Is QAnon a Leftist Prank?

In 2018 an article was published by Buzzfeed that connected the dots from QAnon to an old book about a shadowy figure called Q that leaked government information. On 4chan, users declared that it was all part of a leftist prank and that QAnon was run by the same group who wrote this old book. The idea was to fool MAGA followers into thinking Q was real. Many ran with this idea and never looked back. We're doing a deep dive into it to see if this leftist prank theory holds any weight.

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Episode Transcript

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
podcast series aimed unmasking the true identity of Q. This

(00:25):
is brought to you by I R Radio and Q
Data Media. In this episode, episode two, we're gonna be
looking into the claim that Q and on is a
leftist prank on US Republicans. Also, in a minute, we'll
hear what Trump has had to say about Q and
on this week. So as the US presidential election is closer,

(00:51):
the two competing sides did their town hall events last week.
Both Biden and Trump were lightly grilled on various topics,
but hanging to their policies the election that finances all sorts.
Amongst many things that Trump was criticized for his town
hall event was his failure to disavow Q and On
when asked about it a few weeks back. If you

(01:14):
don't know what I'm talking about here, be sure to
go back and listen to episode one of this podcast.
So once again, the topic of Q came up, and
this is what happened when Trump was asked about thing
to denounce Q and On. It is this theory that
Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are

(01:36):
the savior of that. Now, can you just once and
for all state that that is completely not true about
Q and On in its entirety. I know nothing about
you and On. I just tried to know very little.
You told me, But what you tell me doesn't necessarily
make it fact. I hate to say that I know
nothing about it. I do know they are very much

(02:00):
get pedophilia. That okay, okay, yeah, you did hear that, right?
The president of the United States, the most powerful country
on Earth, arguably for a second time, refused to disavow

(02:22):
the Q and On conspiracy theory. So maybe the Q
and On theory is real after all. Now I'm joking,
of course, I don't think that. But Trump is feeding
into that idea with these theories every time he goes
on TV and refuses to speak out against them. For
the followers of Q and On, it's a big thumbs up.
Their ideas are being reaffirmed each time he does this. Anyway,

(02:45):
let's move on to talk about the main topic of
this episode, the idea that suggests Q and on is
a prank carried out by leftists meant to make us
Trump followers look stupid. It began inen when BuzzFeed really
than article with the catchy headline it's looking extremely likely
that Q and on is a leftist prank on Trump voters,

(03:07):
which they later changed to people think this whole q
and on conspiracy theories of prank on Trump supporters. I
remember when I first saw this article myself, and I
just thought not, surely not. But to be fair, as
I read the article, the coincidences within the piece were
quite striking at times. We'll go into those a little
bit more in a minute, but just bear in mind,

(03:28):
on paper, this isn't actually the far reaching theory that
it might sound like at first. And for those concerned
about the creeping rise of Q and on, I think
it acted almost as a bit of a comforter. They
could laugh at Q and on again if it was
all a big prank being played out against Trump boomers
on no go websites like four chant, the threat was

(03:50):
somewhat extinguished with this idea. A sense of having the
upper hand could be restored. It was all a joke. Now,
I'm not above thinking that it would be absolutely fucking
hilarious if hundreds of thousands of right wing MAGA people
had gathered online only to be led by a group
of secret leftists talking nonsense at them. But I do

(04:10):
think again, for some people, there was a sense of
faux relief. They could think that this increasingly powerful global
conspiracy network was all made up by the good guys
decide that they're more likely to agree with. But was
it someone who looked deeper into this leftist prank theory
is Matthew golt Goal is a journalist and a personal

(04:33):
friend of mine. He works for vices Motherboard and runs
the current affairs podcast Angry Plant. He's good at what
he does and he's never wont to be swayed by
a useful media narrative. I spoke to him about this theory.
So the origin of this idea that Q and on
is a leftist prank had been kind of bubbling in

(04:56):
the fortune, you know, gross parts of the Internet for
a few months in the summer of um and then
it takes off on August six, when BuzzFeed publishes a
story with the subhead what the fund is wrong with Boomers? Right?
So the basic, the very very basic thrust of this

(05:18):
thing is that the reporter seems to have found some
people on some of non's on four Chan talking about
how q is the politics Board's greatest achievement. Look, how
many norms and boomers got sucked into our lulls chaos.
Good job, and on's looking forward to our next big prank, right,
which would appear to be a smoking gun unless you

(05:39):
know anything about four Chan and how it works and
how the politics board works. We've covered a lot of
what four Chan and eighth Chan is and isn't in
the last episode, but just to reiterate what Matthew god
is talking about, he is how four Chan will often
just put out prank saying anything, make things up, put
stories out there aren't real. Basically us to folk with everybody.

