October 14, 2020 • 26 mins
In this first episode we give you a crash course on the various different facets to QAnon. We tell you a bit about the history behind this rampant conspiracy theory, explain the imageboards it was founded on, and speak to some of the people who saw it growing from behind the scenes. If you didn't know how dangerous the rapid build up of QAnon's following was, you will after this.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Q and On is the world's largest online political conspiracy movement.
Followers believe someone code named Q is provided them with
secret information from inside the White House. No one really
knows the real identity of Q, though we aim to
change that. I'm Jake Hanrahan and this is Q Clearance,
a podcast series aimed unmasking the true identity of Q.
(00:25):
This is brought to you by I R Radio and
Q Dayta Media. In this first episode, will be getting
to grips with what Q and On is for those
that don't know, looking into the history of this strange movement,
and hearing from some of the main researchers involved in
trying to dismantle Q and On. On juneen, a man
(00:52):
blocked a bridge near the Hoover Dam with a homemade
armored vehicle. Inside. The man held firearms and nine hundred
rounds about nisition So now in FBI custody tonight after
blocking traffic on the Hoover damn bypassed bridge with a truck,
Arizona troopers say Right had a handgun and rifle inside
the truck and a note that read released the o
(01:14):
I G Report. According to police, he did this as
a protest, demanding that a report he'd heard about via
an online conspiracy be released to the public. This conspiracy
theory started in October. That's when someone calling themselves Q
Clearance Patriot first wrote a public message on the notorious
(01:34):
for Chan website. The original poster, now known as Q,
inferred that they were a US government insider with knowledge
that would expose a deep state conspiracy within American politics.
This spawned what is now the Q and On phenomena,
the conspiracy theory so complex that it's formed a cult
like following. Many of its followers think Q is associated
(01:57):
with Donald Trump and that he's cryptically community cating with
them via obscule image boards online. Hundreds of thousands of
people across the world believe in this now, and as
a result, Q and On has torn families apart, led
people to violence, and it's even infiltrating the highest levels
of government with disinformation. Now, more than seventy U S
(02:20):
congressional candidates of either shared or outright endorsed Q and
on material, and President Trump himself is even given availed
thumbs up to the movement. During the pandemic, the Q
and On movement has been appears to be getting a
lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think
about that and what you have to say to people
(02:40):
who are following this movement right now? Well, I don't
know much about the movement other than I understand they
like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don't
know much about the movement. It's difficult. That's the cross
of the theory. It is this belief that you are
secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles
and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind
(03:04):
or I haven't. I haven't heard that. But is that
supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?
If if I can help save the world from As
I've already mentioned, outside of what the conspiracy community is saying,
nobody quite knows the true identity of Q. We want
to change that with this series, so we'll be looking
into the many different theories surrounding this, such as the
(03:27):
idea that the Q account has changed hands, that it's
the left wing hoax, and that it's been a way
for online grifters simply to make money off of adverts
on the websites. We're going to get into the intricacies
of what Q and on is and isn't what the
followers believe in trying to wrap our heads around the
confusing Q map, and I'm going to try and attempt
(03:50):
to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding Q and On. Now,
for me, this is something a little bit different because
primarily I'm what you might call a war report. I've
spent the last seven years working from various frontline battles
across the world. I've reported from Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Southeast Turkey, Palestine,
all over the place, and I currently run my own
(04:12):
grassroots conflict journalism platform called popular Front. But as one
as the war stuff, I've always been very online, spending
hours and hours on obscure message boards in Internet rabbit
holes and looking into the proliferation of conspiracy theories. I
know a bit, but I definitely need help with all
the Q and on stuff, so I've recruited Sarah Hightower
(04:35):
to assist with research. She's too shy to admit it
out in the open, but Sarah Hightower is one of
the best researchers of online extremism in America. She's completely
self taught, and in my opinion, understands Q and On
better than any of the academics and the welfared extremism
experts working as talking heads for TV news. She cares
(04:56):
deeply for the people caught up in this, and after
years recreationally online in some of the most fringe parts
of the Internet, Sarah effectively speaks the language fluently as
I do. She thinks it's incredibly important to shine a
light on who actually is behind Q and on, whoever
the hell it is. They've been lying to people, manipulating people,
(05:18):
radicalizing people, and tearing families apart for like two years unchecked,
So I think finding out who it is, who it was,
and who it has been is very important because there's
got to be some accountability. She's very eccentric, a bit
of a web and it's kind of weird, and I
don't say that in a bad way. I think that's
what makes her so good. Sarah has also seen firsthand
(05:40):
the effects of Q and On. Early on mid to
I had a friend of mine her parents stopped talking
to her in real life, so she reached out to
me and she said, Hey, do you think this Q
and on thing is occult? And I was like, what
are you talking about and she started explaining that like
her parents had started reading these things called Q drops
(06:01):
because apparently someone in the government with like a special
clearance was sending these super secret messages. And she said
that her parents had stopped talking to her and that
her stepdad, I think, just spent all of his time
watching Q tubers. I was like, what is a Q tube?
