Folks, they finally got him. A jury of Donald Trump’s peers determined that he violated New York Penal Law 175-10 in the first degree. We chat about how the conspiracist right is reacting to the news with a combination of vows for revenge, lamenting the fall of the nation, and insisting that this is good for Trump, actually. Plus we touch on the film 2000 Mules getting pulled by its distributor in response to a lawsuit and the DOJ alleging that Epoch Times is funded through a giant money laundering operation.
After that, we are joined by journalist Ali Breland to discuss his recent Mother Jones article “How Q Became Everything: The conspiracy group’s goal was to convince people the world is run by pedophiles, and, well, mission accomplished.”
REFERENCES
How Q Became Everything: The conspiracy group’s goal was to convince people the world is run by pedophiles, and, well, mission accomplished
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/06/how-q-became-everything-big-feature-wayfair-balenciaga/
Ali Breland On Twitter
https://x.com/alibreland
Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes
https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-testimony-verdict-85558c6d08efb434d05b694364470aa0
The upside-down American flag goes mainstream as a form of right-wing protest
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/03/nx-s1-4987590/upside-down-american-flag-protest-symbol-history
Publisher of ‘2,000 Mules’ election conspiracy theory film issues apology
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-2298/publisher-of-2000-mules-election-conspiracy-theory-film-issues-apology
Epoch Times Executive Accused of Laundering $67 Million
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/politics/epoch-times-money-laundering-doj.html
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to podcast mini-series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAA
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)
qaapodcast.com
QAA was formerly known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast Episode 281, Lock Him Up.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Brokatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Folks, they finally got him.
A jury of Donald Trump's peers determined that he violated New York Penal Law 175-10 in the first degree.
What does that mean?
Why do I still feel empty inside?
How are conspiracists reacting to the news?
We'll answer one or more of those questions on today's episode, and we'll also talk about two more stories of conspiracists getting nabbed by Johnny Law.
The producers of the election conspiracy film 2000 Mules pulled it in response to a lawsuit, plus the very weird media outlet Epic Times is actually just a money laundering operation, according to the DOJ.
After that, we'll tone down the celebrations to speak with Ali Breland about his recent Mother Jones article exploring the current state of QAnon.
Tangerine Hitler is going to jail.
Finally, he's going to get a full body suit that matches the color of his skin, which is orange.
You know, you can use your lib resist voice all you like, but they got it done.
Historic case.
They posted and memed Trump into this legal trouble, possibly jail.
Wow.
You sound like a radical left podcaster type.
I do suggest, uh, if you're a liberal and you are really wanting extra schadenfreude, uh, you should subscribe to, uh, Donald Trump's campaign emails, because I've been getting the funniest shit.
Just emails from him, and it just, you know, it shows up as the header, like, in your inbox, and it says, from President Donald Trump, and the subject line is, I'm guilty.
I'm guilty of wanting a better America.
Travis, I'm excited that you have dressed for the occasion.
You are wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
So I guess you're looking forward to the civil war that will result from a president being unjustly persecuted in what I can only describe as a witch hunt.
I disagree.
The tuft of chest hair with the absence of tactical vest signifies that Travis is one of the good Hawaiian shirt wearers and not a part of a pro Second Civil War movement.
Jake, tell us more about your observations around the tuft of chest hair.
Well, he's got his top button undone.
He's looking relaxed.
He's looking festive.
We could put a Miami Vice in his hands.
He would be really enjoying it on a beach, uh, somewhere.
I see no weapons.
I see no, uh, flak jacket.
So, uh, I think your observations are wrong.
He's not wearing any pants or underwear either.
So it's a very strange look.
You know, it's just a beautiful day here in Southern California.
It's in the 80s now.
I wanted to wear a loose-fitting, very comfortable shirt to enjoy the sunshine while I can.
You're airing out the boys, as you should.
I'm with you.
I'm not with you technically, physically, but spiritually we are brothers and I would love to spiritually on an astral plane kiss you on the mouth.
So let's get into it.
So a Manhattan jury found President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The jurors said that they unanimously agreed Trump falsified those business records to conceal a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
So, this is just one of four criminal cases that the former president is dealing with, but right now, none of those other three have trial dates.
I guess it's illegal to get laid now.
I guess we can't have any more fun in America.
I mean, this is a very Trumpian way to finally get nabbed.
The whole, you know, being a secret Russian back dealer thing, you know, that didn't have as much juice as him just paying off a porn star.
That makes more sense.
Yeah, they should have always just gone for what he really is, which is like a shitty criminal business owner.
You know, a greasy casino guy.
That's where all the crime's laid all along.
I just like that all of America has to peer over these grubby, cum-stained documents so that we can finally get this guy to squirm in front of a camera.
And you know what?
He might actually go down, but maybe it'll be related to the fact that he keeps essentially being held in contempt and that those can escalate.
But I mean, okay, so I did some reading about this.
Very, very cursory.
It seems like he could still run even if he goes to jail and that he probably won't go to jail.
So we're still going to get him running, right?
Oh.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the sentencing is scheduled for July 11th, just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where he is set to become the official presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
So yeah, he could.
So we're going to find out if he actually is going to spend some time in jail.
That will be wild.
That will be wild.
Because I'm told that Secret Service would have to join him in prison.
Oh my God, they would have such a good time.
He's going to appeal immediately, and during that appeal, the election will happen, because it takes a while.
So I doubt he's going to do any jail time.
That would be very strange.
It's also his first offense, right?
So, you know... Yeah, he's never done anything wrong before this.
That's a good point.
Well, the eyes of the law.
He's been an angel for all, like, eight decades or so he's been on Earth.
Yeah, but let's be real.
So this is basically optics plus like he's like a multiple felon now, but are they going to lock him up?
Well, we're going to, we're going to find out, but I mean, like I said- Oh, you're doing a teaser like, oh, keep paying attention to the episode, folks.
They might lock him up unless Travis Hue tells you the opposite later on.
That's what you're doing?
Yeah, well, each each count carries with it a maximum sentence of five years in jail.
So technically, I mean, technically, I don't think it'll happen.
But you know, he could get five years for every single charge, which would be quite a lot of jail time.
I don't think that that's going to happen.
I imagine he's going to get a fine and maybe some kind of sort of performative jail sentence, like 10 days, which let's
be honest, would be great for his campaign. I think if the police walked Donald Trump
up to the podium at the Republican National Convention in handcuffs, I think it'd probably be
the loudest cheer that he would get from his supporters. I mean, to them, this is
just another feather in the cap of the state trying to persecute the best president
that they've ever had.
I don't think that this sentence is going to change anybody's mind who supports him.
