Is there actually a liberal equivalent to QAnon? Travis doesn’t think so.
But there are anonymous entities and online communities that bear some of the noxious elements of QAnon, despite being liberal. In this episode we explore two of them.
First, we take a look at the “Alt National Park” social media accounts. These are anonymous “resistance” accounts that got started during Trump’s first term, but took a strange turn when they moved to Bluesky.
And then we’re going to explore the 4 AM Club, a loose community of spiritual women on Tik Tok who believe that they were awakened to something significant the day after the 2024 presidential election.
Will fake park rangers and online channelers save us from the horrors of the Trump administration? You already know the answer, but listen to the episode to hear what we have to say about it.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa
REFERENCES
A Conversation With the Rogue National Park Service Twitter Account
https://www.vice.com/en/article/alternate-national-parks-service-explains-why-its-twitter-will-remain-anonymous/
Rogue National Park Service Twitter account says it’s no longer run by government employees…but maybe it never was
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/27/rogue-national-park-service-twitter-account-says-its-no-longer-run-by-government-employees-but-maybe-it-never-was/
The "Alt National Park Service" Sounds an Awful Lot Like QAnon
https://jjoycelynch.substack.com/p/the-alt-national-parks-service-sounds
AltWatcher on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/altwatcher.bsky.social
Meet the 4 a.m. club, TikTok’s mystical election night movement
https://www.fastcompany.com/91356982/meet-the-4-am-club-tiktoks-mystical-election-night-movement
Welcome to the QA Podcast Premium Episode 297, the hunt for liberal QAnon.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakotansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
All right, before we really start getting into it, I got a few things to say about this concept of liberal QAnon, or sometimes called blue and on.
We've covered like Seth Abrinson before and like these people who go a little off their rails in terms of like their hopes and dreams and delusions about like, you know, how like Donald Trump is going to get rolled up any moment now.
Or the stuff around the assassination attempt or the stuff around the election being stolen by Elon Musk.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's all real delusional.
And I, you know, I'm not even really opposed to other people using his terms because I know what they mean.
I know they mean that kind of stuff, right?
But I don't like it because like, number one, I don't like it.
I don't like to contribute how QAnon is like equated to like all kinds of conspiracism.
I don't like the idea that like this is just sort of the North Star of all conspiracism.
It's the gold standard.
It's the template that all other kinds of conspiracism should aspire to.
You know, it's a kind of thing.
Conspiracism, I think, is like the broader category.
And then QAnon sort of falls under it.
I do think people like call political copium conspiracy theories QAnon, like or they use that term as a basis.
You know, I think that's where people are more focused.
I also don't like it because like, you know, QAnon is not just conspiracism.
It's like an online extremist movement.
And according to Mark Andre Argentino's excellent book that's coming out this month, which I read early and I blurbed because I'm cool like that, it can also be classified as a hyper-real religion.
And these kinds of things are just substantially different than a group of people who have like kooky beliefs.
Okay.
Have you taken care of your children?
Have you coddled them enough?
Do the lips feel okay?
Do they feel good?
Are we able to cover this now that the lips have been soothed?
I don't want to be soothing.
You know what?
I want to be precise.
I want to be very clear about what we're talking about and the terms they use.
I like defining terms.
Absolutely.
And I mostly honestly agree with you, but I also won't let you get away with it without teasing you.
So it's like you put Chum in the water, the shark is coming.
The shark is coming, brother.
There is a big difference, I think, between believing that Elon used satellites to hack the election and that dead people are actually alive and in disguises and they're running with your favorite politicians.
There is a difference there in kookiness, if you will.
Even in the kookiness, yeah.
Yeah, I'd have to agree.
So was I too mean?
No, you're very fair.
It's like a fair amount of mean.
That's okay, kid.
Well, then, as long as we're all calibrated, we can get on with things and everybody's found their position and we're all.
I haven't found mine.
I don't know.
I don't know how I'm going to, I don't know how I'm going to end up by the end of this episode.
Oh, we're probably going to have a fucking meltdown, Jake.
