What is QAnon today, nearly eight years after the first Q drop? In Marc-André-Argentio’s new book QAnon: From Conspiracy Theory to New Religious Movement he argues that QAnon is best understood as a “hyper-real religion.” Even years after the Q drops stopped, QAnon exists as a lived religious practice, where true believers are commissioned to redpill the normies and posting is a rite. The book demonstrates that the movement has gone through three stages of existence: proto-QAnon, canonical-QAnon, and apocryphal-QAnon.
Travis and Jake chat with Marc-André about his book and how it builds on other books that cover the movement.
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Marc-André Argentino
https://www.maargentino.com/
QAnon: From Conspiracy Theory to New Religious Movement
https://www.routledge.com/QAnon-From-Conspiracy-Theory-to-New-Religious-Movement/Argentino/p/book/9781032703534
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
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Part of why I found and continue to find QAnon so compelling is that it's intriguingly difficult to define in a really succinct way.
QAnon has been called a conspiracy theory, an extremist movement, a LARP, an ARG, a SYAP, a cult, and a religion.
And the problem is that any one of those labels is at worst misleading, and at best they might be technically accurate, but still fail to entirely describe how the QAnon community operates.
Now, this is why I was very excited to read a new book, QAnon from Conspiracy Theory to New Religious Movement by Mark Andre Argentino.
For longtime listeners of the show, might remember we've had him on a few times back when our episode counts was still in the double digits.
This is like a long time ago, pre-January 6.
Also is one of the few Q researchers that we've met IRL.
Most people we see, we only know through a Zoom or Skype screen, but Mark Andre actually came to the live show when we performed in Canada and we got to hug IRL.
It was wonderful.
We got to hang out behind the scenes.
It was great.
Yeah.
I was having a panic attack too, which is so funny.
I don't know if you remember that.
I was like, I wanted to hang out, but I was also having a massive panic attack because I, like, even though I have a theater degree, I like decided to get stage fright like for the live shows for whatever reason.
I don't know.
My mind, my mind was playing tricks on me.
No, I remember that, but it was still a fun time.
It was great to see that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We were still good.
I'm not like an annoying panicer.
No, it was subtle, but it was a great time to hang out.
Yeah, it was great.
So nowadays, Mark Andre works with Public Safety Canada.
And what's really amazing about the book is that it goes beyond like describing like the original formation of QAnon.
It goes deeper and provides this analysis of like, how is it?
of how it evolved over the years and on multiple platforms.
And I think it provides the best understanding of the state of QAnon today in 2025, nearly eight years after the first QDrop.
And I think this is valuable because, man, I like it was really interesting to see the evolution of how people have kind of reacted to me talking about what I do on the podcast.
Because for the first like three years or so, like prior to January 6, the reaction was basically, what's QAnon?
Like literally the average person would have no knowledge.
I'd have to have like basic sort of like understanding.
Well, it's like, you know, it's an online sort of like conspiracy theory cult movement thing.
Then after like January 6th, all of a sudden, it kind of entered public consciousness in a bigger way.
And I would have to, I have to explain, it's a QAnon podcast, but like anti QAnon.
So just be clear.
But then something else happened.
It's like starting two years ago, there was this change in like all QAnon, is that still going?
Is that still a thing?
There was this period in which people were like, were aware of it and then stopped being talked about in the media so much.
And it kind of like faded from the public consciousness.
But I mean, it's still very much an active thing online in the in these communities.
It's just not covered quite as extensively by by the media anymore.
And even though the media doesn't necessarily think that there's lots of advancements taking place within the world.
The QAnon people believe that.
They believe that, you know, some of them that the storm is humming along quite nicely and, you know, that they're going to be treated any minute to mass executions.
So they're still excited about it even if the media, you know, at large in some ways has sort of forgotten or moved on.
But also it's become so normalized in terms of how the conspiracy theories from the Q movement are standard talking points in some political spaces that, you know, it's not newsworthy if it's normative.
So in a way, they're sure.
QAnon movement shifted, you know, the Overton window on conversations and some conspiracy theories are just normal political speech now.
Well, and California is becoming so melted now.
I used to say, oh, it's a show, it's a podcast about QAnon, but we're anti QAnon.
And I've run into enough people that have looked at me funny after I said that it's anti QAnon that now I just say it's a podcast and it's about politics and conspiracy theories.
And the answer I usually get is people being like, oh, I love conspiracy theories.
Awesome.
I'll listen.
Sorry.
Go on, Travis.
So yeah, this book is, I mean, it is quite an effort.
I mean, you go into detail about like just the kind of the reams and reams of data from like social media platforms you go into.
Like it was like about like 54 million tweets, 1.7 million Facebook posts, 1.3 million Reddit posts, another 1.3 million Telegram posts and 23,000 Instagram posts.
So this is this was a this was an undertaking.
So yeah, I mean, what was that like?
Definitely was a passion project to get through all of this stuff.
Yeah, man.
And I mean, like this is not this wasn't the start of my PhD, right?
I switched into QAnon in mid 2018 going into 2019 just before the pandemic and then it became my entire dissertation.
I threw away everything I wrote before that.
So it was definitely a grind to start from the beginning, but there was so much data on this, so much information to report on that.
It wasn't too difficult in the end to really do academic research.
There was not much on the topic at the time, though a good history on what conspiracy theories were and how they impact society.
But, you know, the digital way that QAnon emerged, the impact on politics, the large social movements it built, so many unique things that definitely worth the effort.
And so much of it is all online.
You know, it's so, it's so digital that that we really do, you know, if you know where to look, you really do have a, uh, you know, a trail of footprints, you know, leading back, uh, you know, seven years through all the transformations and the various characters who are coming in and out.
I mean, it's why this, it's why we're still doing this podcast.
It's why we even have a podcast is because the depth and different layers under this sort of, you know, as Travis always called it, you know, a tent pole conspiracy theory can go so deep and there's so many spin-offs and segments and breakaway groups that it's just, yeah, it can seem endless and it can seem overwhelming.
And I think that that's, you know, and I'm sure that you also felt that way and thought that, you know, a book was necessary to kind of wrangle in all of the madness in a place where, where people can actually kind of get their bearings on what this is and where it stands.
I mean, it was really an academic book because Mike did an amazing book on QAnon for popular print.
There are other people that we are familiar with that have done great work on this, right?
But in the academic space, having something dedicated to QAnon wasn't there yet.
So it was great to be able to put something out, but especially transforming years of doctoral research into something in print was quite fun to do.
And it was great.
It came out just the week that all the Epstein stuff came to a head.
So it was a great time to release a book where I was at a point like, man, my book's coming out.
Is it still really relevant?
And well, sure is.
Yes, it was.
Yeah.
I mean, I think this is really great because, yeah, it does.
It's going to provide a really a base for the academic world, for the scholarly world, for understanding this phenomenon, which again, it's shockingly did not really exist, you know, as a as much of a comprehensive analysis before now.
And I think is a this is a perfect companion to a Mike Rothschild's book because that describes like, you know, really the like origins and the movement and its growth and the basic concepts like the cue drops and how the community operates.
And then this book really kind of like takes it like what happens like afterwards, what happens like in the years after the cue drops stop and the community still evolves and still exists online.
