Speaker 1: Q and on is now the most prolific online conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory of the twenty one century. None of their predictions
Speaker 1: came true. Q has vanished and the storm never came,
Speaker 1: but Q and on is still alive. I'm Jake Hanrahan,
Speaker 1: and this is series two of Q Clearance, a podcast
Speaker 1: shedding light on the ongoing Q and on conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: This is a production of Kudatar Media and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to be taking a look at the
Speaker 1: effect Q and on has had on families and relationships.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, much like a cult, it has
Speaker 1: been devastating for many many people. Now, before we get
Speaker 1: fully into it, I want to bring your attention to
Speaker 1: one of the most brutal cases of Q and on
Speaker 1: warping a family dynamic that I have ever seen. What
Speaker 1: I'm about to read out is a statement from a
Speaker 1: Stoneman Douglas school shooting survivor. The Stoneman Douglas shooting being
Speaker 1: the eighteen massacre in which a gunman opened fire and
Speaker 1: killed seventeen people in a Parkland, Florida school. This is
Speaker 1: what one of the survivors of that is having to
Speaker 1: deal with thanks to Q and on. This is from
Speaker 1: the q and On Casualties board on Reddit, and it goes, quote,
Speaker 1: I survived the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, and my dad
Speaker 1: is suddenly convinced I'm a liar and part of a
Speaker 1: false flag operation. Sorry if this is long, but I
Speaker 1: gotta get off my chest. I think my dad has
Speaker 1: gone fucking insane. It's going way too far, and I
Speaker 1: have trouble processing the last five months. He's always been
Speaker 1: very conservative, but now q and on has consumed his
Speaker 1: life to the point where it's tearing our family apart,
Speaker 1: along with my mental health. Back January, he saw the
Speaker 1: video of Marjorie Taylor Green harassing David Hogg, another student
Speaker 1: from Stoneman Douglas, about the shooting being a false flag operation.
Speaker 1: And while my dad was already inter cue, he'd never
Speaker 1: gone down that particular rabbit hole. And now he's convinced
Speaker 1: everything was a hoax, and it breaks my fucking heart.
Speaker 1: He's done quote extensive research on body language and claims
Speaker 1: he can tell Nicholas Cruz is a radical comic actor
Speaker 1: who was paid to sacrifice his life in order to
Speaker 1: remove our guns. He's questioning why they released the interrogation
Speaker 1: footage if not to further deceive the sheep, believing everything
Speaker 1: they see. He also stays the trial will be rigged,
Speaker 1: and the reason they're talking about the death penalty is
Speaker 1: to prevent him from ever talking just in case. What's
Speaker 1: really fucked is that he knows I never want to
Speaker 1: hear about him or see his face ever again. I've
Speaker 1: been very clear on that, and I always leave the
Speaker 1: room when he starts talking about him. I keep telling
Speaker 1: him to please, please fucking stop, but there's no reaction
Speaker 1: or empathy whatsoever. Even burgundy colored T shirt to make
Speaker 1: me uncomfortable. That's what the shooter was wearing, and he
Speaker 1: used to be so understanding. He stopped wearing it around me.
Speaker 1: That person is completely gone, and I miss him so
Speaker 1: fucking much. You're a real piece of work to be
Speaker 1: able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened
Speaker 1: if it wasn't a hoax, shame on you for being
Speaker 1: part of it and putting your family through it too.
