-QAnon is the single
greatest information operation
in the history of humanity.
- Our kids are not for sale!
- Our kids are not for sale!
-You know, currency of the elite
basically is babies.
-[ Speaking in tongues ]
-Drinking children's blood,
adrenochrome
This stuff has been going on.
- Where we go one
- We go all.
-There was a new phenomenon this
week, something called QAnon.
-What exactly is QAnon, and why
is it making headlines now?
-On Saturday, October 28, 2017,
a series of posts
on the message board 4chan
-which is an anonymous
online message
- Message board
- Claimed the arrest
of Hillary Clinton was scheduled
for the following Monday.
-The anonymous user
claimed to be
a high-level government insider,
but signed the post only Q
A nod to
Q level security clearance
granted
by the Department of Energy.
-An army of digital soldiers
quickly assembled behind Q.
-Where we go one, we go all.
- Where we go one, we go all.
- God bless America.
-Trump began retweeting accounts
associated with Q.
-Our president just gave
the most damning Q proof ever.
-The president condemns
and denounces any group
that would incite violence.
-This is a militant group.
There's been two murders tied
to this group this year alone.
-QAnon is a military operation.
That's why they're not allowed
to talk about it.
-As Q supporters began running
for Congress
and headlines
about Q invaded everyone's
social-media feeds,
millions around the globe,
began asking their friends
and family
- What the f*ck is Q?
- What the f*ck is Q?
♪♪
-We have an army
of digital soldiers.
♪♪
-You're with dealing with one of
the most experienced spies
you're ever gonna meet.
-It's meant to be kind
of like a big joke.
-It's called QAnon,
a fringe conspiracy theory
that some have likened
to an online religion.
-Well, I don't know much
about the movement
other than I understand
they like me very much.
-As long as these drops
are still continuing,
it matters a lot.
Because who's writing them
and who is having
all this influence?
-What exactly is QAnon, and
why is it making headlines now?
[ Indistinct chanting ]
♪♪
[ Woman on P.A.
speaking indistinctly ]
Please have your boarding pass
and identification ready.
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
-Which gate are we again?
- We're right there.
- Oh, okay.
-Hey. You made it.
- Hello.
- Hi.
My entire life, I've been a bit
of a political nerd,
so unsurprisingly, I've spent
my career in or around campaigns
and public policy
in Washington, D.C.
-Growing up in Israel,
I saw firsthand
what it looks like
to be at w*r with your neighbor.
I became a filmmaker
to tell stories
that positively address
ideological divides.
Back in 2012, I helped launch
a YouTube
- SoulPancake.
- SoulPancake.
- where our mission
was to make videos
that inspired
deeper conversations
than you could typically find
online.
-After the 2016 election,
a friend talked me
into quitting my stable job
and spending a really
weird couple of years
making a documentary with him.
"Active Measures."
- Yeah, no.
- You've seen it?
- When Marley came to L.A
-We discovered we were both
obsessed with a new phenomenon
on the scene.
- An anonymous figure known as Q,
which connected our worlds,
the Internet and politics.
-I wanted to know Q's identity,
who the person behind the cloak
was because it seems
like a political operation
designed to weaponize
societal divisions
and foment distrust
in our institutions.
-What I didn't see happening
in the coverage around Q
was a desire to better
understand why Q exists,
and as a result, things
have become much more hostile,
and it feels like having
a conversation
is nearly impossible.
-Which is dangerous
for our democracy.
And so in the middle
of a pandemic
-Marley and I packed our bags.
-And headed out to find Q.
Almost everyone these days
knows someone
who's fallen down
the Q rabbit hole.
We're no exception. We're
starting in Tampa, Florida.
We're meeting
Bayan's friend J.T.
to learn how a former
Bernie Bro took a turn
and has devoted his career to Q.
It feels like a perfect
starting point
to get an understanding
of what Q is
and how someone becomes
so enveloped in the movement.
-Where we go one ♪
We go all ♪
Push you down,
you won't let me fall ♪
One day, for sure
we will stand tall ♪
Where we go one ♪
We go all ♪
-My friend J.T.
is a talented musician
who's become a rock star
in the Q community
after turning several Q slogans
into anthems for the movement.
- So I took my hair down.
- It looks great.
-It looks I mean,
it looks very majestic.
One thing that we connected on
early on
was that you were
a Bernie guy in '15, right?
Yes. And the reason why
'cause he he
he said, "Break the
establishment."
-How did you go
from Bernie to Trump?
-Bernie got kicked out
of the running.
I was furious at Hillary.
[ Indistinct chanting,
shouting ]
And then Trump came out.
He started saying the things
that I liked about Bernie,
which was fighting
against the establishment.
-Our movement is about replacing
a failed and corrupt
and when I say "corrupt,"
I'm talking about
totally corrupt
political establishment.
-So how did you find Q?
-Jordan Sather, who I love,
literally probably the two days
after Q posted,
I saw his feed about it.
And I'm like,
"What the heck is this?"
-Q information.
All of this is just going
to be mainly questions
I'm gonna throw out there and
thoughts for you guys to ponder.
-So So strategic to, like,
reel you in,
you know?
- Right.
-You'd Like, they put in
a code, and you're like,
"What the hell does that mean?"