So you sort of like you sort of.
understand how it, how it blooms in, um, sort of like, after, I guess, where a Mark Rothschild's book ends.
No, and Mike's book helped a lot because I didn't have to spend so much time, you know, building the historical introduction of where it came from and all that.
Like, you know, his book was fantastic.
And even within the academic space, I know a lot of my peers love this book and regularly cite him.
So it was a great companion, but it's also, I had a lot of fun breaking down the conspiracy to different components and highlighting various harms, various dimensions, because, you know, Q non's not this singular thing.
There's so many dimensions and elements to it.
So taking it apart in specific ways just as a start was so.
Art was super interesting to do and I think still valuable to this day and kind of gets us to understand that where we are at this point, but what it could look like in terms of future conspiracy theories impacting the political sphere.
Yeah.
One of the, I guess, your methods for analyzing the community is something you call digital ethnography.
What is that exactly?
So what I mean by digital ethnography is basically doing your ethnographic analysis and observations in the digital space.
So instead of, you know, if I wanted to study an indigenous community in their environment to better understand their behaviors and their cultures, you would have to travel, spend time with them, take notes, take your journals and then report back on it.
It's the same principle, but this time it's I go and observe within the digital ecosystems of QAnon itself and spend time like we've done over the years, reading the Q drops, understanding how they interpret them, poisoning our brains with things like the Q clock and trying to understand some of the madness, but also relating to, you know, get to understand what it means to individuals and understand why they are mobilizing or believing in this.
What does it offer them in their lives?
There has to be a reason behind it.
And it's trying to get through observation what it means to the believers rather than just applying my external observations.
And I try to be as faithful to what a QAnon believer would say or believe and remove as much of my bias as possible when I'm reporting on it.
And I think that's one of the things that was driving me is not only digital ethnography, but looking at them from a religious perspective is understanding what their beliefs are and what it means to them rather than what an outsider will think it looks weirdly and it's like this is just crazy stuff or it's just cultish, but there's actually multiple layers and more depth to it than just a superficial glance.
Yeah, I think it has very valuable.
Like, try to like, understand it sort of like beyond the kind of like outsider sort of like stigmatized perspective.
And man, I just love that term digital ethnography because I just called it lurking on forums, but this is a, this is a much nicer sounding name.
That's the academic term for lurking on forums.
That's how you make it sound fantastic in an academic book.
Now you ruined my secret, Travis.
But yeah, it's eight years of lurking and reading and all their reading their books and they're watching their videos and attending their church services on Sundays.
And yeah.
But it's amazing because I think that that's it's so easy.
You know, if you look at some of the individual QAnon beliefs, you know, just a couple of the crazier ones, you know, JFK Jr. is still alive and coming back and he's going to run with Trump or the idea that John McCain, you know, did not die of brain cancer.
He was he was executed and the cancer was a cover.
You know, it's really easy to look at at people in this belief system and make fun of them.
And, you know, we're guilty of that.
Like, uh, but it's a podcast, it's entertainment.
And sometimes you have to laugh at how crazy some of this stuff is because it makes you feel less sad at where we're sort of collectively heading as a society.
But what we always try to do, and I think that the book does a very good job of doing, is, is exactly like you said.
Why?
What draws some?
What makes QAnon attractive to somebody?
And I've experienced that firsthand, you know, when I we first the reason we started the show is because I was kind of into QAnon, not from a right wing.
place, but I was into all the spy gate stuff.
And I was like very interested in this idea that our intelligence agencies, you know, might not play fair if there was a candidate that they really didn't like.
And I was, I was fresh off a, you know, a lot of our listeners know this, but I was like, you know, fresh off a very disappointing primary where I was, I was really hoping that that Sanders would get a, you know, a fairer shake.
And I was like pretty disillusioned.
I was pretty angry.
And my career wasn't really, you know, didn't compare to my peers.
I was single.
I was kind of lonely and living paycheck to paycheck.
And there was something about QAnon that felt like, oh, finally like the, you know, the, the people that it's easiest to blame for my own misfortunes.
They're going to be broke or they're going to be struggling or unhappy.
And for me, I felt that that was a big part of it.
There was this anger.
There was this isolation.
There was a general dissatisfaction in our government and politics and transparency.
And I'm curious if, you know, over your research, if you found that to be a common theme between people, maybe not, not necessarily your average QAnon believer, but someone who goes like all in, you know, to the point where maybe they become an influencer themselves or, you know, they, they join some kind of subgroup?
I mean, when you're looking at what you're describing, it's not unique, right?
When you have these types of grievances, when you have these angers, you're looking for a type of answer to justify why you're feeling and the answers in terms of, you know, political outcomes or social and cultural outcomes are not always black and white.
They're these complex shades of gray.
But when you're looking at, you know, a conspiracy theory or even the online influencers providing, you know, a specific type of framing to your news, it's designed in a way to give you the quick answers when, you know, that's what your brain is attracted to.
You don't want to have to struggle through the psychological dynamics of questioning yourself or whatever.
I think the difference, the difference between what you're describing for your own pathway versus like some who go further is at some point you were not satisfied with just the quick answers and you kept digging and trying to find more.
But there are some who are just going to be satisfied by getting these very, you know, quick answers that provide them the comfort they need and they'll stick to it because it becomes familiar.
But then you could also build a community around it.
But part of it is like your grievances are going to and your personal risk factors are going to play a big role in how you are attracted to these things.
And I mean, it could have been Q for you, Jake.
It could have been, you know, someone coming in, hey, do you want to come and help me run a boy scout troop or do you want to join the Church of Mormons or when you have something that'll come to you and give you meaning and it resonates with you, that'll provide you that type of comfort when you're in a point of crisis.
Yeah.
You know, my other choice, this guy had asked me if I wanted to be part of a Beastie Boys cover band that performed in Las Vegas.
And I said no to that.
And so I think that probably would have been, that was kind of my other option.
Um, and who knows where I would have ended up had I gone that way, probably still in Vegas to this day.
Oh boy, I would love to see that Jerry fly.
By the way, I'm not joking.
Alternate universe, Jake.
Put that in Bizarro World.
Yeah.
But no, I mean, that's, that's real.
And I think, I think it's interesting to, you know, when we talk about QAnon and conspiracy theories, to talk about these roadblocks that happened or these off ramps.
You know, for me, it was when the QAnon group moved off of Reddit.
and they went on to this other anonymous sort of clone Reddit platform where they could, you know, they could say what they really wanted to say.
And a lot of the posts were anti Semitic and deeply, deeply offensive to me as a Jewish person.
And that was the off ramp.
I was like, oh, this is actually not the stuff that I'm interested in is just at the surface.
And what's actually beneath this is something that I'm that I don't want to be a part of, you know?
And I think it was like that for people with J six to some degree.
They said, oh, you know, I have a couple of family members who were pro Trump who after J six they went, oh, no, this is not what we signed up for.
And that was an off ramp.
And I think some of the Epstein stuff, Trump calling Epstein a hoax was potentially an off-ramp for some QAnon believers.
So yeah, it's interesting to see what brings you on, what takes you off, what keeps you, what keeps you there.