Speaker 1: He'll say stuff like that straight to my face whenever
Speaker 1: he's drinking, and I wonder if he'd still say it
Speaker 1: if he knew what it does to me. It's bringing
Speaker 1: back so much of my survivor's guilt, and I fucking
Speaker 1: hate him for it. I worked in it for so long,
Speaker 1: and now I once again feel like the biggest piece
Speaker 1: of ship for being able to have good days when
Speaker 1: their parents still grieving. I can't take more of him
Speaker 1: berating me and purposely trying to trigger me to see
Speaker 1: if my PTSD is real or not. He's seen me
Speaker 1: breakdown and cry my eyes out multiple times, which I
Speaker 1: never ever did before. Sometimes I wonder if he's hit
Speaker 1: his head or had a fucking stroke, because I almost
Speaker 1: can't believe it's the same person. What the funck is
Speaker 1: Q and on doing to people. My breaking point was
Speaker 1: yesterday when I borrowed my little brother's iPad and saw
Speaker 1: that he'd search for things like Stoneman Douglas fake proof
Speaker 1: and Stoneman Douglas real dead body. I practically begged my
Speaker 1: mom to give my dad an automatum to get professional
Speaker 1: help or move out. She's really timid and hates confrontation,
Speaker 1: so all she said was trying not to be home
Speaker 1: as much and wait it out. I have no fucking
Speaker 1: idea how to deal with this. It's too painful for
Speaker 1: me to keep living like this, hearing his name almost
Speaker 1: every single fucking day and being accused of accepting money
Speaker 1: to be part of it. Even if my dad magically
Speaker 1: snap out of this cube bullshit, I don't think i'd
Speaker 1: ever forgive him for putting me through this when I
Speaker 1: was just recently starting to do relatively well. So fuck
Speaker 1: him for that, and fuck you and on and fuck
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green for ruining my dad. Even though I've
Speaker 1: definitely felt like it, I don't think getting physical would
Speaker 1: do any good at all. I instead try to remind
Speaker 1: him to look back at the texts I sent when
Speaker 1: I was sure the shooter was about to enter our classroom.
Speaker 1: I asked him to look me in the eyes and
Speaker 1: still argue I'm able to fake what I wrote in
Speaker 1: those messages, But no luck. End quote. So that was
Speaker 1: a post from a lad who survived a school shooting
Speaker 1: and is now being accused by his own dad of
Speaker 1: being some kind of crisis actor, some kind of fraud
Speaker 1: thanks to the insanity of Q and On. This Stoneman
Speaker 1: Douglas shooting survivor is having to relive the trauma of
Speaker 1: the massacre over and over again via his own father.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, that post is from the Q and
Speaker 1: On Casualties board. This subredit has been incredibly sad to
Speaker 1: read through whilst doing my research for this episode, but
Speaker 1: it's something that has to be done to really gauge
Speaker 1: an idea of how destructive Q and on can be.
Speaker 1: I spoke to one of the key moderators of the
Speaker 1: Q and On Casualties board. He's known online as Poker Politics.
Speaker 1: He had a lot to say on the ways that
Speaker 1: Q and on has helped destroy whole families. Okay, so
Speaker 1: first of all, give us an idea of what exactly
Speaker 1: Q Casualties is. Why was it set up well? And
Speaker 1: Casualties was a subredit. There was kind of an offshoot
Speaker 1: from what was called cult Headquarters, which was the separatedit
Speaker 1: where people were going to make memes making fun of
Speaker 1: Q and Q and on reporting on that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and then somebody else started it as a more serious
Speaker 1: um support group for family and friends who have had
Speaker 1: people get into Q and on and become a different
Speaker 1: person and basically strange relationships that were happening. So it
Speaker 1: was a place it wasn't There wasn't much to it,
Speaker 1: and that was just what we were going for, making
Speaker 1: a support group for uh again, family and friends who
Speaker 1: had someone get into Q and on and now they
Speaker 1: they're not who they were before. Then COVID hit and
Speaker 1: there was the lockdown, and suddenly the forum just becomes
Speaker 1: huge because so many people are getting exposed to all
Speaker 1: this misinformation and going down the rabbit hole of Q
Speaker 1: and on, and then their family and friends are trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's happening to them, and then they
Speaker 1: find our forum, and it just it really became terrible
Speaker 1: that we became so popular is what basically happened. And
Speaker 1: it was at this point that because of what we
Speaker 1: were doing and because of Q and On's popularity, media
Speaker 1: and other people started looking into the forum and talking
Speaker 1: to us. Basically, at that point, the moderators were like, well,
Speaker 1: we we just sort of started to set this up
Speaker 1: as a as a support group, as a way to
Speaker 1: meet other people dealing with this problem. We're not really
Speaker 1: into Q and on, we're not really um people that
Speaker 1: understand that movement. And I'm like, well I do. At
Speaker 1: this point, Poker Politics essentially became the paman for the
Speaker 1: Q and On Casualties Board as more journalist media people
Speaker 1: started to get in touch with them. The reason he
Speaker 1: knew more about Q and on than the other motivators
Speaker 1: is because he too was once sucked into conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: I grew up basically as a conspiracy theorist. I was
Speaker 1: in school, I was obsessed of the assassination of Raf Kennedy.