And then you figure out
what it means,
and you go, "Whoa!
I figured out what it means!"
It's a game, but it's a game
with insider information
that you can't get
from anywhere else.
It's like going to college
for the deep state.
-So it wasn't, like, a moment?
It was kind of, like, gradual
and over time
that you discovered
-It Well, it
Listen, anybody
that is involved
in the Q movement
that can't admit it's a psyop
is too blind to see that
it's a psyop. It is a psyop.
- What's a psyop?
- It's a psychological operation.
-A psyop, or psychological
operation, is usually
a military-led strategy
to influence a population's
emotions,
motives,
and objective reasoning.
-We wrapped up the interview
in the parking lot,
and I hopped
in J.T.'s car to catch up.
-Right after 2016,
I was reunited
with one of my best friends.
We got a We started a band.
It was my dream
to be playing with him again.
And everything lined up
and and in the way,
you know, I thought that I
wanted my career to be, and
And and then this happened,
and
my eyes were opened to something
that I knew existed
and I couldn't put
my finger on it,
and it gave me an opportunity to
start to put my finger on it.
- In 2018,
J.T. was inspired by Q and began
writing songs for the movement.
-The songs all came out,
and beginning in 2018,
he just said, "Nah, dude.
I can't be
I can't be around that."
-Unfortunately
J.T.'s best friend
didn't feel as inspired by Q.
-I had I
Of course, I love the guy.
I-I honor him.
And it was almost like
an ultimatum.
Like, I could put it away.
I could, like, say,
"Well, this isn't worth,
you know, just writing music
about all the time."
And for, you know, some reason,
I-I didn't make that choice,
I made the choice
to take the hard road.
Where we go one, we go all.
Because
Well, I'm a rebel.
[ Laughs ]
And nobody
is gonna tell me what to do.
-We pulled over to eat and
J.T. got an alert on his phone.
What just happened?
- Yeah. So, dude,
like, Q just posted.
Says that "this nation under God
shall have a new birth
of freedom,
and that government
of the people, by the people,
for the people shall not perish
from the Earth."
"Abraham Lincoln, November 1863.
Together we win."
The question I get from people
that don't really know about Q,
but just have heard of him
is, you know,
it does make you wonder why
they would try so hard
to make it sound awful
and bad and evil.
And it's like, they
Thousands of articles,
thousands of articles
written about about it
as a insane and evil
and extremist.
-A conspiracy group
whose theories
make alien-invader claims
sound mainstream.
-Falsely claim that the world
is run
by a Satanic cabal of elites.
-The Bureau warned some of
those conspiracy theories
will "likely motivate
some domestic extremists."
-If If it was all bullshit
and it was all fake,
why would they try so hard
to diminish it?
-This is all insane
and incoherent.
-It's because they know
it isn't. It's real.
But, you know, dude,
I just can't wait for a day
when we can just sit back and,
like, go see football again.
To not have to worry
if if there's gonna be
a a protest on the field.
Let them just be the NFL.
And if people want to watch it,
they watch it. And
-Well, that's akin, to, like,
you as a
People saying to you,
as an artist,
being like,
"Well, you just b sing songs
about booze and women
and money and cars."
- Yeah. That's so true.
-"But, like, don't f*cking touch
this other stuff
because that's not what I come
to check you out for."
- Oh, my God!
Like
- Oh!
-No, no. I kid you.
You I love yo I love you.
- I triggered you now.
- I No, no.
But I just I love that
That, you know,
you can You can make me see
something I wasn't seeing
and and and we can laugh
about it, man.
And it's You're right.
- Much love, dude.
- J.T. was drawn to Q
because of
political frustrations,
and Q's gamified model
pulled him in further.
But there's more to Q
than anti-establishment games.
We wanted to hear more about
the unfounded theories of QAnon
and how they were able to take
such a big stronghold
on the country.
Coming up after the break
-I-I do think that at very high
levels that it it also
involves sort of ritualistic
practices, some cult stuff.
Imagine "Eyes Wide Shut,"
but with kids.
-Let's do this.
Bunker times.
- Bunker times?
-This is really where I shine.
Let's go over, like,
sort of just QAnon 101.
-Alright, so Q drops
are these cryptic posts
that come directly
from an anonymous figure
that goes by Q.
-The people
who read those drops,
they're the ones who are
referred to as Anons.
And that's where
the "Anon" part comes.
-The most dedicated Anons,
are known as bakers.
-So if you give me
an hour of your time,
by the end of this,
you'll probably be able
to make up your mind
whether you think Q is a LARP,
is a phony, or whether you think
Q is worth paying attention to.
-And what those bakers do is,
they take Q's drops,
which are also called
bread crumbs,
they obsessively research it,
and then they create content
that could be videos,
it could be tweets or posts,
that then interpret it
for the general public.
-Okay, so they're The bakers
are the people
who are wrapping
the bread crumbs together
and creating this actual thing.
- Exactly.
They're putting it
in the oven, you know.
- That's why they're called that.
- But I will say the OGs
Jordan Sather
- Mm-hmm.
- Praying Medic
- Mm-hmm.
- InTheMatrix and Dustin Nemos.
- Yeah, Dustin is
- And that's just
That's an abbreviated list,
you know.