And so that's how I learned about it, and then
I tried to help her with her family, and that's
(06:21):
when I was like, oh, this is this is actually
like a court called, isn't it? And it is so
clearly we're both critical of Q and on. Sarah thinks
it's some kind of cult. I think it's a bit
of a madness. But to give the listeners an idea
of what direction I'm taking with this investigation, it's worth
knowing now that I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
(06:43):
I am not a supporter of Donald Trump or any
of the others you've probably noticed British and whilst I'm
not a particular fan of any politicianal government, I don't
really have a dog in this race. I am not
a political but I'm just not are interested in the
shrill partisan politics that have seemingly taken over in the US.
(07:06):
That's what it looks like over here across the pond.
Of course, a lot of people say, what do you know,
You're British? Forget about that, don't worry. This is about
the Q and On investigation. Why I am interested in
is how Q and on grew so huge so quickly,
and who's actually behind this. This podcast is not trying
to mark, demonize, or laugh at Q and On believers directly.
(07:30):
What we are trying to do is lay out why
anyone that's involved in Q and On, is Q and
On curious or has a family member set adrift with
this conspiracy, why they should consider rethinking their positions that
and to simply report on our findings whilst looking into
the true identity of Q. We're not going to scream
(07:52):
at you, tell you're insane or glow, but we are
going to point out with evidence why we think Q
and On is a complete hoax. First things first, for
anyone who's out there still saying, what the funk even
his Q and On, let's tackle that bit to begin with. Now. Personally,
I would describe T and on as the largest somewhat
decentralized online conspiracy community on Earth right now. As I
(08:16):
mentioned at the start, the followers believe that the Donald
Trump administration will bring upon a new political age where
Democrats are hanged for treason, leftists around it up and imprisoned,
and a political deep state trying to rule America from
within will be defeated by Trump and Q. They think
(08:37):
Q is a high level political operative within the circles
of the White House. They think that he's chosen image
boards such as four chan and h chan to secretly
relay information about the aforementioned plan to wreck the deep State. Now,
I know that sounds outlandish, but remember hundreds of thousands
of people across the world believe in this now, and
(09:00):
big political figures in America have been openly speaking about
que as if it's a normal thing. The messages that
Q posts are known as que drops and are often cryptic.
They predict things that never happened and availed in this
strange speak of a misdirection. Now, it might sound a
bit outlandish and kind of strange, but all of this
(09:24):
was incubated in the world of online image boards. You
might have heard of them, the chance four chan, h
and etcetera. Let's scale back a bit to explain what
these actually are and how they became the battleground for
Q now, I would describe these image boards as, arguably,
for better or worse, the last bastions of the early
(09:47):
wild West version of the Internet that many of us
grew up with. I'm thirty years old. I spent a
lot of time as about fourteen fifteen, even younger on
the Internet before all the kind of rules came in,
before social media relatic over, and you know it was,
it was a much more fun time. Um. But if
you've never seen one of these image boards before, it's
(10:08):
kind of an anonymous Internet bulletin board where you can
chat as well, so users will post up topics based
on their own interests. Each post needs to be started
with an image. Replies create a thread which is eventually deleted.
Nothing is archived on the actual image board itself. And
trust me, fortune is big and very influential on Internet culture,
(10:31):
even if you've never heard of it before. With around
twenty two million unique visitors a month, four chan is
the most well known and most infamous image board. It
was first launched in October two thousand and three by
American programmer Christopher Pool, also known as Moot. Moot, ran
four channel for eleven years before stepping down to go
(10:52):
work for Google. Fortune began as a place to share
anime images, and it quickly built its own online culture,
almost indecipherable to people not familiar with it. Many memes,
internet raids, and historic online pranks were founded on the
boards of four Chan. In recent years, though, four Chan
became known as a place that incubated the new Old
(11:15):
Right in the US, it was linked with scandal after scandal,
as school shooters, Nazi terrorists, and murderers all began posting
up on four Chan. Despite this, most of the boards
are actually completely harmless. For example, there's a board for origami,
there's a board for Pokemon, cooking the i y. It's
all there. It's not all bad. The oddity of the chance, though,
(11:38):
is that all these running tandem with boards that promote
far right agendas, sexual abuse and anime a porn. Now.
I know that sounds outlandish, but remember hundreds of thousands
of people across the world believe in this now, and
big political figures in America have been openly speaking about
(11:58):
que as if it's a normal thing. Trump's regular interaction
with Q and On followers on Twitter is another thing
that gives them belief that this is all real. For example,
in July, he retweeted fourteen tweets from an account supporting
Q and On. Now, obviously Trump isn't going to look
at the bios and the accounts of the people he retweets.
(12:19):
He probably should seem as he's the president, but he
isn't going to do that. Q and On followers don't
see it as a coincidence. They think it's him saying yeah,
I'm with you, and that adds more gravity to the
messages that Q puts out online. These messages that Q
(12:41):
posts are known as Q drops. They predict things that
never happen and availed in this strange speak of a misdirection.
