cancellation.
So that leaked form letter begins like this.
Dear blank name is excited to be joining.
Name of school.
This year.
The letter goes on to say... But I want to share my thoughts on a topic I feel strongly about.
Masks on kids.
I do not believe little kids should be forced to wear masks, and I urge you to adopt a policy that allows parental choice on this matter for the upcoming school year.
The form letter goes on for two pages before concluding like this.
As a parent, I can't ignore this and I hope you understand.
I have to speak up for what is best for my kids.
Thanks for considering my perspective.
Best.
Blank.
So Carrie Lucas, who's the president of the Independent Women's Forum, authored a post in the network's resource center explaining the purpose of this letter.
That post says this.
Is your school considering mask mandates or has it already made a decision that kids must wear masks in class?
Push back.
Here is a draft letter you can use to write your own school superintendents and administrators, principals, and teachers.
The post goes on to advise.
This letter can also easily be turned into a letter to the editor for your local paper.
So, like I said, this is coming from a nonprofit that's funded by billionaires, basically.
It's impossible to know the degree to which these anti-mask efforts are being asserturfed.
And I'm not going to deny that I'm sure a lot of it is partially genuine or partially, you know, people spontaneously, independently getting mad about the stuff.
But this tells us that at least some of the local push about masks is being influenced by big pockets.
But this is happening all over the country, just everywhere.
And much like how conspiracists post online, their in-person rants often seem to be like an expression of the nonsense they soaked up on Facebook groups.
Take, for example, one meeting of the Kent County Board of Commissioners held on August 26.
One parent who spoke there was under the mistaken impression that the drug Ivermectin could alone solve the pandemic.
We have studies from Dr. Pierre Corey and his 2,000 affiliates that did ivermectin treatments that sat in front of the Senate in September and talked about it with proper treatment to take care of this whole virus, this whole situation, and treat it right now.
You don't hear the Kent County Health Department talking about that.
Why is that?
We're under attack.
Communism is here.
Biden is showing it daily.
And I'm not a political guy!
But I can tell you, I've not been happy with what I've seen.
I talked to Mr. Morgan the other day, and then I talked to Adam London personally on the phone at 520, and he had no scientific data.
He told me that.
He said it's opinion-based data that he's stepping up with.
So it is time to stand up and stop the communism That couldn't have gone better for him.
This is exactly what he imagined when he was typing the speech up on his computer the night before.
In one school board meeting in Lee County, Florida, an angry man who may or may not have children in the district, he didn't specify, accused the school board of supporting sex trafficking.
I want to talk about the real pandemic.
Child sex trafficking.
By putting masks on these kids' face, you can't identify any of them.
So by the nine of you already voting on this, tells me you guys support sex trafficking.
Excuse me, sir.
You're out of order.
Good.
Oh my God, you could hear the desperation of the board members voice.
Oh my God.
Oh God.
I mean, they had already sat through hours of the stuff because...
Florida, I gotta tell you, is ground zero for this kind of stuff.
I listened to talk.
Sometimes it's like, you know, every other person was unhinged.
But in Florida, it was actually the rare person who was able to be level-headed.
You know, at that same meeting, one parent accused the board of not live-streaming the meeting while the event was being live-streamed.
But what I did see was the live feed that's typically done for these events is down.
Did you know that?
No one can seem to find it.
Why would that be?
Oh, by accident, of course, we know that.
I mean, seriously, we know disinfectant, sunlight is a great disinfectant, and we know when stuff like this is brought to light, it will get fizzled out and die.
And I know that's what you're trying to hide here, but we, I have never been to one of these before, but I will be back.
Didn't care about his children's future until now.
And he'll be back.
Now, these clips of like school board attendees gone wild, they're very funny.
Sometimes they go viral on Twitter.
But it's worth mentioning that in some instances, these these demonstrations get so seriously out of hand that leads to disruptions of the meeting or even violence.
For example, last month in Mendon, Illinois, it was reported that a man was arrested for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct following a disruption at a Mendon Board of Education meeting at Unity High School.