-Yeah. Alright.
I don't know if you know this,
but Dustin is on the lineup
to be at QCon
in Jacksonville this weekend.
- Let's do it.
- Okay.
-QAnon's book, "An Invitation
to the Great Awakening"
shot to number one on Amazon's
list of best sellers.
-The book contains a compilation
of unproven radical conspiracy
theories suggesting
high-ranking Democrats
are part of a cult
that eats children,
claiming the government created
A*DS,
and saying it's also behind the
movie "Monsters, Inc."
Dustin Nemos is a fixture
in the Q World.
In 2018, he published
"QAnon: An Invitation
to the Great Awakening,"
making him the guy who quite
literally wrote the book on Q,
which includes
a number of conspiracy theories
which have not proven
to be true.
-So the fake news has really
gone from "ignore QAnon"
to "attack,"
and it's beautiful to see.
First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they attack you,
and then you win.
And we are winning, my friends.
-I'm sorry.
-I can try. Maybe.
I'm a little sensitive to light
because I stay up too late.
-Yeah, I feel that.
I'm a vampire.
-Three years of that, man.
I don't work out anymore either.
I-I just sit at the computer
for like 17 hours a day.
-You are really one of
the leaders of the Q movement.
People look to you
and your opinion.
If we could just start with
who you are.
- Well, I
-Could you just give us
a rundown of who you are?
-I'm I Honestly,
I'm just a a entrepreneur
who started a YouTube channel,
and it took off,
and it turned
into sort of a surprise career.
I mean, I was just covering
the news,
but then I was banned a month
before my daughter was born.
So here I am with bills,
a a baby on the way,
and and a pregnant wife.
And it's, like, winter,
6 feet of snow outside.
And I'm about to be evicted
because of YouTube.
-What was the first time
that you kind of ran into Q?
-Christmas Eve 2017,
I jumped in.
New Q post going into
who and where
the pedophiles
in government are.
When I started to see some of
the the games
that they were playing with
Trump's Twitter, for example,
that's when I really started
to pay attention to it.
One famous example
He had a 00:00-second difference
on a post that Q and Trump
posted at the same time
three times in one day.
So there's, like,
a no-time-at-all difference.
That was Oh. It's kind of
bright, guys. Sorry.
That's sort of our methodology
of establishing who he is
and that it's the real,
legitimate Q.
When they asked President Trump
to say "tip-top," "tippy-top,"
and he did so on Easter.
That's a very specific phrase.
-And we keep it
in tip-top shape.
We call it sometimes
tippy-top shape.
-Speaking of the messenger,
there have been a lot
of theories on who Q is.
- Sure.
-First of all, do you Do you
have your own theory?
- I have a few.
- A few?
- Mm-hmm.
- Do you want to tell us?
-I don't want the world
to know who Q is
because it will probably
get the team k*lled.
-Okay, does that change for you
if tomorrow's Q drop says that,
"Now's the time.
Everybody get their g*ns,
and we are going to start
Take to the streets
and hunt these leftists"?
- No. I would defend them.
- No?
- You would defend the leftists?
- Yes.
-How do you think the rest
of the community would respond?
-I would honestly put forth
without even knowing the numbers
that the Q movement
is the most peaceful movement
in the history of mankind.
And I think they would look
to Trump
for sort of clarity on that.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
-What I see is a lot of people
who actually really do want
to converse
before we reach this tipping
point where we can't anymore.
And in a way, I think, like,
this doc,
is is an attempt
to do that, you know?
- Mm-hmm. That's true.
-I hope so.
That would be great.
-Okay, but you think that Q
as a movement will continue
to come together post
In a post-Trump world?
-Sure. The need
would not have stopped.
Kids would still be getting hurt
and
And probably more boldly
than ever,
because if they had beaten
Trump,
then they had kind of beaten
the great challenge
to their rule.
So, you know,
currency of the elite basically
is babies.
They're They're trafficking
in children.
And it's used as blackmail
with entities
like Epstein and NXIVM.
It's used to control
powerful people.
Like, we know Maxwell
allegedly has tapes
on high-level U.S. politicians.
I-I do think that
at very high levels
that it it also involves
sort of ritualistic practices,
some occult stuff.
And I think that's
That's probably kind of
a mind-control thing, you know?
Imagine "Eyes Wide Shut,"
but with kids.
-It does carry with it
part of a conspiracy
that's existed
for a very long time.
-Adrenochrome
is a legitimate drug.
- What is this sh*t?
- That stuff? Adrenochrome.
-It is harvested a specific way,
and that is through t*rture
and adrenalization,
you know, fear, pain,
most often from children.
-Adrenochrome is a chemical
compound used in some countries
to treat blood clots.
It is not harvested
from children.
-Even Q has dropped images
in the past of ab*rtion clinics
that were harvesting
and keeping them alive for days
because they're worth more.
So this stuff does happen.
Child trafficking
is a big business, you know,
multi-, multi-billions of
dollars.
You can sell drugs once,
you can sell g*ns once.
You can sell a child
a hundred times a day.
- Gosh, that's dark.
- Yeah.
-While the country faces a real
child trafficking problem,
none of Dustin's claims
about harvesting adrenochrome
from ab*rtion clinics
have proven to be true.