Q and Ons think this is all part of the plan,
though for d Chess at its most intelligent, oh when.
There's also a large helping of deep state pedophile theories
to Q and On, some of which are based in
(13:03):
the truth of Jeffrey Epstein's horrific elitist pedophile crimes, but
most of which are based on complete fantasy and rampant speculation.
For example, I was watching a prominent Q and on
YouTuber a while ago, and he said that him and
many other Q and on followers believe that there's literally
a video of Hillary Clinton executing a child, cutting off
(13:28):
the child's face and wearing it as a mask. Somehow
such a video is actually never been released to a
seen yet the Q and on's are adamant that it exists.
It's deeply disturbing stuff at times. Now, that's my basic
explanation of Q and on and the various facets to
what they believe. But let's hear from Travis view. Travis
(13:52):
is part of Q and on, Anonymous, a podcast that
spent years looking into Q and It's different ideas. I
was rabit as both a very sort of complex meta
conspiracy theory that kind of connects every other conspiracy theory
under its broad kind of umbrella. And also they kind
of a community of of people who believe in this
(14:15):
particular extremist worldview. I mean, the broad narrative adheres to
a lot of classic New World Order conspiracy theories. They
believe that the world controlled by this satanic cabal pedophiles
who hold all the lever's power, including entertainment media and politicians,
And they further believe that that that this cabal with
(14:37):
continued indefinitely, were not for the election of Donald Trump.
They believe that Trump, uh, you know, knows all about
the cabal. In some instances, they believe that Trump has
been planning for decades to assume the presidency to help
take down take down this cabal. And they further believe
that you know, Trump is uh you know, with the
help of this high level group of military intelligence officials
(14:58):
known as Q Team, is send the outcoded messages about
the secret operation on these image boards. Travis has done
so much work in too q and On exposing the
many holes in their theories that he's actually become a
kind of enemy of the movement that often tweet about
him angrily and take the piss out of him and
his colleagues on YouTube videos all the rest of it.
(15:19):
They don't like him now. Travis thinks that q and
on account has changed hands several times from its inception
on four Chan in two now. You know, even even
if we we are kind of shaky on the details
of who exactly was the original cue poster and who
is now the the author of the que raps, I
(15:40):
do not think it's the same person. The way that
Q and on followers determined what is and isn't a
que drop, as in, was it from que? Was it
someone pretending to be him is by using something called
a trip code. Will go deeper into that in a
later episode, but essentially, a trip code allows an anonymous
user to be semi identified online. Q and On's checked
(16:04):
the Q trip code and boom to them, they know
it's him. The Q and on trip code has changed
once or twice, and there's other people in the Q
team's sphere of influence that have different trip codes determining
their roles. For example, many Q and ons think another
poster called Q plus is Donald Trump himself. Yeah, they
(16:24):
really think that he's out there doing that. One and
on YouTuber called Craig Mason I watched has said it's
completely obvious that Q plus is Trump because he wants
kind of sort of made this Q and A plus
symbol in the air at one of his events whilst
pointing to someone in the crowd. Um, yeah, it's it's
weird that Travis of you is not convinced. I mean, yeah,
(16:47):
Trump does this thing at rallies where he points at
people where he points out a group of people by
waving his finger in the air. Uh, and and he
got So the QUA community got got the idea of um,
they that this is a secret signal to the Q
and that community. I mean, I don't see it. It
(17:07):
looks like a circle to me. Yeah, it looks more
like a circle. Yeah. Yeah, but but it Yeah, they
just got into the got into this. Uh, this this
idea that like basically every gesture, every sort of subtle
sign that Trump gives off is somehow validating to their
world view. So as you see. The thing about Q
and on that has helped some of the wild theories
(17:30):
grow is that it doesn't take a lot for believers
to see confirmation in the real world. So they'll see
a Q post and then often shoehorn in an offline
event such as a throwaway typo in a tweet or
a hand gesture from Trump to prove that Q is
who they claim it to be. After all, Q often
(17:50):
says there are no coincidences, so then the followers think, yeah,
that's not a coincidence that was meant for us. It's
kind of like if you look at panned war paper
long enough, you'll see a face in it. The face
isn't meant to be there, It isn't really there, but
somehow you can see it. It's the same kind of
thing you catch my drift. So this all ties back
(18:12):
into the image boards being the place where Q speaks.
They have a culture of mystery and far fetched ideas
that are often taken seriously. Even through a hail of
cynicism and people throwing insults at the original poster, people
do still often take a lot of what is going
out there seriously, even if it seems like everybody is
telling them to go funk themselves. Now, you might be
(18:34):
thinking that four chan hardly seems like a place where
you'd expect a highly intelligent White House insider to go
to to spread information that would ultimately help save America.
