Spotting Bullshit – A Needlessly In-Depth Guide

As the war in Ukraine continues, the hot takes and thinking pieces keep rolling in.

When we think of dangerous misinformation, our minds tend to go to the QAnon cult and stories of ‘biolabs’ and rescued children. Alternatively, you might think of Tucker Carlson’s increasingly desperate attempts to defend Putin (although contrary to a lot of posts I’ve seen, he did not imply that discovered bodies of Ukrainian civilians were staged.)

Often overlooked are the far-left publications promoting almost identical talking points. The headlines are more nuanced, the lies more subtle, and the authors often have a better veneer of respectability.

They deserve just as much scrutiny as their far-right counterparts, but parsing out exactly what is wrong with one of these articles takes effort. You can’t just point at a sentence mentioning mole children and be done with it. You need to engage your brain.

This article is long. I apologize. But a thorough debunking takes time, and explaining your findings takes up even more time. With practice, this becomes very easy, but first you have to follow the process.

For this illustration we will be looking at ‘‘Russian Propaganda’ Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship‘ by Caitlin Johnstone, but you can pick whichever partisan hack you like and follow along.

Step 1 – Should I Even Care?

The headline comes in strong with ‘Russian Propaganda’ in quotes, but there’s only so many hours in the day so it’s a fair question.

Caring should be about context. Is your cousin who likes to call you a cuck posting it to his 20 Facebook followers? In that case, it depends on how much you value the intellectual integrity of your cousin.

Is it being received well by 50,000 people on Twitter? This is where I would think about clicking the link. In my case it was being posted where I had a duty to step in if anything qualifying as ‘dangerous’ or ‘misinformation’ was posted.

Step 2 – Who Wrote This?

So you’ve clicked on the link, now let’s Google the author. On a first go around, she looks like a pretty standard leftist writer. She has books sold by Waterstones and has written for the Observer, which are two institutions you’d expect to do their due diligence on a writer.

However, SEO is relatively easy to manipulate, so there are two extra searches I always perform:

‘<Author Name> RationalWiki’ and ‘<Author Name> controversy’.

‘<Author Name> controversy’ didn’t bring up anything suspicious. So we’re off to a good start!

‘<Author Name> RationalWiki’ is where it gets interesting.

Caitlin Johnstone does not have her own RationalWiki article (great!) but is mentioned on conspiracy theorist Jimmy Dore’s article (bad). Furthermore, Jimmy is praising Caitlin for ‘debunking the conspiracy theory that Assad gassed his own people‘ (RED ALERT).

The third entry down on my RationalWiki search is an article entitled ‘Caitlin Johnstone: Anatomy of a Far Left Conspiracy Nut’ written by Ben Cohen. He doesn’t appear to have much of a journalistic footprint, but thankfully we don’t have to take his word for it. He links us right to a piece Caitlin likely authored on a 9/11 truther site – and a Medium piece promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

If you don’t know about the Seth Rich conspiracy, Wikipedia has a write-up here, but safe to say this is an absolutely disgusting display of conspiracist thinking that directly attacks the parents of a murder victim.

Step 3 – Keep Digging?

I know it sounds like step one but it’s perfectly adequate to point out a 9/11 truther isn’t someone to take seriously and move on with your life. Take a moment to check in and decide if it’s worth the effort to keep going.

If it is, get ready to do what I can only describe as ‘increasingly depressing clicking’.

Step 4 – Identify and Assess What Claims Are Being Made

I’m going to use two sentences to illustrate the dual-pronged approach I advocate for these documents.

Identify What Isn’t Factual

For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy.
Caitlin Johnstone

The sources aren’t good, but at least ‘using threats’ and ‘pressure Silicon Valley companies’ are referenced. It would be possible to link to proof of threats, and perhaps legislation designed to suppress speech solely based on its political nature. It is possible for these to be statements of fact.

Even with that (nebulous) possibility in the air, the last nine words are neither a statement of fact nor an earned deduction. Perhaps Caitlin knows a lot of things I don’t and is secretly correct. However as the sentence is currently being presented to us, the conclusion is wholly unsubstantiated and can therefor be discarded.

Click On Those References!