You talk in the book about how QAnon really can't be understood outside the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And it's like, well, this is something we talked about before, but man, you really drive it home in this book.
To illustrate this, you provide a statistic that made my eyes pop.
So on Facebook posts like maybe between March of 2020, which is like really when the pandemic started to hit the US in a big way, and August of 2020, that time period.
period accounted for 65 percent of all QAnon posts ever on Facebook at like this five month period.
I mean, it sounds like people like when the world started turning upside down, there was this disease that, you know, all of a sudden forced people to socialize less and ended their jobs and their social lives and everything.
They turned to, they went online, they tried to make sense of what was going on and they found QAnon.
I mean, like how would you, how you think we should understand the relationship between the start of the pandemic and QAnon?
You're absolutely right.
Those numbers are even staggering for me looking at it back today, but we have to remember if we're looking at that period..
We had maybe not parts of the US, but we had lockdowns in most of the world.
We still had a lot of unknowns about what it is and information coming out, like, oh, it was spread by blood, spread by water droplets, spread by air.
It's not transmissible.
It's preventive.
We were coming into a period where we don't really know what's going on.
Scientific evidence was changing on a weekly basis because people were trying to research this as fast as they could.
And some findings were good, some were not.
People were reacting.
So you're creating this very chaotic environment for most of the human population.
We've never lived through this type of crisis.
We're not adapted or able to deal with this type of impacts.
Governments closing down borders limiting access.
Where I was in Montreal, you know, we had lockdowns between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.
You weren't able to leave your house.
So there were a lot of different restrictions which a does push people to go online because what else are you going to do is, you know, spend your time online, try to find friends, connect with people.
But also everyone was also speculating and trying to find answers.
And it wasn't only QAnon, but you had so many different individuals, both well intentioned and ill intentioned, that were putting information out as fast as possible to try to get answers.
And people were coming together and trying to get comfort.
And you really saw the QAnon influencers who had years of experience, like before the pandemic, creating an attractive narrative to a locked in audience and how to bring those people in.
So during like the biggest crisis that most people have gone through in their lives, those that were useful, like very successful influencers were able to drag people in iroves.
And we kind of saw that early, like especially with like the weeded media crowds that were coming in at that time, like all those influencers were very successful in dragging in their audience to this day where they're still considered influencers because of that foundation they built, you know, five years ago.
Yeah.
It's really, yeah, the equation of a 24 hour media versus a brand new virus that we don't know a ton about.
It was the, it was the perfect storm for a disaster because people are, you know, there is an expectation that information will come out quickly.
And because of that, I think that the narrative change.
And, you know, I think that we all saw that these influencers, you know, especially in the QAnon space, were taking advantage of that.
And that when something would be, you know, one of the pillars of, you know, if you're a conspiracy theory peddler is if you catch the media in a lie or you catch your, you know, your enemy political party in a lie, you use that to build a foundation to discredit things that actually are well-sourced and actually are true and real.
And so it's a mess.
And I mean, it's not only the QAnon people.
We have to remember that there was a fair amountunt of foreign interference going on at the time.
And we saw QAnon influencers catching onto Chinese narratives, which were coming directly from the state spokesperson, and they were amplifying it and making these posts viral, several of which were successful campaigns just because QAnon influencers were running with it and community members were linking it to Q drops and pass in.
And they already had all the architecture to run wild with everything.
So their capacity to connect any bit of information, good or bad, to Q drops to justify their prophecies or their conspiracies.
It was just a perfect storm for this type of movement.
Yeah, in the book you sort of like talk about like the kind of tricky work of like describing what it is.
And in chapter two you ask like, are we dealing with a new religious movement and how this is like, um, maybe distinct from the more sort of like stigmatizing label of cult.
So like, what kind of like tipped you towards saying that it is in fact a new religious movement?
A lot of it was trying to understand the behavioral impact that QAnon was having.
And it was trying to frame it, you know, using a bit of the work that Michael Darkoon had done on conspiracy theories and looking at the framing of those early American conspiracy theories on human behavior, but the scale was so much more.
And what I found interesting was how much ritual was built into Q'anon practices, you know, everything from baking the bread and making your threads on Akun and four chan, but it's also how it was aligned with this concept of hyper real religion or hyper reality.
And it's to understand that individuals were framing this in a way that is not necessarily just a cult or conspiracy theory because of the amount of meaning you were getting through it.
You had ideological adherence that was obtained through participation.
It wasn't just this, you know, passive consumption of a conspiracy theory.
You had to, you know, work your way through it and understand.
You had, you know, I talk about the three types of practices, whether they're, you know, entangled religious practice where there's a high degree of overlap between social action and religion.
And we could see that this was a group that was driven by social action.
They wanted to mobilize.
They wanted to change politics.
But they also had, because it was rooted in American culture, a huge tie to evangelism.
So there was a lot of borrowing from evangelism and Christian religions.
And we even did one of the episodes on the Church of QAnon where they were having these services on Sundays online based around the conspiracy theories.
But then we also saw how QAnon tied to mainstream popular culture and tied to movies and comics and, you know, stuff like yoga and crystal and other forms of spirituality.
So what we're seeing is this type of religion that is based on the premise that pop culture really shapes and creates our reality.
And QAnon was not the first one to do this, right?
If you want to go something very wild, you could look at the concept of Jediism and why it's a religion in the UK is because this type of digital movement on the census, people just signed up as putting Jediism as their religion.
And they had to be officially recognized because they had over a hundred thousand people that recorded for it.
But then it became a practice because of this whole popular culture thing.
So we could really see how popular culture is embodying the characteristics and roles of faith and religion for this new generation.
And it's also important to understand that, you know, if we're looking at those who are within their twenties, thirties, forties now, they talk less about being religious and more about being spiritual and finding attachments to different types of things.
So this is also where there was a good resonance with Q'non because those who are within the spiritual place or we're talking about conspirituality, we could really see how that's tying to a lot of the same things that conspiracy theory has, but trying to offer this meaning to those who believe and practice it.
And, you know, some things are not a big leap.
If you're doing yoga, there's a lot of esoteric practices that are tied to that.
Same thing if you believe in angels or crystals or some of the other type of esoteric things that are quite popular on platforms like Instagram.
So we could see how that tied in.
But it's really that Q non believers were making meaning in their real lives based on Q drops, how Q drops interpreted movies or historical facts or everything.
So it's really that pop culture element that dictated behaviors.
You know, it's really interesting too, is that if you go and look at these quotes from whoever was posting as Q, there's a ton of religious stuff baked in.
I mean, you know, the big quotes are dark to light or dark versus light, God wins.
The great awakening is a perfect example.
You know, I went through many, many years of Hebrew school when I was a kid.
Not to say, you know, I'm not trying to pit one religion against the other, but I did.
I, you know, I grew up, I was raised, you know, Jewish.
We never there was any talk about any kind of awakening.
There was not that, that's not part of the thing that that seems to me to be unique to evangelism or some, some, the Millerites.
There's something there that's different that's deeply, deeply baked into the pie crust of QAnon, if you will.
It's their apocalyptic language.
They were waiting for the apocalypse, right?
This great awakening, this storm coming is your apocalypse and your great awakening is everyone realizing, oh my God, this storm came, we need to change, we need to be better.