According to the two followers, at least, what's more unusual
is that q quickly immigrated to an even darker image board,
(18:55):
h Chan. H chan is like four chan's even more
fucked up evil isn't like for cha, and it had
a similar set up with the image board and what
have you, but it devolved into something even worse. Specifically,
it became a place for anonymous users to discuss the
sharing of child abuse images pedophiles were actively posting on
(19:18):
h h and before it was removed from the Internet
by its web hosting provider. It's now called a coon,
but we'll get onto that in another episode. Will also
speak about the history of h chan and how it
became at the way it is, But first let's hear
from Hun's creator, Frederick Brennan. I had kind of always
(19:39):
been involved in the like alternate four chan universe. There's
all these small image boards that don't really get any
media attention or they're not really noticed outside, like very
kind of people that are into internet culture. You know,
you have like seven chan, four chan, so you get
like all of these small sites. So, uh, I was
(20:03):
basically like a web developer, and my day job was
doing just freelance web development. And since I was already
so into image boards, I became kind of friends with
every image board admin. You know, at the time, I
don't want to toot my own horn, but they knew
that I was kind of a good programmer. Now, despite
(20:26):
what I told you about h and just before Frederick
started speaking there, keep in mind that Frederick Brennan didn't
create h h and for pedophiles, and he is no
longer in control of it. The Watkins family took the
image board over in. Watkins will be mentioned a lot
throughout this series later on, but for now keep that
(20:47):
name in your head. H and basically started after I
had a mushroom trip and uh, I just thought it
would be really cool to have like this site that
was like read it and watching and combined. But I
didn't have any visions in the beginning. I didn't think
it was ever going to be popular. So let's back
(21:09):
up a second and ask the question you all might
be wondering. Why the fuck would Q and on a
movement so determined to tear down a political deep state
with links to a supposed child sex trafficking cabal, except
that its leader drop his leaked info on a website
that allows pedos to communicate freely with each other. It
(21:31):
makes no sense. It would be like having an environmentalist
give a speech at a shell oil conference or something.
But if you ask Q and On's they'll tell you
that it's all simply part of the plan, one of
their many mantras. And even though they wouldn't say this,
perhaps the plan from the outside at least looks simply
(21:53):
to be a way for them to achieve their political
utopia by any means necessary. Any failed predict chin can
be explained away with the plan. A clear fake post
becomes a clever red herring with the plan. When Q
posted his first ever drop on four chan on October seventeen,
saying Hillary Clinton will be arrested between seven forty five
(22:15):
am to eight thirty a m e s t. On
Monday the morning on October thirteen, and it didn't happen.
That was all part of the plan. To Hillary was
not arrested, None of that happened. But to Q and On,
it doesn't matter. They can explain away anything in this sense.
As Sarah said earlier, Q and On has become cult
(22:38):
like in some way, like most conspiracy theories, and arguably
with most cults, there is a final end game for
Q and On. It's the so called plan that we've mentioned.
I asked Travis's view about this. I've never really seen
them explicitly point out what the plan is. Now. I
know they have the idea of getting everybody out and
(23:00):
trying everybody for treason and hanging them um, but that
is not a plan. That's like a goal, right, I mean,
is there any indication to what they actually think the
plan is? No, I no, No. This is the funniest part.
The plan that they're trusting is secret um so so,
so they don't know what the plan is, but there
they know they have to trust it because they think
(23:22):
it's in like I said, they think it's in Trump's hands.
They think it's in military intelligence hands. They don't know
what the plan is, but they they're very convinced that
there is a plan and it's going to result in,
like you said, the the executions that they want, the
the sort of return to the world that they want
to see, I mean love them really believe that there's
(23:44):
going to be utopia. They think there are hidden cures
to cancer and other diseases that will be revealed. They
think that this this fake law called the SARA is
going to get past and make everyone rich. Uh. They
think you know that, you know that all the everyone
will kind of real eyes that they were rail along
and all their bluepilled NORMI lib friends will come crawling
(24:05):
to them and saying I was so wrong and I'm
so sorry, You're so smart. Uh. You know, they really
think that the world's can be a better place. But
because of this plan, so they trust it even though
they don't know where it is really. So that is
Q and on Internet image boards, Donald Trump, conspiracy theories,
(24:26):
and blind faith, all meeting under the same umbrella, radicalizing
each other further and following an anonymous leader online. It's
potentially quite dangerous. Just remember the man in the armored
vehicle on the Hoover Dam Bridge. And the run up
to the US election, Q and on is being promoted
more and more. The followers thing they're going to make
(24:48):
America great again again and have been spreading increasingly more
erratic conspiracies about election night. As a result, Facebook has
just banned all talk of Q and on on its
platform after allowing it to flourish for years. This will
likely push Q and on deeper underground, perhaps further increasing
its radicalization. I think it's more important now than ever
(25:11):
to truly dig up the ground and show who's the
controller behind the Q and on conspiracy theory. In the
next episode, we're going to look into the theory that
Q and on is a prank led by a whole
group of people supposed left wing activists. Due Clearance is
brought to you by I Heart Radio and co dat
Our Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan. You can find me online
(25:35):
at Jake Underscore hand Rahan. That's h A N A
h A M. This episode was produced by myself with
fact checking by Sarah Hightower. The music is by Sam
Black and the sound levels were mixed by Thomas Griffin
at Splicing Block, sat In
Q and On is the world's largest online political conspiracy movement.