As our camera team
was packing up,
Dustin made one last comment.
No.
- No.
- It is what happens
- Dustin went on to explain
one of the most violent
and horrific acts imaginable.
It shows how for many that see
the world through Q's filter,
suddenly things like pizza,
hot dogs, and pandas
become confirmation of the worst
possible assumptions
that you could have
about another person.
-Coming up after the break
-Buckey Wolfe
out in the Pacific Northwest.
This was a young man who was
very troubled, got into QAnon,
and he allegedly k*lled
his brother with a samurai sword
because he was convinced
he was a lizard.
-That's what makes it dangerous.
It's a call to arms centered
around an idea
that the people who should be
in some way targeted
are not even human beings.
-Will Sommer is a national
reporter for The Daily Beast
whose focus on Q
has resulted in him
becoming the target of Q drops
and the Anons.
- Hey, how it's going?
- And Angelo Carusone
is the president
of Media Matters for America,
a nonprofit media watchdog
that has been tracking Q
since its creation.
Why is QAnon considered
so dangerous?
-You know, we've always gone
after the right.
We've, you know,
had death threats before
and other sorts of things.
This has been different.
You know, we've had to have
security at the office
during periods of time
because of the amount of threats
that have happened.
It's harder to, I think,
ensure the safety of staff.
They go after us, and they use
the same tactics that they use
on people every day
Doxing, harassment, trolling.
Doxing is You know, they will
pull private information
and post about it online.
You know, not that long ago,
somebody dox'd
my sister and my niece.
-I hear several times a week,
I would say,
from people who have lost
their families to QAnon
or have lost a husband
or a a son or a mother.
And these are often people who,
you know, they go on Facebook,
you know, in March
when the pandemic's starting,
and suddenly they see
all this QAnon stuff,
and they just fall headfirst
into it.
-A lot of it is tied into the
same actions and behaviors
that makes them
deeply connected to QAnon.
You are doing your own research.
You're investigating,
you're deciphering clues.
You're invested in the idea
in a different way
than just, say,
believing a conspiracy theory.
It's a lot harder to disentangle
somebody from that.
-Should Q classified
as a domestic terrorism threat?
-QAnon, we know in one case
has already inspired
domestic terrorism
In the case
of the the Hoover Dam
ar armored truck situation.
-Did you know that there is
a man on the bridge with a g*n?
-In 2018, a man blocked
the entrance to the Hoover Dam
in an armored truck with a sign
that said
"Release the OIG report."
-They were convinced,
based off of all this chatter
in the Q threads,
that inside this report,
finally, all of the prime people
within the deep state
that were running this child sex
trafficking conspiracy
would be exposed.
- I think with QAnon,
it certainly sort of
It can give a sort of force
for these people
who are already disturbed.
Buckey Wolf,
out of the Pacific Northwest.
This was a young man
who was very troubled,
got into QAnon, and he allegedly
k*lled his brother
with a samurai sword
because he was convinced
he was a lizard.
-Stating, "I will dash you
lizards to pieces like pottery."
-Buckey Wolfe was a young man
who fell down the Q rabbit hole
and became convinced
Donald Trump was communicating
with him through
coded messages on the Q boards.
-Anthony Comello was another
QAnon-related crime.
-24-year-old Anthony Comello
was taken into custody.
-He basically just falls down
the QAnon hole, like
so many people have before,
and he decides that, you know,
he's going to go
citizen's arrest
the head of a Mafia family.
And so he figures out
where this guy lives,
and he rolls up,
you know, allegedly and slams
into the guy's truck
and shoots him.
And then Comello gets in court,
and he holds up his hand,
and he's drawn a Q on it.
And, I mean, people are stunned.
-There's a few major narratives
and themes,
but they always weave it back
to this idea
of this massive operation
of child sex trafficking.
And the reason why all of
these Democrats and the media
and deep state are running these
child sex trafficking rings
is because they're demons
feeding off of these children.
-We're talking about people
in banking and Hollywood
were drinking children's blood.
So this is playing
on some kind of, like, classic
anti-Semitic tropes.
I mean, George Soros
looms very large in QAnon.
-Which means they're not human.
They're otherworldly.
That to me is what makes it
dangerous.
It's a call to arms
centered around an idea
that the people who should be
in some way targeted
are not even human beings.
-I think the initial reaction
is, "Surely this can't be,
and surely, you know,
we're talking about
maybe a dozen kooks
on the Internet,"
but then when you start
kind of showing to people
that really, I mean,
this is the Internet
reaching into our real world
and this is really happening,
and, you know,
we can't just look away from it.
-How big do you think
the movement is?
-Overall I'd put it at about
10% of the population,
10% to 15%.
-Though the size of the movement
is widely debated,
Angelo's assessment
closely matches ours,
which lands at about
30 million followers in the U.S.
-It is true that some of
the trafficking stats are awful.
It's actually a reflection
of having bad domestic services.
So I don't dismiss it.
I embrace it.
Yes, this is a terrible thing,
and we better damn well
do something about it.
But the answer is not to run
to
To any right-wing philosophy
that's gonna strip
those services more.
