S2E20 - The Crusaders: Resolve (QAnon, pt 5: tie up & words of resilience)

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Chris: All right, Kayla, we're starting with storytime this time. This is a 100% true story from history. And yes, I'm doing my best Dan Carlin impression again. I'm sorry. I keep talking about historical stuff on our cult show.

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Kayla: Eventually you're gonna try to kill Dan Carlin and take over.

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Chris: I'm going to, yeah. I'm gonna skin him and wear it as a suit. That's.

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Kayla: I fully expect that to happen.

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Chris: Yeah, that's what I'm planning on doing. Oh, and then I can be one of the multitudinous murder podcasts.

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Kayla: Oh, that's true.

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Chris: Yeah. Wow. It all comes together anyway. Yeah. So history stuff. Sorry, bear with me. That's a real. That's a great way to hook people onto this story. Sorry, I'm about to be boring. This is gonna suck. No, but this. So, yeah, so this is a 100% true story a bit over 2000 years ago. It's the tale of two civilizations. In these particular civilizations, slice of the globe. At the time of this tale, they were the two major geopolitical powers. So kind of like the US and the Soviet Union last century. Basically, like in this region, it was just these two guys only for these two empires, unlike the Soviet Union and the US, they actually went to a hot war. Not a cold war, a hot war. A hot war. It was super hot.

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Kayla: Xxx war.

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Chris: Basically, they were both like these superpowers and expanding in their region, and they eventually that led to war. And as this war got going, let's just say it was a little tiny bit lopsided. Civilization a. Let's call them like the southerners. Right? Because I'm not going to tell you the names of them just yet.

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Kayla: Why? You don't want to spoil it. You don't spoil a 2000 year old story.

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Chris: Yeah, that's right. Look, people that are listening to this, that know history will probably pick up on what I'm talking about, but for everyone else, it's gonna be a surprise.

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Kayla: Also, we hate spoilers. If you talk about the Mandalorian, you get kicked off the show. You can't even listen to it.

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Chris: All right, so let's call Empire A. Let's call them the southerners, and let's call the other guys the northerners. Now, in the early part of this war, the southerners began marching their army right on through the territory of empire B of the Northerners. As they marched, the southerners got local populations to defect and join their side. Not a good start if you're the northern team. Meanwhile, this very march of this army came as actually a surprise to the Northerners, who they had actually planned an invasion the other way. They had actually planned to invade the south, and they had to cancel it at last minute to play defense. So that all means that they were at least going to successfully defend, though, right? No, wrong.

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Kayla: Wrong.

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Chris: One of the first major battles of this war resulted in the southern army capturing a key city of the northerners and getting even more locals to join their ranks, doubling the size of their army.

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Kayla: Oh, shit.

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Chris: The following battle, the one that came after this, saw the southern forces decimate the northern army, which at this point had been reinforced fully by the guys that were supposed to be invading, but got called back. So, like, the invading force that the northerners were going to send, they'd got called back to defend, and they still got crushed. This victory led the Southerners to recruit even more, and their ranks by this time were now tripled. So at the start of this invasion, they had roughly 20,000 men, and then they went to 40,000 and now stood at around 60,000.

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Kayla: That's like all of the people that were around.

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Chris: In 2000, following two victories, this army continued its march towards the northerners capital. And they were opposed a third time on the field of battle and proceeded for a third time to crush their northern opponents. This third crushing defeat finally caused the panic in the northerners capital, understandably so, where a new leader was elected. This new leader sought a new strategy. Basically, he said, okay, we're losing every single time, so perhaps we should just, like, not fight, which actually sounds kind of smart. He was basically playing this avoidance strategy, but there's very unpopular consequences to not fighting an invading army. The unchecked destruction and plunder of your homeland, it's not super popular. So with multiple massive defeats, local populations defecting, and unchecked plunder of the countryside, things were looking, let's just say, pretty grim for these northern forces.

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Kayla: I would not want to be a northerner right now.

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Chris: This avoiding fighting thing that they were doing actually went on for a full year.

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Kayla: Whoa.

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Chris: Before the massive unpopularity of the strategy, and this was with just about everyone, soldiers, the citizens, the elites. Like, nobody liked this strategy, understandably so. So a year of dealing with it basically initiated another change in tactics. This northern empire finally decided enough was enough, and they marshaled all of the resources they could to have a decisive battle and finally kick out the invaders. Their leadership council raised the largest army that had ever been raised in the history of their civilization, including a large portion of the leadership council itself, as well as the equivalent of, like, their president, basically. And they marched to meet the as yet undefeated southerner army in battle. These two armies met on the field at Kinni on August 2, 216 BC.

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Chris: And this is where things finally took a turn for the northerners, who, up to this point, had been beaten so badly.

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Kayla: Seems kind of hopeless.

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Chris: Yeah, except at Cani, it was turned around. You see, Canni is legendary among military dorks and history dorks and just dorks all, especially roman history dorks.

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Kayla: Oh, God. The biggest dorks of all.

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Chris: Because Kenny is arguably the biggest military disaster of all time. It's certainly in the conversation, and when I say things took a turn for the northerner Empire, I don't actually mean a turn for the better.

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Chris: After all of the shitty disasters I described leading up to this battle, the resulting summoning of all their forces as much as they could, the destruction the Romans faced at canny is still one that's studied at military colleges today. This is the battle in which the Roman Empire's largest ever army, the one that was supposed to save it from being conquered and its countryside from being ravaged by Hannibal of Carthage. The army, led by both of Rome's two consuls and involving dozens of senators, hundreds of noble or elite rank, was utterly destroyed. Casualty figures for ancient battles are always hard to discern, but we do know that one of the consuls was killed, 30 senators were killed, and 20 other officers that were of similar consular rank.

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Chris: So think of, like, in our case, that would be, like, ex presidents or folks eligible to become president or, like, cabinet members type thing.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: 20 of those were killed.

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Kayla: That's a lot of people.

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Chris: Essentially, the leadership of the entire roman empire was either dead or captured at Canni. Oh. But this was also a small fraction of the total casualties of that battle. The best estimate I've seen is casualty numbers of 70,000 roman soldiers and allies.

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Kayla: That's a lot of people for one battle.

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Chris: There are some credible claims that up to 60,000 of those casualties were killed.

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Kayla: Jesus.

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Chris: Casualty numbers include both captured and killed. When you're talking about war, casualty numbers. But, like, that percentage of casualties being deaths is, like, unheard of.

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Kayla: That's insane.

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Chris: Here's some perspective for you. Remember the Vietnam War?

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Kayla: No, I was not born.

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Chris: Well, for those of you that do remember it or have learned about it. Kayla.

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Kayla: I've seen Forrest Gump.

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Chris: I've seen Forrest Gump. The estimated number of american deaths in the entire Vietnam war, 14 years long, is just a shade over 58,000. 2000 less than the number of Romans that died at Cani in the space of an afternoon. If the United States had a percentage of its total population perish in battle equal to what Rome did on that august afternoon, right now it would be 1.5 million dead Americans. It's about as good of an example as you'll ever find of a battle that military folks call decisive. Following this battle, Hannibal and his carthaginian army had free reign over not just the alpine part of Italy, where most of those early battles that I talked about were fought. Fought where they crushed the Romans before the super crushing, where they dominated. But now he had free reign over the entire italian peninsula.

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Chris: Free reign which he took great advantage, conquering roman cities and getting other roman allies to defect and join his campaign, which had done nothing but win by this point, snowballing with momentum the entire time. Anyway, to summarize, Rome won that war.

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Kayla: Explain.

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Chris: Oh, was that not what it seemed like I was saying?

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Kayla: No, you said they got crushed. They got crushed. They got crushed. They had all of the casualties in the whole world, and then they won.

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Chris: You didn't pick up on the fact that Rome won the second Punic War. I didn't make it clear that Rome won that war.

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Kayla: You intentionally misled.

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Chris: I didn't mislead. All those things are true. I mean, maybe it was because I was telling you about those early, massive crushing defeats, which did nothing but precipitate maybe the most crushing defeat in military history.

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Kayla: So you had one of the most decisive crushing military defeats in history, and then you're saying there's another one after that?

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Chris: I'm saying that there were normal crushing defeats. Normal ish.

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Kayla: 70,000 people.

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Chris: Pretty horrible. And then the thing that Rome did to, like, say, we're gonna turn this around.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Was the worst defeat in. Possibly the worst defeat in military history.

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Kayla: Is it because Hannibal wasn't able to get his elephants there?

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Chris: No, he was.

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Kayla: So the elephants are here.

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Chris: There were elephants there.

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Kayla: That's the only thing I know about Hannibal and that he likes.

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Chris: Yeah, he crossed the Pyrenees, and then. That's a different. That's a different Hannibal and a nice Chianti. He's also on the Eric Andre show and one of my favorite comedians, and he's a landlord. Anyway, I don't know what to tell you, Kayla, but, you know, Rome one. That's what happened. If you. And if our listeners want to hear more about the second Punic War, by the way, definitely go check out hardcore history's episodes on it. They're called Punic Nightmares. It's pretty far back in his backlog by now, but they're really good.

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Kayla: I think they're, like, seven years old at this point, because we listen to them on our honeymoon.

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Chris: Oh, yeah. They're quite old. But I will say this. There's only one way for Rome to have won that war, and it was.

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Kayla: Taking out the elephants.

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Chris: It was taking out the elephants.

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Kayla: Did they spin around them in Star wars like the at walkers?

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Chris: Yeah, that's how they did it.

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Kayla: They liked the elephant legs.

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Chris: That's right. They got little speeder thingies and threw ropes around the elephant's legs, and they fell down. And it was sad. The Romans spent the next ten years. You heard me right. Ten years. Going back to their strategy of basically letting Hannibal do whatever he wanted on the italian peninsula right on the roman back doorstep. Ten years of enduring a foreign invader, destroying your literal homeland. Now, the Roman Empire is a mixed bag when it comes to being an object of admiration. They created feats of engineering and prosperity, but they were also slavers and invented crucifixion. But there's one admirable quality that they had that allowed them to win a war that basically makes no sense at all, that they should have been able to win when they took a massive crippling and by all accounts, lethal blow.

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Chris: All they had to do from that point forward was one thing. Not quit their strategy. In a word, resilience.

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Kayla: Hell, yeah.

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Chris: Welcome to cult are just weird. Final episode of season two.

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Kayla: Booyah. We did it. We're here.

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Chris: Chris.

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Kayla: I'm Kayla. And I'm here. I'm excited.

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Chris: I'm excited, too.

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Kayla: That was a good story you told.

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Chris: Thanks.

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Kayla: But I. First of all, two questions.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: One, when does Hannibal bite the guy's face off?

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Chris: He doesn't do that until 1972.

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Kayla: Is that when you think that movie came out, or is that when you think the book came out?

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Chris: That's when I think the book came out. I have no idea, though.

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Kayla: Second, how did the Romans win?

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Chris: I said resilience. That's how they won.

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Kayla: So they just went, we. We're gonna win.

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Chris: I mean, like, in a very real way. Like. Yes, like, in a very real way. Like, the. Literally what they did was they just didn't give up. And they.

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Kayla: Best lesson.

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Chris: Yeah. Like, the next ten years was Hannibal basically, like, going to cities and, like, just taking his army all around the italian countryside and just, like, conquering city after city. And then what Rome would do is they would wait for him to leave, and then they would reconquer it, right. And, you know, because he was. Because Hannibal was not in his homeland, obviously the supply lines for him were different than they were for the Romans. So he couldn't keep up with the retaking of the cities. Even counting for the fact that the roman allies were deserting and joining Hannibal's side, they still were able to basically just keep up with it. When they did meet him on the field of battle, which they did, obviously, over the course of ten years, that happened.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: They would totally get their asses kicked.

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Kayla: Except when they flew around the elephant legs.

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Chris: Except when they flew around the elephant legs. And then they basically just did that for ten years until they produced their own, like, homegrown guy that could was as good of a general as Hannibal, right? His name was Scipio Africanus.

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Kayla: Scipio.

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Chris: Scipio. Scipio.

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Kayla: Publius Scipio Africanus.

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Chris: I always pronounce it wrong. Anyway, he was basically the like up and coming guy that was able to beat Hannibal at his own game.

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Kayla: That's how he got his name.

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Chris: That's how he got his name. Because he defeated him at the battle of, I believe, Zama.

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Kayla: Why do I know about Scipio Africanison on anything before that?

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Chris: I think we saw his tomb somewhere.

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Kayla: I don't remember that.

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Chris: I was super jazzed about it.

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Kayla: I think I just wikipedia him.

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Chris: On our honeymoon. We were in Italy. I'm pretty sure we saw his grave site.

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Kayla: Cool.

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Chris: I don't know. But anyway, that's like the mechanics of how they did it. But like any other empire, kingdom, whatever, like the after cunny, like, you don't win a war after about a, like knee. You just don't. Like you. That's like surrender is what you should do after a battle like that. So the. The object lesson here is they didn't quit.

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Kayla: So, like, I'm not a fan of war.

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Chris: War's dope, though.

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Kayla: It's not at all sucks. But the lesson. Huge fan of.

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Chris: Yeah, of course. And that's why I'm telling it. I'm not telling it. Cause like, war is cool.

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Kayla: I love it when 70,000 people die.

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Chris: Yeah, fuck those Romans.

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Kayla: Wait, actually, here's another question. Who is the bad guy? Who's the bad guy? Who's the good guy? Who am I rooting for? I wanna root for the guy with.

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Chris: The elephants in my story. You're rooting for the Romans because I'm telling it from that sort of.

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Kayla: I know, but like, for real rocky, underdog perception, objectively, who is the bad guy?

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Chris: Who's the good guy. I'm not sure that objectively, that's a question that can really be answered.

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Kayla: I think I'm siding with the elephants.

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Chris: It's like Game of Thrones, man. Like, everybody sucks.

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Kayla: There were no elephants in Game of thrones.

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Chris: Dragons.

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Kayla: The dragons were jerks. First of all, not a fan. The elephants were cute.

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Chris: All right, fine. Root for you. You're rooting for the losing team. Then I'm reading.

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Kayla: That's gonna eat your face off.

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Chris: I'm sorry. He also lost, to be fair. He got captured, but then he escaped.

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Kayla: Spoiler.

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Chris: I don't know. Oh, I'm not. Okay. Silence of the Lambs. It's like 30 years ago.

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Kayla: Yeah, but what if you're, like, a 14 year old? This is the thing that I always think about with the spoilers. When there's movies where, like, a twist.

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Chris: Oh, yeah.

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Kayla: Something important happens where, like, part of the enjoyment of the film is, like, the discovery of that moment. I feel like there's kind of a moral obligation to try and conceal those spoilers because I feel bad for the 14 year old film kid who's like, I'm a geek. I like Boondocks ace who goes and fucking puts in silence of the lamb for the first time in their life, and it's already ruined for them.

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Chris: Well, I mean, the fact that he is.

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Kayla: What about something like 6th sense? Spoiler alerts for 6th sense. If you put that movie in for the first time and you already know the twisted.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Like, I would love to be able to preserve that moment for that child.

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Chris: Sure. How do you feel about something like Citizen Kane? Did you know the twist before you saw it? I mean, I think I've never seen Citizen Kane. What industry do you work in again? Oh, my God.

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Kayla: It's because it's here. I'll tell you.

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Chris: Why don't we start the show?

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Kayla: It's because literally, every time I've attempted to watch that film, I have gotten, like, I've gotten stymied in some way. Like, I remember tried to watch it. Like, I was gonna watch it in, like, school, and I think I got sick, and then I was gonna, like, watch it at home and it, like, something happened. And then finally when I was in college, when I was in film school and I was in film aesthetics, one of, like, the basic courses, and of course we're gonna sit down and watch Susan Cain one day. And I was like, great. I'm finally gonna see this stupid fucking movie. And then you and I missed a flight in New York. And got stuck in New York for two days. I remember that class.

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Chris: That was not fun.

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Kayla: No. So I've never seen.

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Chris: That's why you didn't see citizens.

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Kayla: I've seen the part where I know everything about it.

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Chris: So how do you feel about that, then?

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Kayla: Because I've never seen the film in its entirety. I don't. I don't quite understand what has been spoiled for me.

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Chris: Right. I mean, like, I'm super anti spoiler. I kind of. I think I was in the same boat when I first saw it. It's like I kind of knew, but kind of didn't.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: But I also am kind of like, man, that's so long ago that it's just. I can't really.

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Kayla: I also can't say that I know for sure that Citizen Kane, like, a huge portion of, like, the ability to enjoy that film comes from that moment, because I think. Excuse me.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: That's a huge portion of Citizen Kane is just, like, the filmmaking.

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Chris: Right. And then the twist is sort of like, oh, that's neat.

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Kayla: Whereas, like, with.

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Chris: Right, with $0.06 or, like, usual suspects, like, if you know the twists, you might as well not even watch.

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Kayla: I don't know if that's true, but.

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Chris: It'S much more true than. Yeah, we should probably move on for the banter because we actually have a longer than expected show today, too.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: I will say this.

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Kayla: What?

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Chris: Remember how last week, were you gonna talk about this?

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: Okay, well, you can.

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Kayla: I actually have banter today, so.

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Chris: But are you gonna talk about the fact that the banter was voted yes up? Okay. Okay.

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Kayla: We. As stated on the last episode, previous episode, were gonna put a poll up to see how our listeners feel about banter. And much like the Romans at the Battle of Cani, the no banter folks were crushed and dominated by the Hannibal.

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Chris: But then will the no banter folks come back and win in ten years?

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Kayla: I don't know. That's for us to see. Somebody made a meme about me wanting to destroy the banter, which is torturing our listeners. So I surrender to the banter.

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Chris: Yeah. It's decisively pro banter podcast. Well, actually, hold on. You said you did a vote on it.

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Kayla: There's a poll.

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Chris: Poll. We're using, like, dominion voting machines or.

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Kayla: We'Re using Patreon voting machines. And I don't think the Russians have hacked Patreon yet.

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Chris: I don't know. No, the Russians have. Wait, no, I don't think the russian.

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Kayla: Liberal hoax has China hacked the Patreon yet.

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Chris: Just string a bunch of words together.