Followers believe someone code named Q is provided them with
secret information from inside the White House. No one really
knows the real identity of Q, though we aim to
change that. I'm Jake Hanrahan and this is Q Clearance,
a podcast series aimed unmasking the true identity of Q.
(00:25):
This is brought to you by I R Radio and
Q Dayta Media. In this first episode, will be getting
to grips with what Q and On is for those
that don't know, looking into the history of this strange movement,
and hearing from some of the main researchers involved in
trying to dismantle Q and On. On juneen, a man
(00:52):
blocked a bridge near the Hoover Dam with a homemade
armored vehicle. Inside. The man held firearms and nine hundred
rounds about nisition So now in FBI custody tonight after
blocking traffic on the Hoover damn bypassed bridge with a truck,
Arizona troopers say Right had a handgun and rifle inside
the truck and a note that read released the o
(01:14):
I G Report. According to police, he did this as
a protest, demanding that a report he'd heard about via
an online conspiracy be released to the public. This conspiracy
theory started in October. That's when someone calling themselves Q
Clearance Patriot first wrote a public message on the notorious
(01:34):
for Chan website. The original poster, now known as Q,
inferred that they were a US government insider with knowledge
that would expose a deep state conspiracy within American politics.
This spawned what is now the Q and On phenomena,
the conspiracy theory so complex that it's formed a cult
like following. Many of its followers think Q is associated
(01:57):
with Donald Trump and that he's cryptically community cating with
them via obscule image boards online. Hundreds of thousands of
people across the world believe in this now, and as
a result, Q and On has torn families apart, led
people to violence, and it's even infiltrating the highest levels
of government with disinformation. Now, more than seventy U S
(02:20):
congressional candidates of either shared or outright endorsed Q and
on material, and President Trump himself is even given availed
thumbs up to the movement. During the pandemic, the Q
and On movement has been appears to be getting a
lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think
about that and what you have to say to people
(02:40):
who are following this movement right now? Well, I don't
know much about the movement other than I understand they
like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don't
know much about the movement. It's difficult. That's the cross
of the theory. It is this belief that you are
secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles
and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind
(03:04):
or I haven't. I haven't heard that. But is that
supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?
If if I can help save the world from As
I've already mentioned, outside of what the conspiracy community is saying,
nobody quite knows the true identity of Q. We want
to change that with this series, so we'll be looking
into the many different theories surrounding this, such as the
(03:27):
idea that the Q account has changed hands, that it's
the left wing hoax, and that it's been a way
for online grifters simply to make money off of adverts
on the websites. We're going to get into the intricacies
of what Q and on is and isn't what the
followers believe in trying to wrap our heads around the
confusing Q map, and I'm going to try and attempt
(03:50):
to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding Q and On. Now,
for me, this is something a little bit different because
primarily I'm what you might call a war report. I've
spent the last seven years working from various frontline battles
across the world. I've reported from Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Southeast Turkey, Palestine,
all over the place, and I currently run my own
(04:12):
grassroots conflict journalism platform called popular Front. But as one
as the war stuff, I've always been very online, spending
hours and hours on obscure message boards in Internet rabbit
holes and looking into the proliferation of conspiracy theories. I
know a bit, but I definitely need help with all
the Q and on stuff, so I've recruited Sarah Hightower
(04:35):
to assist with research. She's too shy to admit it
out in the open, but Sarah Hightower is one of
the best researchers of online extremism in America. She's completely
self taught, and in my opinion, understands Q and On
better than any of the academics and the welfared extremism
experts working as talking heads for TV news. She cares
(04:56):
deeply for the people caught up in this, and after
years recreationally online in some of the most fringe parts
of the Internet, Sarah effectively speaks the language fluently as
I do. She thinks it's incredibly important to shine a
light on who actually is behind Q and on, whoever
the hell it is. They've been lying to people, manipulating people,
(05:18):
radicalizing people, and tearing families apart for like two years unchecked,
So I think finding out who it is, who it was,
and who it has been is very important because there's
got to be some accountability. She's very eccentric, a bit
of a web and it's kind of weird, and I
don't say that in a bad way. I think that's
what makes her so good. Sarah has also seen firsthand
(05:40):
the effects of Q and On. Early on mid to
I had a friend of mine her parents stopped talking
to her in real life, so she reached out to
me and she said, Hey, do you think this Q
and on thing is occult? And I was like, what
are you talking about and she started explaining that like
her parents had started reading these things called Q drops
(06:01):
because apparently someone in the government with like a special
clearance was sending these super secret messages. And she said
that her parents had stopped talking to her and that
her stepdad, I think, just spent all of his time
watching Q tubers. I was like, what is a Q tube?