Speaker 1: I was a nine eleven truther or for a period
Speaker 1: of time in my life. And then when I got
Speaker 1: out of that, I started looking at it from the
Speaker 1: other side, and I was like, why do people believe
Speaker 1: in these things? Why did I believe in these things?
Speaker 1: And then and this led me to following the Illuminati
Speaker 1: New World Order stuff on the internet and all the
Speaker 1: websites about that. And then I started hearing about Q
Speaker 1: and On in two thousand eighteen, and it was just
Speaker 1: getting so big and there was so much buzz around it,
Speaker 1: and I knew it was just the Illuminati story that
Speaker 1: I've been hearing for decades, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: was why is why is this breaking through? When the
Speaker 1: Illuminati story remained really kind of niche and wasn't that
Speaker 1: uh big in the mainstream. So I started digging into
Speaker 1: Q and On to try to find out what it
Speaker 1: was going on about it, and then I saw how
Speaker 1: they had tied the Illuminati story to Donald Trump. As
Speaker 1: the hero, how he was going to save the world,
Speaker 1: and you were now mingling mainstream American politics and with
Speaker 1: the niche conspiracy theory. And it was at that point
Speaker 1: that I was like, well, now I gotta get on
Speaker 1: social media. I gotta get more active, I gotta start
Speaker 1: engaging on this. Okay, So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the cases or the situations you've seen through being a
Speaker 1: moderator on the Q and on Casualties Board. What have
Speaker 1: you actually seen? What has Q and on done to
Speaker 1: some of these families that go there um to talk
Speaker 1: about it. The stories are always just like so tragic
Speaker 1: because this person finds something that seems to be innocuous
Speaker 1: and they started talking about it, and then after that
Speaker 1: happens for a couple of weeks and then it gets
Speaker 1: then it gets even weirder and worse, and then you
Speaker 1: eventually get into the the are people bad people are pedophiles,
Speaker 1: They're bad people, are child trafficking. It's like the Wayfair
Speaker 1: scandal that nonsense, and you you just see it like
Speaker 1: take off on these people. And it's always and I
Speaker 1: mean I wunna say it's always, but like so much
Speaker 1: of the time the person seemed like a grounded, rational
Speaker 1: person who would never fall for this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And that's what something that always happens is like like
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, but my husband's so intelligent, he
Speaker 1: would never fall for this kind of thing or whatever.
Speaker 1: And intelligence never is a defense against this kind of
Speaker 1: belief like this Q and on and things like it
Speaker 1: fulfill an emotional need. They do something for a person
Speaker 1: that they're not getting from outside sources, and you don't
Speaker 1: see it coming and most of the time until it's
Speaker 1: too late. I mean, unless you're with somebody all the time,
Speaker 1: you you wouldn't notice what's going on. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes it so jarring, is that it just feels so
Speaker 1: sudden for so many of these people that their loved
Speaker 1: one was one person one day, then a whole new
Speaker 1: person the next. There comes a point where there is
Speaker 1: no changing the situation, There is no fixing the problem right.
Speaker 1: And why is it with Q specifically that it seems
Speaker 1: like they can't agree to disagree, Like the wife or
Speaker 1: the husband or whatever can't just go right. I believe
Speaker 1: in Q. You don't know, but I'm going to shut
Speaker 1: up about it to say this marriage or whatever, why
Speaker 1: is it? Why does it seem that Q is just
Speaker 1: so destructive in that regard. It's because Q is such
Speaker 1: an aggressive movement when it comes to prosplytizing. The whole
Speaker 1: basis of Q and On is the belief in the
Speaker 1: Great Awakening, this massive payoff that's supposed to happen. It's
Speaker 1: some ill defined point in the future when all the
Speaker 1: bad guys get arrested and Donald Trump saves the world.
Speaker 1: And one of the beliefs about the Great Awakening is
Speaker 1: awakening people that when you become a part of Q
Speaker 1: and On, it's your h You now have a mission
Speaker 1: to recruit more people into Q and On. You have
Speaker 1: to grow the community to help trigger the Great Awakening.