A sentence that stood out to me was:

‘The “different research organizations” AP ends up citing include “Cyabra, an Israeli tech company that works to detect disinformation,” as well as the state-funded NATO narrative management firm The Atlantic Council.’
Caitlin Johnstone

I’ll be honest, it was mostly because when people write emotionally charged articles which mention Israel what they mean is (((The Jews))), but ‘state-funded’, ‘NATO’, and ‘narrative management firm’ are all citations, so let’s dig in

‘State Funded’

This links directly to a primary source showing that at least 10 different governments have made a sizable donation to the Atlantic Council. In using this reference Caitlin is asking us to believe that the governments of Japan and Bahrain (amongst others) are all in on pushing that sweet, sweet (((Israeli))) and NATO propaganda. I decline to endorse that assumption, but at least it’s a primary source.

‘NATO’

This links to a page from a group calling themselves ‘Swiss Propaganda Research’ with a(n, IMO) very swank looking WordPress website. Unfortunately the article itself is in German, and you can read a translation here. It’s almost entirely unsupported conclusions about The Atlantic Research Council and NATO (see ‘Identify what isn’t factual’). But, employing the bare minimum of effort to sate my curiosity and judge this website, I hover over ‘English’ and click ‘Contents’.

A web page

TITLE: Contents

Paragraph: Swiss Policy Research (SPR), founded in 2016, is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda. SPR is composed of independent academics and receives no external funding other than reader donations. Our analyses have been published by numerous independent media outlets and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

TITLE: Coronavirus Pandemic

Links:
Facts about Covid (updated) Twenty key facts about covid
Covid vaccines: a reality check (2022)
Safety and effectiveness
Covid vaccine injuries (2022) An overview of covid vaccine injuries
‘Vaccine passports’ (2022) On ‘vaccine passports’ and digital ID
Coronavirus origins (2022) On the origins of the novel coronavirus
The Propaganda Pandemic (2022) Propaganda during the pandemic
The WEF and the Pandemic (2021) On the World Economic Forum
Face masks: the evidence (2022) A review of the scientific evidence
More: More covid articles (updated) An overview of all covid articles — Well…it’s definitely content

Oh look – ‘Covid Vaccine Adverse Events’ uses VAERS data to promote that the COVID vaccine can kill you. (Please see here for why that’s a deceptive practice) They’re also supplementing their reporting with…Telegram posts of Facebook posts. A+ –

This is enough to dismiss them to my satisfaction. Maybe you know more about science than I do and can really dig in there, but employing VAERS data and Telegram groups to promote COVID conspiracies is enough for me.

‘Narrative Management Firm’

Before I even read the article on this one I’m jumping to the homepage. No COVID conspiracies, but they’re pushing the narrative that Ukraine is supporting neo-Nazis, so that lets me know what to expect. I immediately do not trust this site’s editors.

For context – The Azov Battalian, a very real group of neo-Nazis currently fighting for the Ukrainian military, number between 900-1500, which is 0.76% of the Ukrainian army, or 0.003% of Ukrainian citizens. In the 2015 general election British fascists ‘National Front’ received 1,114 votes but I don’t think it would be appropriate for France to de-nazify the UK with tanks.

However in this instance the extra clicks were superfluous. Reading the article with a critical eye, you can see that it’s 882 devoted to bitching about the fact that 32 pages were removed from Facebook, two of which might have been groups they endorse. But they may not have been. And in any case they’re restored now. How this is supposed to support the assertion that The Atlantic Council serves as a NATO narrative management firm is a little beyond me

Step 5 – Is It Dangerous Or Stupid?

This is always going to be the most subject part of the process. The article is stupid, yes, but it’s written competently enough, and is obviously geared towards inflaming the emotions of the crowd.

I also believe it’s dangerous to allow on a platform because (a) it’s written by someone with a track record of promoting Russian-backed/authored conspiracy theories (see Seth Rich) (b) it leads the reader to websites promoting misinformation, including vaccine disinformation which has demonstrably led to deaths.

The eventual apotheosis – ‘This isn’t about RT, it’s about the the agenda to continually expand and normalize the censorship of unauthorized speech’ – links to another one of her blog posts that opens insinuating that people are only calling out Joe Rogan’s COVID misinformation because the elites want to control our minds. This adds nothing to the discourse.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Caitlin provides plenty of the former, but none of the latter

Step 6 – Make a Lot of People Angry

It would be nice to end with the ‘extraordinary claims’ line, but you’ll be extremely lucky if you’ve managed to dissect a post like this without making people angry.