This is like that future golden age that you're promised in these types of religious beliefs and practices.
They're borrowing that from a lot of the evangelical movements that many of these influencers are from, they were using what they're familiar with.
This didn't come out of nowhere.
These individuals grew up within these communities and they are using what they're familiar with and adapting it to either their new beliefs or in some Q Influencer places, their grift.
We were just saying the other day we did an, uh, Brad Abrahams and I did an episode of them about this impending alien invasion in November that people are getting pretty excited about.
And we found this guy online who goes by cab and he is an end times prophecy guy, like a, like a Christian end times rapture guy, but he's also a QAnon alien guy.
And, you know, what's really interesting is that the alien, like the extraterrestrial apocalypse, we found is compatible with the religious apocalypse.
You would think that those two don't go together, but these guys will point to, you know, a book of Revelations or other passages in the Bible and say, look, they're telling us that they're extraterrestrials.
And so the way that it's now now combined in the soup online, and this guy's got, oh my God, hundreds of thousands of followers on X. And I'm sure, one actually kind of off the cuff question that I've got for you is, have you noticed that since Elon has taken over Twitter, that the conspiracy community is boosted much higher than it was before?
Because that's, to me, anecdotally seems very true.
I mean, I don't know if it's the conspiracy theory community, because I've been on a different part of X for my current research.
Sure, so fair.
What I did notice is Grock really pushing out a lot of the QAnon tropes, narratives.
I mean, I think it was this week.
I don't know if it was Travis or posted it maybe, but it was the Karaq actually just putting where we go one, where we go all at the end of the post after someone asked if Q is real.
So we could see.
So if that's what it says, we know that it's pulling that from some type of Twitter user base, but X in itself has just become a platform where everything is permissible.
So why would you not go there if you're a QAnon influencer?
Because you know you're not going to be taken down any more.
You have free reign to push whatever conspiracy you want.
Your political audience that you want to have as a user base is there.
So for them, it's the perfect place to go because you don't need to go to a half baked gab or something else.
You have a kind of functional platform, kinda.
Yeah, premium, a premium platform.
And you took it, you know, in your mind, you took it from the libs, which makes it all that much better.
Well, exactly, because you stole it from all the, you scared off all the journalists, the academics, the liberal politicians, everyone.
So, yeah.
For them, it's also a victory ground for them to do their deeds on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I like, yeah, I really like this hyper real religion and sort of new religious movement framework, because I think it, like, I think helps her understand the, the sort of, like, the practices and why, um, why these QAnon followers were so devoted to something that, uh, that from the outside seems so deranged, you know?
So, I mean, it's almost like they used posting as a kind of religious sacrament.
They felt like they were commissioned to red pill the normies, and they have to do this.
And this is sort of a practice that they do every day, which is just a lot for religious practice.
Like if a Catholic went to mass every single day, I think even most Catholics would be like, oh, that's a little much.
You don't have to go every single day.
But these QAnon followers, they take part in this essentially religious practice of posting for red pilling the normies just daily.
that doesn't just serve the purpose of adding more qanon followers or like you know or spreading the message of qanon it also reinforces this the devotion of the practitioner.
And I mean, like QAnon participation from a religious perspective is very similar to militant religious individuals.
Like the average Catholic will not go, well, is just an Easter and Christ type of Christian.
So, you know, your E's and C's.
You might have people who are more practicing will go regularly on a Sunday, but the militant ones, those who are committed will be going every day.
And it's the same thing you see with them.
You know, if we think about their whole concept, we're digital soldiers in a digital war.
You see that with millenarian perspectives where you are a Christian soldier in a war for the soul of the earth.
And you're seeing that mandate that they believe they're given is what's really helping them dictate their behaviorior, which is why they're spending all this time.
They have no concerns about the relationships that they're losing because for them, whatever the end promises, that golden age that they promised, is going to be worth all the sacrifice that they have.
The sad part is that that end is never coming and what they've lost are friends and families and employment and whatever else they might have lost along the way.
So you might have built a new community, but in the long run, it is going to be a costly practice for those who are still holding on to this years after it was initially created.
And you provide the sort of like more like granular framework of understanding QAnon as a lived religion.
You break it up into like proto QAnon, canonical QAnon and apocryphal QAnon.
So I thought this was very useful for sort of understanding.
So I mean, like, so let's start with like, what exactly, how would you define the proto QAnon?
So the way that I was looking at this is thinking about how QAnon changed over time, right?
And it's the same way that religion evolves and the proto QAnon or I borrow basically from proto religions is what is the groundwork, the stepping stones that were laid to permit QAnon to flourish, right?
Because even though this seemed to come out of nowhere for.
For most individuals, if you're an observer of the edge sphere, at least like the three of us weirdos are, you saw that this type of stuff was not new, right?
We started with not even Pizza Gate being the first one, but really thinking about the type of LARPing you have online with people like FBI and on and all of the other type of individuals that just appeared and tried to be these type of online influencers, but they were playing a role as well.
That type of pretend being an agent and leaking secrets.
And there was an element of play that was part of this.
And it was part of like this image board culture that could be problematic, but in itself was not a terrible thing.
And we had some going back historically, like to the early 3000s of the internet, where, you know, we're pretending to be time travelers and talking about the future.
And so we have all these possibilities that laid the groundwork.
But I thought it was important to realize that, you know, there is the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory, which was crucial to setting this up, because we wouldn't really get there without the success of Pizza Gate and the leftovers of it, and especially the stuff around child abuse that would have led to the current iteration of QNON.
Then because they were also on 4chan, this culture of LARPing was part of the QNON space, right?
A lot of the people who were there from the beginning were familiar with this type of role playing that occurs in these spaces.
And we could see that they borrowed a lot of that from the early individuals who created Q, even those who were participating.
It was not odd for early members of QAnon to have and participate within these type of conversations.
And the last one is the work that Q Origins did on the lost Q drops, which predeed actually the first Q drop that's been collected by the aggregators.
So we could see that even from the core QAnon community, there were attempts early on to create the Q movement that have now been collected and demonstrated that this is not something that was started specifically in October 2017.
But that there were attempts earlier to try to get this going and it's rooted in a bunch of other things.
And I think that's important to understand to get to, you know, the main point of the QAnon space, which is what I call the canonical period.
And this is the easiest one to describe.
This is everything that is covered by the QAnon aggregators and considered official QPosts by the community.
So between October 27, 2017 to December 8, 2020, I don't include the garbage, uh, fake QPosts that came out while you were trying to.
The gym posting.
Yeah, we don't consider the gym posting as Q drops and not even the QAnon people believe.
Yeah, even they don't.
Yeah.
Even they didn't buy it.
So, you know, you weren't doing a pretty good job at the QAnon believers.
Yeah, this is bullshit.
Wait, I got a I got an interesting question.
So like, because role play has been part, at least, of popular culture forever.
I, look, I'm a guy that's got three Ghostbusters proton packs in my basement, you were talking about Star Wars, massive, massive community of people.
Some are so into it that they are like real professional lightsaber duelers and will go to lightsaber duel competitions.
I watch videos of these guys and they're fucking incredible, guys and girls.
And so I guess we do kind of have a history of doing this.