Speaker 1: And so they and they're on the chains and all
Speaker 1: these social media platforms, they have guides on how to
Speaker 1: manipulate people, how to rope them in, how to lure
Speaker 1: them into the movement. So it becomes it's a um,
Speaker 1: it's imperative that you get your friends and family to
Speaker 1: believe because that's the only way we can win and
Speaker 1: defeat the deep state. So you just really, uh can't
Speaker 1: uh have a live and let live attitude when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a a family member or a friend who
Speaker 1: is a Q and on supporter. There's always a part
Speaker 1: of them that's gonna want to pull you in. They
Speaker 1: it's very hard for them to not be uh, for
Speaker 1: them to be quiet, because they've been told by their
Speaker 1: community and the people who are now effectively like their
Speaker 1: new family. You gotta get more people. You gotta get
Speaker 1: your wife, you gotta get your you gotta get your kids,
Speaker 1: you gotta get your parents. You got to bring people
Speaker 1: in because the only way we can undo the brainwashing
Speaker 1: of Bill Gates and George Sorrows and all the bad
Speaker 1: guys is by getting superior numbers to them, right right,
Speaker 1: got you, um to to really kind of give our
Speaker 1: listeners an idea of how serious this is. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: just give us a specific example without exposing anyone of
Speaker 1: how Q and on has really shout at someone's family. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a report about a month ago of a
Speaker 1: husband and wife who were in a custody battle and
Speaker 1: that when the wife had a custody of the children, uh,
Speaker 1: she killed them. And it was because she believed that
Speaker 1: the entire city was involved in a child sex trafficking
Speaker 1: ring and that the children were going to be abducted
Speaker 1: at some point and sold into this bondage. And on
Speaker 1: the Q and On Casualties for or UM, someone posted
Speaker 1: a message to that headline and said, this was Q
Speaker 1: and On. I am a family member, but I want
Speaker 1: to remain anonymous about it. But the this is I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a relative of the husband. I know the wife,
Speaker 1: I know the mental issue she was going through and
Speaker 1: this is what drove her to this and that's that.
Speaker 1: So and again it's a it's a message on the internet.
Speaker 1: Take it with a grain of salt and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But the reporting that came out about what the woman
Speaker 1: believed about the massive child trafficking community and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean, it fits the narrative of Q and On.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's exactly what they believe or what
Speaker 1: they subscribed to. Whilst we weren't able to completely verify
Speaker 1: that horrific situation explained to us there by poker politics.
Speaker 1: There have been several other shootings that have Q and
Speaker 1: On firmly at their periphery. To be frank at this stage,
Speaker 1: is not at all surprising that someone with serious mental
Speaker 1: health issues, spurred on by a Q and On would
Speaker 1: take things too far and commit murder and as we
Speaker 1: just heard for the last twenty minutes people all across
Speaker 1: America choosing to destroy their families in favor of an
Speaker 1: internet conspiracy theory. I don't think there's ever been something
Speaker 1: this divisive and vicious to come entirely from the Internet
Speaker 1: with no evidence whatsoever and become this wide spread. Remember again,
Speaker 1: there are hundreds of thousands of Q and on supporters
Speaker 1: on the most extreme end of it. Q and on
Speaker 1: pulls people away from their families the same way a
Speaker 1: cultic church does, only there is no church, nor building,
Speaker 1: nor base nor headquarters. It's all done online. So to
Speaker 1: escape such a cult, all one has to do really
Speaker 1: is log off. But they can't. It's as if they're addicted.
Speaker 1: It seems that in reality, the so called storm that
Speaker 1: Q and on predicted is coming was actually the destruction
Speaker 1: that it has caused to so many people's lives. For some,
Speaker 1: it's turning from an online conspiracy theory into a dangerous
Speaker 1: mass delusion. Q Clearance is brought to you by I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and cou Data Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan. You
Speaker 1: can find me online at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h
Speaker 1: A N R A H A N You can get
Speaker 1: Q clearance merch at dark wash dot net. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by myself, with fact checking and additional research
Speaker 1: by Sarah Hightower. The music is by Sam Black and
Speaker 1: the sound was mixed by Thomas Griffin at Splicing blockh