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This article was completed well before the events of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol. QAnon followers were among the leading participants in the assault.
In the 1999 film The Matrix, the entire plot pivots on a choice that Neo must make. He must choose between a red pill and blue pill; the red pill will wake him up, and the blue pill will allow him to go back to life as he has always known it.
The film, with its clever mix of action and philosophy, is still as relevant today and may in fact be more relevant than when it premiered. Its pill metaphor has become inevitably enmeshed in the primordial stew of conspiratorial thinking and has been adopted by almost every fringe ideology.
Those “in the know” are considered the “red-pilled” or “woke,” while the rest of us “blue-pilled sheeple” toil away in our lives, unaware or unwilling to accept the existence of the “Deep State.” The blue-pilled stay asleep, while the red-pilled are schooled in the secret forbidden knowledge—that is somehow readily available for anyone to see online. Perhaps far more menacing than those who become red-pilled are those who give into “black-pilling,” a sense of utter indoctrinated nihilism embraced by many mass shooters and incels (dangerous loners who often devolve to the point of violence).
Enter QAnon, the ultimate conspiracy—the mothership; the umbrella; the “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” saucerful of secrets and codes. (To be clear, QAnon is not officially affiliated with the Guy Fawkes–mask-wearing hacktivists known as Anonymous.)
QAnon first appeared in October 2017 on the message board 4chan. This anonymous poster was not the first “Insider Anon” to attempt trolling the masses. There were several other Anon accounts, but QAnon stuck. “Q” claimed to have top secret Q Clearance, which is in fact an actual thing. Q began posting Nostradamus-esque riddles and codes and links, like an online scavenger hunt. Q’s ultimate secret? That Hollywood, financial, and political elites were secretly controlling the world all the while engaging in Satanism, pedophilia, torture, and cannibalism to extract adrenachrome—a chemical said to prolong life—from children. This myth is not new and played a part in another topic I investigated.
While I was writing the three-part series on Nazi occultism for the podcast Even the Podcast Is Afraid, I dove into the origins of fascism prior to World War II. One of the most enduring and damning culprits that led to the Holocaust was a completely debunked, fictional—and plagiarized—book titled The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, commonly known as The Protocols of Zion. This book emerged in 1903 and claimed to tell the “true” story of a meeting of a secret cabal of Jewish people who controlled the world.
The QAnon conspiracy takes heavily from this concept, and indeed at its core, almost every false conspiracy theory ends up somehow naming the evil culprits as those of Jewish descent.
Hollywood, financial, and political elites? It doesn’t take a bulletin board filled with red strings and pushpins to decode what that means. Nor does it take much to understand the roots of the QAnon concept of Satanic cannibals who indulge in a sort of “blood sacrifice.” This stems all the way back through the centuries to the Blood Libel Myth, which has somehow just been regurgitated through the years, being molded to fit the zeitgeist of any particular era.
Declaring one’s enemies Satanists is an ancient trope as well. It would be difficult for anyone to support such evil. In actuality, true Satanism, as defined by Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, is nothing more than atheism spiced up with a bit of mysterious “magick” and sexual ambiguity. A careful reading of LaVey’s The Satanic Bible shows it is nothing more than a misinterpretation of the made-up text Enochian Aethyrs, with certain “angelic” words changed to “demonic” ones. Because most people who buy into Satanic Panic are oblivious to the historical, etymological, and mythological roots of this concept, Satan is just the ultimate bad guy stripped completely of his classical antihero roots and cast off into the darkness.
Clever too is the idea of adding children into this mix. While Satan represents the most evil force ever imagined, children represent the most innocent and fragile of humans. Maybe you can get away with giving Satan a pass, but how could anyone, ever, possibly condone the torture, rape, and murder of children?
Using the ultimate evil to inflict damage against the ultimate good is the most fallacious, conspiratorial basis for any misguided belief system. But it works, time and time again. And it persists like the stains on Lady MacBeth’s hands.
QAnon is also a stale leftover slice of “PizzaGate,” which emerged right before the 2016 election. It seemed to fade, and then it came back with a vengeance and morphed into QAnon and later on “WayfairGate,” which emerged in early 2020 when people began speculating that expensive industrial cabinets with human-sounding names were really children being sold online.