And so that's how I learned about it, and then
I tried to help her with her family, and that's
(06:21):
when I was like, oh, this is this is actually
like a court called, isn't it? And it is so
clearly we're both critical of Q and on. Sarah thinks
it's some kind of cult. I think it's a bit
of a madness. But to give the listeners an idea
of what direction I'm taking with this investigation, it's worth
knowing now that I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
(06:43):
I am not a supporter of Donald Trump or any
of the others you've probably noticed British and whilst I'm
not a particular fan of any politicianal government, I don't
really have a dog in this race. I am not
a political but I'm just not are interested in the
shrill partisan politics that have seemingly taken over in the US.
(07:06):
That's what it looks like over here across the pond.
Of course, a lot of people say, what do you know,
You're British? Forget about that, don't worry. This is about
the Q and On investigation. Why I am interested in
is how Q and on grew so huge so quickly,
and who's actually behind this. This podcast is not trying
to mark, demonize, or laugh at Q and On believers directly.
(07:30):
What we are trying to do is lay out why
anyone that's involved in Q and On, is Q and
On curious or has a family member set adrift with
this conspiracy, why they should consider rethinking their positions that
and to simply report on our findings whilst looking into
the true identity of Q. We're not going to scream
(07:52):
at you, tell you're insane or glow, but we are
going to point out with evidence why we think Q
and On is a complete hoax. First things first, for
anyone who's out there still saying, what the funk even
his Q and On, let's tackle that bit to begin with. Now. Personally,
I would describe T and on as the largest somewhat
decentralized online conspiracy community on Earth right now. As I
(08:16):
mentioned at the start, the followers believe that the Donald
Trump administration will bring upon a new political age where
Democrats are hanged for treason, leftists around it up and imprisoned,
and a political deep state trying to rule America from
within will be defeated by Trump and Q. They think
(08:37):
Q is a high level political operative within the circles
of the White House. They think that he's chosen image
boards such as four chan and h chan to secretly
relay information about the aforementioned plan to wreck the deep State. Now,
I know that sounds outlandish, but remember hundreds of thousands
of people across the world believe in this now, and
(09:00):
big political figures in America have been openly speaking about
que as if it's a normal thing. The messages that
Q posts are known as que drops and are often cryptic.
They predict things that never happened and availed in this
strange speak of a misdirection. Now, it might sound a
bit outlandish and kind of strange, but all of this
(09:24):
was incubated in the world of online image boards. You
might have heard of them, the chance four chan, h
and etcetera. Let's scale back a bit to explain what
these actually are and how they became the battleground for
Q now, I would describe these image boards as, arguably,
for better or worse, the last bastions of the early
(09:47):
wild West version of the Internet that many of us
grew up with. I'm thirty years old. I spent a
lot of time as about fourteen fifteen, even younger on
the Internet before all the kind of rules came in,
before social media relatic over, and you know it was,
it was a much more fun time. Um. But if
you've never seen one of these image boards before, it's
(10:08):
kind of an anonymous Internet bulletin board where you can
chat as well, so users will post up topics based
on their own interests. Each post needs to be started
with an image. Replies create a thread which is eventually deleted.
Nothing is archived on the actual image board itself. And
trust me, fortune is big and very influential on Internet culture,
(10:31):
even if you've never heard of it before. With around
twenty two million unique visitors a month, four chan is
the most well known and most infamous image board. It
was first launched in October two thousand and three by
American programmer Christopher Pool, also known as Moot. Moot, ran
four channel for eleven years before stepping down to go
(10:52):
work for Google. Fortune began as a place to share
anime images, and it quickly built its own online culture,
almost indecipherable to people not familiar with it. Many memes,
internet raids, and historic online pranks were founded on the
boards of four Chan. In recent years, though, four Chan
became known as a place that incubated the new Old
(11:15):
Right in the US, it was linked with scandal after scandal,
as school shooters, Nazi terrorists, and murderers all began posting
up on four Chan. Despite this, most of the boards
are actually completely harmless. For example, there's a board for origami,
there's a board for Pokemon, cooking the i y. It's
all there. It's not all bad. The oddity of the chance, though,
(11:38):
is that all these running tandem with boards that promote
far right agendas, sexual abuse and anime a porn. Now.
I know that sounds outlandish, but remember hundreds of thousands
of people across the world believe in this now, and
big political figures in America have been openly speaking about
(11:58):
que as if it's a normal thing. Trump's regular interaction
with Q and On followers on Twitter is another thing
that gives them belief that this is all real. For example,
in July, he retweeted fourteen tweets from an account supporting
Q and On. Now, obviously Trump isn't going to look
at the bios and the accounts of the people he retweets.
(12:19):
He probably should seem as he's the president, but he
isn't going to do that. Q and On followers don't
see it as a coincidence. They think it's him saying yeah,
I'm with you, and that adds more gravity to the
messages that Q puts out online. These messages that Q
(12:41):
posts are known as Q drops. They predict things that
never happen and availed in this strange speak of a misdirection.
Q and Ons think this is all part of the plan,
though for d Chess at its most intelligent, oh when.