And really, really, the main difference is going to be that when, you know, internet pundits, you know, talk about Donald Trump, they will add a 34 time convicted felon after twice impeached.
You always call them pundits.
That's what they are.
They're like pundits.
No, they're pundits.
I punt them down the football field.
I do think that they should put him in like a black and white striped pajama with like a big ball and chain attached to his ankle.
He's like, I really like hamburgers, okay?
They've dressed me up as the Hamburglar, which is what I am.
I stole all those hamburgers for the young football players.
You should have the little black mask.
My favorite is like this MAGA argument that like, oh, you think you won?
You think you think you beat him?
Huh.
Good job.
Now he has street cred.
That's so cool.
I love that argument.
That's extremely funny.
And I would argue, Jake, that it's not just about the base when it comes to the election.
You're going to need a few extra voters in there.
So.
Who knows?
It's gonna be interesting.
Has America really given up on all this kind of how things look?
Or do they care if something is a bad look?
Yeah.
Are optics a thing of the past?
One could argue that his entire existence is proof that optics are somewhat a thing of the past, but...
I think the final thing that I think is worth mentioning is the fact that a former president committed a crime and was charged with it and convicted of it.
I mean, I think that there is some semblance of justice there.
You know, you left it to the jury, they could have acquitted him if the evidence didn't you know, look right to them or didn't match up or they
didn't think that the prosecutors made a good case, but they did, you know, and he'll have a chance
to appeal it just like every other citizen. But, you know, I do think that on some level,
whether or not it has any kind of effect on the outcome of the election or Donald Trump supporters,
the fact that this guy did something illegal, especially concerning, you know, his campaign and
how he, you know, presented, you know, these sort of payments, you know, I think it's good
that he got caught. I think it's good that he got charged. I think it's good that the jury found
him guilty. It does show on some level, whether or not I think it's going to make any kind of
difference, doesn't really matter. It does show that, you know, for lack of a better phrase, that no one is
above the law. If you speak badly of other politicians and the news at large.
I would argue that there's one argument I've seen made that I do have to kind of hand it to, and that is that the fact that this is what an American president is being prosecuted successfully for is extremely funny considering what Bush did to get us into the Iraq War.
Illegal surveillance, like the drone program.
War crimes.
You know, there's a good argument that a lot of these guys should be in jail.
Yeah.
And I think, unfortunately, it is kind of a decent argument that Trump is being kind of, not unfairly, but at least like maybe targeted a little more than others, that we're probably not going to see this again much.
No.
And we certainly won't see it about larger scale crimes that cost millions of lives.
No, agreed, because this is a safe crime to charge a former president with.
You know what I mean?
It doesn't highlight any of the other atrocities.
It seems to be almost kind of isolated in its own sort of bubble of Trump and his dealings as a businessman.
Basically, you can do white-collar crime, but if you do lower-end white-collar crime, like the kind of white-collar crime you would do if you were like a used car salesman, that will be punished.
Yeah.
Anything above that, eh, whatever.
I do think that one result of this is that our political system will devolve into one party just trying to get the other guy in jail, or girl in jail, you know, as much as they can.
I was even seeing tweets from, you know, MAGA supporters basically being like, alright, like, all right, Republicans, start finding crimes. I think
that we are about to be ushered into an era where instead of our politicians and our
government sort of trying to make lives better for the American citizens, they will just be trying to find
ways to put each other in jail, which is funny, but also we all lose. We all lose and we'll
continue to lose.
Joe Biden does seem to already be in a kind of spiritual solitary where you have to slip his
meals in the little slit to reach him.
I almost spit my coffee out.
Woo!
All right, Travis, take us away.
So let's talk about the reactions from the right.
So among even like mainstream conservative media figures, the reaction range between like promises of retribution, lamenting that America has become a banana republic, or saying that this is awesome actually because it makes Trump look like a badass.
Fox News host Jesse Watters, who has been friendly with QAnon before, promised revenge.
Trump was found guilty because he beat Hillary and is about to beat Joe Biden.
I thought I'd be angry, but I feel this cool resignation, this resoluteness that we're wounded as a country.
And we're not going to go down.
That we're going to get back up, we're going to regain our strength, and then we're going to vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic.
And if you look at the American people, how are they looking at this?
People are desperate for help from these politicians, for safety, for security, and these nitwits, consumed with hatred, Are trying to destroy a man because he threatens their power.
These are wicked people obsessed with a person and we will seek justice.
We guarantee that.
God, the fact that anyone would be willing to even kind of metaphorically take a bullet for this guy is so funny to me.
Oh yeah, we're all under attack.
Donald Trump is the representative of us.
Incredible.
Yeah, and what forces of evil are you talking about, dude?
The current president just used an executive order to enact the majority of Donald Trump's immigration policies.
What are you, like, I don't understand, what are you fighting against?
He's got Jesse Watters using DND language, like, ah, we will vanquish the evil forces!
I just don't understand what they're fighting against.
What are they so unhappy about?
Yeah, I mean, these people don't care about, like, policies.
It's all in the world of—it's sports, basically.
It's our guy versus their guy, and the goal is to make their guys look bad and prevent them from looking like our guys look bad.
So, you made our guy look bad, we're gonna make your guy—that's all it is.
It's just that they live in this world of representation and aesthetics.
The substance behind things doesn't matter to them.
Charlie Kirk had a lot of dramatic things to say about the momentous importance of the conviction of Donald Trump.
Yesterday is a day unlike any other.
It will go down in the memory of the nation like the JFK assassination, like 9-11.
It'll go down like the 2008 financial crisis, like COVID.
It'll go down like the 2016 election.
You will remember where you were on May 30.
Relieffactor.com.
100% drug-free relief factor.
Knee pain, back pain, joint pain, elbow pain.
And he's already wrong.
I don't remember where I was on May 30, and that was like less than a week ago.
Also, I would love if this, you know, went down in history as similarly to what happened to JFK.
That would be so much better than what we're getting.
You know what I mean?
To just see, like, part of a fucking blonde toupee on the back of a car?
Oh boy, you are getting... I really hope the four intelligence officers that listen to this podcast know to not take Julian seriously.
He's off his meds, folks.
He's talking about things that he doesn't know I would not be.
I'd be driving in Mercedes-Benz, not whatever he had, because...
You couldn't think of the car?
Mercedes-Benz, they do a lot better in terms of the lights that go under the door.
Okay, there are lights under the door.
What a nice impression.
I think that the person you're impersonating, I don't know who it is, but I think that person should get domed.
Alright, goddammit!
Well, he did.
He did get domed by Stormy Daniels, and that's kind of where this whole thing started, really.
Yeah, he got two types of dome.
He got dome, and then he got d**k.