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Kayla: General Flynn, Patriot. Great awakening. Where we go when we go all election. Yeah. Which I guess leads us into today's episode, our final episode of the season, and our final episode of our. Is this a five part series?

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Chris: This has been a five part series.

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Kayla: Our five part QAnon series, which I think I'm gonna go ahead and say it. This is just the definitive analysis of QAnon.

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Chris: Yeah, this is. This is the. If you wanna know about QAnon, listen to us. Don't listen to anything else. We are the definitive source.

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Kayla: False. There's definitely. I guess what I should really say is that we have gotten very deep into this, and I still feel like we've. It's still the tip of the iceberg.

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Chris: Yeah. We're still scratching the surface. I actually have a recommendation for that later in the show, and it's go.

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Kayla: Live in the woods without any Internet access and forget you ever heard about this.

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Chris: Sorry. I have multiple recommendations. One of those recommendations is, if you want to know more because you hate yourself, I have one specific recommendation that I will talk about in a bit. There are many things I could recommend. I'm just choosing one. And I gotta say, speaking of, like, hating yourself, like, I. As much as this has been an interesting topic, and I think that this has been a great series, I'm really looking forward to not learning any more about QAnon for a while.

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Kayla: Yeah. Speaking as the resident, like, Q obsessed person, I think I'm good. I think I'm sated. I don't want to know anymore.

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Chris: I'm ready to get out of this sludge pit and take my scuba gear off.

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Kayla: I'm ready to go talk about tulpas and the line and just. So anybody, listeners, anybody has any recommendations for fun? Nice things.

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Chris: Nice things.

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Kayla: Gentle cults.

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Chris: Actually, the person that sent us in.

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Kayla: The future, please send them our way.

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Chris: The person that sent us, the meme, I think, had a couple of nicey nice recommendations.

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Kayla: Thank God. Thank you for sending us a meme. So do you have more banter, or should I move on?

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Chris: Let's see. We talked about Citizen Kane.

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Kayla: Thank God.

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Chris: The roman empire. Yeah. We've done a lot of things that are completely irrelevant to our topic. That sounds good.

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Kayla: Before we get into the meat of this episode, our final, like, I guess it's a wrap up. I don't even know.

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Chris: Wrap it up.

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Kayla: B before we wrap up, QAnon resolution. Before we hit the resolution, let's do a quick QAnon update. So what's happened in the world of QAnon since our previous episode?

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Chris: Oh, God.

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Kayla: I feel like it's important because it's literally changing all the time.

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Chris: It is.

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Kayla: So Donald Trump's various challenges to the 2020 election results have all but been stamped out. A few of the most newsworthy happenings include the Supreme Court throwing out a lawsuit brought by Texas and 18 other states, including 126 GOP Reps, who all sought to overturn the election by invalidating results from four swing states that went to Biden. So that's Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

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Chris: If you want to know the names of these folks, it's online.

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Kayla: Yeah, we will be linking a list. Do not worry. The bid, brought forward by 19 states, as mentioned by their attorneys general, also included to imaginary states. Yes, imaginary states.

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Chris: Oh, I forgot about that.

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Kayla: That definitely will be covered in a future episode of this podcast. And those imaginary states are new California and New Nevada. Basically, New California and new Nevada are groups of people from each state who are, quote, in the process of seceding from the mother state to form their own state. So new ca. New California is a group of very right wing leaning folks who want to break away from the liberal tyranny of the blue counties of California and form their own ultra red state made up of the red counties of California.

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Chris: They also do PowerPoint. We're gonna link you. We're gonna link you their website.

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Kayla: I don't know if we're gonna link you their website. Cause, again, might be a topic on the future show.

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Chris: We should hold that one in our pockets. Yeah, you're right.

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Kayla: I. Yeah, these are imaginary states. But, man, either way, if we link it, check out the website. If we don't link it, check out the website. It's glorious.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Another newsworthy event happened on December 14, when the country's electors formally certified the electoral college vote, which confirmed Biden has been elected as the 46th president of the United States. However, a couple groups of fake electors attempted to have their votes counted for Trump as part of an effort to, of course, have him declared the rightful winner.

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Chris: I think it was just. I don't. Did they attempt or was it just theater? It feels like it was just theater. Like the Nevada electors and the.

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Kayla: I don't think the Nevada electors. No, it's the Arizona electors that I don't think was theater.

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Chris: Oh, well, the Arizona GOP is also the ones that said, like, you should.

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Kayla: You should die for her. Yeah, don't.

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Chris: Don't die for this cause.

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Kayla: Die for an important cause, not a fake cause. Sorry. So a group of these fake electors showed up at the Michigan state capitol, had to be turned away. Another group was present in Arizona, and actual Arizona GOP legislators wanted their votes counted. They weren't. These fake electors espoused Q ideology and were embraced by many in the Q community. And ultimately, the electoral college process happened as normal, per usual.

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Chris: But they didn't count the fake electors.

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Kayla: They did not count the fake electors.

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Chris: Yeah, I do remember a lot of that news sort of circulating through the Q community as like, oh, there's competing electors. So that means that there's gonna be a deadlock. You can't tell who's really the winner. So it's gonna go to Congress, and then Congress is gonna decide this way.

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Kayla: And then Mike Pence is gonna be the final vote.

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Chris: So there's, like, this whole series of events that these fake electors were supposed to trigger that. Obviously they didn't.

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Kayla: Speaking of Mike Pence, do you see that he's gonna go on a vacation outside of the country after the inauguration?

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Chris: Really?

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Kayla: It's like, there's something where, like, Mike Pence is already planning on fleeing the country. He's going on a vacation, I think.

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Chris: Right? I.

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Kayla: Out of the country.

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Chris: I'm surprised Trump hasn't died. Although maybe he's not gonna leave.

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Kayla: So he's gonna get a show on Newsmax. He doesn't need to go anywhere.

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Chris: Right. That's a good point.

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Kayla: So these events, while from our perspective, might pretty clearly demonstrate that Trump very much did not win this election, and Joe Biden will be inaugurated in January. For many in the Q community, this is all still part of the plan, and Joe Biden will never be president. Or even if it's not part of the plan, Trump still has plenty of options to retain the power he rightfully deserves, basically by declaring himself a dictator. Not quite QAnon's words, but also not quite. Not Qanon's words.

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Chris: Well, they use the geodes thing.

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Kayla: God emperor of the United States. Yeah, but it's also. That's like a troll on a troll.

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Chris: Thing where it's like, I know, it's like they believe it, but also, haha. I'm just kidding.

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Kayla: Far right. And QAnon influencers like the guy we've talked about many times on this show, Ron Watkins, have begun calling for Trump to hash crosstherubicon, which is, oh, more history.

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Chris: More roman history.

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Kayla: More roman history. Holy shit. It is a reference to when Julius Caesar turned his troops on his own country and, like, made a massive civil war. So that he could retain dictatorial power, basically.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: Some far right influencers and figures who espouse ideologies adjacent to this have Trump's ear, which is cool. It's been reported that Sydney released the kraken. Powell and Michael, some people think I'm Q and also Trump should deploy the military to redo the election. Flynn have been meeting with Trump at the Oval Office to discuss having Sidney Powell head up an election fraud council to discuss how they can, like, cross the Rubicon.

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Chris: Martial law. Yeah, they're literally talking about this with the president has in the last week or two, been on video talking about martial law, declaring martial law and why it should be done.

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Kayla: He literally said, in the last few years, Donald Trump should deploy the military to redo the election.

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Chris: To redo the election. And then in the last few days, he has been in the White House with the president talking to him.

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Kayla: Not good.

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Chris: And Sidney Powell, who is, as you point out, batshit.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Right. And then. Right with Mike, with Michael Flynn. There are some folks out there. I don't think we're necessarily those folks, but there are some folks that believe that, like, he is Q. Like, he's the head of the Q thing.

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Kayla: And there's some folks that are like, he is a seditious traitor and should be like that. He is arrested and executed.

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Chris: I don't think he's, like, head of. I don't think he's like, you know, like, brain, head, brain, guy. Of kid. That's not a word.

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Kayla: Head, brain guy.

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Chris: Head, brain, guy.

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Kayla: Not the mastermind.

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Chris: Mastermind. That's the word I was looking for.

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Kayla: Head, brain guy.

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Chris: Head, brain, guy. No, but obviously he's, like, important enough. He's a very important figure and a very influential figure in the movement.

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Kayla: He's done so many crimes.

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Chris: Yes, right.

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Kayla: So many crimes.

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Chris: He's pardoned now. It's fine.

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Kayla: I remember when he was the one who was like, lock her up. I don't know if anybody else, I'm sure. Obviously, a lot of people did. But the 2016 RNC, it was really embarrassing the first time he did the lock her up chant because it, like, took a while for, like, oh, really? People to, like, keep doing it? I'm definitely.

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Chris: That's actually kind of a good sign.

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Kayla: No, because. No, because then they did.

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Chris: Well, yeah.

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Kayla: Hilarious. I definitely had tweeted about it at the time of just, like, how sad and weird it was. Whatever. That's not what we're talking about.

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Chris: Yeah. The point is now he is in the White House with the president of the United States.

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Kayla: So it's maybe a little troubling to hear that the president's inner circle may be espousing the Q cross, the Rubicon ideology, especially in the wake of the Proud Boy protests that happened in DC on December 12. As a reminder, I don't know how much we've talked about them, but the Proud Boys is a group of far alt right men, exclusively men with neo fascist boys.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: What do they call this boys? Men with neo fascist and sometimes white supremacist beliefs that promote, prepare for, and engage in political violence in order to fight back against antifa, the left, and socialists so as to preserve male culture and western culture.

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Chris: Also, they're very proud of themselves.

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Kayla: They are not Q, but, like, they're not part of the Q community. But there are obviously some sentiments and goals that overlap, particularly intense support for Donald Trump.

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Chris: Right. If you drew that Venn diagram, there'd.

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Kayla: Be some overlap, yeah, for sure. I just think the Proud Boys are like, proud boys are the ones that are showing up at, like, protests and doing violence and q, I don't know, community is more like, at home doing the digital soldier thing.

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Chris: Right? Digital soldier versus brown shirt.

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Kayla: So these rallies on the 12th were obviously pro Trump rallies. They were not particularly uneventful rallies, as there were physical clashes with counter protesters, as well as incidents of hate crimes, such as when the leader of the organization, Enrique Tarrio, ripped down a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic black church and burned it. The crime which DC police and the FBI are investigating. And he confessed to this like, it was on camera that this happened. The DC police, the FBI were like, we're offering rewards for, like, whoever knows who did this hate crime. And he literally was like, I fucking did it. I'll fly myself to DC.

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Chris: And, like, that sounds right.

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Kayla: But he doesn't think it was a hate crime. He's just like, I'm prot. I don't know. He's a crazy person, in my opinion. Sorry. Four other churches were vandalized during the DC protest. Three dozen people were arrested and four people were stabbed. Not sure how any of that helped support the effort to overturn the election, but that's supposedly why they were out there doing their thing. As far as I know, no new Q drops have cropped up on acuntein, but the aforementioned Ron Watkins continues to tweet consistently, with some pointing out that he's sounding more and more like Q himself. So tweets like, SCOTUS is compromised. Without rule of law, the Republic is imperiled checks and balances are moot. Our constitution is in its death throes at real Donald Trump. You know what to do.

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Chris: Yeah, Ron. Ron's been, Ron's been a busy guy, I think.

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Kayla: Friend of the show Mike Rothschild or one of the other, like, q researchers that. That we follow on Twitter said that they wouldn't be surprised if fairly soon, Q does a drop where he's like, I'm getting off of eight kun guys. I'm gonna only be talking through Ron Watkins on Twitter now. And I.

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Chris: That would be so awesome.

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Kayla: There's a world where I see that for sure.

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Chris: That totally could happen.

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Kayla: That all brings us now to here, today, where we're doing our podcast, and QAnon continues to evolve around us. In this series, we've talked about a lot of really heavy stuff. So we started with the centuries long prejudice and violence that leads us to the phenomenon of nocturnal ritual fantasy. We talked about the specific happenings on the Internet before and during the 2016 election that set the table for something like QAnon to spring up. We discussed the reasons why a group like QAnon and the way it operates can be so powerful and engaging for those that get sucked in. And we talked about the devastation QAnon wreaks on family members and those that get involved with it.

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Kayla: As we have already said, it has been hard to research, probably a little hard to listen to, and that's because it seems all of it seems so overwhelming and hopeless. But as we near the end of the series and the season, I think we're also nearing a light at the end of the tunnel. So listeners, stick with us as we all make our way. We all go towards the light.

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Chris: Go towards the light, everyone. It's fine.

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Kayla: Usually it's bad advice. In this case, I think it's good advice.

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Chris: Yeah. And plus, you know what? It's the holiday season. It's a good time to sit down and reflect on themes like hope and resilience.

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Kayla: Because of Star Wars Christmas special.

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Chris: Exactly. Because of life day.

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Kayla: Was that the joke you were gonna make, or did you just. Did that just come to you?

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Chris: That just came to me.

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Kayla: That was good.

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Chris: Thanks. Happy life day, everyone.

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Kayla: So what do I have to talk now? Well, were gonna split this episode and that.

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Chris: Basically, I'll go if I don't have to talk.

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Kayla: Basically turned into me doing that part and you doing the rest of it. So I'm ready to sit back, relax.

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Chris: To be fair, it's because I'm a control freak.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: So it's not your fault. It's actually my fault. So to follow up what Kayla was saying, there's a bunch of stuff we want to cover today. I think the first thing that it makes sense to cover is that, like, as much as we've gone into deep dove, there are certain things that we either chose to leave out or didn't have time to cover or are sort of new and so didn't really get onto our radar. So briefly, go over some of that stuff.

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Kayla: The unfolding stuff is really hard to get a handle on.

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Chris: We'll get to that. And like you said, scratching the surface. Right. Even after I go through some of these things that we sort of, like, we missed, like, our catch all bucket here.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: I. There'll be, like, a million more things that we missed. So it's a very deep rabbit hole, but let's go. So one thing that's been written a lot about lately is this thing that's being called. I love the name conspirituality. Conspirituality is, like, this new term coined to mean the confluence of conspiracy theory, thinking, and spirituality. This actually came up a bit, if you recall, our interview with Violet, her sister in law's entry point into QAnon was that alt medicine groups were those alt medicine groups on Facebook. And alt medicine is, of course, very overlapping in their own venn diagram with spirituality. It's a surprisingly short jump, sometimes from something benign and even beneficial, like yoga, total craziness. Look no further than our episode, the streaming service about Gaia TV, for more information on that.

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Kayla: Yoga's a gateway drug, guys.

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Chris: Okay, that's my next sentence. Please don't get me wrong. Please. Yoga as a physical activity is fucking awesome. Moving your body, getting in touch with your physical, inner world, meeting muscles you've never met, becoming stronger. These things are all great, and yoga is great for them.

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Kayla: I love yoga. I do it several times a week. It's a gateway drug.

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Chris: I've done it. It's a total gateway. But there is a darker side. There's a darker new age side that it can overlap with, as we saw with Gaia, that has the yoga channels. And it also then has these conspiracy mongering channels that talk about those same aliens that Chitarth told us about and secret space programs and other things that are very popular in QAnon. Also, if you recall, Gaia TV used to be the same company with Gaia and the yoga mats. I don't know if you're.

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Kayla: And yoga blocks.

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Chris: And yoga blocks.

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Kayla: Yoga accessories that's the best.

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Chris: That was my favorite thing about that episode. And as surprising as this connection may sound at first blush, it's actually not new. New age spiritualism, unfortunately, has always had a potential dark side to it. For example, German Nazis in World War Two were obsessed with spiritualism in the occult. We could spend a whole episode just talking about conspiratorial. But again, since this is our wrap up episode and we're just sort of, like, quick hitting some things we missed, we really can't. So I'm just gonna kind of cut it off here. But I will. I will definitely make sure that we put a few links about this in our show notes. In the meantime, if you're interested, I suggest you google someone by the name of Barbara Marks and maybe also throw in the word fascist.

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Kayla: Is she a fascist, or does she talk about fascist?

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Chris: She has some writings that are not good. She has some.

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Kayla: So you're recommending fascist writings to our listeners.

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Chris: So, she is a person that does a lot of new age spiritual stuff, and she actually has a bunch of videos on Gaia. She has also written some things that are, like eugenicsy.

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Kayla: Well, I mean, at its core, anti vaxx itself is eugenicsy.

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Chris: Well, yeah, of course. Yeah, right. But I'm talking about, like, she's not anti. Well, I mean, I'm sure she's also anti vaxxer, but all of these.

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Kayla: I'm agreeing with you. All of these, like, spirituality, all medicine stuff, flip side of it, oftentimes, it's.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: Eugenics.

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Chris: Yeah. And that is no different. So, like I said, we'll put a few links in, but just something I wanted to mention, because that means we.

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Kayla: Love to talk about eugenics, mainly because.

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Chris: I like the word and also. Yeah, because I just love eugenics. It's great.

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Kayla: It's not great. We're anti eugenics podcast, you guys. Yeah, I promise.

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Chris: I mean, the jury's out, right?

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Kayla: Bite your face off.

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Chris: I'm keeping that.

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Kayla: No, I'm editing this one.

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Chris: No, no, I'm editing it now. So, moving on to another thing that we definitely felt like we needed to address is about real human trafficking. So another sad and extremely important point that can get lost in the discussions about QAnon and frequently does get lost, although there have been writings about this. We'll put those in the show notesies, too.

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Kayla: Did you mean to say show notesies?

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Chris: Show notesies. Yeah, it's cute. Yeah. Show Z, not sees. Show notesies is how much the QAnon phenomenon is unfortunately damaging. Reality based organizations that are combating human trafficking.

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Kayla: Human trafficking is an incredibly real thing.

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Chris: Yeah. And I can't believe, by the way, that I have to use the words reality based to describe something, but here we are.

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Kayla: It's like when I took a class and they were like, evidence based.

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Chris: Right? Wait, hold on. So you're telling me you haven't seen Citizen Kane, but you have seen with the bleep?

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Kayla: Yep.

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Chris: That's your life at the same.

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Kayla: And that was the same college, that film I watched. What the leave do we know? At the same college where I was supposed to watch Citizen Kane, but then someone missed our flight in New York, and it was me.