You might make the author angry, which is fine! No, genuinely, it’s fine. Be prepared to be lambasted using the same rigorous journalism that got them here in the first place. Perhaps they’ll even find an embarrassing photo or five. Own it. If liars and conspiracists are mad at you, you’re doing the right thing.

You might also have made reactionaries angry but I point to the above.

You may encounter people saying “well ok so the author isn’t too credible, and there are holes in the arguments, and the references are bad, but the HEART of the article is true”. Always invite those people to expand on what they mean, but be prepared to repeat steps 1-6 if you do.

Anyone emotionally invested in the narrative simply isn’t going to have their mind changed by you. There are so many half-assed posts on the internet that you can play this game indefinitely.

Remember to always check in with step 1 – because at some point it really does stop being worth your time.

Inside London’s Anti-Lockdown Protest – 14th June

CW: Antisemitism, suicide

For my own safety and at the request of some of my subjects, I will not be posting interviews from now on. If you believe you have a compelling reason to see them, please email me.

To most people, the 14th of June ’21 was when Boris Johnson would announce an extension to the national lockdown. The Delta COVID Variant has seen increasing infection rates and hospitalizations.

To protesters, it was described as ‘Judgement Day’ on Telegram, a time for a ‘Great Awakening’ when protesters would take the streets of London and halt government business. Below are my main takeaways from the day.

The Media Is The Virus

On Sunday the 13th I tweeted that I would not want to be an official reporter covering this subject. I was right to be concerned. A BBC reporter was chased out of the protest with such hostility that I’m surprised he escaped without a beating. It’s horrific.

The most popular sign of the day was ‘The Media is the Virus’. The hatred was ubiquitous, but there was no shortage of professional camera operators either. Telegram chatter showed the crowd was looking out for the 77th Brigade and ‘Rothschild Controlled Media’.

A white man with aviator sunglasses and a blue and white striped shirt stands on a London street holding a red and white sign which reads: THE MEDIA IS the VIRUS. The font is deliberately evocative of the BBC branding. — Slightly depressing to see them using the BBC font. CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

Fact checks were frequently cited by participants as part of the global conspiracy to lead us to their own personal dystopia. I don’t know how you reach out to these people, but traditional channels are not going to work.

Anti-Semitism is Rife

A through-line with (almost) every participant was that COVID and the lockdowns are part of a plan to depopulate the earth. Another through-line, with every participant, was anti-Semitism. Hate crimes against Jewish people in London have reached unconscionable levels. This has mostly been attributed to leftist anti-Israel sentiment, but it’s also become more prominent in conspiracy circles.

A shirtless white man wearing a baseball cap and aviator sunglasses holds up a round sign. On the sign are numerous printed pages which have been attached with sellotape. They are:

A graph of the number of flu cases in 2019 compared to 2020
'SAY NO TO VACCINES' in black ink
A start of David, as worn by Jewish people during WW2, with overlaying text which reads: Certification of Vaccine ID and some random numbers. There is also an RFID chip embedded in the star.
Brain scans
Revalation 13/17
A fake British passport which reads: GLOBALIST GENOCIDE AGENDA VACCINE PASSPORT
An influenza virus with the caption MISSING! The Influenza Virus AKA: The flu. Last Seen Feb 2020
A beach with the words: VACCINE ONLY HOLIDAY
The cover of a book titled The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials
Two pictures of Tony Blair - one from a news clipping with the headling: TONY BLAIR: The world needs to agree a form of Covid passport - and Britain should lead the way. And another with the words WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION
A picture of a London bus with the words NO VACCINE NO TRAVEL overlayed
A picture of an eye with the words EVENT201 overlaid
A picture of Klaus Schwab with the words I'm coming for your property You will Own Nothing overlayed — He was very proud of being called a threat by the Metro. He also admitted that he couldn’t tell me about anything on the sign. His sign. CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

When I interviewed QAnon protesters last year, only one person mentioned Jewish people at all. Another couple were horrified at the suggestion that they might be anti-Semitic. That was not the case on Monday.