Travis is giving his two weeks notice.
Alright, let's move on.
I'm giving him my one second notice that everything he says in this episode will just be one long beep, and then it'll be my death threat, and then it'll continue to beep as he continues with his script.
Please continue.
Laura Loomer will appear on- Oh wait, wait, I'm sorry, one second.
Sure.
I would also like Charlie Kirk to be beeped.
Alright, fantastic.
Jesus Christ!
Come on!
This is just a podcast, man, come on!
Yeah, continue please.
Laura Loomer, while appearing on Tim Pool's show, suggested that Democrats should get the death penalty for treason, and this led the livestream for Tim Pool's show to just being immediately shut down.
Wow, I would love it if Laura Loomer and Tim Pool got domed and c***ed.
The idea that we decide, I'll put it this way, should Democrats be in jail?
No question.
When Donald Trump gets elected, should he start locking them up?
No question.
Should there be lists of Democrats that need to go to jail?
100%.
The reason for that is they've committed crimes.
We need to make sure that when Donald Trump wins, we've got an attorney general, a deputy attorney general, a head of the CIA and the FBI, Cash Patel would be fantastic.
We can have Attorney General, there's some names floating around, and then they can start having their investigators and the feds issuing subpoenas, pulling up evidence, and with real evidence, bring them to judges for warrants.
Then these people can spend three years of their lives fighting tooth and nail for the crime against the government, for crimes they committed, and we can prove.
And the reason why we put them on trial is that we can show the whole world.
We will uncover what you've done.
We will make sure everyone knows and you will be held accountable for it.
Not just jail.
They should get the death penalty.
You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.
Yo.
Okay.
Okay.
Careful what you wish for.
That's cool, man.
Yeah.
All right, guys.
They do realize that the defense got to be a part of picking the jury too, right?
It's not like Hillary Clinton went down to the courthouse and was like, 1, 2, 3, 4, you, you, you, you, you.
There was a whole process to select the jury, and I would imagine that the defense, they wouldn't really let the trial go on if they felt like they had 12 MSNBC stands deciding the fate of President Trump.
They don't care about the process.
Again, what matters is the end result, and it makes them mad.
There was something that happened that made their guy look bad, and they have to deal with legal consequences, and so they want to strike back.
I mean, again, it's just this Hatfield-McCoy vision of politics.
Like, you get her a guy, we'll get your guy.
Totally.
And if he had been acquitted, they would have gone, see, you can't pull the wool over the eyes of the American people.
Twelve heroic jurors did what was right for the country.
You know, hats off to this judge.
Hats off to this jury.
I mean, it would have been, you know, you know.
I think it is something we're going to be discussing later in the episode, but we have gotten to like peak kind of QAnon just being everywhere and everything.
Where you just have people being like, yeah, they should fucking execute that entire political party when something doesn't go their way.
That is incredible.
I mean, you used to have to tune into some weird Rumble channel to hear that kind of shit.
We're still on a weird Rumble channel.
No, we're not.
The Rumble channel is all the channels now.
The world is buffering.
The world is buffering.
The world is bit shoot.
Michael Flynn, fresh off his nationwide tour promoting his movie, had this melodramatic response in a post on Twitter.
Wherever you are, remember this moment for the rest of your life.
Again, I don't think people are going to remember that.
No!
People weren't even following the trial, mostly.
No!
It wasn't like the Mueller investigation got just caustic coverage.
People were like, is more Trump stuff happening?
Yeah.
People are more interested in seeing stories people are following, generally.
He has an upside-down American flag as his AVI, which is extremely funny.
But I don't know about that, Travis.
I don't know if you read the front page of, like, CNN or tune into the 24-hour news networks.
They definitely were following this thing.
No, I think he meant conservatives.
I've seen a lot of court drawings of Donald Trump's deformed dome.
So yeah, he changed his Twitter profile image to an upside-down American flag.
So he wasn't the only one to do this.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Fox News contributor Guy Benson, and far-right conspiracist Ali Alexander also posted images of upside-down American flags.
Also, this follows a report from the New York Times last month, which revealed that an upside-down American flag flew outside the Virginia home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January of 2021.
They have melted wives, one and all.
It was another Supreme Court wife.
We need to do something about Supreme Court wife apparently just makes you lose your mind.
Being married to a Supreme Court justice makes you go off the rails.
We gotta discuss the Supreme Court wife to majorly pilled pipeline.
I don't think we need to discuss it.
I think it needs to be a reality show that follows the real housewives of Orange County.
You know, the housewives of the Supreme Court.
What are they doing?
What are they drinking?
What are they searching on DuckDuckGo?
You know, I think that that could be a really interesting show for a lot of people.
So, the upside-down American flag was originally used by naval vessels to indicate that their ship was in distress, but has taken on political dimensions.
Now, interestingly, I read that the inverted American flag was at times used by American left-wing protesters, such as those protesting the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s.
But in recent years, it's been used more frequently by far-right extremists.
For example, the white nationalist group Patriot Front has repeatedly shown up to protest bearing upside-down U.S.
flags.
One of the many ways that Trump himself reacted to the news was by denying that he said, lock her up, in reference to Hillary Clinton.
He did this during an interview on Fox and Friends.
You famously said, regarding Hillary Clinton, lock her up.
You declined to do that as president.
I beat her.
It's easier when you win.
And they all said, lock her up.
And I felt, and I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing.
And then this happened to me.
So I may feel differently about it.
I can't tell you.
I can.
I'm not sure I can answer the question.
Hillary Clinton, I didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say lock her up, lock her up.
OK, then we won.
And I say and I said pretty openly, I say, all right, come on, just relax.
Let's go.
We're going to make our country great.
And it would have been.
Think of it.
You lock up the wife of a president of the United States.
Yeah, that's good though.
If he becomes president, he's just aggravated and no longer even cares about the few things, the few parts of decorum that he seemed to care about during his term.
Who knows?
I'm just amazed to have, like, how readily he threw his, like, his most passionate followers on the ballot.
I didn't say that!
The fucking people were like, blah, blah, lock her up, like, whatever.
He's like, he's so contemptuous of everyone, including the people who, you know, showed up to his rallies.
Of course, the claim that he didn't say, lock her up, is as ludicrous.
There are many compilations of Trump himself saying, lock her up, which were posted online.
I will say this, Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay?
She has to go to jail!
For what she's done, they should lock her up.
So it's weird that he would like this.
This is one of the main things that people support him.
This is one of the things that birthed QAnon, remember?
He said lock her up and then several months into his presidency,
it didn't seem like there was much movement on the lock her up front.
So instead, a bunch of people online who were out of their minds decided that
actually there's a secret plan to lock her up.