According to a sheriff, school officials attempted to escort the man out of the meeting when he struck one of them.
In the Oshkosh Area School District in Wisconsin, the school board postponed a meeting after it was stormed by anti-mask protesters.
Here's how the incident was reported by the local news station WBAY.
What started out as a protest against a mask mandate outside the Oshkosh School District headquarters quickly turned confrontational once the crowd made its way inside for the meeting, refusing to put on a mask, even at the request of police.
I just want to know, are you going to arrest us or forcibly remove us from this building?
Then people on both sides of the issue began to argue in the audience, and the school board president tried to take control.
If you want us to hold a meeting, We would like you to comply and wear a mask.
That led to another outburst and eventually a decision by the school board to get up and walk out.
30 minutes later, the meeting was called off and people were told to leave.
In August, a meeting of the Laramie County School District in Wyoming was stopped after a man refused to give up the microphone when his allotted public comment period was over.
Here's how that incident was reported by the Wyoming Eagle Tribune.
The first three general public comments Monday were related to masks in schools, a conversation which is still ongoing, before the disruption came from a comment related to both critical race theory and the length of public comments, which are capped at three minutes so that everyone has a chance to speak.
Quote, the First Amendment guarantees me the right to speak.
You guys haven't presented any evidence whatsoever that says we're going to be two to three minutes, the unidentified man said, also noting his anger at the fact that the board asked in-person attendees not to clap after comments.
Goddammit, I want clapping!
He later continued, quote, this is how a dictatorship is.
When his time was nearing the three-minute mark, the man began yelling louder and louder, especially when told his time was up, and the school board members called the meeting and vacated the days.
Some incidents, Proud Boys team up with anti-maskers to threaten school boards over COVID mandates.
And so that's, again, very, very disturbing.
These incidents have been so severe that they inspired Viola Garcia, the president of the School Boards Association, to make a personal appeal to President Biden.
In a letter sent last month, Garcia asked Biden to treat these incidents as domestic terrorism and to invoke the Patriot Act.
Now, The Patriot Act is, of course, the post-911 law that granted greater surveillance power to law enforcement and expanded the list of activities which qualify for terrorism charges.
I don't want fucking habeas corpus for Greg.
He shows up every fucking time.
You get him to Gitmo now!
Here is from that letter.
As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
As such, NSBA requests a joint expedited review by the U.S.
Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training,
coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI, including any technical
assistance necessary from and state and local coordination with its National Security Branch
and Counterterrorism Division, as well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional
authority and oversight.
Additionally, NSBA requests that such review examine appropriate enforceable actions against
these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the Patriot Act
in regards to domestic terrorism, and the National Security Act.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
The Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights Statute.
The Conspiracy Against Rights Statute.
An executive order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel and any related measure.
Signed, Thomas Wichter.
Now, obviously, school board members should be able to conduct their business without fear of violence or harassment, and reasonable efforts to protect seriously threatened school board members are perfectly sensible.
I don't think the Proud Boys should be allowed to have a heckler's veto over the conduct of local government.
But I would also argue that invoking a frequently abused law that supposedly intends to fight foreign terrorism is a bit overkill in this instance, I would say.
Now, however, it appears that the Biden administration has responded to the concerns of the School Board Association.
Attorney General Merrick Garland recently authored a memo asking the FBI to meet with local leaders to discuss strategies for addressing disturbing actions towards school board members.
Here's what a Department of Justice press release said about that memo.
Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school board members, teachers, and workers in our nation's public schools, today Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the FBI and U.S.
Attorney's offices to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend.
So nothing in there about the Patriot Act quite yet.
We'll see.
We'll see if it gets to that point.
Release the drone armies!
Call in the SUVs!
I want a tank!
What we need to do is, like, as soon as someone starts yelling at a school board about them being pedophiles or something, just drone them.
Just, pssh!
That'll make the next speaker a lot more polite.
What about the old barkeep rule, where you get to have a shotgun under the desk?
Yeah, and, you know, the people speaking at these things, it definitely won't increase their paranoia that the state is out to get them, for sure.