A few people still paid lip-service to it just being ‘the Rockefellers’ and ‘Zionists’, but absolutely everyone I talked to was perfectly comfortable blaming Jewish people for COVID 19. One man even took the time to patiently explain Hitler’s revolutionary economic policies, which he believed were the real reason for WW2.

Jesus Is Lord (And Anti-Lockdown)

I was not expecting the Catholic faithful to feature so heavily in an anti-lockdown protest but the faithful were out in force. A de-frocked priest, a former nun, and a smattering of worshippers made their presence known.

A white man in a crowd wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap holds up a bullhorn with the words 'On A Mission From God' stuck to it. — CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

When asked why they were attending, most claimed that they believed lockdowns and “mandatory” vaccinations were against the biblical concept of free will. Depopulation via COVID was called a continuation of abortion, and proselytisers also assured me that this was the best place to “plant seeds” for the lord.

Trump Looms Large

As I set up my camera for the day, before I had started interviewing people, a woman grabbed my arm. “It’s Trump’s birthday today”, she tells me with a big smile. I ask her why that matters and she just nods and walks away.

A white woman wearing aviator sunglasses (are you noticing a pattern here?) holds a white flag which reads: TRUMP 2020 NO MORE BULLSHIT — CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

There were at least four giant Trump flags on display, with many more participants wearing ‘Make England Great Again’ hats. The people I spoke to empathised with Trump’s deplatforming, and noted that “England always follows America”. To them, the fact that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ (which, just to be absolutely clear, it was not) from Trump is a warning of what’s to come.

The ‘Make England Great Again’ hat wearers were freemen of the land inspired by Trump. By their telling, there is no English parliament, instead, the English are oppressed by the British. When I asked who ‘The British’ were the leader responded “You know exactly who they are”.

Q, Lizards, And Assorted Conspiracies

Nobody was willing to talk about Q on camera. The fingerprint of the conspiracy could be seen everywhere, but as one person told me ‘I have about 5% hopium it’s true, but I doubt it’. The rhetoric about saving the children has also shifted. Instead of paedophiles kidnapping kids for nefarious purposes, it was now the more grounded (but still absurd) theory that vaccines were going to murder children.

For conspiracy buffs out there, I did find a Bill Cooper fan in the wild, which was very surreal in 2021 London. (For more on Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars I recommend this episode of the podcast Knowledge Fight)

A white man wearing sunglasses stands in a crowd holding a cardboard sign with the words: 5G, Vaccines, Silent Weapons for Silent War — I mean he didn’t get the quote right, but he was still a fan. CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

David Icke was a prominent figure in the story of most people I spoke to. There was a strong parasocial element, with many expressing regret at having ‘abandoned’ him at an earlier point. I was only able to find two people willing to agree that we had Reptilian overlords. They also very earnestly wanted to me know the Pleiadians were fighting back.

“It’s better that then civilized humans doing this to people. I don’t think I could live with that.”

We Have To Get Personal

Two things really stuck out throughout the day. One, was the carnival-esque atmosphere. People were ecstatic to be around people like them. As they carried messages about our collective impending doom, people were laughing and more than happy to mug for the camera.

A free woman wearing sunglasses holds up a cardboard sign which reads THEY NEVER INTEND TO SET US FREE. She is standing on an empty Parliament Square — If I believed that I feel I would be slightly less enthused. CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

But even light probing revealed a dark undercurrent of fear and despair. One woman I spoke to had undergone chemotherapy in the past, and was terrified of any additional medical treatments. People spoke about losing their businesses, their jobs. And then there was the sign I still can’t get out of my head:

A white woman is standing with her back turned to camera in the middle of a crowd. She is holding a white sign which reads: IS SUICIDE MY ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS? — CC-BY-SA 4.0 yesthatfiona

It was too loud to interview this woman, and I lost her in the crowd. According to the other side of her sign, she’s an NHS worker. I really hope she’s ok, and that someone can get her help.

I don’t have any big answers or a moral takeaway. These people are putting their communities at risk and making life hell for the NHS. They’re part of the reason I have only seen a specialist once in the last year and a half. The increasing calls to violence on Telegram are scaring me, and I don’t think they’re empty threats.

All I can really do is suggest, if you have it in you, that you keep in touch with people in your life who have fallen down this rabbit hole. I think exposure to the real world is the only thing that is going to make a difference.