(06:01):
And in this case it kind of worked. In regards
to this article, however, you will see that it's not
just that there is more to it. Random people just
say random ship just you know, just because they can. Um. So,
where things get kind of weird is that like the
conspiracy theory I would say behind this conspiracy theory is

(06:25):
that in nine nine, Luther Blissett published a novel in Italy.
It's titled Q. It became a cult classic in Europe,
never really took off in America. It was translated into
English in two thousand four and released in Britain and
the US. Then. Um. The novel was set in the
sixteenth century, and it's against this backdrop of societal upheaval

(06:45):
that follows the Reformation. Martin Martin, Martin Lutheran nails Martin
Luther nails the ninety nine Theses onto the church door,
and like the Catholic Church starts to lose power, the
Protestant movement begins. Uh. There's a lot of war or
in chaos and fighting that goes on after that. And
so the main character of this book is moving throughout

(07:07):
Europe and moving throughout the century and basically participating in
various religious wars and rebellions. He doesn't have a name,
and he's adopting different identities as he goes, and he's
this radical revolutionary figure. Um kind of think of him
as like a precursor to like a v for Vendetta
kind of character. Right. Um, So, the antagonist of the

(07:27):
story is this agent of the Pope named Q, and
this agent of the Pope is the bad guy, and
he's sending letters to radical leaders, spreading misinformation to so
chaos among the ranks of the revolutionaries. He claims to
be a person, sometimes he claims to be a group
of people, and he always claims that he's writing from
within the halls of power, right, like, you know, I've

(07:49):
got the Count's ear, so I know what's really going on.
And if your revolutionaries will just do what I tell you, uh,
you know, we'll be able to wipe out all of
these bad guys, like all of these the ruling class
that's on top of you. Right. So he says he's
on the side of the rebel, so that he's infiltrated
the institutions of power. But at the same time he's
always feeding information back into the Vatican Um. And when
he is talking to the rebels, he always science this

(08:10):
missives Q. Sounds familiar, right, Well, this is where the
coincidences or the clues come in. Think about this cue
book for a second. As Matthew said, the book is
about a secret shadow entity within the government that is
moving from place to place whispering ideas in people's ears
to stoke conflict. And his name just so happens to

(08:33):
be Q as well, same emo, same name as our
Q and On. That's a pretty big coincidence, if you
ask me. And remember, according to Q and On, there
is no such thing as coincidences. That's one of Que's
many mantras. Certainly, if there is a collective of mischievous
leftist behind Q and On, this might start to sound

(08:54):
like an inside joke, right, a way to openly laugh
at the Q followers whilst remaining hidden in plain sight.
This is also kind of Q and On style as well,
hidden in plain sight. It gets weirder. So, the author
of this book Q is Luther Blisset, right, So who
is Luther Blisset um? And could it be possible that

(09:15):
this person is involved somehow in the Q and On movement? Well,
Luther Blisset is not one person. It's a collective of
writers that describe themselves as a collective of cultural agitation
and guerrilla communication. These are like cultural pranksters that we
kind of don't have any more, um and now they've

(09:39):
they're still around. They call themselves the Womming Collective UM
and so after this BuzzFeed article comes out, I reach
out and I talked to them. So now you're going
to hear a snippet of an interview Matthew Gold did
with a man named wu Ming Wooming. He's a member
of the Wooming Collective. Again a joke name. These lot
like to mess around. Now, remember the Women Collective is

(10:02):
the obscure leftist pranksters that came together to write the
Cube Book, the one we're talking about that has the
parallels with Q and On. What Woman has to say
here is particularly interesting, I think in regards to if
they are or aren't behind Q and On. Some conspiracies
do exist. What is a conspiracy? You have a conspiracy

(10:24):
when a group of people or more than one people
agree in secret to take some action against someone else,
a third party, against someone else's interests at least. Okay,
so you can just say that conspiracies do exist, but real,

(10:45):
actual conspiracies have some key characteristics that make them very
different from the kind of convoluted, cumbersome conspiracy theories which
spiracists dream about and share and spread. Okay, and you've

(11:05):
you've designed some conspiracies yourself, correct or you've been a
part of it, we practically debunked some conspiracies. We devised
the pranks as a practical critique and a direct intervention
against conspiracism. That's what we did. From the horse's mouth there,
a member of the Women Collective is saying what they

(11:27):
do is construct events, construct pranks to kind of show
that the intricacies and nonsense of many conspiracy theories are
a problem, and they aim to use a kind of
satire to debunk them. Now does that mean that that's

(11:49):
what they did with Q and on? Are they creating
a conspiracy to show the people fall for anything? When
you look at how outlandish some of Q and on
theories are, you might think, yeah, that makes sense. Now,
let's scale back a minute to talk about some of
the wombing collectives other activities. Specifically, let me explain how

(12:10):
they took part in their own way in Italy's Satanic
panic in the nineties. Satanic panic being a time when
the country's law enforcement, the media, everybody seems to think
there's some kind of occult ritual's going on with kids
saying devil worship. It's all there, and throughout history we've
seen this happen in different countries. Almost always there's nothing

(12:33):
to it, devil worship, pedophile rings, and lots of empty accusations.
It all has a parallel to cun On, as you
will see. Stay with me on this. So Italy Satanic
Panic took place off the back of the so called
Years of Lead, a time from the sixties to the

(12:56):
eighties when there were thousands of far right and far
terror attacks in the country. Italy was still very much
a nervous culture in some respects because of this. In
the nineties, a new threat emerged, devil worshipers. Several people
were accused of satanic pedophile abuse, sixteen children were taken