There's no way.
You and I, like with this topic, we love to have a good meltdown around this.
I'd love one, you know?
I'd love a good meltdown.
Yeah, I'm ready for one.
You know, let's go.
Now, all that being said, obviously, no political persuasion is immune from the kind of beliefs and behavior made famous by the QAnon community.
And today we're going to talk about two of them who are like, you know, more in the Democratic or liberal camp.
First, we're going to talk about the Alt National Park Service or Alt NPS social media accounts.
So these are like anonymous resistance accounts that like actually got started all the way back during Trump's first term, but then they took a strange turn when they moved a blue sky during Trump's second term.
And then we're going to explore the 4AM Club.
This is a loose community of spiritual women on the video platform TikTok who believe that they are awakened to something significant the day after the 2024 presidential election.
Oh yeah, lots of fun.
So let's start in with the Alt National Park Service account.
Like to be like, what if fucking parks and wreck, but it was someone deep inside the building.
An insider at the National Parks is one of the funniest and most lived out versions of like this kind of shit that I've ever heard.
Yeah, these are the guys that are about to take him down.
But you know, I think it's really interesting.
It's like an interesting component of QAnon.
It's like they had this vision of like there was a good deep state, but in their vision, it was like, oh, it's high-level military intelligence.
It's these hardcore, brilliant guys who are doing, you know, psyops and shit, and they're going to fix the country.
And the liberal version is Park Rangers.
Yeah, they're going to check the security of Trail 4, but in a way that destroys Trump today.
Yeah, I mean, do they imagine it's some kind of like Davey Crockett?
Yeah, I think it is.
I think this hero with like a funny hat and like a big rifle and he kind of like lives in the woods off the land.
I feel like now that every police is militarized and every single like police intervention around the world looks like spec ops were literally deployed against the civilian population.
Like everyone looks like a fucking psycho.
The idea of a guy in like a little felt hat, you know, like who spends a lot of his time talking about Smokey the Bear to kids, but is like also kind of an operator, like I think there's something there.
A Japanese video game could probably be made to honor this concept.
Yeah, he's like, he's got some sort of like secret, secret radio in the little shack where they check your parking.
So yeah, if you remember, there are these, the alt National Park Service accounts that like early 2017, they were basically created in direct reaction to the Trump administration's restrictions on federal agencies' communications.
So what happened is that on January 20th, 2017, the day Trump is inaugurated, the official NPS Twitter account, the real one, retweeted posts critical of Trump and like comparing the inauguration crowd size of that day to Obama's.
And so the new administration, they swiftly ordered the Defense of the Interior, which oversees the NPS, to suspend all social media activity.
And then just days later, on January 24th, the Badlands National Park Twitter account, again, the real one, the one that was verified and everything, they posted a series of factual tweets about climate change.
And this is obviously at odds with the new administration stance.
So this was sort of like a real kind of rebellion, whoever the fuck was operating these accounts.
So this is very, yeah, very tasty.
Like one guy who probably was already on his way out, you know, just kind of did a couple of last minute fun, fun times and he started an entire schizophrenic breakoff.
Basically, this kind of, he thought he was doing some good and didn't realize.
It's not even so much like fun times or like activism in any sort of like meaningful way.
It's just posting.
He was like, you know what?
I'm going to put it all on the line.
I'm going to use my thumb.
I'm going to hover over the little glass screen.
I'm going to press a colored square.
That square is going to open and there's going to be a box there.
And in that box, my resistance will live.
I type.
I die.
I bleed.
Red, white, and blue.
I post.
Well, you're saying that, but a lot of like the ways that America now murders people involves a little screen that you click on a box on.
So it's, you know, it's like, I don't know if simplifying it to that level because you just described probably most drone murders.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Like, that's probably how they erase like an entire fucking building these days.
So they're just fucking like SimCity, like destroying, you know, buildings, just clicking on whole buildings.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Plan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QA.
Well, that's not an opinion.
It's a fact.
You're so right, Jake.
We love and appreciate all of our listeners.
Yes, we do.
And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe?