And also everyone else I hate.
He wasn't lying.
He wasn't just bullshitting us to get elected.
It's gonna happen, but it's happening in secret.
You know what?
I actually advise Donald Trump to take the QAnon stance on this and just start saying that he did lock her up.
No, she's locked up.
No, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, I was saying like, yeah, just say it's like that.
That's just a clone.
You see her?
That's a clone.
I've locked Hillary up.
I win.
Oh, Jake made the Trump face that he makes right before he does an imitation.
And then he pulled back and he started vaping.
Wow.
Restraint.
But I want to know how the wider QAnon community was handling this news because You know, one big part of the QAnon fantasy is that the justice system would, like, crack down on Trump's enemies.
But here, Trump is the one facing all these problems with the criminal courts.
A common theme among QAnon followers was that this is good, actually.
There was this comment from the QAnon influencer WarClandestine.
The deep state just signed their own death warrant.
Trump's polls are about to skyrocket.
He is still going to win.
And now he has the precedent established to bring the full letter of the law down on every single corrupt bureaucrat and politician in DC.
Game on!
Smiley devil face.
Yeah.
And we have a picture of Trump.
His hair is blown from left to right by the gales of wind and rain.
I'm assuming the storm, but he must've removed the roof of the White House or maybe a window is open.
In his 2028 presidential election acceptance speech, he's gonna be like, yeah, they got me on falsifying business, lots of business, but Hillary Clinton, she's human trafficking.
These are two very different charges, okay?
Two very different charges.
They might have gotten me on Falsifying business, but who doesn't, honestly?
But a lot of people are not human trafficking, but Hillary Clinton is, so compare the crimes.
I'm just saying, compare the crimes and you'll see who's different and who's not and who's locked up and who paid the fine, who's executed and who had to rejigger some of their business practices.
It's a big difference, folks, and we're here for it.
Another common theme in the QAnon community was that what is done to Trump is going to boomerang back to Trump's political enemies.
This is a reference to a QTrump that said boomerang.
Now, this is how this idea was expressed on the QAnon show Eye of the Storm.
We just have to have to stay on rails, stay focused, friends.
You know, I understand that everything that's happening is for exposure.
And thus far, everything that's happened to him is boomerang right back on them.
And I'm not just talking about the court stuff.
I'm talking about ever since he took the oath of office, everything they've tried on him has boomerang right back on them.
This will be no different.
Okay, we've got a guy here who has a blue striped Punisher skull.
So this is like a combination of the thin blue line and the Punisher skull.
Yeah.
And a mounted boomerang behind him on the wall.
Yeah.
So that's good.
You see and you say.
It's clear.
I mean, they just have this endless ability to read the news and say, this means I'm winning, actually, every single time.
Do they know that, like, the person who throws the boomerang just catches it when it comes back?
I mean, I guess they didn't really think through the metaphor, no.
A lot of QAnon followers kept noticing the reappearance of the number 34.
So Trump was found guilty on 34 counts.
And shortly after this happened, the Trump campaign announced that they had raised $34.8 million.
Trump also posted a 34-second video on Truth Social.
Trump's press conference lasted 34 minutes.
Now, what's the relevance here?
Well, first of all, 34 is 17 times 2, so we got a 17 in there.
Perfect.
Okay.
And then, so, in addition to that, according to them, it's all pointing to Q-drop 34, which is, of course, the first Q-drop where Q-clearance is referenced.
34 charges, 34 arrays, 34-second video, 34-minute speech posted also in the middle of that speech at the 11-34 minute mark.
So, what is the big deal about 34?
Okay.
Abs, why don't you read for the audience this particular cue, and then you can give your take on what basically it's pointing to, brother.
Sure thing, dude.
So Cue Drop 34 came on November 1st, 2017.
Cue Clearance Patriot, my fellow Americans, over the course of the next several days, you will undoubtedly realize that we are taking back our great country, the land of the free.
Yeah, then he goes on to read the whole cue drop for the show.
That's basically it.
Whenever anything happens to Trump, they just return to the pile of entrails and bones to divide the future.
Well, good play, liberals.
Have you considered that I am rubber and you are glue?
I mean, why not just make it 17?
Why not put out a 17 second video?
You know, the fact that I got to divide the number by two to get the code is like...
Yeah, it's a little much.
Who the hell had learned how to divide 34?
That's crazy.
That's what makes it, you know, a little bit more participatory.
You gotta take that extra step.
I mean, if it just said 17 everywhere, any weirdo normie could see what was going on there.
The fact is 34.
You gotta work for it to figure out where the 17 is.
Because Trump knew all along, all along how many charges he was going to get convicted of.
Now, I also want to discuss an update regarding Dinesh D'Souza's film 2000 Mules.
This is the film that falsely claimed that the 2020 election was decided thanks to so-called ballot mules stuffing votes into these ballot drop boxes.
One of the people accused in this film was a man named Mark Andrews, who was shown putting five ballots into a drop box in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Now, it's perfectly legal to drop off ballots for other people in Georgia, so that's not evidence of doing anything illegal.
In the film, D'Souza falsely claimed that what Andrews was doing was criminal, describing the votes as fraudulent.
And so, Mark Andrews sued Salem Media, the organization that produced the film, and this lawsuit was successful.
In response, Salem Media released a statement disowning 2,000 Mules and declared that they will no longer distribute it.
And here's what that statement said.
Salem Media Group, Inc.
and its former publishing division, Regnery Publishing, published a film and book entitled 2000 Mules that examines allegations of voter fraud related to the 2020 presidential election.
In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D'Souza and True The Vote, Inc.
TTV that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots.
We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules.
It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews.
We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews' image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.
We have removed the film from Salem's platforms and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.
So, that ends a long, pointless saga.
I also like the idea, it's like, well, listen, fucking Dinesh D'Souza said you committed a crime, and we just believed him, so we didn't really look into it too deeply.
Now, perhaps you're familiar with Epic Times.
We covered them on this podcast all the way back in January of 2020.
More than four years ago, and they were on our radar because they actively promoted QAnon.
Now, this is a media company with a far-right conspiracy slant that offers these free Epoch Times newspapers, which are possibly stacked up in the corner of your parents' house for some reason.
You may also know them from their weird billboards that just say, number one trusted news next to a picture of some dude.
Have you seen these?
I mean, I sometimes see them driving on the freeway.
Oh yeah, I thought this was a picture that I took, because I did post one on Twitter back in the day.
I've seen this.
I thought the billboard at first was for an accident lawyer, and then I realized it was Epic Times.
Yeah, it's awesome that weird Chinese anti-communists who've been exiled for being in a cult are, you know, just kind of...