But also, but there are healthy ways, you know, that role play and LARPing, uh, have been embedded in, in the culture and ways for people who, who, you know, really identify with a particular, uh, intellectual property or, or, or book or movie, whatever, whatever it is, you know, that they can kind of like live that fantasy.
And it's, it's yet, you know, I often think about, were there more dangerous ones preceding Q or ones that were just as dangerous or just as popular?
And I don't know if you came across any that flag, you know, that you flagged as like, oh, well, this is, this is really interesting and and could have potentially set the, you know, set the stage for something like Q to really take off.
I don't know if there was anything that was really more dangerous.
And I don't think Q itself was dangerous because even like we think 2018, the movement was dying up until the pandemic hit and that gave them a big boost, right?
That's the only real reason they were alive.
Because after the Christchurch attack, you know, eight Chan was taken down, four Chan was under fire, Reddit was taken down.
So there's a lot of content removal.
So even early on, like Q was interesting, but its reach was still quite limited for a long time.
Yeah.
But a lot of the stuff, like I was super interested in like online LARPing and communities from the get-go.
I remember like early on when I was getting, when I was on, my God, maybe old now., one of the first computers I was ever playing on.
I remember reading about, you know, John Titter, like Time Traveler Zero, the guy who was angry.
I traveled back from 2036.
I was like, oh my God, this is the year 2000.
You have a Time Traveler from 2036.
You know, even though I knew in the back of my mind like this wasn't something real, it's cool to play and be part of that and try to build this community around talking to this individual and getting these types of responses back.
So it is this type of play.
It's, you know, if you're a gamer, you've been to these types of places, you've played an RPG, you've played Dungeon and Dragons, you've played Baldur's game.
Right, right, right.
So like it is, it is healthy in a way.
I think the risk is when the LARPing becomeses attached to either an extreme movement or is tied to individuals with extreme goals and combining that with personal grievances and risk factors, then you could go extreme.
I mean, if we think about like the reptilian conspiracy theories, we do have that guy in Tennessee who blew up his RV, you know, we have the guy in California who killed his two kids in Mexico because he thought they had reptilian blood in and of itself.
Like, yes, the reptilian conspiracy theories, extremely anti Semitic, but there's no real indications of, oh, you need to mobilize and do that type of stuff.
The push factor really comes within the individuals who are participating in it.
But it's, it's, you know, now when we look at the type of conspiracy theories on the edge sphere, it's more like, what does it take for us this to become dangerous or how it could be dangerous rather than having that old joy of being like, oh, this could be fun to participate in.
So I think now we're just more aware of the risk but also how we're interconnected to these type of spaces along to how everything just becomes political so quickly.
I think those risk factors within these things are just higher at the moment.
It's really interesting that you bring up John Tyder because this is a larp.
We did one of our very one of the first episodes I ever did for the pod, I think was like on Tyder.
And what was interesting about it is that he included all of these pictures or they whoever was posting there were pictures, there were manuals, there was content to really sift through and this was kind of like, correct me if I'm wrong, but this was basically like a list serve conspiracy or an email list, you know?
And it's like you go and I think about I think about going back to, um, like Prodigy and AOL, you know, when I when we first got access to that in my house, you better believe I was going into chat rooms and like pretending to be somebody else, anybody else, because an eleven year old kid in the, you know, in the suburbs of Chicago, like, wasn't that interesting to me?
And it, you know, it just sort of brings up this really interesting idea that as long as we've had this digital place where we can kind of start over and reinvent ourselves in whatever way possible, people have been.
doing this.
Maybe they're too afraid to go to the Ren Fair.
They think it's stupid.
They don't want to dress up.
They don't whatever.
But like online, all you have to do is open a web browser.
The bar to entry is pretty low.
It is.
And I mean, like, this is also why we're still seeing these things continue today.
Like, you know, when I'm talking about the third category of like a proper, a proper Q non, there was a question at the time when Q stopped posting.
Is this the end of the movement?
I remember chatting with you guys about this.
Like, what is going to happen?
You know, January 6 happened, Q is gone, Trump is out of the White House, you know, the Democrats are coming in.
The general sense should have been like, well, this is going to hit her out.
But the reality is, was they took all the opportunities in the chaos after J six and used that as a form to continue and adapt the play.
And we could really see that these are individuals who are quite proficient at LARPing online.
They were able to adapt to this new environment.
And they're also able to overcome the failure of prophecy again and again, even though everything failed.
Oh my God, everything's going to be like, oh no, it's okay.
We don't have all the information.
We could move on.
And these new figures were coming in.
And a lot of these new figures that came in early on are gone.
You know, we could see that they're no longer really playing a role.
They're not as important, but they acted as this bridging between that chaotic period to where we are today and the original influencers are still around and then they just get to keep on pace.
So you had new people trying to, you know, take on advantage of this stuff, but it made the capacity for the influencers to take the time and adapt while the really wild people who came on board on like, you know, in 2021 were able to go.
Some of them are still around though.
I mean, negative 48 tragically died away in a motorcycle accident, but his followers are still active and still gathering on a regular basis.
Romana D'Ullo in Canada is still around.
She might be less directly linked to QAnon, but we really see more of that conspiracy theory overlapping with the pseudo law movement in Canada and how she's still.
continuing strong.
And I mean, the influence is still there.
It might not be at the height it was back in 2022, 2023, but we could really see that influence is still there.
We have to think like, you know, all the court cases that were happening after January 6 were an extremely important platform for those who were tied to the Q sphere to keep having a voice, keep having relevance.
And the fact that that dragged on for four years means that you had to be relevant for that time.
If they didn't get the type of attention they did, it might have peered out.
But because of how successful they are in this digital space, we saw them continue having success.
Well, and I mean, what do you think about this?
There's there's now real oppression.
You do have QAnon believers and influencers who are facing legal consequences.
They're in jail for years.
Some of them, the stakes are now high, you know, and I think, you know, that brings up some of the stuff that's happening currently with Trump ordering the military to, to seize control of DC and deputizing, you know, government officials as law enforcement agents and like,
you know, my biggest fear always when we started this is that they would make QAnon real, that the narrative of QAnon would give them a guide of what to do because they don't know what to do.
And so the storm will actually happen not because it's been plannanned for thirty years, but because it's what the base wants, because it's what QAnon promised them.
And we're stuck in this fucking bizarre cycle that now there's a real, now there's a real, you know, I doubt Hillary Clinton is going to be dragged out of her home.
But, but the fact exists that there is, you know, government law enforcement agency descending on DC.
You know, Trump has taken over.
I mean, I can't imagine that people who are still deep in the rabbit hole on QAnon are not going to see this as the beginning of the storm.
What are your thoughts about that?
I mean, the type of crisis we're seeing right now just fits in this type of millennial and apocalyptic narratrative that QAnon is founded on.
The big risk for QAnon was always this concept that they're digital soldiers in a digital war, but we saw that the digital wasn't enough, right?
J six is a clear example that QAnon influencers can mobilize.
I had how many cases of QAnon individuals that were arrested over the years?
Two hundred something.
Now did I hit my two hundred ninety seven, I think?
So, you know, we have several hundred people getting arrested.
So we can, we know that there's a risk for them to mobilize to criminality.