(13:16):
from their parents by the state, and one mother even
killed herself Off the back of all this. I won't
go into too much detail here, but basically it was
later found that Italian officials had aggressively coerced people into
giving evidence about something that just wasn't true. The Satanic
panic accusations were baseless. To show the government how stupid,

(13:40):
heavy handed and irrational they'd been, the Women Collective began
planning fake evidence in the woods to make it look
like there had been a cult satanic practices taking place. Eventually,
they revealed themselves to show that it was a prank.
It sounds funked up, but what they did was show
that the police were not doing their due diligence whilst

(14:01):
investigating something extremely sensitive. The Women Collective had pulled a
prank to expose a serious problem within Italian policing. Now
let me be clear here, it wasn't like the Woming
Collective planet it and then the satanic panic began that
had already happened. The satanic panic was not because of them,
but they were the ones who took part in this

(14:22):
prank to show, hey, you were not doing the proper
work here. These satanic panic Shenanigans also kind of strike
a parallel with what Q and On is doing right.
Cure has told his followers many times that the Democrat
Party is a devil worshiping Peter following he's insinuated all
sorts around the occult worship in various different cue drops.

(14:44):
He has said the following obscure things quote spirit cooking,
what does spirit cooking represent? Cult? And does Satan exist?
Does the thought of Satan exists? Who worshiped Satan? What
is a cult? Epstein Island and Operation mocking Bird Priority

(15:04):
to clean out the bad actors to unite people behind
the America First agenda, Many and our government worships Satan
end quote. Satanic occultism is part of the central Q
and On mythos. However, unlike the Woming collective, Q and
On has not dropped the mask to say, yeah, this
was all a prank. In fact, what Q and On

(15:27):
is doing is more like what the Italian police did
in the nineties, tearing families apart by putting out false information.
So are the Wombing Collective behind Q on on or not?
Matthew go asked them directly, are you responsible for q
and On? Of course not. They they basically said, like

(15:48):
they don't think that it's possible for stuff like this
to to work anymore because of the way that the
modern information ecosystem works and the way like parity and
satire work, Like all of that stuff's broken down, and
they so they think like any kind of any kind
of prank that they would try to pull them this
way would just end up making things worse at the time.

(16:10):
And like what's quoted in the BuzzFeed article is Wooming
is tweeting about the connections. So they're out there saying like, hey,
this is kind of strange. This is similar to our book,
and BuzzFeed kind of implies that, you know, hey, this
is them taking responsibility. Um. And when I talk to them,
they're like, no, we we didn't do this, um we
And I believe that their exact quote is believe me,

(16:33):
we had never heard about Q until six weeks ago.
I've seen the emails that Goal is speaking about there,
I've seen the communications, and every turn the Wooming Collective
have outright denied any involvement with Q and On. What's more,
they've never once staged a prank without claiming it and
have never engaged in anything as malicious as it will

(16:54):
be to keep Q and On going this long. The
other clues to who Q and On might be don't
add up if it were the Women Collective either. We'll
speak about that in another episode, but basically, the Women
Collective Cue book is a handy coincidence that was spurred
on by fortune and blown out of proportion by the media.
The Women Collective do bring attention to a good point, though,

(17:17):
that satire in a post truth world is all but dead.
We saw a clear example of this last week when
Trump retweeted a satirical article by Babylon b as if
it was real. The joke was in the article that
Twitter had shut down its network to stop the spread
of negative comments about Trump's adversary, Joe Biden. It was

(17:41):
meant to be funny. It was meant to be taken seriously.
This is what the Babylon be does, much like its
counterpart The Onion their satire news sites. The same week,
Trump also retweeted a wild que and On conspiracy theory
that Joe Biden orchestrated the killing of Seal Team six
members to cover up a plot where they didn't actually

(18:04):
kill Osama Bin Ladding. The theory states, without any evidence whatsoever,
that in fact, only been Laddin's body double was killed,
and that it was done as a blood sacrifice to Iran.
Trump retweeted this outlandish theory. You couldn't make it up.

(18:25):
I think the women collective theory ultimately serves as a
cautionary tale within the q and On universe. Just because
you want something to be true because it fits your
ideals doesn't make it so. It works both ways. What
I'm saying is we have to be very careful when
looking at who Q and on actually is or who
he might be. Everyone has their own ideas, their own clues,

(18:47):
their own evidence, but if we don't come through it
all carefully and objectively, the prank might end up being
pulled on us. Next week, we'll be looking at y
Q and our mood from four chance Hn what that
meant for the direction of queues messages. And also I'll
be going over some new leads that might explain where

(19:08):
the original cue post came from. Q Clearance is brought
to you by I Heart Radio and Codatar Media. I'm
Jake Handrahan. You can find me online at Jake Underscore
hand Rahan. That's h a N A h a N.

(19:28):
This episode was produced by myself with fact checking by
Sarah hi Tower. The music is by Sam Black and
the sound levels were mixed by Thomas Griffin at Splicing
Block wo untold