What Is QAnon? (Part 1 – A LARP is born)

(Need More Context? – Read Part 0.5 Here)

People asked me “Fiona, what is a LARP?” A LARP is either when a bunch of nerds get together and act out a kickass fantasy in the woods IRL, or it’s when your racist uncle puts on a confederate soldier’s uniform and pinkie swears that he’s only doing this because of his deep and abiding love of history.

However, in both of those cases, you have to put in some effort, just look at the kickass picture below. One of the most infuriating things about Q is just how lazy of a LARP it is.

A picture of a person dressed in fantasy robes, wearing a fencer's mask, and holding a bladed weapon in a field. — *This is how you do a LARP right.*
Image by Ralf Hüls, Sascha Rathjen – CC-BY-SA 4.0

FBIAnon had fizzled out by 2017, occasionally popping up to do a pointless Q&A where nothing came true. Fun way to pass the time on /pol/, but not really anything more than that. But no worries, on the 28th of October, 2017, a new and improved FBIANon, named Q, came into the world with this bold and totally accurate prediction:

Picture of an archived 4chan post which reads: "Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 7:45 AM - 8:30 AM EST on Monday - the morning on October 30, 2017." — You can totally see why people insist Q is infallible, right?

(For the rest of these posts I’m going to steal an idea from Jan Bobrowicz and deliver Q drop via the medium of Garfield.)

Make the Mark Work For You

Three posts were made on that first day and immediately they hit on the winning formula. Sure, there was the blatantly untrue prediction of Hillary Clinton’s arrest, but they also asked open ended nonsense questions. Ask any conman and they’ll tell you that getting the mark to put work in on your side is the best way to reel them in.

Here’s an example from the third ever ‘Q drop’:

Panel 1: Garfield standing next to a hole in the ground saying 'Where is Huma? Follow Huma'
Panel 2: Garfield standing next to Otie, who has a bone in his mouth in the hole
Panel 3: Otie is shaking his head. Garfield is saying 'What is the military code? Where is AW being held? Why? — Otie thought about listening to Garfield and getting pilled, before realizing he was spouting nonsense. Because even a dumb-shit imaginary dog can avoid radicalization with a little extra thought.

For the record, Huma is Huma Abedin, ex-wife of Anthony Weiner (who is AW), and former Hillary Clinton employee. At the time, Anthony Weiner was in Federal Medical Center, Devens, which according to Wikipedia is: ‘a United States federal prison in Massachusetts for male inmates requiring specialized or long-term medical or mental health care.’ He was there because he’s a white man with money whose lawyers said he had a sex addiction.

I have no idea what military or what code that question is referring to. Neither do you, because Q never provides answers. Not that it matters. You’re actively crafting this story together. What do you want it to mean? Congratulations, you cracked the code! Please enjoy the temporary dopamine boost and sense of achievement.

The worst part is, to write about this, I have to put in work. By doing so it looks as though I accept the premise that the questions were worth answering. Even if I dismiss the questions as nonsense, I have engaged. That’s how they reel you in.

And that’s why this is a game. If I were passively consuming predictions or just reading a Q&A I might get bored, but at this early stage QAnon is a LARP in a meaningful sense because by answering the nebulous open-ended questions you become an active participant and player.

Harassment Gets Baked Into The Crust

Q likes to call their posts ‘crumbs’ or ‘breadcrumbs’, and Q followers like to say they are ‘bakers’. I’m not entirely sure how you bake bread from already existing crumbs but let’s work with what we have.

As we will see in later parts, QAnon acolytes love to harass people. If you thought (as they do) that someone was a cannibalistic pedophile, you’d probably harass them too. This isn’t an offshoot or a case of something ‘getting out of hand’, it’s a core feature of the game.

You notice I didn’t go stalk Huma Abedin in my answers above. I don’t care where she is. I hope she’s happy now she’s not married to a lying pervert who chats up children. Q really cares. Four out of the first ten Q drops say to follow or check in with where she is. Why? Like I said, Q doesn’t provide answers. You decide!

In all panels, Garfield is lying down and a thought bubble is coming from his head. They say:
Panel 1: Where is Huma?
Panel 2: Follow Huma Tomorrow. Human
Panel 3: Where is Huma Today? — This is normal. Everything is fine.