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Chris: Which same college that Michael Shermer, famed, used to be skeptic now? Kind of a dildo.

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Kayla: I think potentially the new. The guy who filed.

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Chris: Do you think he and Ronda Wimmer are friends?

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Kayla: I think the guy who filed the lawsuits on behalf of the imaginary states might work there.

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Chris: Ra ra Chapman.

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Kayla: Should I. Let me look that up.

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Chris: Go Panthers. In the reality based world, trafficking doesn't happen via nocturnal ritual fantasy. It's not satanic kabbalists sucking adrenochrome out of children and nightly rituals. Rather, these stories, tragically, tend to be more about people that the trafficked individual knows and trusts. Stories victims tell are about a family member or significant other or someone that comes into their lives, builds a trusting relationship, and then abusing that relationship, in this case, with the component of commoditizing their free will and their bodies. And as with most abuse, there are the psychological gaslighting components, too, where victims can sometimes take a long time to realize what's even happening to them, and by then, it's too late. And of course, frequently with that trust comes a power differential. So, like the Jeffrey Epstein's of the world, have the ability to, like, promise lavish things to girls and.

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Chris: And mentally back them into a corner. Or Chris Delia, who, by the way, if listeners are not aware of his story, it's not sure how much outside of the Hollywood industry that story got. He's an actor that played a role on a television show last year where he was on the show. His character was an actor comedian in Los Angeles who used his power position to manipulate and sexually assault underage girls. And then the actor himself in the real world months after the show came out. Turns out he was, like, literally doing the exact same thing. He is a comedian actor who was doing that in the real world.

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Kayla: That just makes me go, you know, you're a fucking sociopath, if you could.

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Chris: It's the most sociopathic thing I can think of.

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Kayla: Like, you either have to be in such a level of denial about your actions that you can, like, separate yourself from them. Be like, I'm just playing this character, or you're doing the, like, thing that QAnon says, and you're, like, fucking signaling.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Like, is it like a cry for. I don't know. I don't want to. Like, we can't pundit on that because who knows what's going on in a brain like that, but it's fucked up and. Yeah, like, actually, you just said this, but I remember when the story came out, like, that was one of the things with him. That was one of the things where were like, you know, QAnon isn't entirely wrong. And then we talked about doing this show. Doing QAnon on cults are just weird. Anyway, I digress. Other than reminding us that the most dangerous conspiracies are built upon grains of truth, the point of me talking about this is that real trafficking is real, and QAnon's interest in the fantasy version of it is hurting, not helping.

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Chris: It's throwing mud and already dirty water again, this could be its own topic for a whole episode. But since we're wrapping up our Q content, I'll just say, check out the show notes. And if you want to support anti trafficking efforts, two of the better organizations to check out are the National center for Missing and Exploited Children, missingkids.org, comma, and the Polaris Project, polarisproject.org dot.

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Kayla: I also just want to add to this. I think that the hyper focus that QAnon has specifically on sex trafficking, which, as we've talked about, is a real problem in the real world, the hyper focus on that particular arm of human trafficking, it ignores the reality that human trafficking is so much bigger than just this kind, and that labor trafficking is also. Labor trafficking of children and adults is also a very big problem, and we can't ignore that in favor of something that is more salacious to these QAnon groups.

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Chris: Right. And as we talked about in the first episode, the reason that's salacious is because that's such a. Or the reason that they. That's the focus is because it's so salacious.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: It's because it's, like, the worst thing you can think of is abusing children. So that's what the nocturnal ritual fantasy focuses on. I'll also say that it's. Now, there's. I'm sure there are a bunch. There's a whole spectrum of people, a whole spectrum of beliefs within QAnon, but it does seem to me like it's more focused on punishment of the perpetrators.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: It's more about, like, let's go hang Hillary from the rafters than it is about, like, helping victims and save our children. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people that do both.

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Kayla: I think you're right.

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Chris: I think it feels more oriented towards the punishment.

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Kayla: I think that the desire for punishment often hides behind this premise of concern for the children.

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Chris: Yeah. And if you're a Q and honor listening to this and you disagree with that, shoot me an email. Like, I.

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Kayla: Shoot me.

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Chris: Just shoot me. We're gonna get shot anyway because we're doing this topic, so just shoot me. All right, moving on. Another brief point I think we should make. This topic was inherently political, which is not normally, like, a majority major characteristic of the groups we talk about on the show. QAnon just sort of naturally involves a political element. But I want to stress that, like, it's really not a liberal versus conservative thing, a left versus right thing. As we have seen and heard from interviewees, QAnon consumes people from the left side of the spectrum as easily as it consumes people from the right. The finishing point involves far right extremism and pseudo religious worship of a person who happens to be a Republican right now, Donald Trump.

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Chris: And I think that all of the QAnoners that ran for Congress technically did so on a republican ticket. But you don't have to be a democrat to think that QAnon is a danger to american democracy. And you don't have to be a Republican to understand that believing in a satanic, child trafficking cabal and or aliens and or time travel is not exactly what you'd call traditional conservative values.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: I'm not sure if we've made that point yet in the series or if we've hit on it. So I just wanted to make it. Now, QAnon has political content, but it is not political. It is a threat to all Americans. And now, I would say, even non Americans.

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Kayla: I think it's pretty clear at this point that it's like. Or it's becoming more and more clear that QAnon belief is almost siloing off into its own, like, its own political thing, even outside. So it's like.

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Chris: Yeah, it's like.

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Kayla: It's like a third party on. It's schisming. And I'm actually really glad that one of my biggest takeaways I think from us doing this show is that before going into this, I knew that it wasn't just conservatives or Republicans or right leaning folks that were victim to QAnon or got sucked into it, but my knowledge of how much it can affect people from other political spheres, I kind of like hand waved that a little bit. I was like, yeah, I know what happens, but that's probably, you know, minor. Yeah, it's minor. It's the, it's the. What is it? Something.

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Chris: Not the rule exception.

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Kayla: The exception. Not the rule, like exception that proves the rule. They probably were already like right leaning and just call them like. I definitely wrote it off and was very biased about it. And I'm very glad to now have the evidence of, like, because I was saying before the show, I don't think it's just a republican thing. I think it's its own thing. And now I really have the evidence for that.

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Chris: Yeah. All three people we talked to last episode described a situation of somebody being originally left leaning right and then getting sucked into this and now being like, crazy. Alright.

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Kayla: I appreciate having my, like, my preconceived biases checked on that.

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Chris: Absolutely. So another thing that was, this is more of like, we have talked about this, but maybe like, want to kind of just discuss it a little bit. Summarize is we heard a lot about COVID throwing gas on the cue fire. And, you know, again, we didn't really skip this, but just pointing out that fact that like, you know, up to early 2020, QAnon Fire had really only been kind of like smoldering. And then after 2020, it just got like a giant can of gasoline dumped on it. Just about everyone we talked to mentioned this fact. Mike Rothschild talked about this from the 10,000 point view point. You know, he said, like, it's, you know, I've really seen it explode. After Covid, our Q casualties interviews also talked about that.

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Chris: They were like, yeah, I mean, like, my aunt was like relatively normal and then Covid happened. So I just kind of want to talk with you a little bit about, like, why do you think that is?

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Kayla: Why do I think it through that fire or through that fuel on the fire?

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Chris: Yeah. And I mean, we've talked about this a little bit and. But I just kind of want to, like, make sure that we summarize that for the podcast.

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Kayla: Covid has almost provided, like, the conditions that are necessary for getting most people into a cult. Like, I wonder if were, if we had godlike abilities, if we could. I do go and look at, I.

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Chris: Have godlike good looks.

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Kayla: Sure. If we could go like, at a macro level and like, look at all the things we think are cults and see if there's like, either now or after. Covid is, quote unquote over which, whatever that means. If there is an increase in participation, I think that we probably are seeing and will see an increase in participation of mlms and pyramid schemes for similar reasons.

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Chris: Right. Economic hardship.

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Kayla: Yeah. Like Covid, for so many people, it isolation. It is. It makes you feel desperate. Even if you're not like financially desperate, it makes a lot of people financially desperate. And then you're then like the thing that we haven't necessarily talked about with like, getting into cult groups but is clearly a thing here is just staring at the Internet all day is really bad for your brain. Yeah, it is really not good.

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Chris: Yeah, absolutely.

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Kayla: Like one of the only things to do. And as we get more and more in this, into the COVID situation, I've noticed this in myself. I was just saying this to you the other day. I'm spending so much more time on the Internet than I was in the beginning. Yeah, in the beginning.

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Chris: And I will noticeably feel like when I, you know, like I'm doom scrolling or whatever.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And then I stop. I almost physically feel it. I'm almost like, oh, I snapped out of it.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: I was feeling really shitty and like in a bad state of mind and then I stop and I'm like, oh, the world exists. Ok, ok.

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Kayla: I look at my calendar from the first few, first three months after March and it was like, ok, I have this many zooms with my friends this week and I have this many dance classes and I have this meeting to go to and, oh, I need to do this. I had a schedule and now I look at my calendar and it's like I don't have those things. I'm sitting at home and I'm looking at the Internet.

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Chris: Yeah. And all those pre Covid mediums of communication, like Facebook and Twitter at least was balanced out with being able to exist in the real world and interact with your real world friends and anchored in reality that way. And that all went away. So people that were susceptible to this are going to be susceptible this. They didn't have a chance, especially because.

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Kayla: The thing that we keep seeing and hearing and learning is that the problem with QAnon is that you get hooked on it and then you're just, you're like wired into your computer and you're like plugged into this thing that you can't get away from. Maybe before your quote unquote crazy uncle would read some weird QAnon thing, but then they would have to go to the family barbecue and at least be away from it for a little bit. Like my Rothschild talked about, just get people off of the Internet for a little bit. There's no family barbecue to go to now. You're just sitting on the Internet. And even if you're on a zoom with your friend, you can still be scrolling Twitter. You can still be scrolling what?

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Chris: I've never done that.

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Kayla: I've definitely been on meetings where I'm not paying attention to the meeting. I'm scrolling Twitter. And I don't like that.

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Chris: To be fair, Kayla, I was doing that.

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Kayla: In real life, though, I think the thing that I wanna ask you, and this will be really interesting to see in a year from now, do you think that as Covid declines, as the vaccine actually is distributed, and our numbers decline, do you think there will be a decline in people participating in these kinds of activities? Or do you think it's like, once you're hooked? Or is this what the episode's about?

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Chris: Well, no, actually. So I talk about this later. So I guess I could say we'll get to that, because that's a catchphrase, but I'll answer it now. I do think there will be a difference. I think there's two reasons. I think. First of all, I don't think once you're hooked. I mean, to some degree, yes, but I don't think anybody is beyond help.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And then also the bigger thing, even if you. Everybody was beyond. Even if everybody that's currently in QAnon stays in QAnon forever, and they're just forever qanoners, they still are going to lose inflow. If there are fewer people that are like, you know. Exactly. They're going to lose their. What we call in the gaming industry is we call user acquisitions. So they're going to lose their user acquisition funnel. And then the people that naturally churn out are just gonna. That's you have a leaky bucket, and then they're gonna leak out. And then.

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Kayla: Anyway, it is nice to think about that. There's just going to be a natural.

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Chris: There will churn. As a data analyst in the gaming.

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Kayla: Industry, people will leave QAnon, if nothing else. But just because, like, sometimes you put down a game and you never pick it up again, not to say the QAnon's game, I know that's your best. Sometimes you play candy crush for six years of your life, and then you never play candy crush ever.

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Chris: QAnon has elements of a game that are, psychologically speaking, keep you hooked on it, and in the same way that you can. Yeah. Put down candy grush. It's possible also to put down Q.

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Kayla: Right. I think just cause maybe you get bored of it. Maybe your brain is bored of it.

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Chris: Good segue.

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Kayla: Is that a good segue?

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Chris: Totally. Because we would be remiss if we didn't bring up some of the more, let's call it controversial threads.

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Kayla: I don't want to. I don't want to talk about controversy.

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Chris: Anti Qanon fabric. So this actually, I mean, it almost belonged in your current events update, because what we're about to talk about is, like, sort of ongoing as we speak, like it's been happening, but it's still ongoing.

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Kayla: I don't want to talk about this.

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Chris: And I think, in fact, I think if this is something, if we had known about this a few months ago when were planning the series out, I'm pretty sure we would have dedicated a whole episode to it or two. Very interesting. You can do it in one, but here I'm going to try to do it in, like, one 10th of one. So here we go. What I'm talking about here is the QAnon is a Russian Psyop theory. Psyop is a shorthand, meaning psychological operation. That is, this is theory that QAnon is a russian intelligence operation designed to attack and I destabilize american democracy rather than an organic phenomenon. There are a few reasons I'm calling this controversial. The first reason is just that, interestingly enough, it's causing a bit of a schism in the anti QAnon community. I know.

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Chris: Here's our favorite thing again, schisms. That's how you know you've made it right.

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Kayla: I don't want the anti QAnon community to have a schism, though.

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Chris: I want it to be a united community.

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Kayla: I know.

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Chris: Believe me, it is very sad for me to have to report this. But anyway, there's sort of two camps floating around out there, right? There's the. It's organic camp, which that hint that camp has more what I'd call, and I'm gonna have to do, like, a lot of, like, I'm sorry if you believe one side or the other here, because I don't want to come off cross as insulting, but I would call the more reasonable folks are on the it's organic side. That includes people like Mike Rothschild, friend of the show Frederick Brennan. So I don't know if we've talked about him, but he's the software dev that built the infrastructure for the Chan boards. They talk to him a lot on the reply all episode, and he very.

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Kayla: Much believes that Jim and Ron Watkins have a direct link to whoever either they are Q. They have a direct link to who Q is, something.

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Chris: And based on his experience, and he's very anti Q now. He's, like, one of the more significant anti Q voices. And based on his experience as, like, the software engineer behind the Chan boards, he is fairly convinced that it's organic. It's just like, hey, man, that's how the Chan boards work. That's just how it is. Then there's the. It's a Russian Psyop camp, and the most significant voice on that side is Jim Stewartson, who I briefly mentioned in our QAnon as ARg episode, which I'll get back to that in a second. We'll get to that now. Like anything, it's not actually binary. It's a spectrum. Right. There are definitely some folks that think QAnon is completely organic, and there's zero russian intel involvement whatsoever, and there's no direction whatsoever, or at least zero proof for any such involvement, even incidentally.

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Chris: And then there are some people, like Stewardson, that think that it's just like, as planned. As planned gets. You know, it's. It's masterminded. It's been planned since 2015 from the get go, and it's all being game mastered.

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Kayla: If you are on that end of the spectrum, do you. Is it required that you believe that it is a Russian Psyop?

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Chris: I have only really seen Russian Psyop.

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Kayla: Like, there's no.

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Chris: But I don't. I'm sure there's. I mean, I don't know. It's a big world, and there's probably some people that are like, it's a china Psyop. I don't know.

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Kayla: Donald Trump. Well, anytime something is blamed on Russia, he's like, but it could be China.

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Chris: Well, yeah, right.

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Kayla: Donald Trump is a Russian Psyop.

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Chris: And then there are some people that are, like, sort of more in between that spectrum. I think you can kind of count us in here as somewhere in between. And before you ask, no, I'm not sure how much of QAnon is organic versus directed, and I'm not sure if anyone definitively knows that yet. I think it's our position. And correct me if I'm wrong, Kayla, but it's our position that the most. Occam's razor that is, this is true. Until you can show me concrete, non circumstantial counterfactuals, is that QAnon is not definitively a controlled, masterminded psyop. I think it's pretty likely that russian intel is at least keeping an eye on it.

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Kayla: Well, it's kind of like saying that would be kind of like saying the racial issue, like the issues of racism in our country, is entirely a Russian Psyop. No, those issues, right.

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Chris: There's organic bits in our country.

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Kayla: And then also bad actors have exploited those issues.

432
00:57:53,386 --> 00:58:19,928
Chris: Right? Have driven wedges. Yeah. And I'm sure they're doing the same thing with QAnon. Right? I'm sure that's. Sure that's something that's happening. But again, I'm also saying likely and possible. I'm not saying it's definitely this, because the evidence presented on the it's Russia side of things is highly circumstantial. For example, when eight Chan server hosting company dumped them, right. The way they got back up and running was to use a russian hosting company.

433
00:58:20,024 --> 00:58:22,140
Kayla: Well, then it's definitely Russian Ziob.

434
00:58:23,720 --> 00:58:37,808
Chris: So does this mean that russian intelligence is involved? I don't know. Maybe. Who knows? Or maybe it's just that, like, no reputable non russian hosting services wanted to work with a site that publishes mass murder manifestos. Yeah, that explanation also logically tracks or.

435
00:58:37,904 --> 00:58:43,658
Kayla: Something in the middle. Not a russian psyop. But then Russia was like, ooh, opportunity, right?

436
00:58:43,714 --> 00:58:44,074
Chris: Sure.

437
00:58:44,162 --> 00:58:47,218
Kayla: Opened the gate to be like, come hang out here, right?

438
00:58:47,394 --> 00:59:20,140
Chris: Hey, we should probably. We should probably make sure this thing doesn't die out. Sure, maybe. And there's a bunch of stuff like that, right? Like things like, Michael Flynn says things that are very pro russian, and Donald Trump says things that are very pro russian. I mean, hell, we just learned of a massive russian cyber attack. Like, an actual, real one, right? So, like, the story came out a few days ago, I think it was the New York Times. It even resulted in some american politicians legitimately asking, like, if we're actually at war, this is real. Even some Republicans, like Marco Rubio, are talking about how serious this is.

439
00:59:20,180 --> 00:59:23,972
Kayla: They hacked everything. They hacked the Pentagon, they hacked, like, our nuclear shit.

440
00:59:24,036 --> 00:59:31,700
Chris: Like, actually computer hacking. Not, like, colloquially, like, we got hacked. Like, hacked the election. Like, actual computer hacking.

441
00:59:31,780 --> 00:59:33,800
Kayla: And it happened, like, eight months ago.

442
00:59:34,110 --> 00:59:44,534
Chris: I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, but that sounds right. Trump, though, tweeted just yesterday that it's a fake news hoax, and the mainstream media wants you to think that it's a bigger deal than it is.

443
00:59:44,622 --> 00:59:45,406
Kayla: Did he really?