Now, QAnon promoters aren't just yelling at school board members.
In some instances, they're becoming school board members.
This was seen last year in the Grand Blanc School Board in Michigan.
There's a woman named Amy Facinello who was elected to the board, and after her election, a student discovered that she had spent years promoting QAnon on Twitter.
Facinello's promotion of QAnon can be seen going all the way back to December of 2017 when she tweeted, quote, QAnon confirmed by Trump.
Since then, she repeatedly tweeted the QAnon slogan, where we go one, we go all, and retweeted the accounts of QAnon76 and Pragmedic.
So, fully Q-peeled, unambiguous.
In March of this year, more than 100 students, retired teachers, and other members of the community protested Faccinello.
The signs carried by the protesters read things like, keep Q out of schools, Q is for cowards, and cowards is spelled with a Q. And Amy Q Resign.
And perhaps most cleverly, Amy Fascist Nello.
Here's how the protests were covered by the local ABC affiliate news station, WJRT.
A Grand Blanc High School senior found Amy Fascianello's Twitter page, the Grand Blanc school member appearing to show support for Q. That prompted today's protest.
You can't have someone on the school board who isn't dealing with reality the way the other school board members are.
Patty Duffy joined a group of protesters outside of Grand Blanc High School accusing Fascianello of being a QAnon supporter.
QAnon followers have been accused of spreading baseless conspiracy theories and false information on social media about the 2020 presidential election, COVID-19, and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Bassanello denies supporting Q, saying she votes in line with other board members and is instead being canceled for her conservative beliefs.
Conservatives are tired of being bullied and feeling like we're being canceled all over the nation.
When Fashionello was asked about her social media posts by the publication Michigan Advance, she said this.
"There's no such thing as QAnon. They've built this whole narrative around it, but there's no such thing. There's no
groupthink happening."
But when asked at another point during Rally if there's anything she agrees with QAnon on, Fashionello said, quote,
These people, they have beautiful minds, beautiful brains.
pedophiles very much. So her view is that QAnon doesn't exist, but she agrees with QAnon's
anti-pedophile stance. I don't...these people, they have beautiful minds, beautiful brains.
This is why I'm fascinated by them. They have like three contradictory ideas at once, just
swirling around.
Another local QAnon politician making waves is Shumay Navarro of Colorado, who is a candidate for the Cherry Creek School District.
Shumay Navarro is also unambiguously a QAnon follower.
In December of 2020, she posted a video of herself on TikTok holding a big red Q with the caption, when you hear there's a Trump rally coming to town and you're ready for someone to ask the Q. Again, this comes straight from a Q drop.
Yep.
She's fully Q-pilled.
That caption also included the QAnon hashtag in case there was any question.
In a Rumble video posted right before Biden's inauguration, Shumay Navarro stated that she believed that Biden would not be president.
I want you to know that tomorrow, Joe Biden, president-elect, is not going to become the president.
This has been an ongoing coup that has been perpetrated by China.
Everything.
I'm talking about the virus.
I'm talking about the lockdowns.
So yeah, really bold prediction to make just hours before you will be proved wrong.
I mean, that's how you know she really believed it, right?
She isn't saying something's gonna happen next year.
It's like, something won't happen tomorrow.
In that same video, she also called attention to the large National Guard presence for Inauguration Day.
This, of course, force was there because the federal government failed to provide adequate protection on January 6th.
But according to Navarro, this is actually part of a trap set for Biden.
I hope you've seen the pictures of the National Guard and how there are 26,000 to 30,000 at the Capitol.
There is a wall that they have built.
There is barbed wire along the top and they raised it from like 9 feet to 12 feet.
They put barbed wire and the barbed wire is facing inwards.
This is a trap that has been set and the whole thought process of it has been planned for a long time.
It might look like we're losing, like we lost, all that kind of stuff, but no, this is not.
This is the rebirth of America.
So, where does Navarro stand on the issues?
On her website, she lists three areas of importance for her.
The covert implementation of critical race theory agenda, parental rights regarding transparency, and medical freedom in terms of vaccine-slash-mask mandates.