Join me next week for part 2 where we explore early Q narratives, and watch the original creators desperately try and bail from the monster they made.

Reddit – Still Evil

There’s been a lot of weird revisionist history around Reddit recently. The Atlantic wrote a piece praising them for not currently being a hotbed of QAnon conspiracies, completely overlooking the fact that Reddit helped spread it in the first place. In fact, Reddit was so instrumental in the early spread of QAnon that they got a shoutout in a Q drop.

They praise their swift action on /r/Pizzagate, but in the same post remark on how /r/TheGreatAwakening had 70,000 members. If you want to know how bad it got before Reddit deigned to step in, read this incredibly detailed post about just one harassment campaign organised by Q acolytes.

But all that is in the past. There’s been a big push to make the Anti-Evil Operations team more visible. Has that made a difference? Not really.

Reddit – Still Pushing Conspiracies

I wanted to make a new Reddit account recently. I used an email address from a domain that I owned, and knew had no other user accounts (BurnYourFeelings.com)

Going through on-boarding, here were the first suggestions I got.

Image of Reddit page which is recommending communities to new users. The two relevant ones are 'r/conspiracy_commons' and 'r/conspiracytheories' — Why, Reddit? Why do you do this?

I asked someone else I knew to create an account on a domain I had a level of control over. Here’s what came up:

Image of Reddit page which is recommending communities to new users. The two relevant one is 'r/conspiracytheories' — They’re serious about pushing this apparently….

A complete throwaway with a fake email address does produce completely generic results, removing the ‘Just For You’ section entirely, so this has to be personalized somehow. A quick glance at this blog shows you that I’m no stranger to browsing conspiracy boards. UBlockOrigin doesn’t block every cookie. So that’s it. That’s the solution, right? No harm, no foul. Just serving up relevant content.

What Are They Recommending?

Reddit has no way of knowing why I’m browsing conspiracy boards. The algorithm might be watching me, but it isn’t watching that closely. Much like Facebook, Reddit is now creating a tailored road-map to ‘pill’ me.

Here’s a selection of posts from /r/conspiracy_commons the day I signed up (please note that I took my sweet time writing this so this first bunch are old)

A Q/COVID-denalist grifter!

A reddit post with the title 'Fight with us people of the UK!!' — You too can get coaching on…something. Only £20 p/h!

A QAnon/Hollow-Earth true believer!

A Reddit post with the title 'What did Seth MacFarlane mean by this? A character dressed as Steven Spielberg molesting an Asian boy while singing The Goonies theme. It's probably nothing' — Seth MacFarlane likes to make jokes in poor taste. That is the explanation.

Racist memes from user Murder_All_Marxists, who deleted their own account. Reddit was apparently fine with the username.

A Reddit post with the title 'Slavery is still active in Africa' — This isn’t even a conspiracy.

In defense of the folks at /r/conspiracy_commons, today’s selection (15th October) was less actively horrendous, but number five on ‘Hot’ was still QAnon propaganda.

A reddit post with the title 'Evidence against Biden, Obama and Clinton goes Public! Deep State Scrambles as MORE EVIDENCE Revealed! — This is exhausting.

Just to re-emphasize. This is content that Reddit was actively recommending to me as a new user. I can’t find statistics on how many new accounts there are a day, but there are apparently 430 million active users right now. How many people are being recommended similar content??

Why Does It Matter?

If you hang around places like /r/QAnonCasualties you can get a real sense of what happens in the lives of people taken in by these posts. On the day I registered, I came across this incredibly telling and sad post.

A Reddit post with the title 'Does anyone here feel the constant sadness and hollowness once you are not distracted?' — Apparently this post was deleted. I’m not shocked.

There’s a human cost to algorithms. The anti-COVID propaganda seen here has an actual body-count. Democracies are being eroded by QAnon and Deep State content that pushed people into an alternative reality. And on the micro-level, divorce proceedings are being started, people are losing their kids, parents are alienated from their children.

Reddit can do better.

#SaveOurChildren – QAnon Comes to London

(This blog post was also published to WT.Social with permission. You can see my interviews with attendees here)

On August 22nd, at 3pm exactly, ~100 people sat by Wellington Arch to participate in a “global guided meditation”. Children all over the world were being kidnapped, murdered, or cannibalized by a nebulous group called ‘the elites’. But more than anything, the organizers claimed, this was a spiritual war.

