Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: For the last few weeks, you might have been hearing
Speaker 2: about something called q and Non, the biggest thing on
Speaker 2: the Internet since that time Kim Kardashian's but was thirsty.
Speaker 2: It has been all over the news, social media, and
Speaker 2: this weekend, Q and on supporters even held demonstrations in
Speaker 2: cities across America. But what is QAnon? Well, let's find
Speaker 2: out in another installment of our ongoing segments. If you
Speaker 2: don't know, now you know. If you know anything about
Speaker 2: q andon, you've probably heard that it's a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: But the truth is it's more like a political cult
Speaker 2: built around a conspiracy theory and then crossed with a
Speaker 2: big book of word search puzzles. And if that sounds complicated,
Speaker 2: well wait till you hear what they believe in.
Speaker 3: For believers, Q isn't an anonymous government official who post
Speaker 3: classified information about a covert battle between the president and
Speaker 3: a malicious ring of celebrities, political elites, and the so
Speaker 3: called deep State.
Speaker 4: This anonymous poster Q was giving secret clues about becoming
Speaker 4: quote Great Awakening.
Speaker 5: The central theme here is that Hillary Clinton and many
Speaker 5: of the world's other politicians and celebrities are members of
Speaker 5: a murderous child sex ring.
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and others.
Speaker 3: Eight children in order to extract a life extending chemical
Speaker 3: from their blood group.
Speaker 6: They believe that a group of military generals recruited President
Speaker 6: Trump to break up this conspiracy and end their control
Speaker 6: of the government.
Speaker 7: In the media, Donald.
Speaker 4: Trump and the Quanon view is going to save us
Speaker 4: from this in a moment called the Storm. His tweets
Speaker 4: are misspelled for a reason. When he does cafe, hey
Speaker 4: is the smocking gun, It's all code for what he's
Speaker 4: telling us.
Speaker 2: Okay, I want whatever. These people are smocking because Trump's
Speaker 2: typos are a secret message. Man, I wish people were
Speaker 2: this forgiving when I did stupid shit. No, you guys
Speaker 2: don't get it. When Trevor threw up at that party,
Speaker 2: he was showing us it's what's on the inside that counts.
Speaker 2: But look, this guy's also not wrong. President Trump's tweets
Speaker 2: are misspelled for a reason, and that reason is he
Speaker 2: can't read. Now. Look, if Hillary and Oprah were eating
Speaker 2: children to live longer, I would be horrified because that
Speaker 2: is such a waste of magic blood. You feed those
Speaker 2: kids to Ruth bite at Ginsburg people priorities. But there's
Speaker 2: no ways this conspiracy theory is actually true. And look,
Speaker 2: I believe a lot of crazy shit.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 2: I believe the TSA confiscates all our lotion in order
Speaker 2: to secretly sell it back to us at Walgreen. I
Speaker 2: believe possums are just dogs without makeup. I believe no
Speaker 2: one has actually ever broken up with me. They've just
Speaker 2: all been abducted by aliens. But this conspiracy theory is crazy,
Speaker 2: even for conspiracy. I mean, set aside everything else you're
Speaker 2: telling me. Trump is doing something heroic, but instead of
Speaker 2: taking credit for it, he's keeping it a secret. That
Speaker 2: is the most unbelievable thing I have ever heard. Plus,
Speaker 2: if you're wondering how it's possible that Trump can be
Speaker 2: leading the fights against the pedophile ring when he was
Speaker 2: friends with Jeffrey Epstein for year as well, according to Q,
Speaker 2: Trump has been undercover since the nineties, which I believe.
Speaker 2: I mean, if there's one thing Trump is known for,
Speaker 2: it's his famously long attention span. So how did this
Speaker 2: insane theory take off? Well, partly it latched onto fears
Speaker 2: about the real phenomenon of human trafficking. Partly it fed
Speaker 2: off ancient anti Semitic tropes about elitists who drink the
Speaker 2: blood of children, but mostly it was just the good
Speaker 2: old Internet.
Speaker 8: Q Andon first emerged in the months after President Trump
Speaker 8: took office, starting on fringe Internet message boards before spreading
Speaker 8: to social media.
Speaker 9: That the pandemic has only made things worse and so
Speaker 9: these people are just there all day. Faceook group's have
Speaker 9: grown exponentially with q and on.
Speaker 3: In just four months, membership of the biggest public q
Speaker 3: andon groups rose by seven hundred percent.
Speaker 10: We saw a lot of groups who were wellness communities,
Speaker 10: people who are interested in alternative health. People would the
Speaker 10: algorithm would sort these people together with the QAnon people.
Speaker 10: They would say, oh, alternative health, maybe they're into anti vacs.
Speaker 10: If they're anti vacs, maybe they're into Donald Trump, And
Speaker 10: within one or two clicks, people would go down these.