Now, she believes her anti-mask stance so strongly that she is currently suing the Cherry Creek School Board over the requirement that she wear a mask at candidate forums.
So she's suing the board for which she is running.
Great way to get a life.
Right.
The Public Trust Institute, which is a conservative law firm, filed the federal suit on Navarro's behalf, claiming Cherry Creek Schools violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In court documents, Navarro said that she has two diagnosed disabilities that prevent her from wearing a mask and therefore prevent her from participating in candidate forums where masks are required.
Her conditions, the complaint said, stem from trauma suffered as a child that now prompts panic when her mouth and nose are covered.
Navarro said she also has a nasal deformity that makes breathing difficult regardless of a mask.
Cherry Creek School said, quote, the district disputes the allegations in the complaint and intends to vigorously defend this case.
Now, you might take comfort in the idea that at least Shumay Navarro doesn't have any institutional support because she's not being embraced by by her party.
But you would fail because she is absolutely being embraced by her party.
On September 18th, the Colorado Republican Party awarded Navarro its 2021 Rising Star Award.
Yes.
Christy Burton Brown, the chairwoman of the Colorado GOP, said quote, God, how is that a fucking good thing?
This woman, she takes action.
is to jump in head first without looking back.
God, how is that a fucking good thing?
This woman, she takes action. She doesn't think, she just moves.
Well, and it's interesting to see that the GOP has sort of let go of their judgments of people with blue hair.
You know, for a while they started making fun of that.
So broadly, what I think is going on here regarding the whole school board mess is that Bannon and Flynn are encouraging their followers to get involved in local politics.
And by the way, I think people generally underestimate just how incredibly influential Bannon and his podcast are.
And they're using the network of QAnon media outlets to get their message out.
And that encouragement is mixing with existing grievances over critical race theory, masks, and vaccination, which is in part being egged on by more mainstream influencers on the right, such as Fox News and the Koch Network.
And when you combine all of that together, you wind up with a new crop of QAnon candidates, dudes accusing school board members of being child traffickers, and conditions so threatening for school boards that the feds are starting to get involved.
Yeah, it is like 1776.
So for this week's story, you know, it's October.
Things are feeling spooky.
You know, small light-up jack-o'-lanterns are appearing in my apartment the day the month began.
And so for this week, I thought I would, you know, do something a little bit on the horror side.
I hope you like it.
Enemy of the Board.
Barbara Miller hit the period key on her ancient Gateway personal computer.
She leaned back in her decaying roller chair.
The white pieces from the faux leather upholstery now covered her entire body.
She stared at the paragraph typed out on the screen in front of her.
It was perfect.
She clicked print and waited with bated breath.
After what felt like a lifetime, a rickety old printer on the far side of the living room began to sputter and cough out a document.
She eased herself out of her chair and hobbled over to the machine, waiting anxiously for the document to print.
Realizing she had forgotten to extend the tray, she hurriedly tried to move it in place, lest the paper be catapulted to the ground where the ink could potentially smear.
She carefully lifted the single page out of the printer tray and examined it.
One of the T's on take your mask mandate and shove it up your ass was smeared.
No good.
She opened the tray to see if there was any more paper.
It was empty.
She was holding the very last sheet.
She glanced down at the nearby trash bin.
There were hundreds of similarly printed pages.
This one would have to do.
She read the first line over in her head a couple of times.
Hello.
My name is Barbara Miller, and every single person on this school board is a no-good, lousy bum.
It was damn good.
Barbara herself didn't have any children, nor had she attended any of the schools in question.
But as an American citizen, it was her God-given right to stand up to injustices whenever and wherever she saw them.
She began to fantasize about the following morning.
She would march right up to the podium and strike fear in the hearts of the fascist school board members.
The crowd would leap out of their seats and cheer when she got to the part about masks being nothing more than waterboarding for children.
People would weep as she slowly transitioned to a stanza from Reba McEntire's Freedom.
It would go viral.
She'd have Blake Shelton on the phone begging her to sign a record deal that she had never wanted until this moment, but now desperately felt she deserved.