Full on around here in the United States and partaking in the culture.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think so.
I think the Falun Gong cult, they sort of they noticed the success that, you know, the unification church cult had in manipulating U.S.
politics, really embedding with the Republican Party and the right.
And they said like, hey, I can do that.
Mm hmm.
And they could.
Well, according to the Justice Department, this media company was at the center of a fraudulent money laundering and cryptocurrency scam involving tens of millions of dollars.
This information was revealed in an indictment of the company's chief financial officer, Bill Guan.
Now, Guan is accused of masterminding a scheme in which he managed an overseas team, which was called Make Money Online.
I get this ad in between rounds of words with friends, too.
It brings us no pleasure to announce that Jake is now in the poorhouse.
So here's from a statement about that indictment.
Under Guan's management, members of the team and others used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds, including proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits that had been loaded onto tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards.
The proceeds were then allegedly laundered through a certain cryptocurrency platform then turned into digital currency at 70 to 80 cents on the dollar.
The team members then used stolen personal identification information to open accounts
and funnel the profits there and subsequently into accounts held in their own names.
They got caught because investigators noticed that Epoch Times enjoyed a massive 410% increase
in annual revenue from about $15 million to $62 million.
When these investigators asked about it, Guan lied about the source of the money, claiming
it was all from donations.
So this actually, this answers a lot of questions about how they were able to grow so quickly.
How is it like this weird, obscure, cult-owned media company was like on every corner and then all of a sudden every sort of weird, you know, conservative that you know is getting it delivered to their, and then all of a sudden there are all these billboards.
Well, it was a massive money laundering scheme, which, you know, also answers the question, like, how do you succeed as a media company?
Massive money laundering.
Oh, yeah.
So this is illegal now?
God damn it.
This is America.
To further discuss the state of QAnon, we are joined by journalist Ali Bredlund.
He has written for The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Vice News.
But his latest for Mother Jones has the provocative headline, How Q Became Everything.
And I really like the sub-headline, which is, The conspiracy group's goal was to convince people the world is run by pedophiles, and well, mission accomplished.
Mm-hmm.
So, Ali, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, we're doing the, like, last episode.
We—'cause this is it, right?
QAnon 1, it's over.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Congratulations.
We're closing up shop.
Yeah, I've got all my—I've logged out of all my accounts.
That was our goal.
We needed to get it there, and now we're done.
You should have waited to do the name change until I did this.
Then we could have timed it perfectly.
Yeah.
That's so true.
You know, I'm glad you wrote this because it articulated something we've tried to talk about before the podcast, which is how, like, essentially QAnon style paranoia is in the bloodstream of the discourse now.
It's not it's not some sort of weird fringe thing that you have to seek out.
It's everywhere.
And you pointed to specific examples of popular conspiracism related to child trafficking.
And one is the Wayfair conspiracy theory, and the other was a Yeah.
Um, in like 2020, I guess, like everyone's like sitting around on their computers like stressed out about like COVID or whatever.
those were about. Yeah. In like 2020, I guess, like everyone's like sitting around on their
computers, like stressed out about like COVID or whatever.
And this like weird conspiracy theory goes like super viral about Wayfair. And like the short of
it was that people were saying that like kids are being trafficked via like armoires or like pieces
of furniture. And it was like super absurd. And like in retrospect, it's like crazy, but it was
like so I guess like it was so powerful that it had this like truly viral moment to the point where
like the Washington Post and other outlets had to write about it and like
not take it seriously, but be like, "All these people believe this." And it was weird. It was
this very piercing of the veil moment where QAnon and this sort of conspiratorial belief
became super mainstream. The other sort of analog that I actually didn't write about in the story,
but that was sort of adjacent to this, was there was a similar panic with the Netflix documentary
about cuties called Cuties, which I forget the specifics, but basically right-wingers were
sort of accusing it of being this groomer type of movie, which was adjacent kind of fears.
But there were still both of these were very, very big moments in the sort of QAnon evolving
into this other thing and these conspiratorial beliefs about children being abused, but they
were still kind of confined to the right a little bit. But then in
And they also seem like too ludicrous to continue it was like this is like the apex like it can't get any more nutty than this like this is going to recede like people will have learned their lesson but then Balenciaga is where it hits this like weird point that surpasses like either of these moments and basically what happened was there was these two separate ad campaigns One of them depicted children showing bears in bondage in living rooms with stuff around them.
And then the other ad campaign was this campaign that featured adults, no children, in an office setting.
And then if you zoomed in on one of the documents on the table, it was a reference to a Supreme Court case that I think had some sort of relation to child pornography.
And so this like balloons into like a massive scandal.
People are like, whoa, Balenciaga is like messed up.
And it's not just like the right that is concerned about this.
It's not just like QAnon people.
It's like everyone, like Yasir Ali, this journalist who is arguably left of center, is saying that Balenciaga is doing something messed up.
Kim Kardashian, who is not a right winger, is saying, well, this is like very, I was shaken to my core by this.
Um, even like Julia Fox who had a sort of nuanced perspective was still like, you know, I thought it was like disgusting.
So it was like this thing that was like in the zeitgeist that hit like way beyond even what Wayfair had before.
I love that like two of those were probably texted by Kanye.
Hey, check this out.
I feel, I feel like maybe he would have just said something, you know?
Did he?
I forget.
Kanye would have wore the same things that the bears were wearing.
Because when you say bondage, it sounds way more intense.
It's like they had like little black straps.
They were just teddy bears.
Like, yeah, you know, it's, it's BDSM culture.
And you make the argument in your, in your article that like, this has far surpassed the actual BDSM scene.
It's like in fashion.
It's, you know, it's, it's everywhere.
I spent time like in Ohio in the 2000s as a kid and like I didn't realize that there was like a sexual sort of component to like leather and like chains and black.
I thought it was like a mall goth thing and there was like mall goth kids at my middle school and there was mall goth kids at the mall that my family would go to and like they were edgy looking but like they were just people.
I didn't think and like I don't know I came across it later in like raving and like metal and it was like I don't know it took me maybe I was like a little too old by the time I learned that it had like a sort of sexual meaning to it.
Yeah, to me it was always just like, oh, the guy in the basement in Pulp Fiction.
Well, that is sexual.
That Jake has somewhat of a sexual tendency.
Yeah, but I didn't put that together when I watched Pulp Fiction.
I was just like, oh, it's a monster.
It's a leather monster.
That guy is blown out.
He loves hanging out with his homies.
That is such a good insight into your brain.
It's funny because, you know, when I tell people, even nowadays, you know, if people ask what I do and I say, oh, I do this podcast about, you know, kind of debunking conspiracy theories and politics and all this stuff, and they'll say, oh, conspiracy theories.