-But I think on kind of
a more mundane
but still very tragic level,
I think just people who are
alienated from their family,
from their relatives, because
they get so into QAnon,
and then suddenly it's all
they want to talk about.
-On a personal level,
I understand
that you have seen this
in your own life.
- Yeah.
-Would you be comfortable
talking a little about that?
-Sure.
I mean, it happens to everybody,
even if they they don't
fully appreciate
or even know why that person
seems to be gone.
You know, it You know, in
my case, it's a family member.
It's an uncle who's gone fully
down the Q rabbit hole.
Somebody that I grew up with
telling me that Donald Trump
was gonna put my head
on a pike, you know,
and, like, at least
I would assume, knows
that I'm not, like,
running this,
like, massive
child sex trafficking ring
where I'm a demon
eating children.
I would at least assume that.
It's pretty clear
that he's gone, and
yeah, he's gone.
He's completely gone.
- I'm very sorry to hear that.
- So sorry.
- Yeah, that's terrible.
- Yeah.
A lot of times,
when we think about this
The violence like this,
it seems like it's gonna be
in the context
of political violence.
And, sure,
I think that's possible.
But I actually think
it's gonna be like most violence
that occurs with people
they know and love,
because they will be convinced
that they're doing
something nefarious,
that they're running
a child sex trafficking ring,
that they're members
of the deep state,
and they will take matters
into their own hands.
- Coming up
- After the break
-If Q does exist and Q is real
and we are finding out that
there is this Satanic worship,
the devil and all this stuff,
if this proves
all of that stuff,
that will make me happy
because it will have undeniable
proof that Satan exists
and you have to acknowledge
that Christ exists.
-We're in Chicago to meet
Dominick Izzo,
a former police officer
and online personality
who recently began
looking into Q.
-Oh, this one's gonna piss
a lot of you f*ck off.
-Alright.
How would you describe Q
to someone
who's never heard of it before?
-Q is about ending
child sex trafficking.
I don't know
another worthy cause
outside of that.
I got bit by the Q bug
back in February of this year.
I think that it was just about
the beginning of the lockdown,
so before March.
I don't recall what it was.
I No, I think it was
the Janet Ossebaard
"Fall of Cabal" documentary.
I was captivated. And I watched,
and I watched, and I watched.
And for me, somebody who was
pretty good at discerning,
somebody who's pretty good
at needing and requiring facts
to make a concrete decision,
I was
I wanted to believe it bad.
-And so what brought you
to become a police officer?
-Ideology.
I wanted to change the world.
Are you kidding me?
Loved it.
I'm Christian.
I was raised Catholic.
When you start looking
at what is supposed to be
the most righteous organization
on the planet, Rome,
the Vatican,
the Catholic Church,
how hard is it to believe
then that you flip
that side of the coin
and there's gonna be
a darker, more nefarious cabal,
if you will, that is operating
off of the same aspect.
Satanic rituals,
drinking children's blood,
adrenochrome
This stuff has been going on.
If Q does exist and Q is real,
that will make me happy
because it will have undeniable
proof that Satan exists
and you have to acknowledge
that Christ exists.
-That's insane.
Right?
-Ashley Bryant is the founder
of Win Black/Pa'lante,
a national campaign hub
designed to counter
disinformation
and voter suppression efforts.
-You're using "misinformation"
and "disinformation"
sort of interchangeably.
- Mm.
-Do you find a distinction
in those?
-Misinformation is is
without intent.
In the beginning
of the pandemic, right,
there wasn't
a lot of information out there.
The country was scrambling
to figure out what's happening.
Disinformation is with
the intent to disinform.
I like to just call them
plain old lies
[Laughs]
quite quite honestly.
- Just some bullshit, you know?
- Just some bullshit.
-In an Instagram post recently
that you referred
to BLM supporters
as "subhuman."
- 100%.
- What do you mean by that?
- 100%. Black Lives Matter,
anybody who supports them is
Is subhuman, in my opinion.
-I mean, I support Black Lives
Matter. Am I subhuman?
-I'm very black and white,
and I'm extremely polarizing.
So my my "subhuman"
That's always gonna be my
emotional, like, polarizing post
because I absolutely always post
for controversy's sake
and to create it
and to stir a narrative.
-The other thing that we're
noticing a lot is, like,
language that dehumanizes
Black Lives Matter.
What is the effect
of that type of language?
-It has large effects.
Simply being a black person
in America is challenging.
And so to be beat down
and diminished and dehumanized,
as as you said,
it just continues
to add this additional layer.
-Don't you deserve to know
who I really am?
Don't you deserve to know?
Oh, he thinks that these people
are subhuman. 100%.
-Another favorite of yours
seems to be the pushing
that Michelle Obama is a man.
Can you talk to us about that?
- Oh, my gosh, yes.
It's I [Sighs]
I hate that woman.
And I will go down
that conspiracy theory
when she's dancing on "Ellen."
You bet. I love enjoying
these these fantasy
and fantastical possibilities
that are out that.
I'm not a fan of her personally.
So why would You know,
yeah, why wouldn't I go low?
-And And this just goes
to show
how dark these groups
are willing to go,
because to use that, you know,
transphobic type of of
commentary
when it's so easily debunked.
- I know.