Speaker 8: Very bad paths.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's how the shit always goes on the Internet.
Speaker 2: It feels like at this point the entire purpose of
Speaker 2: Facebook is to funnel everyone towards the craziest conspiracy theories possible,
Speaker 2: because people will join a group about cycling and then
Speaker 2: five hours later they're like Hillarriy Clinton is a mountain
Speaker 2: go people. She's an actual go And it's not surprising
Speaker 2: that the pandemic turned out to create the perfect conditions
Speaker 2: for people to get radicalized. Some people join q and on,
Speaker 2: some people order pelotons, and neither of them will shut
Speaker 2: up about It shows you how much the incident is
Speaker 2: ruining our brains. When Shakespeare was quarantined during the plague,
Speaker 2: he was like, maybe I should write King Lear and
Speaker 2: how people are sitting around during coronavirus going. I wonder
Speaker 2: if I could prove that Tom Hanks has sex with
Speaker 2: the devil either way. Starting from the swampiest parts of
Speaker 2: the incidents, QAnon gradually picked up followers and eventually grew
Speaker 2: into a major online movement, and it hasn't seemed to
Speaker 2: matter that many of the things it predicted over the
Speaker 2: years just never came true.
Speaker 5: Early on, they were claiming that Robert Mueller was secretly
Speaker 5: investigating and on to indict the cabal of the Democratic leaders,
Speaker 5: and that President Trump was secretly working with Mother's team.
Speaker 5: President Trump is secretly created a police force by the
Speaker 5: way to arrest them and force them to wear ankle bracelets.
Speaker 4: The belief is that somehow the late JFK. Junior is
Speaker 4: alive and helping Trump clean up the deep state.
Speaker 9: Nearly all of these clues, including that Hillary Clinton was arrested,
Speaker 9: turn out to be wrong, but the batting average doesn't
Speaker 9: seem to matter.
Speaker 11: Present them with evidence, you can demonstrate how the predictions
Speaker 11: have gone wrong, and they don't seem to care. It's
Speaker 11: just again and again that Q is bigger than anything
Speaker 11: that they can be presented to the contrary.
Speaker 2: That's right. It doesn't matter how many of q's outlandish
Speaker 2: predictions failed to pan out. It never seems to have
Speaker 2: an impact on the movement. And that, my friends, is
Speaker 2: the classic sign of cult behavior. Once you're invested enough
Speaker 2: in something, you will make any excuse for its failures.
Speaker 2: So please don't be looking for logic here. That's not
Speaker 2: how cults work. Okay, Cults don't follow logic. They follow
Speaker 2: whatever the cult tells them. That's why you always see
Speaker 2: cult leaders go so quickly from the Sacred Aliens have
Speaker 2: chosen us to weird news. Guys. The Sacred Aliens told
Speaker 2: me I should bang all of your wives. I guess
Speaker 2: it must be for our redemption or something to go somewhere.
Speaker 10: I pick her.
Speaker 2: So thanks to this religious fervor, QAnon took over the Internet,
Speaker 2: and it would have been fairly harmless if it had
Speaker 2: just stayed on the incents, you know, like Momo. That
Speaker 2: thing was a joke.
Speaker 1: It was that was weird.
Speaker 2: But the scary thing about QAnon is what happened when
Speaker 2: it jumped from the screen to the streets.
Speaker 7: This is not just a bunch of online crazy talk.
Speaker 7: It's dangerous in real life.
Speaker 4: The FBI says QAnon and their many conspiracy theories are
Speaker 4: a potential domestic terrorism threat. The North Carolina man who
Speaker 4: shot up this DC pizza restaurant looking for non existent
Speaker 4: pedophiles believed in similar theories.
Speaker 6: On more than one occasion, people believe to be followers
Speaker 6: of q andon have shown up, sometimes with weapons, in
Speaker 6: places that the character told them were somehow connected to
Speaker 6: anti Trump conspiracies. And June, a man armed with a
Speaker 6: rifle and a handgun drove an armored vehicle to the
Speaker 6: Hoover Dam on what he said was a mission from QAnon.
Speaker 6: Cunon followers have allegedly been involved in a foiled presidential
Speaker 6: assassination plot, the devastating California wildfire, and an armed standoff
Speaker 6: local law enforcement officers in Arizona.
Speaker 3: In July, a twenty four year old man was charged
Speaker 3: in the shooting death of a reputed mob boss. His
Speaker 3: attorneys argued he was motivated by QAnon. Written on his
Speaker 3: hand in the courtroom were QAnon symbols.