The absurdity of QAnon might not have spread as far if it had remained where it had started. The Chan message boards are not for the casual internet user, so at the start, QAnon was not widespread or easily accessible. The problem began when the Chan users began sharing “Q Drops” (posts) on mainstream social media platforms. This made the Q “crumbs” easy for widespread “baking.” (Q’s codes are called “crumbs” or “breadcrumbs,” and followers are encouraged to “bake the crumbs” into whatever nonsense they choose.)
There are even QAnon aggregator sites such as QAnon.pub, which contain all the Q Drops ever posted. While these aggregator sites usually attract QAnon followers, they are also utilized by reporters and podcasters for legitimate research.
Another cryptic and biblical tenet of QAnon is their belief in “The Storm.” “The Storm Is Upon Us” is one of their catchphrases. So much energy has been put into the importance of this storm, yet no one—not even Q, who may in fact be several people—has defined what exactly “The Storm” even is. Anything can be “The Storm,” and a lot of time and energy has been put into defining what it is. QAnon followers, once they have received their “red-pill” indoctrination, declare that they have experienced “The Great Awakening.”
QAnon plays into the fantastical notions and concepts of heroic identity. Disgraced (and recently pardoned) General Michael Flynn, made a dog whistler reference to QAnon in one of his speeches, saying, “We have an Army of Digital Soldiers.” QAnon followers rejoiced at this and adopted the moniker “Digital Soldiers.” This is their ultimate fantasy; their ultimate LARP (Live Action Role Playing). QAnon is a never-ending LARP; these “digital soldiers” brave the battlefields of the internet with memes and hashtags as their weapons. (“Meme War” is another term used by QAnon followers. Nothing about QAnon is decidedly new or original, and even their main catchphrase, “Where We Go One, We Go All,” was borrowed from a line in the film White Squall.)
Perhaps the most unapologetically comical aspect of the QAnon conspiracy is the “Jesus” figure; the force for ultimate good: Donald Trump, the man who in only four years reduced every core value of American democracy into a nonstop rally of contrarian beliefs, dog whistles to neofascist politics, and absolute pandemonium. Setting aside all the other ridiculous plot twists of QAnon, Donald Trump as the hero lies somewhere in between hyperbole and sheer lunacy. But this characterization of Trump as the savior has led to the spread of Q. While not every Trump supporter is a follower of QAnon, every QAnon follower is a supporter of Trump.
At its core, QAnon represents one of the most extreme examples of fundamentalist, dominionist Christian, right-wing belief systems. According to an internal FBI memo, QAnon—like many right-wing conspiracy organizations—has been classified as a potentially terroristic threat, and the conspiracists are often listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Former “Moonie” cult member, deprogrammer, and author Steven Hassan has classified QAnon as a cult on his Freedom of Mind organization website. (His book The Cult of Trump is highly recommended. I suggest the Audible version, because it includes actual clips of Trump speaking to illustrate Hassan’s points.)
QApostates
The most dangerous aspects of the QAnon conspiracy cult are its erosive properties. While they have hijacked and hidden behind hashtags such as #SaveTheChildren, QAnon has actually been the cause of destroying lives and tearing families apart. On the SubReddit “QAnon Casualties,” innumerable posters discuss how either their former belief in QAnon or a loved one’s current belief has led to everything from the loss of a job to divorce. Families have been torn apart by a cultic belief that claims to want to “save the children.”
Jitarth Jadeja is perhaps the most well-known former QAnon follower and was in fact catapulted to a sort of reluctant fame due to his postings on this SubReddit. Jadeja, who currently resides in Australia, says he was slowly drawn into the dark world of QAnon after he experienced what can only be described as a sense of collective disillusionment and disbelief after Trump won the 2016 election. Jadeja began to question how such a thing could happen and began to seek alternative views of reality, because Trump’s win represented the antithesis of reality as he had known it. He found himself gravitating toward Alex Jones, and the slippery slope finally landed him right into the gaping maw of QAnon.
I interviewed Jadeja by telephone.
The further he slipped into the “rabbit hole,” the more he became withdrawn from the real world. “Everyone who falls into QAnon is miserable,” Jadeja says. Oftentimes these people already have a mental or emotional instability, and they likely possess some form of social dysfunction as well as low self-esteem. But Q is there to pick them up: “QAnon tells them they can be a hero. It’s about being a hero and getting credit for it,” adds Jadeja.