What do you think about the Wayfair thing?
Like, people still ask about that.
It is still part of the collective consciousness.
The other one that I get all the time is, what do you think about the moon landing?
So Wayfair and The Moon, two of the topics at the front of the general public's mind.
Yeah, people who smoke bowls on couches with Jake's mind.
Nobody smokes bowls with couches on me anymore.
I do all my smoking by myself, okay?
I will let the audience enjoy that last sentence you just provided us.
Yeah, I remember the Wayfair one was really bewildering because number one,
like the absurdity of the premise that like you just go to a mainstream
website, retail website, and just purchase children was the idea, it was
the accusation being made, which has these secret names.
And then the other element that made it very weird and scary was how popular it was.
It wasn't just constrained to even like, you know, like, you know, Boomer Facebook or whatever.
It was like it was on TikTok.
These young people in their 20s were panicking about this absurd idea that somehow Wayfair was a hub for human trafficking.
And it led to some young people even being harassed because of the idea that they might have been human trafficking victims.
And it's like, you're right.
Very few of those people were even aware of QAnon.
It was just sort of this stance, this feeling like you are righteous in being very panicked about this absurd idea, this cartoonish false idea of how child trafficking works.
Hey guys, I am currently doing this TikTok from inside an armoire.
There's like a, not to make too much about aggression, but like, um, and I'm not like a big techno determinist, but like, there's like something about TikTok that also just makes it like really ripe for this.
Like, I remember there was like the car seat, like woman abduction conspiracy that like ripped through for like two days.
The Travis Scott, like.
Quasi-Satanic Panic after, like, that tragic concert Astroworld in Houston was, like, doing just numbers on their, uh, I don't know, weird platform, but maybe that's why they want to ban it.
TikTok, everything you can point your finger up at.
Yeah.
But if you had, like, 20 fingers at once.
Yeah.
I mean, I definitely think it says something about, especially during, you know, 2020 when the world seemed so unrecognizable and what seemed like kind of an old world problem was now front and center and, you know, tens of thousands of people were dying.
You know, I think it plays to the fact that people are desperate for any kind of distraction and conspiracy theories are a a great distraction, and they also develop this sense of
community.
So two things that you're kind of lacking during these lockdowns are satisfied within
these.
There's something that's kind of apolitical about that, which might help to explain why
some of these theories kind of can cross the aisle, so to speak.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, COVID led to a lot of, like, weird digital behavior.
A lot of people in, like, crypto think that, like, crypto did super well because, like, people were just sitting at home with, like, extra time on their hands.
And, like, while I do think that these things, and we can get into this more later, I get into this in the essay, but, like, these things are the basis of, like, social and political forces.
Like, there is also just, like, whatever is happening in the moment, like, both the mediums that these things exist on, like, social media, but then also, like, just other material factors can help exacerbate it or flip
it in the other direction as people find other stuff to do. Totally. You have a lot of, you
know, and a lot of these, especially the influencers who are smart, are saying, you
know, at the end of their video, they're saying, "Comment below. What do you think it is?"
or "What do you think is really happening?"
And when you get a lot of engagement and people doing comments, you know, that lets the algorithm
know to bring those topics further to the top for more eyes to see because it sees that they're
getting a lot of engagements.
So in a lot of ways, yeah, it is a snake eating itself perpetually.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like TikTok.
It's like a constant, I'm going to mess up the pronunciation, but like an ouroboros of just like stuff, just like it goes over and over and over.
And I don't know, it produces like, I'm going to sound like a boomer, but it produces like overly, it produces deleterious effects from time to time, for sure.
Now, you discuss in your article how the most obvious antecedent to QAnon was the Satanic Panic of the 80s.
And that is generally seen as a response to the changing family order in which more women were entering the workforce, more children were spending time in daycare.
Your article discusses how this modern conspiracist panic is also driven by paranoia regarding the family order.
And what is that as you see it?
Yeah, not to like...
Toot my own horn too much.
In fact, I think both of us were very prescient in this.
So, like, when we sat down in 2019, me and you, Travis, like, we had this conversation at the time, and I was, like, trying to understand, like, the social and political forces that, like, had sort of grounded and were generating QAnon.
And I kind of had an idea, but I didn't fully understand.
And, like, you said this really interesting thing, which I cited in this current essay about QAnon winning.
And, like, it was, you You talked about like how QAnon was very preoccupied with like a return to this like economic order of like a prior age and then like you also talked about how it had these like weird preoccupations with I guess like traditional sexuality and things like that and it seemed like that was like what was like I guess like the actual function of QAnon but like and I
Noted that at the time but like it wasn't 100% clear that that was like definitely going to be the case and then by the time we hit like Balenciaga it's like kind of clear that that was like I don't know if it was like the end game but it was like certainly like woven into the DNA of like what animated and motivated it and then galvanized and like every step of the way this sort of like energy around like fighting back against like the acceptance of trans people this like sort of trad energy and like restoring this like Fortis family wage was like always just like bubbling underneath the surface and like that's what got it I don't know like Helped, I guess, like Balenciaga Blossom.
Actually, you know, I went off so far, I forgot the original question.
Like, what were we getting at originally?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So if the 80s Satanic Panic was driven by a change in the family order, what are the modern changes that are driving people into QAnon?
Like we talked about it just ended up being I think like this sort of fear of I guess like this trans panic that's like sort of homophobic impulse that had like it seemed like it had already been like litigated out like it was like even though there was still like plenty of homophobia in the United States in like 2018 it seemed like inevitable that the LGBTQ community at least to me it seemed like they would win it seemed like it had been like kind of a lockstep issue that even like Republicans had kind of retreated on they tried the the bathroom bills in the late teens in North Carolina and those were just like failed miserably and it seemed like their assaults on the
trans and gay communities would not work.
And then QAnon helped them establish a grammar and a vocabulary to kind of come back and fight
these things. And that was what was animating this sort of panic that metastasized into Balenciaga.
Soterios Johnson: I think you bring up a really interesting point, and I definitely,
I really resonated with this piece of your essay. We talked a little bit earlier in the episode,
before you hopped on, after the Trump guilty verdict, you have all of these right-wing talk
show hosts and supporters kind of saying, "We got to fight back. We have to fight back at this,
these forces of evil," I believe is what Jesse Watters was saying.
And I brought up this point, I said, what are you fighting back against?
You know, and I brought up the point that, you know, the current president is enacting immigration policy that a lot of, you You know, right-wingers would agree with.
In fact, they were championing for Donald Trump to do, and yet it was done just today, I believe, with an executive order.
And I think what it really boils down to is just that.