The board members would cast their masks into the waste bins and beg on their knees for forgiveness.
A statue would be erected on the lawn of the middle school, Barbara H. Miller Elementary, where freedom won.
She glanced over near the table where she had carefully laid out her outfit.
A t-shirt with a hand-drawn disposable mask sporting a swastika.
Barbara nearly wept at the art of it.
A knock at the door jolted her back to reality.
Greg had probably locked himself out again, the old coot.
Another knock, this one more forceful.
I'm coming, I'm coming, hold your horses, Barbara croaked as she sauntered over to the front door.
She carefully undid the lock and opened the door expecting to see her tired, pilled husband.
Instead, she was greeted by no one.
Greg?
She called out.
A wave of uneasiness began to wash over her.
Just then, five men in futuristic-looking tactical gear exploded through her living room windows.
They had on advanced-looking helmets and shiny chrome jetpacks, which they used to hover through her living room, knocking over tables, chairs, even a quilt her mother left her that Barbara had been planning on taking to a taping of Antiques Roadshow.
Before she could take a step, the men were on her, pinning her against the wall.
Mrs. Miller, by mandate of the District of Brain County Precrime, we're placing you under arrest for the future crime of school board disruption.
Lieutenant, give the lady her mask.
Barbara watched in horror as one of the agents whipped out a small, advanced-looking face covering.
He carefully placed the device over her mouth and nose.
Everything went to black.
When Barbara came to, she was handcuffed to a metal table in a small room.
There was no sign of the mask the arresting officer had placed on her, and Barbara was grateful for that.
On one side of the wall was a window, but she couldn't really make out what was beyond it.
Her attention snapped back to the door as a young, handsome agent walked through it and set a manila folder on the table.
Barbara was terrified.
What is this all about?
I didn't do anything wrong!
The agent was polite, but emotionless.
He sat down at the table and thumbed through the papers.
Some time ago, Brain County was authorized to develop a more sophisticated way of catching criminals.
The Patriot Act was amended to allow us to research what's known as pre-crime.
Essentially, detecting crimes before they happen.
The agent produced a set of keys from his pocket.
You're not going to take off on me, are you?
Barbara shook her head no.
The agent gently leaned over and quickly undid her restraints.
You know, it's amazing we didn't pick you up earlier, but I guess the oracles aren't quite as accurate as we thought.
He gestured to the small window within the room.
Go ahead, have a look.
Barbara slowly rose from her chair and creeped over to the window.
It peered into a giant chamber.
About a hundred feet below, she could make out three former podcasters, all naked and laying in some sort of crystal blue liquid.
The men were looking straight up, their faces twisted in fear, their naked bodies convulsing, and all the while, muttering to themselves.
Barbara stepped back from the window, a disgusted look on her face.
What?
What are they?
The agent closed the folder and joined her near the window.
We call them pre-posters, meaning they can somehow see and hear posts, whether on the internet or in real life, before it's posted.
It's... disturbing, I know.
Barbara became angry.
Surely that's... that's illegal!
It's every Brain County citizen's right to post, online or off, whenever they damn well feel like it!
The agent sighed.
I'd tend to agree with you, ma'am, but given the circumstances, I'd say they're the last hope we have.
Barbara scoffed.
What are you talking about?
The agent gestured to the chair, encouraging Barbara to take a seat.
She did.
Ma'am, have you been to the schools in Brain County recently?
Barbara thought for a beat.
Well, no.
This was going to be my first time, but I was planning on going every week after.
The agent stopped her.
Ma'am, have you heard any children in your neighborhood recently?
Kids laughing, playing, getting off the school bus, things of that nature.
Barbara wrecked her brain.
Come to think of it...
No.
The agent raised his eyebrows.
Any idea why that might be?
Barbara shook her head.
The agent continued.
Turns out, there's only so much complaining a person can take.
Towards the end of 2021, the school board members went on strike.
Well, the ones that survived, that is.
Barbara began to grow even more nervous.
Survived?
Yes.