Speaker 2: You cannot be serious. Can you imagine being a mob
Speaker 2: boss and you get whacked by a kid from a
Speaker 2: message board, not a rival, just some random kid. You'd
Speaker 2: almost want them to lie in your obituary and say
Speaker 2: you were a snitch. But this is insane QAnon. People
Speaker 2: are out in the world doing real things, shootings, hijackings, kidnappings.
Speaker 2: Of all the bad advice I've gotten on the internet,
Speaker 2: nothing ever came close to making me murder a mob boss.
Speaker 2: The worst advice I ever got was to use toothpaste
Speaker 2: to get rid of pimples. But I ate the entire
Speaker 2: two of toothpaste and all, like God was a tummy.
Speaker 2: Eight pimples didn't go anywhere. And even with sporadic real
Speaker 2: world violence, it might be tempting to dismiss QAnon as
Speaker 2: just another lunatic fringe, but it's actually becoming pretty close
Speaker 2: to mainstream. In fact, there are roughly fifty q supporters
Speaker 2: who ran for office in the Republican Party this year,
Speaker 2: and it's almost certain that one of them is actually
Speaker 2: going to be in Congress next year. Although maybe that's
Speaker 2: a good thing, nothing will prevent them from getting anything
Speaker 2: done better than being in Congress. Congress the only people
Speaker 2: with a lower approval rating than QAnon. And then, of
Speaker 2: course there's President Trump. He's the big hero in all
Speaker 2: these q andon stories, so he could just shut this
Speaker 2: down quickly by saying, guys, none.
Speaker 7: Of this is true.
Speaker 2: Q isn't a real person. And besides, if there was
Speaker 2: a sex group with all the most important people in
Speaker 2: the world, you know, I'd try to be in it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what he could do. But instead he has come
Speaker 2: out and declared that q Andon are some very fine people.
Speaker 1: At President Trump's rally in Tampa, the image was hard
Speaker 1: to miss the letter Q on signs and T shirts
Speaker 1: we are finally.
Speaker 8: Putting America first.
Speaker 2: The Trump campaign even included q and on signs in
Speaker 2: an act.
Speaker 9: President Trump has used his own social media accounts to
Speaker 9: promote q and On followers and content nearly two hundred times.
Speaker 3: President Trump praising supporters of the bizarre QAnon.
Speaker 7: At conspiracy theory. He told reporters he.
Speaker 3: Heard that QAnon followers are people who love the country
Speaker 3: and him.
Speaker 8: Well, I don't know much about the movement other than
Speaker 8: I understand they like me very much, uh, which I appreciate.
Speaker 8: But I don't know much about the movement. I have
Speaker 8: heard that it is gaining in popularity, and these are
Speaker 8: people that love our country and they just don't like
Speaker 8: seeing it. Well, the cross of.
Speaker 1: The theory is this belief that you are secretly saving
Speaker 1: the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals.
Speaker 4: If I can help save the world from problems, I'm
Speaker 4: willing to do it.
Speaker 8: I'm willing to put myself out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You see, it doesn't matter that QAnon is a
Speaker 2: dangerous cult and all of their beliefs of complete fiction.
Speaker 2: President Trump is on board. Trump's approach to QAnon is
Speaker 2: basically the same as that Backstreet Boys song. He doesn't
Speaker 2: care who you are, where you're from, what you did,
Speaker 2: as long as you love and honestly people. Nobody should
Speaker 2: be surprised that Donald Trump is embracing QAnon. It Donald
Speaker 2: Trump was always going to embrace QAnon.
Speaker 6: It.
Speaker 2: The surprise is that he's president. So that's QAnon in
Speaker 2: a nutshell. It's a violent delusion that spread from the
Speaker 2: Internet to pray on vulnerable people and infect an entire
Speaker 2: political party. Or maybe I'm just saying that to throw
Speaker 2: you off the real story. And if you don't know,
Speaker 2: now you.
Speaker 1: Know online conspiracies there the second most search thing on
Speaker 1: the Internet after Joseph Gordon Levi at dancing talk about
Speaker 1: a triple threat, Mama Mia. But recently, more insidious theories
Speaker 1: like Pizzagate, five G COVID towers and QAnon have climbed
Speaker 1: out of the dark corners of the Internet to cause
Speaker 1: real world violence, influence elections, and splinter democracy.
Speaker 7: MoMA Mia.
Speaker 1: But how do people get sucked into these extreme online cults?
Speaker 1: I infiltrated the dark web via something called Gmail to
Speaker 1: find someone who had escaped these pernicious groups. But if
Speaker 1: she was going to trust me, I'd have to start off.
Speaker 7: Nice and easy. Give me your name. How did you
Speaker 7: find QAnon? Who is Q is?
Speaker 8: Qu My name is Linka pern I'm not Q. I
Speaker 8: don't know who Q is. But I'm a mom of
Speaker 8: three and I'm a risk manager for an insurance company.