It's anti-LGBTQ, you know, anti-gay, anti-trans.
That's really kind of what the forces of evil, I think, they're talking about.
Because policy-wise, in a lot of other areas, you know, they're kind of getting What they had hoped for in a weird way.
And so what you're left with is this total inacceptance and total hatred of people who are different from them, especially, you know, in their sexuality or gender.
And, you know, it's almost like for a while they couldn't just come out and say that, right?
Because to some extent it had kind of been a lockstep issue.
And this idea that they have this new language regarding the the nuclear family, which is ironic too because Q, you know,
Q clearance stands for, you know, somebody who has, you know, is, has clearance at the
nuclear level. That didn't make any sense, but we're going to keep it in. You know, you really do see
that it is kind of a very simple thing that they really are rallying against. And it really
is this, you know, women's position and status finally, finally at least being acknowledged on
a grand scale that it, that it still remains to be, you know, it still remains unequal,
but that there are people that are fighting to change that as well as, you know, visibility of,
of gay and especially trans people.
Yeah, it's something that, like, really bothers, like, a lot of people on the right and the far right to, like, a very large degree.
And, like, QAnon, like, I guess, like, yeah, makes it very easy to, by, like, situating these things in, like, a sort of fear of, like, pedophiles or a fear of children being groomed, like, Which QAnon was like that was like what I guess like what started it and what was like always like how I guess the vocabulary of it and like how it was like established was like by like trying to talk about these things instead of talking about transphobia homophobia it was like a way in to talk about these issues like libs of tiktok is like obviously like extremely homophobic and transphobic and the way like she gets around this is just by talking about grooming and like by like invoking the children
And that's exactly what happened in the Satanic Panic, which, like, I'm sure you guys have gotten into.
Except at that point in time, the issue was, like, feminism.
The issue was women in the workplace.
And so instead of, like, feminism and, like, kind of being litigated out, it was, like, a thing that was, like, established.
It was, like, on a path to, like, relative victory.
Obviously, we still have, like, a lot of sexism even now.
But, like, As a sort of project, it was like doing what it had set out to do.
And so it was hard to beat that back.
But like what was easier to beat back was the idea that children were under threat.
So by like linking feminism and linking the totems of feminism, which were daycares, which like helped women enter the workplace, like the kids could be stored in a place so that women could have jobs and like no longer be reliant simply on men and be reliant on like their husbands.
That sort of specific totem was attacked via the children being like in harm's way.
And like, so that's just happening again.
But this time you replace feminism and women with like the LGBTQ community, trans people, gay people.
It's just like a way to, it's a way to like, sort of, it's like almost like, there's that like famous quote by,
I want to say it's that Nixon strategist.
And he's like, yeah, we like lost the battle on talking about black people.
We can't like be racist, but like, we can like invoke crime and we can like, in this sort of like thinly built way
in public, basically talk about black people without talking about black people and be racist
and like sort of win those voters over.
This is like a different version of that, but instead you get to be homophobic
without being homophobic.
Yeah, how do you say Q without saying Q?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Well, and one more thing I think that's worth discussing, and you talk about this in your piece,
which we encourage everybody to check out if you have not, you know, about this idea of some of these tenants
of QAnon and right-wing ideology kind of seeping into other areas.
One thing I've noticed that's pretty troubling over the last couple of years is liberal sort of,
not talking heads or whether they're people on Twitter, I call them pundits, but Julian says
that that's not necessarily the right word.
No, I'm not challenging you saying that, but you call them pundints.
Oh, instead of pundits?
Is it pundits?
Who cares?
Anyway, I'm sure my mom will care.
She'll be like, "No, that's incorrect."
You're gonna embarrass me in front of my media friends.
No, but like, one thing I've noticed is that in an effort to kind of own Republicans online or whatever, they will call them gay or they will use things because it feels like they think that if their base sees their heroes as potentially gay, that they won't like them as much anymore, but somehow in turn, like, use, like, it's still homophobic?
I don't know.
I've noticed it kind of a lot recently, especially with Mike Johnson being elected the Speaker of the House.
And it's just like, yeah, it's very weird to see people who claim to be progressives using homophobic rhetoric to essentially own the other side while still doing homophobia.
I feel like that is a relatively new thing in the last couple of years.
But maybe I'm off.
Yeah, I think people, um, there's like a tendency among like some segments of I guess like liberals to like, I guess like forget about the sort of symmetry potentially like what they're engaging in with like some of the critiques.
I guess like the defense that some people would say is like, well, we're just like attacking them on the terms that they've accepted.
Like, I'm not homophobic, but like if this guy hates gay people, then like, you know, there is like a hypocrisy to it.
But yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
It's a slippery slope though because gay people are still seeing that and it doesn't feel good using it as a diss.
Saying Trump and Putin insert some kind of homophobic slur.
Yeah, it's not good.
I think people, the conversation has been dragged so low into the mud that I think people don't see and it's happened so gradually over time that some of this stuff became so popular and became so mainstream that it's sort of wormed its way into your own rhetoric and it's just something I think for people to be conscious of.
Yeah, I think it also speaks to, and this is like a bit of a tangent we don't have to go into, but like the, I don't know, the lack of like imagination in the American body politic for like what's possible.
Like America has always been like a place of extremely limited set of like political possibilities.
Yeah.
And like that's like widened up a little bit recently and like it's like very destabilizing and upsetting to a lot of people on the left and the right, so yeah.
There's one paragraph from your article I really liked, which ran through the instances of casual and unevidenced accusations of child abuse on the mainstream right.
I mean, it's just shocking how, you know, easily and effortlessly people make accusations of one of the most horrible things you can possibly do.
But yeah, this paragraph I thought was really interesting.
Public figures who embrace the traditional atomic family, like DeSantis, Raychick, and Rufo, smoothed out the grammar that Q established into more palatable versions, as people wholly unconnected to QAnon used this echoing rhetoric.
Serial plagiarist Benny Johnson likes to call President Joe Biden a groomer.
Fox News' Laura Ingraham has claimed public schools are sites of grooming.
Roger Stone recently accused 2024 GOP Senate candidate Larry Hogan,
Maryland's former governor, of having a "record of involvement with pedophiles."
Yeah, I don't, yeah, like, I mean, I kind of watched these things happen and like,
this is, this, like, watching this stuff happen in real time is like,
the sort of mental genesis of this essay. I was like, oh, like, it's just, it's gone.
Like it's like not just like on 8Koon and like, I don't know.
Yeah, it was just like not this like thing at the rally where like I'd go and like talk to like Robot Interiors or whoever I was like talking to at Trump rallies back like pre-2020.
It was just like this thing that like fully existed everywhere.