444
00:59:45,518 --> 00:59:48,878
Chris: And the more important thing is how the election was stolen from me.

445
00:59:49,014 --> 00:59:50,726
Kayla: Wait, did he really say that?

446
00:59:50,918 --> 01:00:10,900
Chris: Let me read you his tweet. The cyber hack is far greater in the fake news media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed, and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia. Russia is the priority chant when anything happens, because lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China. Parentheses, it may.

447
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:14,040
Kayla: There could be always China. It's always China.

448
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:46,842
Chris: Yeah. There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. So this thing that, like, is well reported on well established reality, right? He's saying, like is fake. It's not that big a deal. Don't look at Russia. It's not a problem. Okay, so, obviously, his statements here are incredibly dangerous, and, like, I'd argue, borderline or actual treason, but Trump defending Russia is just Trump being Trump.

449
01:00:46,986 --> 01:00:47,730
Kayla: That's normal.

450
01:00:47,810 --> 01:01:27,758
Chris: That's normal. There's plenty of hard and circumstantial evidence to believe that he has been compromised by russian interests. And that's just how it is. So then to say, well, that means QAnon is a russian op is, like, pure inference. Like, you can't say, oh, look, Trump said this pro Russia thing, therefore, q is russian, right? Those are unrelated, right? Like, Trump is going to say pro russian stuff. Michael Flynn's going to say pro russian stuff. That's what they do. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's Q behind it. But all of this inference that's happening is, like, harmless, though, right? Like, there's no harm in speculating about Russia being behind QAnon. Besides, there's a non zero chance that it's totally true. Right?

451
01:01:27,814 --> 01:01:30,478
Kayla: Are you actually saying that? Are you jokingly saying that?

452
01:01:30,534 --> 01:01:33,582
Chris: No, I'm saying that as a preparation for me saying, not so fast, because.

453
01:01:33,606 --> 01:01:35,150
Kayla: Yeah, I think there might be some harm.

454
01:01:35,310 --> 01:02:08,830
Chris: Let me sort of describe the line of thinking of the. It's a psyop, folks, in a different manner, and you tell me how it sounds. You see, there's a global cabal of nefarious government organizations and elite individuals that is plotting the downfall of democracy as we know it. The only way for us to defeat it is for patriots like you and me to do a bunch of Internet research, determine how everything is all linked together and then call for the good guys to bring these evildoers to justice. Does that sound familiar? So it's like, such a.

455
01:02:08,870 --> 01:02:19,480
Kayla: Such a. There's like, a. There's just a little, like, hop, a little skip. Little jump from that, too. And also, Michael Flynn is eating babies.

456
01:02:19,780 --> 01:02:20,212
Chris: Right.

457
01:02:20,276 --> 01:02:24,116
Kayla: Like, it's basically that.

458
01:02:24,268 --> 01:02:32,020
Chris: I know. So that's why, like, there's some folks on Twitter call people that fall down that hole blue QAnon. They call them, like, blue QAnoners.

459
01:02:32,100 --> 01:02:32,948
Kayla: Oh, God.

460
01:02:33,084 --> 01:02:35,200
Chris: You and I have called it QAnon Anon.

461
01:02:35,540 --> 01:02:36,366
Kayla: Yeah.

462
01:02:36,548 --> 01:02:41,498
Chris: Not to be confused, by the way, with QAnon Anonymous, there's a well regarded QAnon podcast.

463
01:02:41,634 --> 01:02:42,950
Kayla: Stop our podcast.

464
01:02:43,770 --> 01:03:02,230
Chris: No, I don't stop our podcast for that one. There's another podcast. They're not reply. No, but they're good. I. They're good. Probably should reach out to them, but we ran out of time. Anyway, we call it you and I call it QAnon Anon because it's my favorite thing. It's meta. It's a conspiracy about a conspiracy.

465
01:03:02,910 --> 01:03:11,374
Kayla: It's like, it's one of those things where you go, that's insane. And also, of course.

466
01:03:11,502 --> 01:03:11,934
Chris: Right?

467
01:03:12,022 --> 01:03:12,870
Kayla: Like, of course.

468
01:03:12,990 --> 01:03:26,406
Chris: Oh, my God. Wait, Kayla, who is behind QAnon Anon, though? Holy shit. There's probably a cabal of global elites that are running QAnon Anon as a psyop to destroy the anti qanon community. Holy shit.

469
01:03:26,478 --> 01:03:27,454
Kayla: I think I've seen that.

470
01:03:27,502 --> 01:03:28,274
Chris: Do the research.

471
01:03:28,382 --> 01:03:29,870
Kayla: I think I've seen that argument.

472
01:03:30,210 --> 01:03:39,642
Chris: Then. Wait, then who's behind that? Qanon or Qanon anon. Anon. Anon. Ana naan.

473
01:03:39,746 --> 01:04:06,336
Kayla: I think we're gonna base. We're, like, basically touching on something that we're gonna get to later in the show is that, like, eventually the way things play out has to be organic trends and forces based. It has to be. Otherwise, it's. It's Q's all the way down, and that doesn't make sense. Like, at some point, there has to be something organic happening that is there.

474
01:04:06,368 --> 01:04:08,008
Chris: Or else things can't exist.

475
01:04:08,064 --> 01:04:08,660
Kayla: Yeah.

476
01:04:09,760 --> 01:04:51,192
Chris: Anyway, this is how dangerously alluring this type of conspiratorial thinking is. If you remember back in the ARG episode, I mentioned Jim Stewartson because he's a former ARG designer and has deployed the ARG component comparison to support the Psyop argument. After all, if there's a game, there must be a game master, right? And when I was reading some of his stuff, I was like, oh, man, look at this. It sounds legit, like, when you're actually reading it. But then, at the end of the day, as compelling as some of that circumstantial evidence is, and it is, like I said, totally compelling. Go check it out. It's still just circumstantial and inferential. Side note, I say go check it out only because I trust our audience's critical thinking skills. I'm not sure I would actually recommend it to a mass audience.

477
01:04:51,336 --> 01:04:53,976
Kayla: Not sure I want to say something.

478
01:04:54,088 --> 01:04:54,536
Chris: Yes.

479
01:04:54,608 --> 01:05:43,740
Kayla: I don't want you to get upset at me, okay? Because I think it's probably gonna cut this. I already said this to you in our personal life, and you got offended, and I'm. But I'm. The thing is, I'm not trying to point something out bad about you. I'm just saying, when you were doing the research on Jim Stewardson, the QAnon is a russian psyop that became something that you thought was very possible and very real. Specifically, as somebody who did that research, when you did the thing that these people are always saying of do the research, it became very compelling to you. And I think that's important to point out that, like, extremely reasonable people, it's really easy to believe things that, when we step back and look at the bigger picture, may not be as reasonable.

480
01:05:44,160 --> 01:06:03,460
Kayla: And, like, that's how your seemingly normal friend can get into QAnon. Or now Q anon. Anon. It's like, anytime I watch a YouTube video where somebody makes a crazy math claim, and I'm like, zero and infinity are definitely the same number, you cannot convince me otherwise, right? Until you go, like, no, you're an idiot.

481
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:13,724
Chris: This stuff is. This stuff is compelling, whether it's QAnon or whether it's something else on YouTube, whether it's another group we've talked about, it is compelling. Right?

482
01:06:13,812 --> 01:06:19,340
Kayla: I mean, sometimes doing research on these topics, I go, maybe this is a good idea.

483
01:06:19,460 --> 01:06:35,702
Chris: Yeah. And the thing is, like, I don't want to, like, sit here and say, like, inferential reasoning is bunk. Like, being able to do inferential reasoning is an important, like, skill. It's just when your entire. When your entire basis of reality is based on that there's an issue.

484
01:06:35,806 --> 01:06:36,310
Kayla: Right.

485
01:06:36,430 --> 01:06:47,718
Chris: I discussed the Psyop theory a little bit with a friend of the show, Jatarth Jaja. And this is after. This is, like, the other day. And he described it basically as, like, replacing one conspiracy with another.

486
01:06:47,814 --> 01:06:49,966
Kayla: That's what it kind of feels like.

487
01:06:50,038 --> 01:07:07,860
Chris: Yeah. And it's not just the structural similarities that, you know, this involves an amateur sleuthing thing and drawing a whole mess of inferential connections. There's also stylistic similarities. Jim Stewardson, for example, has his very own crazy board that he's been working on that shows all these different connections.

488
01:07:08,720 --> 01:07:26,424
Kayla: Well, when you look at his Twitter, he'll be like, here's my broad claims. Here's my broad claims. Here's my broad claims. And to back it up, here's the proof. And he'll link to something that he wrote. There's not things backing it up that you and I would consider evidence. And also, he uses those, like, emojis of siren slashing when he tweets.

489
01:07:26,472 --> 01:07:27,520
Chris: Yeah, talk about stylistic.

490
01:07:27,560 --> 01:07:29,016
Kayla: Immediately, I go, like, fake.

491
01:07:29,168 --> 01:07:58,338
Chris: Fake news, red flag. I think I talk about this later. Like, I don't want to shit on the guy too much. Like, he's clearly very smart. But as were just talking about, like, you can be very smart and get sucked in by this stuff. Like, you can be very smart and get into this conspiratorial mindset. You know, some of the way that he talks and some of the way that other folks that I've seen talk about this is sort of the same way I've seen, like, qanoners talk about how people, like, how they have special knowledge and outsiders are so ignorant.

492
01:07:58,514 --> 01:07:59,186
Kayla: Right.

493
01:07:59,338 --> 01:08:46,510
Chris: What about the way that Jim refers to those who disagree with him? Like, here's this tweet from the other day, quote, look, anyone downplaying the russian influence on this operation or defending the people involved is either ignorant or pushing their own agenda. In some cases, the agenda is just that they want to keep making money from, quote, reporting or, quote, research in QAnon. In other cases, the pushback is so strong and so irrational that it frankly becomes suspect. We can discuss how the russian influence works, who is getting the money to distribute, why they're engaged in full fledged psychological warfare, all caps. But if you roll your eyes and think, Russia, Russia, every time the subject comes up, you have been psyopped, end quote. So it's like, you can't disagree without being a controlled opposition. That's literally what Q and honors say, right? Anybody?

494
01:08:46,550 --> 01:08:49,318
Chris: Oh, you disagree with me. It's because you've been controlled by the deep state.

495
01:08:49,413 --> 01:09:24,118
Kayla: But it's so hard because, like, yes, I agree. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying it's so hard to. If you are in the anti QAnon community, it would be so difficult to butt up against this particular ideology, because when you start to go down the rabbit hole of it, which I've done a little bit, and I had to step back because I would be dead if I kept looking at it. It gets bonkers. It gets really, really 3ft off the ground.

496
01:09:24,254 --> 01:09:25,210
Chris: What do you mean?

497
01:09:25,630 --> 01:09:36,020
Kayla: Like, it goes to a place of the people who are touting this. I'm not saying Jim Stewartson, I'm not saying the people we've mentioned by name, but other people involved in this.

498
01:09:36,109 --> 01:09:37,984
Chris: When you say in this, you mean the Russian Psyop?

499
01:09:38,032 --> 01:10:02,600
Kayla: That's a Russian Psyop planned. Arg. I've seen some of those people take the argument all the way down to stuff that's basically magic, basically talking about flat earth. I'm using those as examples. But the arguments get so bonkers that it's like, well, because the lizard people. And so if you're anti QAnon.

500
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:04,802
Chris: Researcher meets at the other end.

501
01:10:04,906 --> 01:10:08,530
Kayla: Yeah. It would be really frustrating to, I think, have this.

502
01:10:08,650 --> 01:10:09,178
Chris: Yeah.

503
01:10:09,274 --> 01:10:12,738
Kayla: Butt up against the research and the work that you're doing.

504
01:10:12,794 --> 01:10:20,562
Chris: Right. And if you're trying to, like, debunk dangerous conspiracy theories and then that starts happening to your side. Yeah, that would be very frustrating.

505
01:10:20,626 --> 01:10:23,298
Kayla: And also, and also, it's.

506
01:10:23,354 --> 01:10:24,626
Chris: Russia may be involved in some way.

507
01:10:24,658 --> 01:10:29,692
Kayla: Yeah, I think it's. I think it's counterproductive to be, like, it's entirely this way, because again, I.

508
01:10:29,786 --> 01:11:10,630
Chris: Well, I get to that. I get to that. But, like, come on. Like, people researching and reporting on QAnon, we should be on the same side, not accusing each other of being controlled opposition or either being ignorant or controlled by russian intel just because we disagree about some of the components of the analysis. Now, I'll add, it's not just benign disagreement either. Like, if I were Jim Stewartson, I probably wouldn't be too happy about PC people accusing me of the very same conspiratorial stuff that I'm trying to oppose in QAnon. Right. If I were Jim Stewart and listening to us right now saying, like, he's basically as bad as QAnon, I would be upset, too. So I get him lashing back in some ways. I get the vitriol.

509
01:11:12,170 --> 01:11:41,538
Chris: And again, I said this a second ago, like, I'm not saying he's a dumb guy, far from it. Clearly extremely intelligent. I just think he's barking up the wrong tree in a way that might be a bit dangerous, considering what it is we're trying to combat. And remember, QAnon believers aren't dumb either. Right. The same way I'm saying, like, well, you know, Jim Stewart's a smart guy. I just think that this and this same thing about QAnon believers, right? They're smart, too. They're just sucked in by similar things that we're all susceptible to.

510
01:11:41,594 --> 01:11:41,858
Kayla: Right.

511
01:11:41,914 --> 01:11:52,724
Chris: Right. As much as we might not feel good saying that's true. And we've seen this again and again on the show, intelligence is not immunity against disinformation and motivated reasoning.

512
01:11:52,772 --> 01:11:53,196
Kayla: Right.

513
01:11:53,308 --> 01:11:56,844
Chris: I have volunteered to it. You have? We all do from time to time.

514
01:11:56,892 --> 01:11:57,988
Kayla: I do it on a daily basis.

515
01:11:58,044 --> 01:11:59,252
Chris: You're very dumb, actually.

516
01:11:59,316 --> 01:12:01,600
Kayla: Yeah. So, yeah, I shouldn't even be talking.

517
01:12:02,060 --> 01:12:44,920
Chris: And that's why it's incumbent upon us as people talking about conspiracy beliefs to an audience, to be extremely cautious ourselves, because it's so easy to just get sucked right in. Finally, not only do QAnon anonymous have a similar structure and similar style to conspiracy theorists, there's a similar underlying motivation as well. QAnon is fucking scary and feels out of control in the same way that QAnoners are ordinarily reasonable people that feel terrified and out of control about things that are happening in the world and thus are highly motivated to buy into a belief system that gives them a target to shoot at and a weapon to shoot it with. Bam. Problem solved. QAnon anoners are ordinarily reasonable people that feel terrified about QAnon.

518
01:12:45,240 --> 01:12:52,928
Chris: And I can say this for sure because I'm terrified of QAnon, and believing that there's a guiding force that controls all those actions is much more comforting.

519
01:12:53,024 --> 01:13:46,372
Kayla: I would much rather believe that because I think in addition to giving, like, a structure and, like, there's a person behind it also would. I mean, yeah, it removes any sense of, like, the chaos that can turn into this level of, like, hate and evil in the hearts of my fellow men. It's like, it's that I would so much prefer to believe that there's a person or persons out there manipulating my fellow humans, my next door neighbors, my family members, into this belief system. I was going to use a descriptor that I want cult. Yeah. This cult like belief system that can get very hateful and evil, as, like, Jatarth talked about. I would much rather believe that somebody was doing that to other people rather than. This is something that is organically happening because of something on the Internet.

520
01:13:46,436 --> 01:13:47,040
Chris: Right.

521
01:13:47,540 --> 01:13:50,764
Kayla: I just don't want to. I don't want to think that about my fellow human beings, and we don't.

522
01:13:50,772 --> 01:14:32,040
Chris: Want to think about ourselves that we're capable of that at the end of that tunnel. That's what it means. We are also capable, and that's scary. Now, before we move on, I want to make some pretty huge caveats, because if you're a listener and you're saying to yourself right now, yeah, but what if the psyop theory is correct? Where there's smoke, there's fire, right? Then you're absolutely right. It could be correct. Among all of the explanations for how QAnon came to be, one of them will be most accurate. And I really don't think we have enough to know right now which explanation that is. It could be Russian Psyop, or maybe the Russians have absolutely nothing to do with it or somewhere in between. I'm comfortable with saying that. I don't know for sure right now.

523
01:14:32,200 --> 01:14:57,140
Chris: And not only am I comfortable with saying that, I am contending that it's actually important to be able to say that you are comfortable not knowing. I mean, like, we're in the thick of this thing right now, right? Like, were just talking about this the other day. People are still debating the causes of world War two, and that was, like, 100 years ago, right? So if you think, oh, my God, it was, bruh. It was getting there. Well, like, 90 years ago.

524
01:14:58,790 --> 01:15:02,918
Kayla: I just mean, like, stuff that was happening in the 1920s. Definitely.

525
01:15:03,014 --> 01:15:05,310
Chris: Yeah. Actually, if you want to talk about causes, then, yes.

526
01:15:05,390 --> 01:15:14,454
Kayla: Well, when you start talking about causes, then you get to my theory. That is definitely only my theory, the only one who's ever said it, that there is not multiple wars. There's only been one massive war. That's been.

527
01:15:14,502 --> 01:15:15,582
Chris: Oh, yeah, that's a Kayla thing.

528
01:15:15,606 --> 01:15:21,206
Kayla: It's a kayla thing. World War two would not have. World War two was just World War one, which is just whatever war was before that.

529
01:15:21,398 --> 01:16:06,524
Chris: Oh, well, I don't know about that. It is, but okay. Yeah. So people are still debating that now, as we just did me. So if you think you know for sure what's behind QAnon and all the causes. Exactly. Then for sure, you are wrong. This comfortability with uncertainty is important, not just with QAnon, but also with any of the stuff that we always talk about on the show. Black and white thinking damages your ability to interpret reality. QAnon, is this not that suddenly you are defending a position, and with defending a position comes motivated reasoning. It's so important to be able to be comfortable with uncertainty. It's that exact uncomfortability with uncertainty that leads to conspiracy theories in the first place. Are the Psyop folks. Right? Sure.