And so sage was burned, gongs were rung, and the tranquility was only shattered when a man approached the crowd to scream: “Where were you when those peadophiles were grooming all those white kids, huh? You didn’t give a shit then! Shame on you. You didn’t care about those white kids.”

QAnon has officially come to Britain.

Who Are The Believers?

Event Organizers Leading the March (CC-BY-SA 4.0 YesThatFiona)

The crowd seemed to be evenly split into three camps:

The Crunchy Moms
As the march was centered around such an adult and disgusting subject matter, I was surprised to see so many people attending with their kids. Concerned mothers wanting to be on the right side of history made a strong showing. They helped to lead the meditation, which they took extremely seriously, and a few cast some very forceful spells at the end of the day.

Although they claimed that their kids weren’t aware of what was going on around them, it seems doubtful that signs saying ‘Kill All Pedos’ and chants about children being snatched off the street will go completely over their heads.

The Q Converts
There was a strong showing of people pilled from the internet, although none of them could say exactly where they first became aware of Q. These were the people overtly concerned with symbology, frazzledrip, and COVID being a hoax.

People With Issues Around Their Children
There was a subsection of attendees who obviously had issues with their own children. These were the people who wanted to talk about the courts, or the one gentleman who started crying talking about “fighting for my kids”.

What Do They Believe?

QAnon Follower Holds Up A Homemade Sign With Supposed Pedophilic Symbology (CC-BY-SA 4.0 YesThatFiona)

One of the more surprising things I learned was that most attendees did not believe in the infallibility of Q. Q was “one source” of information, but not correct about everything, and nobody said the words “disinformation is necessary”, for which I will be forever thankful.

A good half of the people I spoke to said that they had known about “this” forever. Although both the US and UK had a Satanic Panic in the 80s, the legacy of pedophile hysteria that overtook Britain in the 90s lives on. Add to that history the very real case of Jimmy Savile and the subsequent Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and it’s easy to see how the UK is primed to simply incorporate QAnon conspiracies into the existing ecosystem.

There was absolutely no mention of Hillary Clinton, and Trump was draining the swamp, which was great, but didn’t have a lot to do with us. George Soros and the Rothschild family made their obligatory appearance, but only one person seemed to be aware that they were spouting antisemitic conspiracy theories. When I pointed out to one couple that all the people they were demonizing were Jewish, they were extremely emphatic that they weren’t aware and didn’t care about that.

The entire UK government seemed to be forgotten. The Queen and Lord Rothschild were the actual rulers of Britain, and the UK heads of the pedophile cabal. Strangely enough, there were no UK-centric saviors. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a savior at all. Just one long list of evils perpetuated by a nebulous elite.

How Has Q Changed Them?

The world’s jolliest QAnon follower (CC-BY-SA 4.0 YesThatFiona)

In a crowd of fellow believers, the mood was light and there was a real sense of camaraderie between attendees. However, when asked about their lives outside of this event, and how their new worldview had changed them, they all had only bad things to say.

People couldn’t sleep, people couldn’t talk about anything else, people’s entire worldview had been shattered. There was no mention of losing loved ones, but even these short self-reports give a depressing insight into the world of a QAnon follower.

When asked how they were looking after their mental health, everyone said “I smoke a lot”. The blanket of cigarette smoke covering the crowd spoke to the truth of that claim. The few day drinking attendees also said this was how they dealt with the stress of living in the world Q has convinced them is real.

This all only applied to the new converts. The older crowd who has known this “forever” reported no change in their lives at all since Q emerged.

When Does This End?

Save Our Children Attendees March Passed Westminster Abbey (CC-BY-SA 4.0 YesThatFiona)

The short answer, according to the attendees, is that it doesn’t. One QAnon devotee did cling to the belief that there would be mass arrests with pedophiles being put into gitmo, but to everyone else, this was a forever fight.

There are more walks scheduled throughout the year, including satellite groups like Sovereign Citizens and “doctors” who believe COVID is a hoax. With no end goal, it’s difficult to know where this misplaced rage will go. After I left, the crowd bum-rushed Buckingham Palace to call out Prince Andrew, but should Q turn their attention to less well guarded individuals, perhaps the witch-hunts of the 90s will return. We can only hope there will be less collateral damage.