Despite the cries about saving the “Mole Children” being kept as sex slaves in underground tunnels and their fury at some imagined “Deep State,” QAnon is ultimately about one thing: “It’s not about kids. It’s not about the cabal. It’s about being heroes,” Jadeja says. Jadeja spent quite some time in the Q Hole, as a follower from December 2017 until June 2019.
The tipping point came for him after a Q post predicted that Trump would use the phrase “Tippy top.” (Q Drops that turn out to be “true” are called Q Proofs; sometimes the drops themselves are meant as a proof, such as the “Tippy Top” post.) Jadeja discovered that while Trump did use the phrase as predicted, he also found that it is a phrase Trump has used repeatedly in the past. That was the moment Jadeja realized he had been lied to. It was a moment of harsh self-realization.
From his experiences, looking back, he was able to see all of the clues that it was fake, clues that he could not see at the time he was enmeshed in it. QAnon is all about the misuse of information and a clever PsyOp of disinformation. (PsyOp is short for Psychological Operations, which is used by the military and defense agencies. It is the usage of tactical psychology, akin to some of the concepts of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.) The way out of QAnon is through facts and knowledge. “The more people know about it, the more likely they are to leave it,” Jadeja told me. The QAnon crowd misuses information to suit their needs, while disregarding actual information. “People use data the way a drunk uses a lamp post—for support rather than illumination.”
Jadeja was thrust into the world of the media after his recovery, when he began posting his story in the SubReddit. He began receiving requests for interviews and at first declined. He later realized that his story of recovery could possibly help others find a similar path. While Jadeja is by no means the only outspoken former QAnon follower, he says, “I’m the most visible.”
Conspiracy culture received a gift in the form of the coronavirus pandemic. With more people stuck at home with more time on their hands (mixed with dangerous algorithms used on social media platforms and YouTube), more people began sinking into the darkness. The pandemic itself became the center of many conspiracies, with many referring to it as a hoax or a “Plandemic.”
One such casualty of the pandemic is Leila Hay from Northern England. She fell into QAnon right around the time the lockdowns began and emerged after only a short period of about six months. I was also able to interview her.
“I got out right before the point where I couldn’t get out,” says Hay, adding, “I have a network that’s been very helpful to me.” Hay points out two aspects of her personality that seem to apply to many QAnon followers: “I’m very obsessive. I’m also quite vulnerable.” Her entry was by way of the algorithms used on YouTube, which has since wiped a lot of QAnon content from its platform. “It’s a toxic environment; there’s no real intelligence behind it.”
Hay’s escape from the Q Hole came by way of Twitter. She came across a page for a podcast titled QAnon Anonymous. Thinking it was a pro-QAnon podcast, she found herself drawn into the posts. She soon realized it was a decidedly anti-QAnon podcast, but she kept reading, emerging once more into the light.
The QAnon Anonymous podcast is inarguably one of the biggest thorns in the side of QAnon and Q “Adjacent” followers. The three hosts—Travis View, Julien Feeld, and Jake Rockatansky—present easily digestible and educated facts that debunk QAnon and other conspiracies. The episodes are well-researched, well-written, and often both frightening and hilarious at the same time. The hosts have even gone undercover to several QAnon rallies and conferences, most recently to one of the Arizona “Stop the Steal” post-election protests, where they encountered the “Frog Man” himself, Alex Jones.
Rockatansky expressed joy in hearing how they helped Hay escape the cult of Q. Diving so deeply into such a dark topic has its downsides for all three of the hosts. “We’ve had to figure out ways to keep ourselves grounded and not get taken along for the ride.” He says the pandemic definitely played a very big role in the proliferation of Q but reiterates the importance of the 2016 election as well. “The whole world, their minds were broken by the event, and I think a lot of people were sure that one thing was going to happen and when it didn’t happen, what they understand about the world was ripped away from them.”
“There’s a corporate interest in driving division; in not being able to empathize with the people you’re instructed to hate,” he says. There is no way around it. America has become more divided in the past four years, and at the helm of this divisive ship is Trump, steering us straight toward an iceberg at full speed.