530
01:16:06,572 --> 01:16:26,266
Chris: Maybe it's absolutely possible they could be right when we see more documented, non inferential evidence comes to light. Totally could be. And I'm not even going to say it's bad to ever make inferences. Mentioned this before, because that's not right either. Like, inferences are a natural human reasoning thing that we do to make sense of things.

531
01:16:26,338 --> 01:16:26,978
Kayla: Right?

532
01:16:27,154 --> 01:17:10,748
Chris: But like I said, a worldview based on a steady diet of nothing but inferences, exactly what Qanonners themselves have built. And sure, content wise, it's crazy, but it's internally consistent. And in that worldview, they're completely right, and their enemies are evil black and white thinking. So I guess what I want to emphasize here by saying all this is that QAnon is certainly a mixture of organic development and some directed influence. What that mixture is, I cannot say, and that's completely fine. And if QAnon is something you're interested in studying on your own, be careful and don't fall prey to that black and white thinking. Be skeptical of your own tendency to believe something that you want to believe, because this abyss really stares back into you. And I can say that from experience.

533
01:17:10,844 --> 01:17:36,812
Kayla: It climbs on in. It makes itself at home. I also just want to say, in addition to that there is also probably some danger in the research and the anti QAnon movement focusing so heavily on figuring out, like, what's behind it, instead of giving that same effort to how do we fix it? How do we combat it? How do we help?

534
01:17:36,916 --> 01:17:53,892
Chris: Right? Because that's the game. If the game is finding out, like, who's behind it all, you've solved the puzzle and you win. That said, I think their counter argument to that would be, well, if there is, like, you know, if Sergei is behind it all, then all we have to do is just extradite Sergei, and we'll win.

535
01:17:53,996 --> 01:18:14,534
Kayla: But that's what I'm gonna argue against, is that it's something that I'm gonna relate to, like a therapeutic process. Kind of the, like, stereotype of going to therapy is that you're going to sit down on a couch with a therapist, and they're going to dig around in your brain until you figure out what happened to you as a kid that is making your problems happen today.

536
01:18:14,662 --> 01:18:16,422
Chris: What if your therapist is Hannibal?

537
01:18:16,486 --> 01:18:18,334
Kayla: Well, if your therapist is Hannibal Lecter, let him eat your face.

538
01:18:18,382 --> 01:18:20,090
Chris: No. Hannibal Barca, the general.

539
01:18:20,390 --> 01:18:23,158
Kayla: Then make sure you get to do therapy on the elephant.

540
01:18:23,294 --> 01:18:26,270
Chris: Mmm. Elephant therapy. That's a good idea.

541
01:18:26,310 --> 01:18:51,216
Kayla: Don't ride elephants, guys. It's actually really cruel. Don't ride elephants. Don't do it. What I'm saying is that stereotype or that pursuit in therapy is not necessarily, even if you can identify exactly what happened to you as a kid, that now gives you trust issues or whatever, being able to identify that is most likely not going to, quote, unquote, fix the issue.

542
01:18:51,328 --> 01:18:51,648
Chris: Right.

543
01:18:51,704 --> 01:19:27,222
Kayla: Even if you can identify it, you still have to figure out how to deal with whatever the issue is in your life and how to change it. And so there's some therapists that, yeah. Want to sit and talk about your childhood. But there are a lot, I think, that the more constructive version of therapy is figuring out. Okay, is identifying this is happening in your life. How do we deal with this? Because there are also things where there are things that you're going to deal with in therapy that you're never going to be able to pinpoint. Like, that's something that I've kind of had to just go, well, I don't know why this is, but it is.

544
01:19:27,326 --> 01:19:28,046
Chris: Right?

545
01:19:28,238 --> 01:19:37,118
Kayla: And you can't just spend all of your time focusing on the why. Cause you can get really lost in the why and then not focus on the how do we actually treat and change.

546
01:19:37,214 --> 01:19:46,942
Chris: Right. It's not to say it's not important to do the why, but if that's all you're focused on, if that's your. If you're obsessed with that bit of it, then, yeah, then you're not gonna. You're not gonna be able to improve.

547
01:19:47,046 --> 01:19:59,502
Kayla: Maybe for this particular thing, our collective energy might better spent on something more productive, as how do we hand? How do we. How do we enact change? How do we enact help?

548
01:19:59,606 --> 01:20:38,538
Chris: Right? And, you know, lest we fall ourselves to black and white thinking, want to make sure that we're not saying that, like, everyone on the side, that everyone out there that thinks that Russia has something to do with this is, like, doesn't care about people that are being heard and not saying that at all. Just saying that this is a. It's the Russia as Psyop is a slippery slope. It's a dangerous. It's a dangerous game to play. So be careful out there, you guys. I also want to, like, just sort of, you know, I don't know if the word is apologize or what, but I know that we have listeners that subscribe to this theory. In fact, I've had some interactions with one or two of them on Twitter.

549
01:20:38,594 --> 01:20:38,810
Kayla: Right.

550
01:20:38,850 --> 01:20:46,084
Chris: We're actually pretty good. Like, they weren't like it. And I know there's some people, like you said, that are, like, super crazy. Person I talked to was not. He was very reasonable.

551
01:20:46,172 --> 01:20:46,564
Kayla: Right.

552
01:20:46,652 --> 01:21:21,250
Chris: So the intent here is not to, like, attack people. Like, the same way that, you know, if we had a cue, an honor, like, I wouldn't want to attack them either. I wouldn't want to say, like, you fucking idiot. That's not what it is. Like, I would probably start with a Q and an ER by saying, like, yeah, you kind of have a point with, like, you know, there's a lot of problems going on right now with child trafficking, and so let's start from there. Same thing with these guys. Right? Like, you guys do have a point. Russia's a problem right there. We have proven instances of them, like, interfering with our politics, our culture, our computer systems. So let's start from there. Right, right.

553
01:21:21,290 --> 01:21:30,626
Chris: So this is not an attack on the Jim stewardsons of the world, except for where the Jim stewardsons of the world are saying, like, everybody else is controlled opposition that I'm attacking.

554
01:21:30,698 --> 01:21:33,722
Kayla: Yeah. The black and white thinking.

555
01:21:33,866 --> 01:21:35,254
Chris: Yeah, the end exactly.

556
01:21:35,322 --> 01:21:36,142
Kayla: Of this section.

557
01:21:36,246 --> 01:21:58,518
Chris: And one more thing. Oh, wait, and I'll add to that. This is important, too. If you are one of those folks, if you're listening to this and you're certain that we are either ignorant or misinformed and you do really have some hard evidence to back it up, please send it our way and we'll talk about it on the show. If I'm factually incorrect and there is really hard evidence, I'm talking, like, smoking gun documents, not.

558
01:21:58,574 --> 01:22:01,062
Kayla: Not a link to your medium article that you did.

559
01:22:01,086 --> 01:22:12,822
Chris: You know that guy that runs parlor has a russian girlfriend? Like, not that. Which, by the way, that's a real thing. That's a real Q. And on and on thing is, like, the guy that runs par. Was dating a russian girl from.

560
01:22:13,006 --> 01:22:19,846
Kayla: And that also gets, like. That gets into weird. Like, it's not racism, but weird prejudice. Like, everybody who's Russian is an evil spy.

561
01:22:19,958 --> 01:22:20,974
Chris: Right, right. I know.

562
01:22:21,022 --> 01:22:21,718
Kayla: Come on.

563
01:22:21,854 --> 01:22:23,678
Chris: I know. I know. It's so bad.

564
01:22:23,774 --> 01:22:27,022
Kayla: Like, I know people who are from that part of the world that, like, I know.

565
01:22:27,046 --> 01:22:28,174
Chris: Very nice Russians.

566
01:22:28,302 --> 01:22:29,530
Kayla: The accusations.

567
01:22:29,870 --> 01:22:32,966
Chris: Actually, some of the Russians I know in my life are, like, amazing people.

568
01:22:33,078 --> 01:22:46,590
Kayla: But I'm saying that I know people who literally these the understandable anti Russia vitriol that sometimes bleeds into this. Like, every Russian is a spy. Like, that does concretely negatively affect their lives.

569
01:22:46,670 --> 01:23:15,122
Chris: Right. Yeah. I mean, like, I was working with a person who was from Russia just recently, and, you know, she was actually, very. She was, like, very, like, good natured about ribbing. Like, she. She was definitely a person that was like, oh, yeah. Like, she'll dish it as much as she'll take it type of thing. So I felt comfortable about this. You know, we definitely gave some. Gave her some shit about, like, oh, you got to call Uncle Putin, huh? So. But with somebody that was less. Somebody that was, like, less, like, wanted to joke about that kind of stuff.

570
01:23:15,186 --> 01:23:15,650
Kayla: Right?

571
01:23:15,770 --> 01:23:18,130
Chris: That might have been kind of shitty as a joke.

572
01:23:18,250 --> 01:23:20,716
Kayla: How do you know that she didn't go home and cry at night?

573
01:23:20,858 --> 01:23:23,488
Chris: I asked Q, and Q said, because he knows everything.

574
01:23:23,544 --> 01:23:24,300
Kayla: Gotcha.

575
01:23:24,840 --> 01:24:03,602
Chris: Anyway, if you can bring. So back to the. Back to the main thread here. So if you can show me, like, real, actual evidence like that, like, you know, documents or whatever, I will 100% issue a statement of correction and retraction here. Russia is a clear and present danger to at least russian intel is to the United States and western democracy generally. And if QAnon really is pre planned, fully controlled Psyop, then it's important to actually spread that information. And more importantly, to me, anyway, it's important to admit that I'm wrong. Self correcting, erroneous beliefs, in case it wasn't obvious by now, is, like, one of my top three values. It's important to me.

576
01:24:03,626 --> 01:24:04,730
Kayla: You love being wrong.

577
01:24:04,810 --> 01:24:07,350
Chris: I love it, and I'm wrong all the time.

578
01:24:07,970 --> 01:24:08,950
Kayla: That's true.

579
01:24:09,890 --> 01:24:18,270
Chris: Anyway, speaking of spreading good information, there are other angles to the QAnon story as well, other than the ones we've talked about on the show.

580
01:24:18,350 --> 01:24:20,598
Kayla: Here's where we talk about why QAnon is good.

581
01:24:20,774 --> 01:24:53,144
Chris: Yeah, QAnon's great. It's not, but it is widely scoped, as we've talked about, and it's victimizing so many people, and it's so complex that there are as many ways to try and analyze, interpret, and understand it as there are people on the Internet. We have a bunch of reference stuff linked in the show notes for this show as for our previous four shows. But I did want one thing to cut through that noise and be mentioned directly on the podcast itself here, and that's a QAnon research paper just published last week by the network Contagion Research Institute.

582
01:24:53,232 --> 01:24:53,984
Kayla: Thank you.

583
01:24:54,112 --> 01:25:22,344
Chris: We almost did a whole episode on them because they're amazing. Like, not as a cult. We were actually going to do an episode on them just because they're great. We were going to kind of, like, break the. Break the model for a second. But anyway, here's the first bit of their about webpage just so you understand what they're all about. The Network Contagion Research Institute is a neutral and independent third party whose mission it is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels, end quote.

584
01:25:22,392 --> 01:25:22,960
Kayla: God bless.

585
01:25:23,040 --> 01:25:50,088
Chris: There's a whole bunch of other additional words after that, but I think that gives you the picture of who they are. So they are definitely part of our trust network. Anyway, they just released a paper on QAnon, and if you listen to or read nothing else, go read that. It's better than our podcast. It presents the most complete and balanced and logic based information I think I've seen. We'll definitely link to it in the show notes. I would say it here, but the URL is too long to say verbally on a podcast.

586
01:25:50,184 --> 01:25:54,260
Kayla: Www. Dot HTTP dot black slash blackslash.

587
01:25:55,600 --> 01:25:56,784
Chris: You got it. That's what it is.

588
01:25:56,832 --> 01:25:59,096
Kayla: Q.com dot.

589
01:25:59,168 --> 01:26:19,258
Chris: Definitely go to that. And you will definitely not get viruses on your computer. All right, so this point in the episode, I actually think it's high time that we tie things back all the way to the way that you open the series. If you recall that story about project Sunshine, we're gonna talk about this.

590
01:26:19,434 --> 01:26:20,762
Kayla: Well, so awful.

591
01:26:20,906 --> 01:26:31,260
Chris: No, we're not gonna talk about project Sunshine. We're gonna talk about why we brought it up. Okay, can you refresh our memories about that real quick trigger warning? Not a long refresh, just a short one.

592
01:26:31,300 --> 01:26:59,254
Kayla: In the fifties, the government, the us government was, like, doing research on the effects of nuclear fallout on human tissues. And it was rumored that they were using dead bodies for this. And then once these reports were declassified, it turned out that they weren't just using dead bodies. They were stealing dead. They were stealing body parts of dead children without the knowledge of the families and utilizing those in their experiments.

593
01:26:59,342 --> 01:27:06,190
Chris: And before it came to light, before the actual evidence showed up, it was one of those things like, oh, my God, that's just a conspiracy theory. That's not.

594
01:27:06,230 --> 01:27:08,182
Kayla: Of course the government's not experimenting on dead bodies.

595
01:27:08,206 --> 01:27:47,878
Chris: And then it turned out to be true, which is like. And worse and worse, right? And, you know, like were saying before, if somebody does that with the Russia psyop thing, like, I'll totally retract. Right? I'll be like, oh, I guess that did turn out to be, same thing sort of happened with project sunshine, and the same thing tends to happen. I think Jatarth actually mentioned this, but, like, in general, with conspiracy theories, right? It's like there's a whole mess of them out there. So, like, eventually one of them is going to be true. Right, right. You know, the people that were out there, it's like, hard to distinguish people that are like, project Sunshine truthers from, like, 911 truthers. But it does turn out that the project sunshine thing was true. But why did we start with that, though?

596
01:27:47,974 --> 01:28:19,732
Kayla: Because were talking about one of the reasons why people may have such little faith in their governments so as to believe seemingly crazy conspiracy theories because it has happened to us as citizens in the past where, oh, wait, turns out the government is doing shitty, crazy, scary things. So if they're stealing dead baby bodies to experiment on, is it that much of a leap to go? Maybe they're also eating children and doing satanic rituals.

597
01:28:19,836 --> 01:28:20,340
Chris: Right.

598
01:28:20,460 --> 01:28:25,604
Kayla: One of the reasons why something like QAnon, why somebody might believe something like QAnon, right.

599
01:28:25,732 --> 01:28:43,834
Chris: It's when we say, when people say, like, the, throw out that word, you know, losing trust institutions. Like, that's the, like, the visceral way that is meant is for things like project sunshine or the Tuskegee experiments or I mkultra or things like that.

600
01:28:43,922 --> 01:28:49,530
Kayla: Which, again, another thing where were like, that's crazy and not real. And then it turned out to be worse.

601
01:28:49,690 --> 01:29:15,944
Chris: Right? Yeah. So it's, yes, it's, the reason we brought it up is for that trust decay in our institutions. And that's what that means. And it's not just decaying trust institutions, it's also decaying trust in, like, individuals. I mean, we talked earlier in the episode about Chris Delia, Jeffrey Epstein. The list goes on for sexual, oh, in the last offenders.

602
01:29:16,032 --> 01:29:32,592
Kayla: I mean, in the last forever. And then particularly in the last few years, the amount of personalities and actors and celebrities and politicians that have had horrendous, abusive scandals come out about them. And it's like every single time that happens, you're just like, but I love this person.

603
01:29:32,696 --> 01:29:33,182
Chris: I know.

604
01:29:33,256 --> 01:29:33,994
Kayla: What do I like?

605
01:29:34,042 --> 01:29:34,522
Chris: I know.

606
01:29:34,626 --> 01:29:41,546
Kayla: I love this person. What do I do? I love this person. What do I do? And then now it's like I'm just, I wait for the other shoe to drop for any celebrity that I like.

607
01:29:41,618 --> 01:30:01,574
Chris: Yeah, I didn't list anybody that had only sexually assaulted a non minor. That's why I only listed Epstein and Chris Delia. But if you include the list of just like, regular sexual assault, then it's like all of a sudden you're talking Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey.

608
01:30:01,622 --> 01:30:10,878
Kayla: Well, then with a lot of these people, it's both like, Kevin Spacey has sexually assaulted minors and non minors. Same with Harvey Weinstein. Like, it's both, right?

609
01:30:10,934 --> 01:30:31,488
Chris: So, like, maybe when you're coming out is like. And that's what's so harmful about it. Like, not only are you damaging the individual that you're assaulting, right, the loss of faith in society at large. That shit adds up, man. That shit adds up. And guess what happens? You get Qanon. Do you want Qanon? Cuz that's how you get Q and A.

610
01:30:31,544 --> 01:30:45,248
Kayla: One of the reactions, especially to things like high profile celebrities and high profile people, like a Harvey Weinstein, is that you go, okay, well, how many other people had to know about this for this to happen? For this to which is true been this.

611
01:30:45,304 --> 01:30:46,168
Chris: They need enablers.

612
01:30:46,224 --> 01:30:52,350
Kayla: Like, yeah, they need enablers around them. So it's like, oh, there is a shadowy cabal. Right. Had a shadowy cabal around him.

613
01:30:52,470 --> 01:31:16,530
Chris: Right, right. I mean, we've made this analogy before in the past, but I don't think we've said it on the show yet, but it's. We think of QAnon a little bit like cancer. You know, it's. The cancer is very bad. It's a disease. It's hurting us. But like, we also should probably stop bombarding ourselves with, you know, radiation and eating carcinogens. Like, we should probably stop doing that if we don't want to have cancer anymore.

614
01:31:16,850 --> 01:31:17,578
Kayla: Yeah.

615
01:31:17,714 --> 01:31:58,238
Chris: One of the things that was curious to me, and I want to get your take on this, is that in the first episode, we talked about Project Sunshine. And right now we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein. We're talking about things that are happening either now or recently that are causing a very specific reaction from our own culture. In the first episode, though, you also talked about how moral panics are cyclical. Right? Like, this has happened before. It will happen again. It's happened. It happened in the eighties with the satanic panic. It happened with the witch hunts. It happened with it. So it's like the cyclical moral panic thing going back hundreds of years. So I just wanted to kind of like, ask you, like, it almost feels like those compete in a way.