You see, Barbara, when a bunch of unvaccinated people gathered in those boardrooms and they yelled and they sang songs, tiny microscopic particles of saliva, well, they all got jumbled up and mixed together, giving birth to what's now known as COVID-2 XL.
Despite our doctor's best efforts, they never did come up with a vaccine that could beat it.
Barbara regained her composure, Oh, I don't believe it for a second.
Everyone knows the whole COVID thing was blown out of proportion.
The agent leaned in and spoke softly.
Barbara, when was the last time you saw your husband?
Barbara started to answer.
Well, couldn't have been more than a couple hours ago.
He was going out to, um, to...
But her memory was blank.
Her mind began to reel as she reached back into the corners of her brain, trying to visualize the last time they spoke.
She began to doubt herself.
How long had she sat in front of that Dell?
She thought back to the pieces of the upholstery covering her black sweater.
Now wait a minute, just wait a damn minute!
She began to tremble.
The agent opened the folder.
Inside was a picture of her husband and a death certificate.
I'm sorry, ma'am, but your husband succumbed to complications from COVID-2 XL in 2024.
Him and approximately 78% of the world's population.
There's a reason you don't hear any school buses and brain anymore, Mrs. Miller.
2024?
Barbara Stammard?
What year is it?
The agent looked down at the table, tracing his finger over the smooth manila folder.
It's 2036, ma'am.
Barbara was shell-shocked.
How could she have been so removed as to not notice her world crumbling around her?
But then she had a thought.
A tiny, single spark of self-preservation.
But if there are no more schools or school boards, how can I possibly be charged with any sort of a crime?
The agent picked the folder off the table.
Well, ma'am, I don't make the laws.
I just enforce them.
He stood and began to cross to the door of the interrogation room, but then paused.
It really is a shame.
Back then, they almost had the virus beat.
As he turned to exit, Barbara called out after him.
If it's really as bad as you say, how come you're not wearing a mask?
The agent paused for a moment.
Barbara knew her superior intelligence had bested him.
She couldn't wait until he had to walk back all of his mumbo-jumbo, admit to her that these were merely sophisticated scare tactics being used to intimidate her for using her God-given right to freedom of speech, that she'd have the Commissioner groveling at her feet a week from now, offering her large sums of money in exchange for an out-of-court settlement.
She'd put most of the money in savings, she thought, but decided she would take some of the money and splurge on that Hawaii vacation she'd always wanted.
The agent faced her, still holding the folder delicately in his hands.
Ma'am, with all due respect, after everything I've just explained to you, you don't really think they send human beings out in the field anymore, do you?
He reached up to his face and opened it like a circuit breaker.
Inside were mechanized eyes and teeth with tiny pistons pumping up and down, powering his jaw.
Barbara fell to the ground, her legs weak from the sheer terror.
The agent closed the panel and his face looked normal once again.
He opened the door.
We're done here.
Two other men, identical to the agent, entered the room.
One was carrying heavy restraints, but it wasn't until Barbara caught a glimpse of what the
other agent held in his hands that her expression turned to one of utter desperation.
Clenched in his muscular, cybernetic fingers was a small, blue, paper mask.
The End.
I mean, at least we got to briefly think about ourselves nude writhing in a big tub.
We don't even get to be calm and just kind of laying there No, writhing.
What do you think we do here on this show?
It's writhing, always.
It's writhing.
We slip into a pile of goo and think about the posts from the future.
That's it.
How bad the posts from the future are going to be.
I do look forward to living in Aloe Vera.
I don't want to.
This is all boring.
Hopefully Tom Cruise comes and rescues us.
Well, me at least.
Yeah, I doubt he'll have anything for us, too.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
If you're already a subscriber, thank you very much.
It helps us stay advertising-free and editorially independent.
For everything else, there's 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 Auto-Tune.
You're about to open a pit of hell.
You do not get a vaccine passport put on us.
You know, as the population who's in control, you know that the people who are the politicians, once you get a power, you will never relinquish it.
Do you think that the four feet of marble that holds you up high in this chamber will help you from the fate of humanity, which you are?