But I do think what's interesting is the pushback the QAnon movement has done against the current administration and the Epson files, like you mentioned, were that turning point where the child abuse narrative within QAnon is central to everything above and beyond everything else.
And that is one of the real motivating factors for people because they do believe they're doing good because they're saving children.
That's their main idea.
That's kind of one of the justifications they have on top of I'm going to save America.
So when you're taking away this Epstein thing where it was everyone's like, we're going to release the files, everyone's going to know.
And we saw QAnon influencers talking about, yeah, you know, ten days after Trump is in, he's going to release the Epstein files and we're going to be vindicated.
When he started to pull back on that, we really saw, you know, when Jay Tansley basically turned around being like, you know, QAnon Shaman's like, I don't support Trump anymore.
This is, you know, this is all a scam.
When you lose his support for the guy who did go to jail for his beliefs, like you could really see that he's losing a core of the audience.
So that little shift is creating some tensions.
But even with those who are in office who have or had, we'll say maybe some of the had QAnon beliefs in the past, we could see that even those individuals are pulling back from the administration because of this.
So this is something that was so central to them that if you navigate away from some of these things, I think it's going to be problematic.
The other issue too, I think it's important to remember is that QAnon is not just a white only movement.
So for them is that they are vulnerable to any type of, you know, risk factors, grievances or targeting that will look at individuals based on their race or religious beliefs or what their standing are in society.
So for them, because you have this wide mix bag, they are less likely to be going alongside specific, you know, legislative or law enforcement choices that are happening right now because they are at risk.
And you've seen some QAnon influencer QAnon members come out saying, Hey, you know, my cousin, my wife, my brother, my sister are being detained.
They've been deported.
You know, we've been here forever.
I've been fighting this war alongside you and Trump for years.
Why am I being targeted?
So in terms like that type of shift will impact some of the individual, some of the members of this community in a way that will want to turn them around.
And it's this difficult space where I think it's less about the QAnon base but more about.
those who hold to conspiratorial beliefs and practices that are going to be coming in and wanting to accept this type of changes because they do see this chaotic type of belief and environment as something that will be beneficial to what they perceive as their own overall goals.
And I think that's where the risk is going to come.
But as a wider thing in itself, I think QDON is kind of split between being supportive and being kind of at risk of being a victim of what's going on.
Because it doesn't really matter what you say online when you're bound in the streets or in the real world and to a certain extent when it comes to these things.
Yeah, because they're not the Proud Boys.
They're not the Gripers.
They're not armed up.
I mean, maybe they are, but, you know, as we've said for years talking about it, you know, the whole, one of the most attractive things about QAnon is grab your popcorn.
You're watching a movie.
You don't have to do anything.
You know, you don't have to do anything.
You just get to watch and enjoy and tell all your fucking bitch family members that, like, you were right all the time and they're going to come to you hat in hand begging for forgiveness and asking which, you know, YouTube videos they need to watch to get up to speed.
I mean, the chaos is official to them and you're right.
Like, you know, it's popcorn day.
They're just going to be looking at it or we're over the target.
It's all going well.
So all these things kind of fit into this environment and in a way that's almost, I'm going to be very light on light on the almost, but it could be a protective factor for some people who are just happy to sit and watch all the chaos that they were promised a long time ago.
Yeah.
Again, it's going to depend on what your personal situation is.
Some of them might not be happy with this, but there's also a lot more, you know, pull and push factors that are more impactful to other movements within this space than for QAnon believers.
But also I think that some of the QAnon believers might just leave the QAnon movement and go catch on to something else.
What they catch on to will be significant in determining what might happen to these individuals in the future.
But, you know, we saw a bunch of them get arrested on J6, get pardoned.
So all of a sudden there's like, well, if we get pardoned, what is the real risk?
if I want to do something again of this sort?
So in terms of like some of those things, some of them are like, I don't want to go back to jail.
I'm done with this.
They learned their lessons.
There's a fair amount of stories coming out that way, but you will have those who will be like, hey, you know, Jake Chastley came out and he was like, I was vindicated.
You know, maybe less now that the Epson files didn't come out, but for him it was like, yeah, this was worth the, the, the reward was worth the risk for me.
Yeah.
Like the sort of the situation that's really incompatible, I think, with like general QAnon belief is like peace and unity and stable, strong democratic institutions.
Like, like, that kind of situation would, like, doesn't make sense in the worldview when they are just on the edge of their seat expecting violent massive changes to the political order, like the chaos and like the confusion and like, you know, the decaying democratic norms is like perfectly not only compatible, it's like, it's what they're expecting.
It's what sort of like is causing them to think that, you know, what they're hoping to happen is inching ever closer.
And I mean, like, I think it's also important to remember that, you know, this is not only a US-based situation.
The Germans, for example, have had a huge issue with the Reichsburg movement.
A lot of them have been arrested wanting to overthrow the government.
So I think like what we could really see with the QA movement is this adaptation to their political and sociological environment where they're going to latch on to groups that might be more attractive to what they want to do based on, you know, some of the members.
But I don't think we have the influencers in the US context or Canadian one that are interested at the moment or willing to move offline and take the risk to want to mobilize or do violence.
I think they're quite comfortable in their grift and having their, you know, dollar reductions coming in from their platforms and their followers and their YouTube because they know that the consequences could be prison time, could be arrest even in this current situation.
So for them being able to rake in dollars during a.
period of quiet and comfort is preferable than taking any type of risks.
But again, if this movement is still around, probably will be in, you know, the next three years, what will happen then if there is a change in government or what happens if there is, you know, socio-political escalations?
Are they going to keep the status quo and celebrate?
Are they going to want to mobilize?
There's a lot of unknowns because you still have a group of individuals who are in a way primed to act either in the digital space or in real life as a large social mobilizing movement.
So there's still that question in terms of if you have the right influencers that do get upset that call on their followers to do something.
We might see that again, but it will take this, you know, organizing factor of bringing multiple people together like we saw on J six, I think, before we would ever get to that type of point again.
So are we going to have the type of people that are going to be in key roles to want to organize and coordinate this versus, you know, a couple of randos on YouTube and Telegram and Gavin X wanting to move their followers offline, whose followers are just happy also to be online these days.
I just hope, I just hope he survives.
You know, the guy's not a healthy, he's not a super healthy guy.
Drinks a lot of Coke, eats a lot of McDonald's.
He's getting up there.
I just, I pray he makes it because if he doesn't, for whatever reason, he'll live forever if you know what i mean it'll live forever it'll become a myth it'll become legend it'll become a hundred more conspiracy theories will spawn of what really happened who really did it it will never ever even if it's like on the toilet you know bob marley style three a.m it's clear that you know the body just gave out even if it's that with all the evidence it'll never be that it's a it'll be an assassination it'll be this it will never
ever ever die that's like my biggest thing and and and i always said you know when people were really worried about you know the second term of trump i said you know the one good thing about it is that he'll have to i mean you know provided he doesn't alter the constitution or perform some kind of coup, which I wouldn't say is entirely out of the realm of possibility, but I would also say it's not likely.
You know, like two terms and done, that's it.
He can never be part of that conversation again.
And I think on some level, I don't know, maybe some of the mythology dies down.