-I mean, I think that's the most
confusing thing to me,
is that they double down
on these lies
that literally takes a half
second for someone to debunk.
I mean, it's like
this birtherism, right?
It's It's You know,
all of these narratives
are are just
It's pure ridiculousness.
Are these sophisticated tactics?
No.
They're able to do that
because they have
a listening ear to folks
that are willing to believe
these narratives
to make themselves feel better,
to make them make them
feel better
about their unfounded hate.
-They're my opinions.
And at the end of the day,
you know,
I guess I-I-I'll be an as*h*le,
but I still will hope
you'll see that that's
That's a part of me,
but it doesn't define
everything that I am.
♪♪
-That was really rough for me.
Talking to Dom
was really unsettling.
I felt
I was sort of taken aback
at how offensive
a lot of the things he said
was in this sort of
very friendly manner.
Right? He was, like,
looking at us in the eye
and was like, "Yeah, yeah,
I think you're subhuman."
-Right. Yeah. I mean, I think
And the thing His follow-up
to that of explanation,
which is that over time
he learned that creating posts
that were as polarizing
as possible
was a way that he can kind of
grow his audience online.
And I think
that's a great example,
when you read between the lines
of how social media amplifies
kind of the most outrageous
messages.
- As a police officer
- Mm.
- he's had this training,
and he understands
how to investigate things.
And yet looking
at these numbers,
he felt that he's doing
something about it
by just posting these things
instead of joining
a legitimate organization
- Mm.
- that's fighting
human trafficking.
-And that
"Save Our Children" thing
becomes kind of the soft
- Is that.
-the soft pill before you get
to the other level of Q, right?
Like, you kind of come
in the door with, like,
let's stop child
sex trafficking,
and then you leave thinking
there is this global conspiracy.
-And I think the the thing
that stands out to me
when I think
about the difference
between those is, they act like
it's this grassroots movement
and it's not.
It's some person somewhere
that has made a decision
to do this
Make put these ideas
in people's heads.
-Yeah. So I guess I just don't
at this point,
like, don't really know how much
of that I know to be true.
How do we untangle the web,
you know, that's been created
to try to put some order
to what just appears
to the outside viewer as chaos?
- Let's work on it.
- Yeah.
-Now, the chans may seem chaotic
to the naked eye,
but the chans are actually
a constant competition
Who can create the most viral
or outrageous thing?
-This girl went missing,
and now Wayfair is selling
this cabinet
with the same name for $12,000.
[ Siren wailing ]
-[ Chanting ]
Our kids are not for sale!
Our kids are not for sale!
[ Horn blows ]
-You got to read
between the lines.
- You need to stop with this.
- You need to calm down, sir.
- Now, look, I mean, if
- You need to calm down
a little bit.
-This is the U.S.A.!
[ Horn blowing ]
-You think this is
a distraction?
- No. I
- I'm done with this.
This is why CNN is a joke.
- I just said
-You can't even report
the facts on daily news.
Get the f*ck out of here.
-We're standing up for the
whole world, for all the kids.
-The Great Awakening's here.
♪♪
-Everybody I have enough
for everybody on the crew,
so you can come and grab meat.
-There you go. Toss
Toss it up, man.
- I'll toss it up.
-Julian Feeld, Jake Rockatansky,
and Travis View have watched
the Q movement unfold
from the very beginning.
-We usually, like, order tacos.
-In August 2018,
they launched a podcast
called "QAnon Anonymous."
-More than two years later,
it's become the go-to place
for those who are Q curious,
looking for the latest update.
So how do you guys think
that Q went from being
just this sort of obscure
movement on the Internet,
living in the chans
to a political movement?
-So Q started on the 4chan
message board.
-The chans, they go back
to Japanese nihilism.
2channel and other image boards
that became prevalent there
among young people
who didn't have opportunities
and, you know
And were just like,
"Well, I feel alone
and disconnected.
I can't get a girlfriend."
And so that culture spread
to the United States.
What started defining them
is the anonymity.
You can go there and say
anything. Just let it loose.
Doesn't matter.
No No consequences.
Now, the chans may seem chaotic
to the naked eye,
but the chans are actually
a constant competition
Who can create the most viral
or outrageous thing?
-One classic example is
the Wayfair conspiracy theory.
-This girl went missing.
And now Wayfair
is selling this cabinet
with the same name for $12,000.
But that's not it.
This girl missing.
This cabinet with coincidentally
the same exact name
that she has $13,000.
-Even though there's
no substance to this,
it caught on amongst people
who maybe have
never even heard of Q.
-The actual people
who they would put
as the missing person
- Oh, yeah. Yes.
- would come up on Facebook
and be like
-Why am I mad?
Because I'm not missing!
f*ck out of here.
- But it does seem like
there were iterations of Q
over time,
and it continues to evolve.
- Yeah.
-Were there any precursors?
-The insider anon
was a common genre on 4chan.
You know, but prior to QAnon,
there was one called FBI Anon
- Right.
- in 2016, who also claimed
to have insider information
about im imminent prosecution
of Hillary Clinton.
So this was
a common genre of post.
And usually, you know,
this supposed insider claims
that, you know, some big thing
is going to happen,
and the Anons play along,
or they try to trip them up.
It's mostly treated as a game.