There's also a large helping of deep state pedophile theories
to Q and On, some of which are based in
(13:03):
the truth of Jeffrey Epstein's horrific elitist pedophile crimes, but
most of which are based on complete fantasy and rampant speculation.
For example, I was watching a prominent Q and on
YouTuber a while ago, and he said that him and
many other Q and on followers believe that there's literally
a video of Hillary Clinton executing a child, cutting off
(13:28):
the child's face and wearing it as a mask. Somehow
such a video is actually never been released to a
seen yet the Q and on's are adamant that it exists.
It's deeply disturbing stuff at times. Now, that's my basic
explanation of Q and on and the various facets to
what they believe. But let's hear from Travis view. Travis
(13:52):
is part of Q and on, Anonymous, a podcast that
spent years looking into Q and It's different ideas. I
was rabit as both a very sort of complex meta
conspiracy theory that kind of connects every other conspiracy theory
under its broad kind of umbrella. And also they kind
of a community of of people who believe in this
(14:15):
particular extremist worldview. I mean, the broad narrative adheres to
a lot of classic New World Order conspiracy theories. They
believe that the world controlled by this satanic cabal pedophiles
who hold all the lever's power, including entertainment media and politicians,
And they further believe that that that this cabal with
(14:37):
continued indefinitely, were not for the election of Donald Trump.
They believe that Trump, uh, you know, knows all about
the cabal. In some instances, they believe that Trump has
been planning for decades to assume the presidency to help
take down take down this cabal. And they further believe
that you know, Trump is uh you know, with the
help of this high level group of military intelligence officials
(14:58):
known as Q Team, is send the outcoded messages about
the secret operation on these image boards. Travis has done
so much work in too q and On exposing the
many holes in their theories that he's actually become a
kind of enemy of the movement that often tweet about
him angrily and take the piss out of him and
his colleagues on YouTube videos all the rest of it.
(15:19):
They don't like him now. Travis thinks that q and
on account has changed hands several times from its inception
on four Chan in two now. You know, even even
if we we are kind of shaky on the details
of who exactly was the original cue poster and who
is now the the author of the que raps, I
(15:40):
do not think it's the same person. The way that
Q and on followers determined what is and isn't a
que drop, as in, was it from que? Was it
someone pretending to be him is by using something called
a trip code. Will go deeper into that in a
later episode, but essentially, a trip code allows an anonymous
user to be semi identified online. Q and On's checked
(16:04):
the Q trip code and boom to them, they know
it's him. The Q and on trip code has changed
once or twice, and there's other people in the Q
team's sphere of influence that have different trip codes determining
their roles. For example, many Q and ons think another
poster called Q plus is Donald Trump himself. Yeah, they
(16:24):
really think that he's out there doing that. One and
on YouTuber called Craig Mason I watched has said it's
completely obvious that Q plus is Trump because he wants
kind of sort of made this Q and A plus
symbol in the air at one of his events whilst
pointing to someone in the crowd. Um, yeah, it's it's
weird that Travis of you is not convinced. I mean, yeah,
(16:47):
Trump does this thing at rallies where he points at
people where he points out a group of people by
waving his finger in the air. Uh, and and he
got So the QUA community got got the idea of um,
they that this is a secret signal to the Q
and that community. I mean, I don't see it. It
(17:07):
looks like a circle to me. Yeah, it looks more
like a circle. Yeah. Yeah, but but it Yeah, they
just got into the got into this. Uh, this this
idea that like basically every gesture, every sort of subtle
sign that Trump gives off is somehow validating to their
world view. So as you see. The thing about Q
and on that has helped some of the wild theories
(17:30):
grow is that it doesn't take a lot for believers
to see confirmation in the real world. So they'll see
a Q post and then often shoehorn in an offline
event such as a throwaway typo in a tweet or
a hand gesture from Trump to prove that Q is
who they claim it to be. After all, Q often
(17:50):
says there are no coincidences, so then the followers think, yeah,
that's not a coincidence that was meant for us. It's
kind of like if you look at panned war paper
long enough, you'll see a face in it. The face
isn't meant to be there, It isn't really there, but
somehow you can see it. It's the same kind of
thing you catch my drift. So this all ties back
(18:12):
into the image boards being the place where Q speaks.
They have a culture of mystery and far fetched ideas
that are often taken seriously. Even through a hail of
cynicism and people throwing insults at the original poster, people
do still often take a lot of what is going
out there seriously, even if it seems like everybody is
telling them to go funk themselves. Now, you might be
(18:34):
thinking that four chan hardly seems like a place where
you'd expect a highly intelligent White House insider to go
to to spread information that would ultimately help save America.