And like these are like the I guess like the biggest cases of it too, but I feel like it's like infected so many things beyond that.
Like I was just kind of thinking earlier about how when Elon called that diver a pedophile, That would still be an insane thing to do right now, but at the time it had this, like, in addition to just being very shocking, it had this novelty to it.
Like, I knew it was, like, floating around 4chan as a thing, but it was, like, just so weirdly online and, like, now it feels like it's, like, totally gone beyond that, which is...
Part of why I felt like it was useful to write and acknowledge this.
It is a sort of language that these people all kind of speak casually to one another and they all understand it to be politically advantageous.
I don't think that they're just sort of unwitting sponges absorbing it either.
They understand that their base is kind of like rabid around these kinds of issues and if they try to connect that and then redirect it, it's politically expedient for them.
This is a huge victory for Chan culture because originally accusing everything of being pedophilia or child porn was the joke, right?
They would say anything with the initials CP, Captain Picard, Cheese Pizza, all of that is actually a reference to child pornography.
And this was just a joke, a meme.
And now we have it in real life.
Just everybody's saying, Oh yeah, I see it there.
I see it there.
You know, innocuous things are suddenly child pornography, or everyone's accusing each other of being pedophiles, you know, even in the latest beef that you pointed out between Drake and Kendrick, you know, I mean, it has become just a way of like, ending an argument of basically claiming that your enemy is ontologically evil.
Right, right.
Have you guys read Charles Portis' Master of Atlantis?
It's a novel by Charles Portis, like, of true-grit fame or whatever, and I like, just drew this connection now, but like, that as you were just talking Julian about this, like you,
the book basically starts off and is about this like society of these like very
goofy sort of like quasi religious people that build this like kind of cult
society thing akin to the Freemasons. It's like very loopy.
And the entire book is about that.
And it's all built out of like one guy at the beginning getting scammed by
someone who makes up the cult. But like, it's just purely a fiction that is like they're scamming
the protagonist into like giving them money and then they disappear.
But this guy just takes it seriously and he takes the joke for real and builds
an entire secret society out of it, which is like the plot of the novel for the next like
several hundred pages.
And yeah, like Q and I, and like this whole grammar is like the same thing.
It's like these jokes from 4chan ended up like building out this novel on
accident. And obviously it like tapped into real things in the culture,
tapped into real social and political forces, which like galvanized and pushed it further.
But it is unendingly like goofy and funny that it just came out of some people
some people doing a LARP as a bit.
They did not expect like these other things to happen.
Yeah.
I mean, what really strikes me is we talked about this on the show is the way
this rhetoric absolutely fails to address the underlying problem, but also at the
same time trivializes it because, you know, I would argue that society has
repeatedly failed to protect children from predators and that is a horrible
thing and, you know, in that this is deserves to be acknowledged and corrected.
But instead of doing anything that's actually helpful, they turn this
accusation of pedophilia into a, just a punchline, just an insult.
Like, you know, as, as casual as calling someone stupid or soft on crime or something.
It's a, it's really, I mean, it's really, really outrageous because it, it just, it
just waters down an accusation of something that used to be.
Yeah, both directly to that point and more broadly, like the problem with QAnon 2 or one of the sort of secondary problems that has always been like this like tool of misdirection, like it's got I've gotten these people who are, like, aggrieved for, like, sometimes, like, kind of legitimate reasons, sometimes not, and it, like, completely distracts them away from, like, material considerations for things that could actually make their lives better, could actually, like, reduce the suffering of, like, themselves and their communities, um, and, like, refocuses it onto this, like, weird, fictitious, like, thing.
And then, like, also, it has this other effect, too, of, like, redirecting actual energy from resolving, like, the abuse of children in, like, all these different ways and communities onto this, like, Absurd thing.
I mean, I've heard you guys talk about this like a million times.
You don't need to hear it from me, but like, yeah, it's... Well, yeah, I mean, you even, you, I mean, you, you note in the, in your article that, you know, during the whole Wayfair scandal, you know, the actual human trafficking resources basically had to put out a statement saying, hey, we are like inundated with calls about this, uh, and it is hindering us from investigating and, you know, potentially helping real victims.
And, you know, we've, we've talked about that before on the show, but, but it, you know, it's worth bringing up again that, you know, It seems like for all that these people care about the safety of children, they are actually getting in the way of real investigations and real groups that are tracking this down.
Unfortunately for the groups, it's just that they don't also believe in QAnon.
If they also believed in QAnon, it would be great.
They would leave them alone.
But that's not the case.
It's just a rhetorical and a debate technique for reactionaries.
You know, you point to children or you point to pedophilia and that closes the kind of conversation because there's a moral imperative to condemn violence done to children and the actions of pedophiles, which, you know, that is true, but it is just a bludgeon.
This sort of thing happened too, like, um, with the hospitals, like, when hospitals were inundated by, like, QAnon people calling them up to oppose, like, I guess, like, uh, gender-affirming care for trans children, which is also, like, uh, some of the specifics of, like, what, like, I think QAnon people were getting their facts wrong, but, like, by calling these hospitals to save children, they were, like, getting in the way of the hospital's resources and time to, like, treat kids and were getting in the way of people who, like, needed help calling in about their kids, uh.
So yeah, it's not I don't know, it's like certainly more self serving that it ends up being about like the children that they profess to want to care about.
We'll be talking to Allie Breland.
That article on Mother Jones is How Q Became Everything.
We'll link to it in the show notes.
Allie, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
Obviously, I've been a big fan since even before the show.
And so, yeah, super great to be on.
And where can people find more of your work?
I have a Twitter, which is my name, Ali Breland.
That's probably the best place.
I write for The Atlantic.
Now, even though this story is from Mother Jones, I just got a new job.
So if you want to follow my work, follow me on Twitter, or you can go to my page at The Atlantic.
Thank you, Ollie.
And thank you, listener, for tuning in to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
It's a good deal.
Go do it.
For everything else, we've got a website, QAApodcast.com.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
This was a disgrace.
This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
It's a rigged trial, a disgrace.
They wouldn't give us a venue change.
We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area.
This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.
The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.
And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
You have a sole respect DA.
And the whole thing, we didn't do a thing wrong.
I'm a very innocent man.
And it's okay.
I'm fighting for our country.
I'm fighting for our Constitution.
Our whole country is being rigged right now.
This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent.
And I think it's just a disgrace.
And we'll keep fighting.
We'll fight till the end and we'll win.
Because our country's gone to hell.
We don't have the same country anymore.
We have a divided mess.
We're nation in decline, serious decline.
Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now from prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists.
And they're taking over our country.
We have a country that's in big trouble.
But this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case.