616
01:31:58,294 --> 01:32:14,148
Chris: Like, is QAnon a cyclical thing that was just gonna happen anyway, or is QAnon something that is like a specific reaction to Jeffrey Epstein and abuses of our governmental institutions?

617
01:32:14,244 --> 01:32:15,756
Kayla: You and I have already argued about this.

618
01:32:15,828 --> 01:32:18,160
Chris: I know we haven't argued about it in front of the microphone.

619
01:32:18,700 --> 01:32:41,768
Kayla: And even after our arguing about it, I think I still, I think it goes back to the conversation were having about russian psyop versus organic. I think that black and white thinking about why did QAnon happen? It ignores or denies an important part of the picture. I think that you need both.

620
01:32:41,824 --> 01:32:43,856
Chris: I think that Porcanola's dos.

621
01:32:44,008 --> 01:33:25,066
Kayla: I think it goes back to what we've talked about this with a lot of different things. It's trends and forces versus great man theory. Trends and forces of, like, organic things that are happening in the world, and then QAnon is birthed from it versus there's a person behind it. Then it's a cult of personality. I think for something like QAnon, it has to be both. I think that for even to say that, like, this is just a cyclical, like, moral panic is cyclical. I think it's reductive to say that it's just something that happens every few years. No, it happens every few years in this particular way for trends enforcement reasons and for great man theory reasons.

622
01:33:25,178 --> 01:33:27,978
Chris: Right? Specific actions, specific people. Right?

623
01:33:28,034 --> 01:33:40,328
Kayla: Like the moral panic around jewish people in the Middle Ages. We talked about some of the specific reasons why this happened, why the racism was specifically targeted at those people. It wasn't random, but it almost feels.

624
01:33:40,344 --> 01:34:01,686
Chris: Like there's, like, a set of tools, right? There's, like, these. There's. There's a. There's a way that human society kind of, like, works and interacts, and then sometimes when some shitty things come up, there's, like, this set of tools that they go back to. It's like, oh, right, let's break out the blood libel hammer and get that one out, and we can use it to smash this over here, right?

625
01:34:01,808 --> 01:34:39,650
Kayla: I mean, it's like you and I talked about this. This is talked about a lot amongst academics, I'm sure. But, like, world War two and the Holocaust, something like that was probably, quote, unquote, bound to happen at the time, given what had happened in the years preceding socially, historically. And also, it happened exactly the way it happened, largely because of a figure like Adolf Hitler. And I think. And I'm not. Okay, I was gonna immediately then talk about the 2016 election, and I don't want to fall into that trap of, like, I'm comparing a politician I don't like to Adolf Hitler. That's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying.

626
01:34:39,810 --> 01:34:40,882
Chris: Too late, Kayla.

627
01:34:40,946 --> 01:35:30,896
Kayla: I'm just. That was an example. Here's a different example. I'm not comparing them. The events of the 2016 election and the political landscape we are currently in very much. Is that as well, what is happening right now? Probably would have happened in a similar way due to things that have been happening 20 years previously, things that have been happening economically with our various, like, crashes in the housing market crash and the whatever. Having the president culturally with racism, having the president that we had previously, both with programs that were enacted and the identity of the person, and a million other things we've talked about with QAnon. And also, it's happening exactly the way it's happening, because somebody like Donald Trump is a big figure, right?

628
01:35:30,928 --> 01:35:40,048
Chris: Like, the last four years would have maybe had a lot of similarities if, you know, Jeb Bush were president. Cause Trump never ran. But maybe also would be, like, different in some key ways, too.

629
01:35:40,144 --> 01:35:46,826
Kayla: I don't know if we would have QAnon the way we have QAnon if Jeb Bush was presidente, but I think there would still be.

630
01:35:46,978 --> 01:35:51,266
Chris: Do you think they would still worship Trump even if he were just still the apprentice?

631
01:35:51,378 --> 01:35:55,442
Kayla: I don't know. I think there'd be severe issues. The thing that I can definitely.

632
01:35:55,466 --> 01:35:57,630
Chris: He was the apprentice on that show, right? It was definitely him.

633
01:35:58,250 --> 01:35:59,506
Kayla: Donald Trump was the apprentice.

634
01:35:59,538 --> 01:36:00,870
Chris: Yeah, he was the apprentice. Right?

635
01:36:01,210 --> 01:36:02,034
Kayla: You're joking.

636
01:36:02,122 --> 01:36:02,530
Chris: Yes.

637
01:36:02,610 --> 01:36:03,590
Kayla: You're fired.

638
01:36:04,050 --> 01:36:06,914
Chris: Oh, no. Cut. Cut that joke.

639
01:36:07,002 --> 01:36:17,728
Kayla: I'm editing it. I think it's really easy to say that no matter who was president next, the issues of racism in our country would have come to a head in similar ways.

640
01:36:17,824 --> 01:36:19,288
Chris: Right, right.

641
01:36:19,384 --> 01:36:21,220
Kayla: QAnon itself, I don't know.

642
01:36:21,800 --> 01:36:27,920
Chris: Trump or no Trump, Russia would still be generating memes and bot farms and whatnot, and trying to hack our infrastructure.

643
01:36:28,080 --> 01:36:36,688
Kayla: And Trump or no Trump, like, you know, talking to somebody like Jatar, he didn't necessarily get into QAnon because of Trump. He got into QAnon because of.

644
01:36:36,784 --> 01:36:37,912
Chris: He was disillusioned by.

645
01:36:37,976 --> 01:36:50,026
Kayla: By Bernie being. Yeah. Shut out at the DNC. And that could have happened regardless of who the conservative or republican candidate was. I think it's both. It's gotta be both.

646
01:36:50,178 --> 01:36:56,550
Chris: I think so, too. It's like you said, black and white thinking would impede our understanding of the situation.

647
01:36:57,050 --> 01:37:03,026
Kayla: I think it maybe would be in better shape if we had a different leader currently, perhaps.

648
01:37:03,098 --> 01:37:09,886
Chris: And perhaps the same could be said for, you know, wwe. Depends. It's hard to say good or bad.

649
01:37:09,918 --> 01:37:11,478
Kayla: Who's to say bad?

650
01:37:11,614 --> 01:37:18,982
Chris: Bad. That was bad. Okay, so we are finally to the point where we want to talk about some prescriptive stuff.

651
01:37:19,086 --> 01:37:30,438
Kayla: This is what this episode was supposed to be about originally. It was like, this is gonna be the episode where we talk about hope and positivity. Hold on and prescriptive, and then it turned into. But we gotta talk about everything else first.

652
01:37:30,494 --> 01:37:34,894
Chris: We are. We. We already talked. We already did give an example of hope and resilience.

653
01:37:35,022 --> 01:37:36,598
Kayla: I'm not saying we didn't. I'm just saying in the form of.

654
01:37:36,614 --> 01:37:38,290
Chris: A sweet war.

655
01:37:39,150 --> 01:37:44,694
Kayla: When you're talking about QAnon, it's impossible to just, like. To just focus one thing.

656
01:37:44,742 --> 01:37:52,894
Chris: I know. We were like, let's just have a brief section where we cover the stuff that we didn't talk about. Now we're, like, an hour and a half into the show, so let's talk about that stuff.

657
01:37:52,982 --> 01:37:56,934
Kayla: Yeah. Please tell me now how we're gonna fix this. Christopher. Christopher.

658
01:37:57,062 --> 01:37:57,350
Chris: Yes.

659
01:37:57,390 --> 01:37:58,318
Kayla: Fix Qanon for us.

660
01:37:58,334 --> 01:38:27,344
Chris: Yeah. It's a simple fix. You just press a button. It's called Fix, and then everything gets fixed. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about how to help. And when I say help, in case it isn't clear by now, if you've listened to all of our episodes, that means both Q cult victims, as well as their friends and family that have been affected since Q has been destructive on both sides of that. Before going into it's extremely important to say Kayla and I are not mental health professionals. We are hobbyist podcasters just talking about shit in our apartment into a microphone.

661
01:38:27,432 --> 01:38:29,180
Kayla: Oh. Mental health recipient.

662
01:38:29,960 --> 01:39:14,494
Chris: We are recipients. So for true mental health emergencies or services, if you need them, it is best to talk to an actual professional, a doctor or psychiatrist or a trained counselor or therapist. Start there now, like we like to do on the show, since we're not professionals, not experts. I did want to talk to somebody who was very dear friend of mine from high school, is now a professional counselor. Actually, technically, she's now, like, a counseling coordinator, because she's been at it long enough to successfully have moved into a more senior role. But because she is also intellectually responsible, she wanted me to preface for her as well that her specialty is with family counseling and early childhood development, not necessarily in addiction therapy or interpersonal trauma, which is kind of more what we're talking about.

663
01:39:14,582 --> 01:39:19,930
Kayla: And there's, like, nothing really a field of therapy yet where it's like, I fix cult people.

664
01:39:20,010 --> 01:39:44,970
Chris: Right? Right. Yeah. Which is. It just doesn't exist, which is deprogramming, as you recall, was its own episode. All right. Caveats emptored there. The content that I'm about to cover is basically. Is a mixture of my conversation with her, plus your and my own observations from doing the research for the series, particularly the interviews we conducted, plus our own experience with therapy and interpersonal trauma.

665
01:39:45,590 --> 01:39:48,830
Kayla: All right, go fix it.

666
01:39:48,990 --> 01:40:01,222
Chris: First things first. If you are an affected friend or family member, attend to your own mental health first. It's like an airplane emergency drill, right? You have to secure your own mask before attempting to help others.

667
01:40:01,326 --> 01:40:05,686
Kayla: It's like the most important advice in life. Yeah, it really is.

668
01:40:05,758 --> 01:40:06,102
Chris: Yeah.

669
01:40:06,166 --> 01:40:09,904
Kayla: Put your own mask on first. Just do it.

670
01:40:10,032 --> 01:40:12,712
Chris: Just do it. Yeah. Good. You solved it. That's the end of the show.

671
01:40:12,776 --> 01:40:13,540
Kayla: The end.

672
01:40:13,840 --> 01:40:52,284
Chris: You and your life matter, and you deserve to live a happy, fulfilled life. And that is possible even in horrifying circumstances. Even when someone you love is hurting, even when you feel like you can't help them and you don't know what to do. This, of course, is much easier said than done. But just know that you get one life, and no matter what, you deserve to be able to have that life. Beverage? Good. And if you absolutely must look at it from a selfless standpoint, then consider trauma can pass from person to person like a chain, like its own little virus. So think of yourself as a firewall to block that chain. Perhaps your mother or your aunt are having an extremely difficult time.

673
01:40:52,452 --> 01:41:01,886
Chris: But if you love and take care of yourself, you are preventing yourself from becoming that exact person to your loved ones. And that's pretty fucking heroic.

674
01:41:02,078 --> 01:41:13,806
Kayla: And if you take care of yourself, that puts you in a better position to be able to take care of somebody else. Yes, if you're just like a depleted shell, you're not actually going to be very helpful to others.

675
01:41:13,998 --> 01:42:00,766
Chris: Furthermore, relationships aren't just two individuals with their own issues. Relationships are their own singular entities. There's symbiotic feedback between two people in a relationship with each other. So by not caring for yourself, you are in a very real way not taking care of the other person as well. All that said, because of the traumatic nature of what's going on, if you're going to be self caring, that also means it's important to set good boundaries with your Q follower loved one and maintain those boundaries. This is also very difficult, but it is important for your own mental health. Some additional recommendations from my healthcare professional friend also included. Find your own support. Qcasualty subreddit is a really good example of this because. Because it's a bunch of folks that are kind of going through the same thing and can provide mutual support to each other.

676
01:42:00,958 --> 01:42:44,310
Chris: And there are other ways as well, right? Other friends and family members that aren't in queue therapists, in person support groups, etcetera. The point is support is necessary and healthy. You don't have to do it on your own. Also, try to engage in self care, even if you don't want to. Try to overcome that motivation block, even in very small ways. Just take a walk, make yourself a cup of tea, take a nice bath. Don't think about what comes next. Just do something small for yourself and enjoy that moment. And speaking of drinking tea and walking, my friend also recommended mindfulness practice, which I can confirm from my own research and personal experience. Every therapist I have had has recommended mindfulness in some form or fashion.

677
01:42:44,850 --> 01:43:09,926
Chris: Mindfulness is simply the practice of being an observer rather than an evaluator of your reality, focusing on the current moment and the literal physical sensations you are experiencing. Touch, smell, sound, sight, without analyzing them, but rather just calmly observing them. And by the way, it's funny when you do this sometimes, like when I do it, I'll notice sounds around me that are like I had no idea I was hearing just like a second ago.

678
01:43:09,998 --> 01:43:11,570
Kayla: And then I'll get really annoyed.

679
01:43:13,310 --> 01:43:16,732
Chris: Yeah. Which is kind of what we're going for here when you practice mindfulness.

680
01:43:16,756 --> 01:43:18,612
Kayla: Mindfulness makes me annoyed at my environment.

681
01:43:18,756 --> 01:43:21,640
Chris: That's very kayla. Jesus.

682
01:43:22,060 --> 01:43:53,226
Kayla: I also want to add one thing just on the self care piece. Just because there are people who sometimes have a difficult time enacting the more stereotypical forms of self care, like taking a bubble bath, which is something that I love to do, or doing a face mask. Self care isn't necessarily just like pampering yourself to a spa day. Self care can be anything. Can be anything. Anything you do to take care of yourself in some small way. It can be paying a bill that's been sitting on your table. It can be walking your dog. It can be folding a shirt and putting it away in the drawer.

683
01:43:53,258 --> 01:43:55,090
Chris: You can be listening to culture just weird.

684
01:43:55,130 --> 01:44:11,468
Kayla: Listening to culture just weird. It doesn't have to necessarily be something that feels maybe too indulgent or too self pampery. If that is not something that you feel capable of doing or want to do, it can be a chore. Sometimes you need to just do your chores so that you can, like, sit.

685
01:44:11,484 --> 01:44:14,772
Chris: Down and like, when I fold my laundry and put it away, I'm like, yeah, that's done.

686
01:44:14,836 --> 01:44:22,980
Kayla: Make your bed. If it has to be something that's more choresy, that is still self care. That is still putting yourself first and taking care of yourself.

687
01:44:23,100 --> 01:44:32,916
Chris: Right? Next up, if you are a regular listener, you will remember this from our first episode of the season when we talked about the anti cult movement and deprogramming practices.

688
01:44:32,988 --> 01:44:33,628
Kayla: Oh, God.

689
01:44:33,724 --> 01:45:08,194
Chris: And that is, brainwashing is not a scientifically supported phenomenon. To the best of our current scientific understanding, brainwashing and synonyms like mind control does not exist. Here's a quote from an interview in an article with Doctor Roger Finke, a professor of sociology and religious studies at Penn State University. The popular idea is that brainwashing techniques can completely alter a person's opinions while he or she is powerless to stop the conversion, he says. So again, I'm quoting an article that is interviewing a person. So that's why it's quote within a.

690
01:45:08,202 --> 01:45:09,170
Kayla: Quote within a quote.

691
01:45:09,330 --> 01:45:56,620
Chris: Yeah, quote ception. But such techniques have never actually been found to exist. Finke argues that the term is a historical inaccuracy that has become entrenched in social lore. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest english use of the word brainwashing dates from 1950. It entered the language from the chinese words, and I'm going to pronounce this wrong, but xi nao, meaning wash brain, a term used to describe the coercive methods of the maoist regime. However, Finke notes that the popular portrayal of brainwashing became widespread in the United States during the 1970s, a time in which a number of cults and religious movements, like the unification church, were on the rise. Quote, and now we're again quote within a quote here. Critics of these movements could not understand why anyone would join, says Finke.

692
01:45:57,010 --> 01:46:09,122
Chris: They argued that the leaders were using almost magical brainwashing techniques to recruit members. The Jonestown cult, mass suicide in 1978, in which 909 members drank cyanide laced flavored drink mix.

693
01:46:09,186 --> 01:46:14,110
Kayla: I'm sorry, wait, how many? It was 900 people.

694
01:46:15,330 --> 01:46:18,890
Chris: In which 909 members drank cyanide laced flavored drink.

695
01:46:18,930 --> 01:46:21,922
Kayla: Mixed flavor aid, not Kool Aid, served.

696
01:46:21,946 --> 01:46:27,236
Chris: To further popularize the idea from this catastrophe, the phrase drinking the Kool Aid was coined.

697
01:46:27,308 --> 01:46:27,996
Kayla: And it's wrong.

698
01:46:28,068 --> 01:47:05,102
Chris: It's right. It totally should be. That's the most important thing about this, is you should be calling it flavor aid, meaning someone who is blindly following the beliefs of a charismatic leader because of successful brainwashing. When these movements were studied systematically by social scientists, however, it was found that they had no powers of brainwashing, says Finke. Propaganda and other methods of persuasion were used to make the movement look as attractive as possible to prospective members. But in the end, the vast majority of those that explored these movements never joined them. It was really only a tiny percentage that joined, notes Finkey, end quote. So why do I bring this up here?

699
01:47:05,166 --> 01:47:06,702
Kayla: Because you like Kool Aid?

700
01:47:06,806 --> 01:47:38,380
Chris: Because Kool Aid is delicious, and we're doing a promotional. No, it's because the first thing that I think we need to think or talk about when we're talking about somebody in the QAnon cult is that they are not stupid. They are not rubes, and as hard as it is to hear, they are not brainwashed. Brainwashing is a way for us to process choices other people make that we don't understand and may not like. And when I say other people, I'm including our past selves in that.

701
01:47:39,440 --> 01:47:42,072
Kayla: You and my past selves, or just.

702
01:47:42,096 --> 01:47:56,674
Chris: Our collective, just in general. Like, I'm saying that, like, I must have me out. I'm saying that we, as a. As humans, we use brainwashing to sort of say, like, oh, he must have been brainwashed. I don't. I disagree with the choices. They seem crazy to me.

703
01:47:56,722 --> 01:47:56,978
Kayla: Right.

704
01:47:57,034 --> 01:48:03,266
Chris: Must have been brainwashed. I'm saying that we can even say that about our past selves. Why did I make that choice? I must have been brainwashed.