-You guys have studied this more
than anybody.
I mean, really.
So who is it? Who's Q?
-Some evidence has been gathered
of who may
or may not be involved.
There's the early days
in which we get to see
the kind of early influencers
like Tracy Beanz
or pamphlet anon.
There's that small crew.
Then we don't know
if it's changed hands
a bunch of times.
Now, at this point, we do know
that there's another point
where some evidence is gathered,
which is through 8chan,
and now 8kun itself.
Jim Watkins and his son,
Ron Watkins, who 8kun,
and people around them,
like, they at the very least,
have verified the identity of Q
and said this is the correct
and authentic Q.
They've had to do
that multiple times over.
So he or she or they,
whoever Q is,
has at the very least
been in contact with them
and jumped through some hoops
to kind of reassert
that they're Q.
♪♪
-So, we've talked to a ton
of people in this community,
and it is very clear to me
that certainly this
has been massively impactful.
I want to know who's behind it.
- Let's do this.
-Okay, so, top theories.
There was the theory
of Patriots' Soapbox.
That was the theory that
this company, Patriots' Soapbox,
which was made up of a woman
named Tracy Beanz,
who's a YouTuber,
and Coleman Rogers
and Paul Furber.
And they were sort of,
I guess, bakers,
but seemed to have
a lot of access.
And then there was videos
of Tracy
yelling at the president
that she's Q.
- We are Q!
- Thank you, thank you.
-We are Q. We're Q!
- Thank you.
- We organized the whole thing!
-There is the idea
that this was all a joke, right?
- All for a Larp, yeah.
- Oh, yeah. All for a Larp.
-That was big in 2018
when Jack Posobiec came out
saying that, "I know who Q is.
I'm gonna publish
this report on OAN.
I've talked to the founders.
We started Q as a joke
on Trump supporters
and we just wanted to see
how far we could take it."
-I could see that being
a funny joke.
Recently, I just heard this,
and I've been trying
to reach out to him.
But this guy Fred Brennan
- Mm.
- Who started 8chan
is claiming that the guy
who now runs 8chan
- Jim Watkins.
- That's his name, Jim Watkins.
Is the person who controls Q.
Who else do we have
to look into?
-Yeah, I mean,
the last one I think
we shouldn't rule out yet
is that it actually is somebody
close to the president and
-Well, I'm just not gonna
give it that kind of credit,
though, right now.
So we're gonna say that for me,
the thing that seems
most promising,
at least from just an entry
point, is the Watkins theory.
- Yes.
- So, uh, let's talk to Fred.
-Fred Brennan has made
national news this week
by appearing on my favorite
podcast, "Reply All,"
saying that his former
business partner, Jim Watkins,
has taken over Q's account.
-I'm making a very specific
claim.
He's not a maker. He's a taker.
He took 8chan,
and now he's taken Q.
It is known that he has control
over the Q account.
-We good?
-Where'd you pull
that water from?
-Just behind the dog.
[ Chuckles ]
-What else you got?
[ Laughter ]
-So, before things got all dark
and f*cked up,
what was, like, the problem,
you know, that you were looking
to solve launching 8chan?
-The reason I really made 8chan
was just 'cause
I thought that
the users of 4chan
don't have enough control
of the topic of the board,
that there are only
30 or 40 boards.
In the whole kind of early '10s,
I very much believed
that users having control
of the board was a good thing.
-But everything changed
in September 2014
when rival platform 4chan
banned all discussions
of GamerGate,
a coordinated harassment
campaign against women
working in
the video game industry.
-Before GamerGate,
we got like 100 posts per hour.
And then after GamerGate,
it was like 7,000, 6,000.
Okay, am I gonna kick them off?
Or, look at all these users
I have now!
I made the shitty decision
to allow them to stay.
And yeah, that totally
changed the site.
-Hi, guys. I'm Jim!
-Was that kind of when
When the Watkins family
reaching out to you
really landed?
-Uh-huh. Yeah. The Watkins
family's pitch to me
"We own this huge Japanese site
that gets millions
and millions
of anonymous posts per day,
and we want to help you
host 8chan.
Any problem you're having,
we'll fix it."
They said, you know,
we'll have a contract.
It'll be like 60/40
of future profits.
And, you know, back then,
I thought there might be
some future profits.
So I went to the Philippines
in October 2014.
-So, what was your, like,
day-to-day life like
in the Philippines?
- Really easy. [ Laughs ]
I mean, really easy
compared to here, you know.
All I had to do
was kind of focus on 8chan,
which took up my entire day.
It seemed like, hey, maybe
this will work, you know?
But then the shootings happened.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-Hours before a 28-year-old
Australian man
calmly walked into this mosque
and m*rder*d 51 people,
he posted a 74-page manifesto
laying out his motivation
on a website called 8chan.
-I just felt like this
isn't maybe such a good idea.
After all, would have wanted
to take it down.
The problem just became
that Watkins had other ideas,
-Proactively censoring is
something that they would do
in the People's Republic
of China.
Americans don't do that.
- In the beginning,
when Q was maybe 10% to 20%
of our users,
we don't need need it.
But now where, after the
shootings, Q stops posting,
their entire site
will have no traffic.
They can't let Q stop posting,
basically.