It wasn’t just Fox News that gave Trump his popularity. Rockatansky points to mainstream media as well, which have been on “a four-year ‘hate tour’ to make up for the fact that they kinda created this guy.” He says, “Our brains have been collectively cooked by [the] media, especially post–Cold War American films from the ’80s and ’90s. People are still trying to fit reality into archetypes that were created then.”
Rockatansky stresses that one of the most unique aspects of QAnon is its real-time malleability and ability to adjust to events as they occur. “I think they know that battle can never be won because it’s not real. … You always get to be angry; you always get to be fighting. It’s a comfortable place. … The fun of it is that it gets to keep going. There’s never going to be any real answers. Once you have answers, you’re never going to be satisfied with them.”
Now, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, with the outcome being decidedly what Q did not predict, QAnon followers are in a state of doubled-down denial, sentiments that are disturbingly being echoed by other elected officials and newly elected officials such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will soon be our most “red-pilled” member of the House of Representatives.
Some QAnon followers have made threats against their own lives or those of their families if Trump does not maintain his stranglehold on the presidency. Despite the new conspiracies that arose in the wake of Joe Biden’s historic win and Trump’s refusal to concede, as of January 20, 2021, at noon, there will be a new president. But how far will QAnon followers go when that happens?
Fredrick Brennan (a.k.a. “Hot Wheels”), the original founder of the message board 8chan (now known as 8kun), has made some very frightening predictions of what may come along with the change of power on January 20.
Brennan is not only the original founder of 8chan; he also lived in the Philippines and worked alongside Jim Watkins. Watkins has been in the spotlight in the aftermath of the election, spouting conspiracies about the Dominion voting system. Watkins has a stake in these conspiracies. He has formed a Q Caucus and stands to profit from the proliferation of QAnon. Some speculate that Watkins may actually be Q. If he isn’t, he has a direct line of communication to whoever is.
Brennan ultimately remanded ownership of 8chan to Watkins in 2015. (Q originally began posting on 4chan in October 2017 but migrated to 8chan on September 19, 2018.) 8chan ultimately turned into a cesspool of filth, with many users posting images of child pornography and racist rhetoric. 8chan had also included postings from persons who later went on to commit mass shootings.
Of QAnon followers, Brennan says, “They haven’t had to reckon with the Biden administration, and that is the thing we were afraid would lead to violence. … I don’t necessarily see bright times ahead at least for political violence. … When Trump is officially out of office, I just don’t know where their narrative can go next.”
Brennan points to this bizarre doubling-down and says, “As far as they’re concerned there’s going to be a second Trump administration. … I don’t know how some of them move on” from Biden’s win. He says there is a very real possibility that “some of them might be willing to commit violent acts.” Of the QAnon followers who have been arrested in recent years, he says, “What we’ve seen are some of the dumb ones get[ting] caught.”
Brennan has been unabashedly outspoken against Watkins and 8kun in recent years. His opinions on Watkins even led to a last-minute escape from the Philippines, where he had resided for several years. Brennan made a social media post that made reference to Watkins possibly having dementia. Due to the strict libel laws in the Philippines, Watkins (claiming to be a champion of “free speech”) pressed charges.
Even a few hours in a jail cell, especially in the Philippines, would almost certainly lead to Brennan’s demise. His nickname “Hot Wheels” refers to the fact that he is wheelchair bound. He is a very small man and was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (“brittle bone disease” such as depicted in the film Unbreakable). Knowing he would not survive jail, Brennan fled from the Philippines just in the nick of time.
Brennan is very knowledgeable and has been a staunch fighter of the Q cult. Brennan has had firsthand experience with Watkins and the tumult and controversy surrounding Watkins and his unapologetic grifts. Brennan was never a believer in QAnon, yet his journey shares similarities with those who have left the Q cult, and like the stories that stem from Q, his journey is still unfolding.
With QAnon, the battle is one that never ends and one that can never be won. It is a real-time epic fight between good and evil, with the goal posts constantly moving and the enemies ever increasing. The damage it causes to people can be so life-altering that there is no turning back, but as with Jadeja and Hay as proof, there is hope for recovery and a life out of the darkness—a life that is productive and filled with logic, science, and reason.
Part 2 will appear in the next issue of Skeptical Inquirer.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Jitarth Jadeja, Leila Hay, Jake Rockatansky of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, and Fredrick Brennan for their phone interviews.