705
01:48:03,298 --> 01:48:04,138
Kayla: Right, right.

706
01:48:04,274 --> 01:48:05,978
Chris: It's a way to kind of wave that off.

707
01:48:06,074 --> 01:48:07,234
Kayla: And some so, like.

708
01:48:07,282 --> 01:48:11,452
Chris: And some people do that, which I will not mention on the show, but we will probably talk about at some point.

709
01:48:11,636 --> 01:48:18,788
Kayla: It's so, like, it can get into a real, like, land of patronizing and condescending.

710
01:48:18,964 --> 01:49:07,238
Chris: Yeah. You take away people's agency, right? So folks that get into conspiracy theories and other cults, we have to recognize that they get value out of them. Right? And actually, agency is one of those values, right? Taking away that person's agency by saying they're brainwashed does not help them, and it doesn't help you either. So you have to bravely face the fact that these people, including maybe your past self, are making choices of their own free will, which is a hard thing to face, especially if that person is yourself. But once you admit that you are ultimately responsible for your own choices, you also have the power to change. There are no villains, only villainous acts. There are no heroes, only heroic acts. It is never, ever too late to consume different information or to make different choices.

711
01:49:07,414 --> 01:49:15,958
Kayla: Except for the hosts of the show, in which one is a hero, one is a villain, which one is which? I'll let you guess who is a villain.

712
01:49:16,014 --> 01:49:18,890
Chris: You better send us an email saying that you disagree with that.

713
01:49:19,350 --> 01:49:20,990
Kayla: Or what? What do you do? You'll blow. You know what?

714
01:49:21,030 --> 01:49:27,290
Chris: Villains are more hot anyway. Actually, I am just sevens as Captain America.

715
01:49:27,470 --> 01:49:33,450
Kayla: You know, I'm not Chris Evans. Whatever are you about to say to me that you're not into Chris Evans. Oh, my. Oh, my God.

716
01:49:33,490 --> 01:49:34,690
Chris: Dude, I'm a good pine guy.

717
01:49:34,730 --> 01:49:35,650
Kayla: I'm gonna rip my face off.

718
01:49:35,690 --> 01:49:35,890
Chris: Chris.

719
01:49:35,930 --> 01:49:38,330
Kayla: I'm gonna rip my face off. I'm gonna. Please do right now.

720
01:49:38,370 --> 01:49:38,842
Chris: Please do.

721
01:49:38,906 --> 01:49:44,674
Kayla: Literally, we've had this conversation where I've been like, I don't think Chris Evans is that hot. And you're like, what are you talking about? He's a Dorito.

722
01:49:44,722 --> 01:49:45,058
Chris: Okay.

723
01:49:45,114 --> 01:49:46,826
Kayla: Oh, my God. You're brainwashed.

724
01:49:46,858 --> 01:49:52,058
Chris: No, Chris Evans is ultra hot. I'm just saying, of the Chris's. He's, like, third or fourth after who.

725
01:49:52,154 --> 01:49:54,008
Kayla: I know. Chris. Chris prime is my number one, too.

726
01:49:54,114 --> 01:49:58,820
Chris: Yeah. It's Chris Pine. Chris. Chris Evans. Chris Pratt. That's how it goes. Sorry.

727
01:49:58,940 --> 01:49:59,772
Kayla: Chris Pratt.

728
01:49:59,916 --> 01:50:01,044
Chris: Don't. Don't do.

729
01:50:01,052 --> 01:50:06,080
Kayla: It was hotter as Andy. I'm just saying it right here. I don't think he's as hot as Star lord. He's hotter as Andy.

730
01:50:06,700 --> 01:50:34,350
Chris: Another hard thing to face is that there is real loss happening here. My friend told me that it's important to face the reality of the feelings and emotions that you are having. Pain, anger, fear, guilt, etcetera. Be with those emotions. Don't try to suppress them or avoid them. That will build your resilience. And beyond that, your emotions are an important part of who you are. It's important to, as she put it, go through the darkness, not around it. Don't take shortcuts.

731
01:50:34,430 --> 01:50:40,086
Kayla: No, but I hate that. I hate having to face my emotions. Well, it's the worst thing. And I do everything that I possibly.

732
01:50:40,118 --> 01:50:45,054
Chris: Can to not just relating what I heard. Kayla, you're not a good example.

733
01:50:45,102 --> 01:50:47,534
Kayla: No, I've done it. I just don't like to.

734
01:50:47,702 --> 01:50:48,694
Chris: Yeah, it's hard.

735
01:50:48,782 --> 01:50:49,750
Kayla: I don't like it.

736
01:50:49,830 --> 01:51:15,114
Chris: It's hard. And I can add some confirmation to this for my own mental health journey. One of the techniques that has helped me the most with my anxiety issues is to not get anxiety about the anxiety. It used to be that when I experienced some unexplained plummet in my mood, I get super anxious about that. Like, what the heck is wrong with me right now? This is scary. I don't understand it. Is this just me, now, blah, blah? What's going on?

737
01:51:15,202 --> 01:51:16,410
Kayla: Oh, my God. It's so tiring.

738
01:51:16,530 --> 01:51:22,082
Chris: This, of course, would cause a negative feedback loop. So that just got worse and worse.

739
01:51:22,226 --> 01:51:23,350
Kayla: Can confirm.

740
01:51:24,770 --> 01:51:56,570
Chris: What I do now instead is just allow myself to experience that drop in mood and do a little bit of self talk to just kind of explain to myself that this is something that just happens. Yep, it totally sucks. I totally feel like shit right now. That's okay. I don't know when exactly it'll go away, but it always has before things will be okay. So that helps me a lot. And the analogy here is that for QAnon, friends and family, try to peacefully face the shitty emotions that are coming with this horrible situation and loss.

741
01:51:57,750 --> 01:52:02,250
Kayla: Speaking of loss, grief sucks, but you gotta feel it, right?

742
01:52:02,630 --> 01:52:53,850
Chris: Speaking of loss, change is loss. And that's true. Even if the change is awesome. Even if it's. I got my dream job, and I have to move to Seattle or wherever. Change is hard to face, so try not to look backward. I can say this with 100% certainty, and it's important to hear your loved one, QAnon person won't be the person that they were before. But guess what? Neither will you. Neither will I. Neither will anybody else. We are the result of our experiences and actions. And short of a lobotomy, the experience of being in the QAnon cult will change someone. But here's the good news. That change does not have to be negative. Is it shitty right now? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really shitty. I've still been reading q casualties, subreddit. It sucks balls. I really don't like reading it.

743
01:52:53,970 --> 01:53:21,136
Chris: I can't wait to stop. I love you guys. I know there's some people listening here. Your community is great. It's just. It's tough. I love you guys. So it's shitty right now, and I can't even guarantee that it will get better or when it'll get better. But what I can guarantee is that it definitely can get better. Look no further than our interviewee last episode, Jatarth Jadeja. Is he the same person he was three years ago when he was balls deep in QAnon? Is he the same person?

744
01:53:21,168 --> 01:53:22,304
Kayla: Balls deep.

745
01:53:22,472 --> 01:53:24,278
Chris: Balls deep. Fine.

746
01:53:24,464 --> 01:53:25,130
Kayla: Knee deep.

747
01:53:25,210 --> 01:54:17,508
Chris: Knee deep. And Qanon. Shoulder deep. Eyeball deep. Is he the same person he was five years ago, before he started following Q? Not at all. And not only that, I'm completely convinced that, as awful as it was, his awful experience has actually rendered him a more thoughtful, more compassionate, and, hell, maybe even more interesting person than he would have been otherwise. So keep that in mind. Your loved one will not go back to who they were, because none of us do. But that is not only. Okay, that can even be a good thing. As Jatar said, pain is how we grow. I also talked to my counselor friend about the QAnon people themselves. What can be done for them. What are their quote, unquote off ramps, as the Contagion Institute doc puts it. And, yes, they have a whole section on off ramps.

748
01:54:17,524 --> 01:54:19,596
Chris: It's very comprehensive. Like I said, go read their shit.

749
01:54:19,708 --> 01:54:21,348
Kayla: Like highway off ramps?

750
01:54:21,484 --> 01:54:25,420
Chris: Yeah, like off ramps from QAnon. Off. From the QAnon highway.

751
01:54:25,460 --> 01:54:30,260
Kayla: Oh, so you not like the really terrible off ramps on the 110 when you're, like, in Pasadena?

752
01:54:30,420 --> 01:55:00,774
Chris: The first thing she said was, look, people aren't dumb or logical. This is feeling some vital need for them. They're getting something out of it. So if you want to influence them away from that, you need to find a way to diversify the source of that need. Fulfillment. In other words, figure out what they're getting out of QAnon and help them find that elsewhere. And we talked about this a little bit before in the episode, right? Like, people are not brainwashed. People are not dumb. They are getting something out of this. They are getting hope out of this. They are getting a sense of agency out of this. These are the things that they are getting.

753
01:55:00,822 --> 01:55:05,862
Kayla: They're getting something out of it that they very meaningfully and, like, realistically are not getting in their daily lives.

754
01:55:05,966 --> 01:55:50,866
Chris: Right? And we've talked about this. Like I said, in and in this episode and previous episodes, there's a variety of needs being filled, right? Having a cabal to hunt gives folks a sense of agency where otherwise, they might be feeling helpless. Having a fellow Q and honor Cabal hunter give them a sense of community. Right? Talking to all their fellow qanoners, having secret knowledge gives them a sense of pride. Interpreting Q drops and solving puzzles gives them a sense of accomplishment. And knowing that even though things are bad, there's a storm coming that will lead to a new golden age of a great awakening gives them hope. So one of the most important things you can do for these folks is to see that these needs are met elsewhere. Otherwise, you're building a house with no foundation.

755
01:55:51,018 --> 01:56:31,768
Chris: They'll just go back to QAnon or find those needs met elsewhere. They need to have community, pride, agency, achievement, and hope needs fulfilled. Guess what? You and I need that, too. So figure out what it is that they're getting from that and try to help them get that fulfilled somewhere else. My friend also mentioned that you might be able to find or initiate something positive going on with them that isn't about the cult, to help them sort of start the process. And she stressed that it can be something incredibly small, like, hey, are you stoked the Lakers won last night or want to go for a quick walk around the block, or let's order from your favorite restaurant. It can be that small.

756
01:56:31,904 --> 01:56:33,088
Kayla: Just don't get Covid.

757
01:56:33,264 --> 01:56:36,936
Chris: Don't get Covid, though. Yeah. Where you're at. Well, okay.

758
01:56:37,128 --> 01:56:39,340
Kayla: Just careful of COVID Careful Covid.

759
01:56:40,240 --> 01:57:23,934
Chris: It can be anything, really, that can act as a little kernel of positivity in the real world for them to build on. And this dovetails nicely, too, with what we've talked about in previous episodes. Came up in multiple interviews, but just the advice to help them disengage from their screens. Actually, we talked about that earlier this episode. Anything to reduce the screen time and have some real world interactions will help. We know that social media has a radicalizing influence. It is literally designed to use your emotional wiring against you for clicks. I have felt it myself. I get Ragey when I'm scrolling twitter. I notice when I log off, I feel better. The same goes for QAnon folks, but times ten, the more you can gently and neutrally disengage them from the online world, the better, even. It's for just a little.

760
01:57:24,102 --> 01:57:47,408
Chris: I'm also hoping. Oh, this is the part were talking about earlier. I'm also hoping that as the pandemic recedes, this will naturally get better in the aggregate, as people are sort of able to rebuild their outdoor, face to face lives. Finally, my friends say just to go burp, burp. You know what be funny is if you just. If that's what. That's just go, burp.

761
01:57:47,544 --> 01:58:19,818
Kayla: The end. Keep going. I think that with win, Covid, if and when Covid. When Covid recedes, let's say when. Part of what we've talked about before that makes QAnon such a powerful drawing force is that it does have that built in hope. And I think that as QAnon recedes, some of our hopelessness is going to recede, and so that aspect of it is going to maybe be less powerful. Not entirely unpowerful, because there's a lot of hopelessness outside of COVID but I.

762
01:58:19,834 --> 01:58:22,426
Chris: Think that we have a lot of work to do.

763
01:58:22,458 --> 01:58:29,994
Kayla: Yeah. Not having a global pandemic will help with some of the hopelessness and combat that hope draw that QAnon has.

764
01:58:30,122 --> 01:59:02,484
Chris: Finally, my friend mentioned to not expect a quick process. Compassion and patience are important here. Progress should be expected to be slow and non linear. And that last part is really hard to deal with because setbacks are shitty. But just try to remember that helping someone who has an addiction to something is a long and difficult thing, and you have to have patience. And, oh, by the way, that's another reason why your own self care is critically important. So my final question to her was, is there such thing as too far gone? Someone who is a lost cause?

765
01:59:02,652 --> 01:59:05,752
Kayla: Her answer to me, yes, your wife, Kayla, is.

766
01:59:05,816 --> 01:59:10,016
Chris: Yeah, Kayla's too far gone. She should just be thrown into a volcano.

767
01:59:10,208 --> 01:59:12,896
Kayla: But what are the only ways to successfully get rid of the body?

768
01:59:12,968 --> 01:59:51,680
Chris: Except for. Except for Kayla, there is no such thing as too far gone, which was good to hear. There's definitely a likelihood spectrum between zero and 100%, of course. And she said basically that there's, like, a lot of situational factors that will determine how easy or how hard, how likely or unlikely it will be to help someone out of these situations. Some factors, like prior abuse or addiction, or being unable to do some of the things we just talked about will obviously make it less likely. Improving situations will make it more likely. But I found it tremendously reassuring for her to say that there's no situation so dire that there's a 0% chance. Maybe small, but never zero.

769
01:59:52,020 --> 02:00:11,422
Kayla: That's really. That's the hope that I think we can all kind of Glomanto. I think that is far more powerful, a far more powerful harbinger. No icon of hope than anything that QAnon could provide. The pope of hope is just that.

770
02:00:11,526 --> 02:00:30,774
Chris: Yeah, I was going to wrap up our discussion of things to help with that last paragraph, but then I, like, I suddenly remembered that we should probably mention real quickly what not to do. I think it's probably pretty clear to most of our listeners at this point, but just to be thorough, fighting them directly on their beliefs and behaviors won't help. It will only entrench them further in the conspiracy.

771
02:00:30,942 --> 02:00:40,646
Kayla: Plus, it's only going to tire. It's not good for your mental health either. To, like, try and debate with facts and figures and getting into it's only going to drive you crazy.

772
02:00:40,798 --> 02:01:06,304
Chris: That's not the level of playing field that they're on. I mean, saying it's stupid to believe in cabals and alien CIA agents time travel, while true and frustrating for a reality based individual, won't help them at all. Plus, as anyone, as you actually, you kind of just said this, but as anyone who has interacted with the Q and honor will attest, there's too much motivated reasoning and closed logical loops going on to be able to just simply try to reason someone out of it, even if it wasn't harmful. It's also pointless.

773
02:01:06,392 --> 02:01:15,740
Kayla: That can probably be said for any kind of cult like group that, like, you're not necessarily going to pull somebody out of an MLM by going, but look at the numbers.

774
02:01:15,860 --> 02:01:32,868
Chris: Right? Exactly. And I feel fairly confident saying that's. Yeah, across the board. But there will come a time when you'll be able to chat with your friend about how weird blue avian aliens are and have a good laugh about it. It's just not a great exit strategy. All right, Kayla, wait, so you're not.

775
02:01:32,884 --> 02:01:39,412
Kayla: Going to talk about, like, the other bad exit strategy, which is, like, kidnapping someone in the night and tying them up and throwing them in a truck and being like, we're deprogramming you?

776
02:01:39,476 --> 02:01:41,204
Chris: No, that's a. A good exit strategy. What are you talking about?

777
02:01:41,252 --> 02:01:48,160
Kayla: I think that the first episode we did of the season proves that. No, it is not a good exit strategy.

778
02:01:48,540 --> 02:01:49,412
Chris: False imprisonment.

779
02:01:49,476 --> 02:01:51,108
Kayla: Don't kidnap cult members. Sorry.

780
02:01:51,164 --> 02:01:57,316
Chris: Deprogramming is not great. Go listen to our first episode of the season. Thank you for tying it back to our first episode of the season. I love callbacks.

781
02:01:57,348 --> 02:01:58,360
Kayla: That's what I'm here for.

782
02:01:58,900 --> 02:02:15,126
Chris: Speaking of tying things up, here we are, finally, at the end of five episodes. Our official cult or just weird criteria and judgment. Funnily enough, I think these are probably gonna go pretty quick this time, but it's our gimmick, so we've gotta do it, folks. Sorry. Here we go.

783
02:02:15,278 --> 02:02:19,238
Kayla: I can't just give you my answer, Kayla.

784
02:02:19,334 --> 02:02:21,806
Chris: The criteria are part of our brand.

785
02:02:21,878 --> 02:02:22,854
Kayla: What are our criteria?

786
02:02:22,942 --> 02:02:23,598
Chris: You have to do it.

787
02:02:23,614 --> 02:02:36,460
Kayla: I've been doing so many episodes since we've done the criteria. I don't know where it is. No, it's too far, actually. It's really too far. It's just been so long since we've done this, so. Yeah. You read them? Yeah, we got it. It's a piece of paper.

788
02:02:37,560 --> 02:02:40,500
Chris: All right, charismatic leader, what do you think?

789
02:02:41,080 --> 02:02:50,856
Kayla: Oh, that. That's like, its own episode. Okay. Okay. Is the charismatic leader Q or is the charismatic leader Trump? It's Q. Right.

790
02:02:50,968 --> 02:02:58,270
Chris: I think we said on a previous episode that were considering, like, Q is the charismatic leader and Trump is, like, the object of.

791
02:02:58,400 --> 02:03:00,810
Kayla: Okay, so, Q. Yes, there is a prep, but depending.

792
02:03:00,850 --> 02:03:01,930
Chris: On who you ask.

793
02:03:02,090 --> 02:03:02,506
Kayla: I don't.

794
02:03:02,538 --> 02:03:07,826
Chris: Maybe it's Ron Watkins. Maybe it's General Flynn. Maybe it's Sidney Powell.