-By that time, Fred had washed
his hands of his creation,
paving the way for a full
takeover by the Watkins.
8chan was now the exclusive home
of Q Drops,
and Brennan believed
that Jim and his son Ron,
a.k.a CodeMonkey, also took over
Q's online persona.
-I knew that Q had moved
to 8chan 'cause Ron was
real excited about that.
- Okay.
-And, oh, we're gonna get
all this traffic
from the Q board that moved,
and
-I mean, like, did he bring
that business in?
-Basically.
I mean, I feel like he
He was kind of communicating
with Paul Furber at the time,
and making Paul Furber
feel comfortable
with 8chan, basically.
- Okay.
-Paul Furber is the first guy
we know for sure was running
a Q-related board.
- 4chan became so unusable
that then we all moved to 8chan
and the board that I created,
which was Calm Before the Storm,
CBTS.
-Six months after
the Christchurch murders,
8chan is shut down.
The Watkins migrate everything
to a new board they call 8kun,
and Q follows.
While Jim Watkins controls
8kun, Fred suspects
he might not be writing
Q's posts himself.
-He kind of has all these guys
who would be willing
to lie to people, you know,
and to write Q-style posts.
I've heard different names.
Thomas Schoenberger
Heard his name thrown out.
- Tell me, who is that?
-I've tried to avoid going down
the Thomas rabbit hole
'cause I know people who have,
and they haven't ever
brought anything concrete
out of that rabbit hole.
-When you look at this
long enough,
the idea that this is a network
of people, not an individual
Not sexy for a documentary,
right, or like a media piece.
- It's not sexy. It's not.
- But it's But it's the truth.
-But it's the truth.
But as long as these drops
are still continuing,
it matters a lot,
because who's writing them
and who is having
all this influence?
Who else is kind of
in the background?
We don't know.
-Where do you think
Jim Watkins is right now?
-ABC News told us
he's somewhere in America.
You should You should
try to find him.
He'd probably be somewhere
in California, actually.
-We all agree that Jim has
something to do with QAnon,
you know, the publishing
of Q drops right now.
But it doesn't really answer
a lot of questions
for all of the things
before Jim Watkins took over Q.
Like, how what was
the involvement there?
And more importantly,
what was the origin story?
-Unsurprising about the Jim
Jim Watkins accusations,
but interesting about this
Thomas Schoenberger character.
I think we should
definitely look into that.
- Yeah.
- To the bunker.
-[ Laughs ] Good job.
That was the worst high five.
-It was so Nope, that's
clearly not gonna work.
Ready?
- [ Laughs ]
- Yo.
- Oh, you don't even know.
-Wait, what?
-So, Jim Watkins is going to be
in Phoenix tomorrow.
- No way!
- Like, nobody has
talked to this guy.
- Wait, for that QCon?
-Yes.
Someone's got to ask Jim the Q.
-Someone needs to
ask that guy the Q.
- So, this seems like our shot.
- So, uh, that's exciting.
I also have a thing, though.
This guy Thomas Schoenberger.
- Mm, yeah.
- Uh, I've been looking into him
and he's too weird
not to go further on.
[ Both laugh ]
- What kind of weird
are we talking here?
- Yeah, this is a guy who writes
music for babies
to make them smarter.
I don't really know
what happens next,
but apparently he has since
really gone down a very dark
turn and has now several
really serious
criminal charges against him,
including defrauding a bunch of
old women of their life savings
and also a felony
stalking charge.
- That is a dark turn.
- Pretty dark turn.
-Also, really working
both ends of the age spectrum
with the babies
and the old people.
-Yeah, I'm not sure
what's creepier.
- Really monetizing a lot of
- Definitely not sure. Yeah.
-So, we basically have
two key suspects at this point.
On one hand there's Jim,
who we know has some level
of influence over Q.
We just don't
really know how much.
And to play devil's advocate,
just because he controls
the board where Q posts
doesn't mean that he
is actually writing the posts.
Our second theory that's
incubating and forming right now
is figuring out who this guy
Thomas Schoenberger is,
'cause Fred mentioned him.
It seems like a few people
have tried to dig up some info,
but nothing has come to light
quite yet.
So, I'll go look into
the Jim theory
and you look into
the Thomas theory?
- I love it.
- Boom. It's done.
- See you when you're back.
- Too late. It's done.
-Be safe.
- Coming up next time on
- "The Search for Q."
-You're dealing with one of
the most experienced spies
you're ever gonna meet.
[ Applause ]
- Jim Watkins, come on up.
-It was meant to be a parody.
It was meant to be kind of
like a big joke
A joke on the president,
a joke on all these other
people that we could laugh at.
-Q is an elaborately
constructed operation.
-I'm a Trump fan
and I don't care what you say.
-Anybody can be a QAnon. Like,
anybody could be a part of it.
-I hate blue in practice.
Don't believe in it.
-I believe that QAnon
is the single greatest
information operation
in the history of humanity.
-You live in a dream.
Actually, you live
in a nightmare.
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01x01 - What is Q?
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Explore the origins, rise and social impact of QAnon, whose story has been told to the public one outrageous headline at a time.
Explore the origins, rise and social impact of QAnon, whose story has been told to the public one outrageous headline at a time.