According to the two followers, at least, what's more unusual
is that q quickly immigrated to an even darker image board,
(18:55):
h Chan. H chan is like four chan's even more
fucked up evil isn't like for cha, and it had
a similar set up with the image board and what
have you, but it devolved into something even worse. Specifically,
it became a place for anonymous users to discuss the
sharing of child abuse images pedophiles were actively posting on
(19:18):
h h and before it was removed from the Internet
by its web hosting provider. It's now called a coon,
but we'll get onto that in another episode. Will also
speak about the history of h chan and how it
became at the way it is, But first let's hear
from Hun's creator, Frederick Brennan. I had kind of always
(19:39):
been involved in the like alternate four chan universe. There's
all these small image boards that don't really get any
media attention or they're not really noticed outside, like very
kind of people that are into internet culture. You know,
you have like seven chan, four chan, so you get
like all of these small sites. So, uh, I was
(20:03):
basically like a web developer, and my day job was
doing just freelance web development. And since I was already
so into image boards, I became kind of friends with
every image board admin. You know, at the time, I
don't want to toot my own horn, but they knew
that I was kind of a good programmer. Now, despite
(20:26):
what I told you about h and just before Frederick
started speaking there, keep in mind that Frederick Brennan didn't
create h h and for pedophiles, and he is no
longer in control of it. The Watkins family took the
image board over in. Watkins will be mentioned a lot
throughout this series later on, but for now keep that
(20:47):
name in your head. H and basically started after I
had a mushroom trip and uh, I just thought it
would be really cool to have like this site that
was like read it and watching and combined. But I
didn't have any visions in the beginning. I didn't think
it was ever going to be popular. So let's back
(21:09):
up a second and ask the question you all might
be wondering. Why the fuck would Q and on a
movement so determined to tear down a political deep state
with links to a supposed child sex trafficking cabal, except
that its leader drop his leaked info on a website
that allows pedos to communicate freely with each other. It
(21:31):
makes no sense. It would be like having an environmentalist
give a speech at a shell oil conference or something.
But if you ask Q and On's they'll tell you
that it's all simply part of the plan, one of
their many mantras. And even though they wouldn't say this,
perhaps the plan from the outside at least looks simply
(21:53):
to be a way for them to achieve their political
utopia by any means necessary. Any failed predict chin can
be explained away with the plan. A clear fake post
becomes a clever red herring with the plan. When Q
posted his first ever drop on four chan on October seventeen,
saying Hillary Clinton will be arrested between seven forty five
(22:15):
am to eight thirty a m e s t. On
Monday the morning on October thirteen, and it didn't happen.
That was all part of the plan. To Hillary was
not arrested, None of that happened. But to Q and On,
it doesn't matter. They can explain away anything in this sense.
As Sarah said earlier, Q and On has become cult
(22:38):
like in some way, like most conspiracy theories, and arguably
with most cults, there is a final end game for
Q and On. It's the so called plan that we've mentioned.
I asked Travis's view about this. I've never really seen
them explicitly point out what the plan is. Now. I
know they have the idea of getting everybody out and
(23:00):
trying everybody for treason and hanging them um, but that
is not a plan. That's like a goal, right, I mean,
is there any indication to what they actually think the
plan is? No, I no, No. This is the funniest part.
The plan that they're trusting is secret um so so,
so they don't know what the plan is, but there
they know they have to trust it because they think
(23:22):
it's in like I said, they think it's in Trump's hands.
They think it's in military intelligence hands. They don't know
what the plan is, but they they're very convinced that
there is a plan and it's going to result in,
like you said, the the executions that they want, the
the sort of return to the world that they want
to see, I mean love them really believe that there's
(23:44):
going to be utopia. They think there are hidden cures
to cancer and other diseases that will be revealed. They
think that this this fake law called the SARA is
going to get past and make everyone rich. Uh. They
think you know that, you know that all the everyone
will kind of real eyes that they were rail along
and all their bluepilled NORMI lib friends will come crawling
(24:05):
to them and saying I was so wrong and I'm
so sorry, You're so smart. Uh. You know, they really
think that the world's can be a better place. But
because of this plan, so they trust it even though
they don't know where it is really. So that is
Q and on Internet image boards, Donald Trump, conspiracy theories,
(24:26):
and blind faith, all meeting under the same umbrella, radicalizing
each other further and following an anonymous leader online. It's
potentially quite dangerous. Just remember the man in the armored
vehicle on the Hoover Dam Bridge. And the run up
to the US election, Q and on is being promoted
more and more. The followers thing they're going to make
(24:48):
America great again again and have been spreading increasingly more
erratic conspiracies about election night. As a result, Facebook has
just banned all talk of Q and on on its
platform after allowing it to flourish for years. This will
likely push Q and on deeper underground, perhaps further increasing
its radicalization. I think it's more important now than ever
(25:11):
to truly dig up the ground and show who's the
controller behind the Q and on conspiracy theory. In the
next episode, we're going to look into the theory that
Q and on is a prank led by a whole
group of people supposed left wing activists. Due Clearance is
brought to you by I Heart Radio and co dat
Our Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan. You can find me online
(25:35):
at Jake Underscore hand Rahan. That's h A N A
h A M. This episode was produced by myself with
fact checking by Sarah Hightower. The music is by Sam
Black and the sound levels were mixed by Thomas Griffin
at Splicing Block, sat In
Host
Jake Hanrahan
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