I don't know, Mark Andre, you would know better than me.
What do you think?
Like, do you think that if Trump serves out this second term, you know, without incident and we as a as a nation also survive, you know, survive it to a certain degree, do you think things can begin to heal or are we kind of stuck with kind of these conspiracy forward candidates because that's what excites people and that's kind of what politics is now for, for lack of a better, you know, for lack of a better term.
I mean, it's a question that doesn't have enough information to answer, but it's an important one, right?
Because are we seeing a permanent cultural shift and what is the status, like, what is the overtoned window for normal political behavior?
And you could kind of see hints of that if you look at, like, global elections and global political debates, how there are being, like, some leaders, some nations starting to emulate this type of more pop culture, performative type of politics rather than the more traditional, you know, policy led, you know, service.
And, you know, serving the constituents and the citizens type of debate.
But it makes sense because if you are someone who is watching the news and the media, you're going to want something that entertainer very few people are pundits are interested in watching four hour debates of people debating policy and stuff.
They want the type of action they want this type of, you know, rude and, you know, obscene type of political behavior that brings in the views.
And we could see that's reflected in the type of entertainment that they watch.
We'll see that the type of podcast they like or the type of YouTube videos they like.
I think the big thing though is, and I write about this in the book is that Trump plays a very important role within the QAO movement.
If Q was the oracle that's sharing secret knowledge necessary for decoding the environment they're in, Trump is their messianic figure, right?
He's the one that's going to bring them salvation.
And this is the movement's closest form of leadership because it is decentralized, you have influencers, but in a way, Q's Q drops and Trump serve as this messianic figure.
And that's what's going to impact how they move forward.
And especially it's part of the role why they have such longevity, because even though he was on power after 2021, he was still relevant in the media.
You saw him more in the press, in the news stories, in the reels than most Democratic candidates for the last four years.
What does that mean?
You get all the attention, you get the luminum, you may lose political power, but you still retain the cultural power.
And this is a political environment that we're seeing where pop culture, cultural elements play more of an important role in shifting and deciding how people will vote than the actual impact of, you know, the legislative behaviors.
And again, the charismatic leader is important with this.
Whether you want to say he's charismatic or not, he definitely has a vibe that fits the taste of a lot of people.
So we could really see that that type of leadership is attractive to people.
People are, when you talk about interviews, oh, he doesn't take no shit.
He says what he wants to do.
He's not influenced by others.
So they're seeing this type of persona that is something that's powerful and willing and it does fit the role that Q gave Trump within the Q drops.
But what they're not seeing is from, if you look at it from a political perspective, then it's someone who doesn't take advice.
It's someone who doesn't read briefs.
It's someone who makes decisions on a whim.
So if you take that, you know, you take Trump out and you put, you know, any Democratic candidate or even probably any former Republican president and you put them in a situation where they're like, oh, well, they never read the briefs.
They do that what they want.
Like that wouldn't have flown if you'd look at like past political situations.
So we are seeing this type of change because of the charismatic role that he's playing.
But within the Q space, it's even more than that.
For them, he's the salvation.
He's the savior.
He's the Messiah.
And that's important.
And so in terms of what it means after the fact, it's going to be hard to tell because what type of attention will there be in the media?
What type of platform will we have to influence and get the type of views that he has from this audience?
Yeah.
He's just he's just going to do like Trump TV plus Q. What's stopping him from, you know, just once he's out of office going, I am Qing on.
It's all real and it's all still happening.
And here's my channel.
Subscribe to it.
If you want updates on the storm, like and subscribe.
It's not impossible.
There's so many other things that he could do after that could gain these views.
But again, it's business oriented.
It's he knows how to get.
people's attention.
Now, before I let you go, I want to get your reaction to recently Tucker Carlson was talking about QAnon on his show.
And I mean, you know, he's obviously a massive pundit.
So I think it's a good sort of like barometer about like how QAnon is being received in like, I guess that more mainstream kind of like conservative right kind of space.
So here's the clip.
Let me share my screen here.
QAnon.
Yeah, QAnon.
What was QAnon?
I don't know.
I don't either.
I avoid, you know, I'd be listening to something and it would have useful information and all of a sudden then it would show the whole and here's Trump and his generals are going to save the world world.
No, I agree.
But the interesting, I never knew anything about QAnon.
I never paid any attention at all.
I have a good friend who I really admire is much smarter than I am, who because he is smarter than I am, took like a year to look into QAnon.
What do you get?
I don't fully understand it, but here's what I understand is that, you know, some of the predictions of QAnon came true.
I mean, it's a sophisticated thing.
It's not just.
Oh, I think it's a bunch of ex-spooks.
for sure.
These are guys who are probably pissed that the system went bad.
It would, the point of it, and it's unclear, you know, who was behind.
it?
I have some theories, but um, people I know actually, but uh, but I don't know if they're true.
But what I what is obvious to me is that it was it's a control mechanism trying to siphon off some of that energy and move it in a siphoning off the energy that's less dangerous direction.
I mean, I thought this was a it's kind of a startling take from Tucker and not a fringe figure because he's he's validating essentially what sort of the core myth of the origin of QAnon, which is that it's like, oh, he says he's like ex spooks people he may know even.
Uh, this is like this is alliance with the QAnon belief that, oh, it really was high level military intelligence making these drops and it wasn't it wasn't a sort of like a slap dash kind of grift but at the same time he also kind of like hedges and says that it's like siphoning off energy and this is uh man this is something i see a lot of like like right-wing groipers saying about qanon that it was they they compare it to the um the bolshevik operation trust that was like trying to uh capture and trick people who are still sort of loyal to uh the tsarist
order uh and there was like some sort of op to sort of like trap people who might otherwise be sympathetic to uh the right-wing cause but it's like man it's like what do you what do you make of that that take from tucker here i mean this throws me back to like 2017, 2018 QA on early days when you're talking about the ex spooks, like, you know, the white hats working with Trump.
This is, you know, it's super interesting to see a push there, but we could also see the type of doubts and mockery he's had about the movement over the years because he's still putting this type of negative spin on it.
And Jordan Seder could have whatever he wants to say about Tucker's take, but, you know, we could really see that he's very much more against what it's really saying.
So he, he knows what he's doing.
You could see how he's tailoring his answers to this type of audience to give them this type of hope and meaning, but he's trying to shift it away from the conspiracy space and link it more towards a real political machination that's happening.
And I know that's the core of, you know, the conspiracy theory, but for Q believers, it's gotten a little bit more far fetched and into the clouds in a way of how they see this.
He's bringing it right back down to this type of political current environment where we're seeing more interest on these type of spaces.
So we can see that he's trying to bring it back to what's happening on the ground.
But also, well, what's Tucker trying to do with this?
Obviously, get views, get likes.
And he knows that Q and on crowds are going to post this and then he's going to get a bunch of views.
So he also knows how to antagonize the space just enough to get the revenue he needs on on his site.
But the impact of this is., again, you're reviving these old debates, you're bringing these type of questions, you're giving it a more realistic meaning than some of the stuff we're seeing right now.
And this is not about UFOs, this is not about men living underground, this is about what's happening, you know, in his country right now and what they're going to do about it.