Speaker 1: Okay, mom, risk manager. That seems relatively normal. How did
Speaker 1: you get involved in these conspiracy communities?
Speaker 8: I didn't join them, They kind of found me. Just
Speaker 8: sort of how.
Speaker 7: This works, right, right right?
Speaker 1: You're a Trump super fan, constantly posting about rigged elections.
Speaker 1: JFK Junior, still being alive, always looking for Trump clues
Speaker 1: for the impending storm.
Speaker 8: Not at all. I was a Bernie Sanders delegate and supporter,
Speaker 8: and I found myself getting pulled into conspiracies in late
Speaker 8: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, according to every news outlet, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be a Trump fanatic.
Speaker 7: You said you're a Bernie supporter.
Speaker 8: Absolutely still am. I even voted for Joe Biden.
Speaker 7: Okay, I'm just going to need a minute.
Speaker 1: I guess conspiracy theories are one of the few things
Speaker 1: that are bipartisan, and Facebook conspiracy groups have millions of members.
Speaker 1: So how did a working class Bernie mom get swept
Speaker 1: up in all this? It started with the conspiracies following
Speaker 1: the wikileak DNC emails.
Speaker 8: So when we opened up the wikileak emails, what we
Speaker 8: essentially were reading was pushing Hillary Clinton across the finish
Speaker 8: line and undermining Bernie Sanders, and we were devastated, and
Speaker 8: so we started, you know, we were in the question
Speaker 8: of if they can do that to us, what else
Speaker 8: are they capable of? And incomes the conspiracy generators who
Speaker 8: are saying, well, let us show you what else they're
Speaker 8: capable of.
Speaker 1: I want you to walk me through some of these
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories.
Speaker 8: Okay, So the conspiracies were around the indictments of Democratic politicians.
Speaker 8: They see the Democratic Party as baby killers. You add
Speaker 8: conspiracies about the COVID vaccine actually have microchips in them.
Speaker 8: You've got the Wayfair furniture conspiracy that they were sex
Speaker 8: trafficking children by taping them up and hiding them in
Speaker 8: big cabinets and so forth.
Speaker 1: So they're saying that Wayfair was hiding children and their furniture.
Speaker 8: Yes they are, and yes they were.
Speaker 7: Thank god that theory is not true. I cannot afford
Speaker 7: another kid.
Speaker 1: With all these sensational narratives, people just got hooked. So
Speaker 1: how is LINCA able to escape?
Speaker 8: It started to feel more more cult like and if
Speaker 8: you dared to question the narrative, like I did, it
Speaker 8: very quickly became like a very kind of bullyish kind
Speaker 8: of playground to be in, where critical thinking and questioning
Speaker 8: wasn't welcomed.
Speaker 1: It's like showing up to an orgy and being like,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the weather, and everyone else is like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to.
Speaker 8: It's very similar to having a loved one who has
Speaker 8: some kind of addiction or gets roped into some kind
Speaker 8: of extremist cult. All they wanted to talk about was
Speaker 8: the conspiracies.
Speaker 7: So that's when you decided to leave.
Speaker 8: Yes, that's when I exited, and I've been watching everything
Speaker 8: really grow and evolve since then.
Speaker 7: Linko was lucky enough to get out.
Speaker 1: But how are these groups able to spread so quickly
Speaker 1: to begin with? Are you finding that things are a
Speaker 1: little more clickbait like some of these theories or a
Speaker 1: bit click baity?
Speaker 8: Oh, there is absolutely a method. They spook as suggesting
Speaker 8: that you join this group or that because you might
Speaker 8: have something in common with them, And before you know it,
Speaker 8: you haven't fed your kids and you're calling somebody to say,
Speaker 8: can you believe it's happening at three in the morning.
Speaker 8: You're excited about what they're seeing is going to happen tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me you'd spend all days scrolling through
Speaker 1: Pizzagate stories and it's because of social media.
Speaker 8: Algorithms exactly, and our news feeds create our realities. The
Speaker 8: algorithms are set up to send you, you know, dozens
Speaker 8: of YouTube and graphics and Facebook selections, and it's a
Speaker 8: multi billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1: Now, turns out big tech companies don't love microchips and
Speaker 1: mind control, They just love money. Why are social media
Speaker 1: fed conspiracies attracting people from both sides of the political spectrum.
Speaker 1: It's not like disenfranchised Americans are finding themselves powerless to
Speaker 1: a corporate ruling class, right right exactly.
Speaker 8: People feel economically insecure, and conspiracies have become a great
Speaker 8: outlet that makes people feel empowered.
Speaker 1: So to decrease the online conspiracy world, all we have
Speaker 1: to do is give power back to the people and
Speaker 1: break up big tech monopolies that control our news speeds.
Speaker 7: Oh Mama Mia.
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