795
02:03:07,898 --> 02:03:08,858
Kayla: I think it's.

796
02:03:09,034 --> 02:03:11,346
Chris: There's, like, a dozen more people I could name.

797
02:03:11,418 --> 02:03:14,018
Kayla: It's the figure of Q is the charismatic leader.

798
02:03:14,074 --> 02:03:19,090
Chris: So we're actually dealing with a fictional, like, LARP charismatic leader here.

799
02:03:19,130 --> 02:03:21,538
Kayla: Well, but there's somebody behind it. Or somebody.

800
02:03:21,594 --> 02:03:23,290
Chris: Somebody. Or somebody's sure.

801
02:03:23,370 --> 02:03:28,548
Kayla: Yeah. Well, I'm like. I'm sure that's. I doubt that is unique to this cult.

802
02:03:28,684 --> 02:03:30,388
Chris: Mmm. Okay.

803
02:03:30,564 --> 02:03:31,764
Kayla: And I think.

804
02:03:31,892 --> 02:03:34,204
Chris: I think Mary Kay was also fake. I think she was a robot.

805
02:03:34,292 --> 02:03:43,900
Kayla: She was definitely multiple people operating a human suit. I've seen that hair, too. Perfect. Presence of a charismatic leader is very high.

806
02:03:44,060 --> 02:03:44,356
Chris: Yeah.

807
02:03:44,388 --> 02:03:46,036
Kayla: Extraordinarily high, any way you look at it.

808
02:03:46,068 --> 02:03:51,564
Chris: Kind of named after the charismatic leader, so I think that counts. All right. Expected harm.

809
02:03:51,732 --> 02:03:52,720
Kayla: So high.

810
02:03:53,260 --> 02:03:58,244
Chris: We did a whole episode on Q casualties, and people that are absolutely fucking devastated by this.

811
02:03:58,372 --> 02:04:06,796
Kayla: And it's caused physical violence, and it causes harm to the individual in many ways, and it causes harm to the people around the. It causes. It causes a lot of harm. Guys.

812
02:04:06,908 --> 02:04:18,824
Chris: Antifactuality. Man, I don't know. It's mostly true. Cause there's definitely an alien presence in their government. There's definitely time travel. Obama has visited Mars.

813
02:04:18,872 --> 02:04:23,080
Kayla: He definitely did. Yeah. The antifactuality is strong with this one.

814
02:04:23,240 --> 02:04:24,980
Chris: As strong as it's ever been.

815
02:04:25,520 --> 02:04:26,568
Kayla: That's the point.

816
02:04:26,704 --> 02:04:32,040
Chris: It's the ur conspiracy percentage of life consumed. Oh, God. That makes me sad. This one's high, too.

817
02:04:32,080 --> 02:04:33,296
Kayla: That's extraordinarily high.

818
02:04:33,368 --> 02:04:35,860
Chris: We just talked about people being consumed on their devices.

819
02:04:36,280 --> 02:04:42,416
Kayla: I think it's possible to be a casual cue believer, but what we've seen time and time again is how much it can take over somebody's life.

820
02:04:42,488 --> 02:04:46,402
Chris: Right. Their only friends are Q, and they're, like, not allowed to go home for thanksgiving.

821
02:04:46,466 --> 02:04:56,194
Kayla: The only thing they can talk. I mean, there's literally. We've seen threads of people being like, this is the only thing that I will talk about. And I can't talk to my family anymore because they don't want me to talk about it. And it's literally the only thing I want to talk about.

822
02:04:56,322 --> 02:05:06,378
Chris: Oh, cue threads, not queue. Casualty threads. Yeah. And we've seen that on the other side as well, where, like, oh, my God. My Q believing mother won't be able. She can't say anything that isn't Q related.

823
02:05:06,434 --> 02:05:07,030
Kayla: Right.

824
02:05:08,670 --> 02:05:09,810
Chris: What about ritual?

825
02:05:10,710 --> 02:05:33,822
Kayla: I think the ritual is also high because I think that, especially in pure, original QAnon interaction, where it was, Q would drop a breadcrumb and then the bakers would bake it into something that's very ritualistic of the looking for the clues and the finding of the clues and the turning the clues into something. And then I think that the ritual really only builds out from there, actually.

826
02:05:33,846 --> 02:05:43,110
Chris: I think you could sort of argue pretty strongly that our whole QAnon as Arg episode is kind of saying that the ritualistic elements are high.

827
02:05:43,190 --> 02:05:43,810
Kayla: Right.

828
02:05:44,110 --> 02:05:47,806
Chris: All right, last one. Is it niche within its society?

829
02:05:47,958 --> 02:05:52,494
Kayla: I don't know. Cause no. Cause yes and no. Not really as much anymore.

830
02:05:52,582 --> 02:05:56,950
Chris: It was. And then Covid happened, and then it exploded. It's actually funny.

831
02:05:57,110 --> 02:05:59,490
Kayla: It's infiltrated the highest levels of our government.

832
02:06:00,110 --> 02:06:15,980
Chris: I was gonna say, also, you can see the stats. Like, the analytics for people posting on Q casualties is just this tiny little line that's close to the x axis, and then in 2020, it's just explodes.

833
02:06:16,480 --> 02:06:35,360
Kayla: This really makes me question, and I know we've questioned this criterion before, but it makes me question this little piece of it, because I know that part of why we have it is specifically to distinguish something that might be called a cult versus something that might be called a religion. But I don't think you can call QAnon a religion.

834
02:06:35,440 --> 02:06:36,976
Chris: I mean, there is, like, a church.

835
02:06:37,008 --> 02:06:38,088
Kayla: Of Q and A. I know there is.

836
02:06:38,184 --> 02:06:40,952
Chris: People have said Q resembles a religion.

837
02:06:41,016 --> 02:06:51,216
Kayla: But then I also think, well, then, are we on the podcast comfortable exempting all things called religions from also being called cults? And I don't know if we are.

838
02:06:51,408 --> 02:06:57,534
Chris: I don't know. This criterion always presents to problems, which means it's, like, definitely the best one.

839
02:06:57,582 --> 02:07:01,326
Kayla: So should. I was gonna say maybe that means it's the worst one. And I wonder if we.

840
02:07:01,358 --> 02:07:03,118
Chris: Oh, because it generates discussion.

841
02:07:03,174 --> 02:07:11,686
Kayla: I wonder if we replace it with the thing that you proposed while back, like the dogmatic issue, which. This is also a very dogmatic.

842
02:07:11,798 --> 02:07:19,414
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Right. You're either with us here against us. Dogmatic. Yeah, for sure. That's our. That's our pseudo criterion.

843
02:07:19,582 --> 02:07:29,022
Kayla: It's a cult, everybody. I don't. By the standards of this podcast, and whatever that word means. Whatever it means. I don't even know.

844
02:07:29,046 --> 02:07:31,310
Chris: Cult is a meaningless word. That said, it's a cult.

845
02:07:31,350 --> 02:07:35,782
Kayla: It's a cult. Yeah. I think that's about where we're at.

846
02:07:35,926 --> 02:07:39,718
Chris: All right, so we are fast approaching the end of the episode.

847
02:07:39,774 --> 02:07:40,270
Kayla: Yes.

848
02:07:40,390 --> 02:08:18,360
Chris: The end of the series on QAnon and the end of season two of cult are just weird. So I just want to go back a little bit to basics. The theme of this episode around hope. We discussed this a little bit ago when were talking about how to help people out of the QAnon conspiracy world. Part of what QAnon gives people is hope, and it's really hard to overstate the importance of that for people that feel lost, terrified depressed that are down on their luck dealing with crises, or feel like they have no future. Or even for people like Jatar who are merely feeling disillusioned and fresh out of trust, the narrative that QAnon offers is indeed a healing tonic. You cannot remove that from them without providing an alternative.

849
02:08:18,900 --> 02:08:40,628
Chris: Hope is an interesting thing, and for a long time I've been a little confused about what it actually is. When I was in grade school, we had this, like, assignment to write an essay about a value. And I don't know how I ended up with. I don't know if I chose it or if it was assigned, but my essay was on hope. Something always felt a little bit awkward or wrong about that, like, even as.

850
02:08:40,644 --> 02:08:43,276
Kayla: A child or like as an adult, I don't know.

851
02:08:43,308 --> 02:09:27,130
Chris: I don't know when I started feeling awkward about it. Not in a bad way, not like I wish I hadn't written about that. But, like, is it a value? Right? Like, certainly it's an important part of the human experience, but is it really a value, or is it an emotion? Is it just a name we give to some of the electricity coursing through our brain? Meet well in the past couple years doing this podcast, and yes, after watching the tv show on becoming a God in central Florida, you should totally watch it. I think I've come to the conclusion that it's none of those things. To me, it feels like what it is a nutrient. It's an essential vitamin required for survival. It's a human need, like food, water, shelter. Add hope to that. Without it, your brain simply decays. You can't survive.

852
02:09:27,430 --> 02:10:03,182
Chris: So people will seek it out no matter where they have to go to get it. And that's terribly sad. But it also offers a way out. If people are starving, the simple solution is to feed them. And it is my hope that this episode, at least, has been some of that nourishment for you, our listeners here at the end of a year that has otherwise been somewhat bleak. I know doing the podcast has been nourishment for me, and talking to you guys over email or your world of text or Twitter or wherever, I don't know. It's definitely helped me keep 20 twenty's demons at bay. So thank you, my co host, Kayla. And thank you, listeners.

853
02:10:03,326 --> 02:10:04,782
Kayla: But mostly thank you to me.

854
02:10:04,846 --> 02:10:49,780
Chris: But mostly Kayla. Yeah, and to take us all the way back to the top of the episode, you may have been wondering why I told a historical story when the series here is about QAnon. Or maybe by now you're not wondering. Maybe it's clear, but the point was to offer a real world example of a situation that appeared hopeless but was turned around with the all powerful value of resolve. If you are thinking things are bleak, if you experience loss after loss, followed up by a knockout blow, followed by years and years of additional loss, I hope you can remember the entirely true story of the Romans after CUNY. The war isn't over until you surrender. All it takes to go down in history is to not give up.

855
02:10:51,320 --> 02:10:58,154
Chris: Speaking of stories of resolve, I think my lovely and resilient co host has her own story for us before we sign off for the year.

856
02:10:58,242 --> 02:11:14,230
Kayla: Maybe if you're like me and anytime something historical comes up, you just. You can't help but tune out. No, I'm kidding. I listen to those Dan Carlin podcasts, too. I just have a hard time keeping history in my head, man. I don't know how to get into it. Cause I didn't write an intro.

857
02:11:14,530 --> 02:11:15,498
Chris: Good job.

858
02:11:15,674 --> 02:11:29,916
Kayla: Wait, what did you say? Yeah, I also have a story that I found that deals with hope in the face of hopelessness, and we're gonna bring it more to the present day. So we have boo. Top of the show.

859
02:11:30,028 --> 02:11:30,844
Chris: Is it about war?

860
02:11:30,932 --> 02:11:31,756
Kayla: It's not about war.

861
02:11:31,828 --> 02:11:33,092
Chris: All right, well, then I'm tuning you out.

862
02:11:33,156 --> 02:12:16,288
Kayla: Top of the show with a historical example, and now the bottom of the show with a modern day example. So hopefully we're covering all our bases here. I want to tell the story of somebody named Angela Kingdom. Angela King grew up in south Florida in the eighties and dealt with hardship early on. In her very religious family and environment, racism and homophobia were commonplace. As a pre teen, her family moved around a lot, leaving her with few friends and lots of loneliness. Her parents soon divorced, and just after bullying entered her life as a, quote, dorky little chubby girl with glasses and braces. King was the target of verbal and physical bullying and humiliation by her peers. She internalized the abuse as rage and decided to turn her anger outward as a form of protection, becoming a bully herself.

863
02:12:16,344 --> 02:12:44,262
Kayla: To take the target off her back, she became violent, her self loathing manifesting into acting out behavior. Drugs and alcohol entered her life, as did run ins with police. She was arrested a number of times before entering high school, and that's when she met the skinheads. Quote, once I fell into the far right, it was pretty much over. From there, it was free reign to be angry and violent and to act out against anybody and everybody. For the next eight years, King involved herself with neo nazi hate groups, including the World Church of the Creator.

864
02:12:44,406 --> 02:12:51,206
Chris: Oh, shout out. Let's tie back to season one. K, I don't know if you're allowed to. This is season two. Too late just to tie back to that.

865
02:12:51,238 --> 02:13:34,718
Kayla: It's this woman's story. These groups validated and encouraged her anger and finally gave her a sense of belonging that blotted out the loneliness and self hatred. But the violence and hatred didn't help her deal with those issues. They only made them worse. When, as King got more involved, any chance of turning back looked hopeless. She was entrenched. She even tattooed her hatred on her body in the form of visible swastikas and white supremacist symbols. In 1995, she witnessed the fallout of white supremacy when the Oklahoma City bombing was covered on the news. As she saw children's bodies pulled from the rubble of a bombing carried out by a far right christian white supremacist terrorist, the first inkling that she might be on the wrong path entered her mind. But when she attempted to pull back from her community, she and her family were threatened.

866
02:13:34,854 --> 02:14:16,368
Kayla: And what's worse, her sense of belonging was threatened. She decided to stay, whatever the cost. Three years later, King had a discussion with some of her friends over how to best support their neo nazi movement. Inspired by the teachings that motivated Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing, they decided to violently rob a jewish business at gunpoint and donate the money they stole to their own organization. King and her friends were caught, arrested, and charged with felony robbery. She was sent to federal prison again, separated from her community, and now with a dangerous target on her back. Courtesy of the media coverage of her crime, as well as her neo nazi tattoos, it's easy to picture a world where King's story ends here. She's part of a violent white supremacist gang.

867
02:14:16,464 --> 02:15:02,356
Kayla: While in prison, incarcerated people have been killed by others for less. And even if her physical life didnt end here, as Weve learned on this show, even the most heinous of identities can become so deeply ingrained that it seems like theres no way out for the person. King was self loathing, isolated, bullied, angry, and entrenched. How could she possibly hope to turn her life into something else? Well, according to some former white supremacists, that hope can often be found in minor moments of kindness. Someone can be pulled out of hopelessness by a simple interaction. For kingdom, that interaction was a black inmate approaching her and asking her if she knew how to play cribbage. King did not, and the woman referred to as Jamaica in an article on UCF's website. University of Central Florida then taught her how to play.

868
02:15:02,548 --> 02:15:44,500
Kayla: King has no doubt that Jamaica knew why she was in prison, and the unexpected moment of kindness disarmed her as she learned to play cribbage. And as she got closer to Jamaica and other inmates of color, her worldview slowly shifted, allowing her to claw her way out of the identity she felt imprisoned by. Over the next two years, the cribbage games morphed into tough conversations about race and King's actions in her life. And when King was finally released, she knew she wanted more for herself and for the people she used to hate. She avoided reassociating with her former neo nazi friends and found enough work to move out of her family home and began attending community college classes. She also began to speak freely about her experiences, both her transformative experience in prison as well as her white supremacist actions that led her there.

869
02:15:44,660 --> 02:15:55,244
Kayla: She wrote about her past as part of her applications to four year colleges, and after multiple rejections, she was accepted to the University of Central Florida, eventually earning her bachelor's degree and a master's degree.

870
02:15:55,332 --> 02:15:56,212
Chris: Go nights.

871
02:15:56,356 --> 02:16:20,364
Kayla: Is that what they are? Yeah, go nights from there. And in addition to all this, she committed herself to the work of truly setting her life on a different track than her racist passed. She joined organizations like the Southern Poverty Law center and the Anti Defamation League. She began the process of having her tattoos removed, and eventually, she helped found life after hate, an organization that is, quote, dedicated to helping individuals leave.

872
02:16:20,452 --> 02:16:23,680
Chris: That's why I know her name. Okay.

873
02:16:24,100 --> 02:16:48,209
Kayla: Dedicated to helping individuals leave the white power movement and start building a more fulfilling and positive life, just like we did. King co founded the organization along with five others who had managed to pull away from the seemingly impossible lives and identities dedicated to hate and violence. As a founding member of the group, King has helped create programs like Exit USA, which specializes in helping to disengage those involved in hate groups, reintegrating them into healthy communities.

874
02:16:48,670 --> 02:17:21,766
Chris: Actually, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but this kind of reminds me of what were just talking about, like, going through rather than around, sort of like, she is not the same person she was before her experiences. Right, right. There's no going back to that. But her experiences, the change that she. That happened in her, has led her to just this incredible place that may not have been possible without the, albeit terrible, awful experiences she had.

875
02:17:21,838 --> 02:17:43,260
Kayla: Life after hate doesn't exist without people identifying what they've done and facing it. And deciding to do something about it right, rather than just denying that it happened or what have you. So she helped create exit USA. She helped create formers Anonymous, which is a twelve step.

876
02:17:43,959 --> 02:17:45,160
Chris: Yes, twelve steps.

877
02:17:45,240 --> 02:18:08,861
Kayla: A twelve step self help group to help former extremists deal with their pasts and move forward. And we counter hate, which is a social media initiative that detects hateful tweets and then messages the author of said tweet to say that a dollar will be donated to life after hate for every retweet of the message that occurs. And this often I know, and this often results in the original tweet getting deleted or helps limit the shares.

878
02:18:09,046 --> 02:18:11,250
Chris: That's really clever and awesome.

879
02:18:11,750 --> 02:18:50,700
Kayla: As King herself tells it once I would have described myself as a warrior, a proud white woman willing to do anything necessary to save her people. I'll be apologizing for the rest of my life for that. But this work no longer feels like penance. I own my mistakes but have compassion for myself. I've stepped into the human being I am today. I'm more than I ever could have given myself credit for. Organizations like life after hate remind us that no matter how hopeless a situation might feel, no matter how trapped someone might be in their extremist worldview, despair isn't necessarily the inevitable outcome. There is support out there, and there are people waiting with open arms to heal the whole hopelessness with something as painfully difficult and painfully simple as kindness.

880
02:18:54,400 --> 02:18:59,056
Chris: This has been season two of cult or just weird. I'm Chris.

881
02:18:59,168 --> 02:19:00,219
Kayla: I'm Kayla.

882
02:19:00,520 --> 02:19:02,080
Chris: See you guys next year.