So it's, you know, he's a smart man.
I don't like him, but he knows what he's doing in terms of this entertainment, right?
He really knows how to grab that audience, bring them in and keep a hold of them.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Tucker does a couple more of these in the next little while just to keep the momentum going, because it does look like he's got a fair amount of views from this little bit.
One last question before we let you go.
So I mean, you did a really interesting analysis of like all the Bible quotes that were shared by QAnon followers.
And of course, Christianity is often very, very important to the movement, but you identified one Bible quote in particular that was shared more than any other, and it was Ephesians six hundred ten through eighteen.
And let's let me have Jake read this one.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Jake, I just want to say that if you are around when I die, please be there to read at my funeral.
I would like you to do you got it.
Thank you.
That was fantastic.
You got it.
Absolutely.
I'm here.
I mean, this biblical passage is like, you guys know, I'm a religious scholar by training.
Before I did engineering, computer science, I was a theologian.
So when all the Bible stuff was coming out of Q, that's what brought me initially to be interested in QAnon, right?
It's this religious element.
That's interesting.
I didn't know that.
Oh yeah.
I'm a Oh, he's a he's a he knows what's going on.
Hey, I used to translate ancient texts from like Coptic and Koine Greek into Normal language.
to see whoa, that's cool.
What it means to put in cultural context.
So for me, this was like perfect, but it's like, you know, we have to think this was put in cue drops during the pandemic, right?
So this apocalyptic mindset, you need to put on the armor of God, you need to protect yourself.
That is something that's very closely linked to, you know, the conspiracies they had about either ID 2025 G, you know, event 201, the mark of the beast.
And we can't forget people like praying medic were running all over this, right?
So like, you know, this is a familiar Bible verse for a huge American evangelical population normally.
So when you're putting this in a cue drop, it's super relevant.
So the Bible becomes this type of lens to interpret who is good and who is evil.
And, you know, this in group ICRO dynamic is important for this type of, uh, extreme groups that might mobilize the violence.
So when you're adapting language of spiritual warfare, um, it really changes how you perceive this.
And, you know, spiritual warfare, we are listeners, is this idea of a dualistic struggle between good and evil and that there exists, uh, across at least evangelical Christianity, but specifically in pentecostal and charismatic circles.
They believe that there is a literal real world happening right now on the ground conflict where you have to use your faith and your practice to change the world.
And sometimes that might mean you have to come in there.
For some, that might be, you know, I'm going to run a Christian business for Christians.
I'm going to make my community safer.
For others, it's I'm going to go and fight and target all those who are perceived as demons.
So when you're putting in the context of Q drops, you know, their regular mention of the armor of God, but also, you know, mentioning of like Thessalonians and Psalm 46 and Matthew 6, like you're framing this in this apocalyptic conflict.
It fits with the digital warfare and narrative that you're a digital soldier, again reinforcing that we are at war.
You need to fight.
You need to defend what you believe in.
And that's really what Pray Medic was doing.
He was really running with this.
And, you know, we could see how, like, he had videos that were over 300,000 views talking about the spiritual warfare that Q believers were going through.
So we could really see how this religious passage turned into a metaphor for daily actions.
It was binding scripture conspiracy and politics into one single narrative that not only resonated with the base in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US, but also specifically with the QAnon community in order to justify what they were doing.
So when you're talking about, oh, we need to, you know, people were pushing back.
Oh, I don't want to kill people.
I don't want to harm people.
Like this is against my beliefs.
It's a lot different when they have the mark of the beast when they're demonic, when they're the reason the apocalypse is happening now.
So this type of narrative was extremely influential and this type of, you know, physical and spiritual battle, we saw it used also by several of the candidates that were also evangelical and believed in QAnon.
So you're taking it away from not only a Q drop, but you're seeing elected officials then resonate this.
You're seeing people in the media, influencers mention this.
So you're giving also this, you know, they don't have to sacrifice yourself and you have to defend yourself from BAAL and all the other Jewish demons that are mentioned in the Old Testament, but you have to go like, we will win.
God is in control.
Q is in control.
Page is in control.
You're seeing this overlap all the time where God, Q, Trump were all put in this trinity of power that is there to protect them.
So whatever Q did that was counter moral or illegal or said that was illegal, you put in this framework where like in the end it's for the greater good of God.
It's for the greater good of, you know, what we need for our society to build this golden age that is could be secular for some Q believers, but was most for most of them a heavenly objective that they're trying to achieve.
So for them, the apocalypse is here.
You need to act.
You are already primed as a Christian believer to understand what that means.
Yeah.
Fascinating stuff.
Man, thank you so much, Mark Andre, for coming on.
Again, that book is Q ⁇ Anon from conspiracy theory to new religious movement.
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Man, it's been great.
I hope we can.
It won't be another five years before we get together, Mark Andre.
Hope not.
I mean, hopefully the new stuff I'm working on might scare some of your followers, but, you know, I think the stuff I'm doing now related to child safety online and the stuff that's going there is extremely relevant.
And I'll also give you and Jake a discount code that I have.
You could put in your notes for your followers if they want to get the book 20% off.
Great.
Oh, awesome.
Thank you.
Well, we love to be scared.
And this is where we live now.
We live in a, you know, in a house.
of fear.
So keep slinging it, Mark Andre.
Thank you so much for all your work and being such a, you know, just a wonderful colleague over these over these many, many years where we've been in the swamps together studying this crazy stuff.
And is there anything else you'd like to plug, uh, before, before we let you go?
I will plug my website.
This is where I still post on a kind of regular basis on my current research for, uh, or public scholarship.
So you could find me at maargentino.com.
I'll give you the link to post also in your notes there, Travis.
But that's it.
And again, thanks to both of you.
You guys have been great to work with over the years.
And like, you know, the book wouldn't have happened if it wasn't initially.
coming across some of the early work that the QAnonymous podcast did.
Like you guys were helping shed light on this and it acted as a motivator for me to do more of the academic work and go more in depth in what you were describing in your own episodes.
You heard it here first folks, dark to light.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast.
You can go to patreon dot com slash QAA and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
We also have a website that's qaa podcast dot com.
And if you like what we're doing, we have recently launcheded a media network and our first show is now bingeable, all six episodes.
It's called Science in Transition and that is held by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows.
And you can find that on cursedmedia dot net.
So if you're interested in that and more miniseries coming this year and beyond, go check out cursedmedia dot net.
It's good stuff.
I think you'll enjoy it.
Until then, listener, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
Thank you.
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There's no plan.
I don't know what, you know, QAnon, Q, whatever the hell it is.
Wake up.
It's a damn good, it's a damn good SIOP.
That's what it is.
I hate to break it to you, but QAnon is a military intelligence SIOP that was created to distract and deceive true American patriots into believing that there was some form of operation going on behind the scenes to dismantle the deep state.
How can we trust a plan when there has been no arrests made of the deep state?
There have been numerous claims that the deep state has been prosecuted and sent to Gidmo with absolutely zero valid evidence that these things have taken place.
Zero.
The Clintons are still out.
Obama's still out.
Bush's still out.
Fauci's still out.
Corrupt judges are still in control, and three-letter agencies are still behind the scenes pulling the strings, covering up on the Epstein case.
