Announcer (00:01): Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

(00:04): Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

(00:27): Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

Chris Carr (00:38): On today's podcast, I'm joined by author Mike Rothschild. He wrote the fantastic book, THE STORM IS UPON US: HOW QANON BECAME A MOVEMENT, CULT, AND CONSPIRACY THEORY OF EVERYTHING. So, on this episode, we're looking at QAnon and conspiracy theory culture, which is a subject of deep interest to me. So, I hope you find this episode interesting.

(00:54): Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Take care.

Announcer (00:58): The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast.

Chris (01:19): Mike, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on.

Mike Rothschild (01:22): Thank you for having me.

Chris (01:23): It's good to see you. So can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to cover conspiracy culture? Because it's such a fascinating area and then you sort of zoned in on QAnon.

Mike (01:34): Yeah, so I'm a journalist and author, and I'm based in the Los Angeles area. And I have been sort of a fan of conspiracy theories and conspiracy culture really since the mid-nineties, or maybe the late-nineties. It's when I discovered COAST TO COAST AM, the old Art Bell radio show--

Chris (01:54): That's a classic.

Mike (01:55): And he was still at that point where it was the right wing was sort of backing away from some of the militia movement stuff and some of the anti-government extremism in the wake of Oklahoma City. So his shows were very much UFOs and crop circles and angels and the face on Mars. And I just was fascinated by it. I didn't believe any of it, but it was so completely outside of my existence that I just kind of couldn't help but be pulled into the sort of weirdness of all these stories. And it was this whole other world that I really didn't know existed. And I sort of stayed as a fan and a casual watcher of conspiracy theories for quite a long time. And then in the mid-tens, maybe 2012-2013, I started writing about them. And that's right around the time where Donald Trump first emerged as the first political candidate whose platform was essentially based on conspiracy theories. And I realized that there was a need for understanding this material in a way that wasn't mocking it, but in terms of trying to unpack why anybody would believe this stuff, and what is the appeal of saying that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, or saying that FEMA camps are being created in abandoned Walmarts to house "patriots" after their guns are taken away? Why does anybody think that that's real? And my interest in it is sort of dovetailed with the public's interest in it and lack of understanding of it, and I've sort of stepped in to help fill that gap between belief and understanding.

Chris (03:34): Yeah, thank you for that. When did you first realize QAnon was more than just another fringe theory?

Mike (03:40): So I started seeing tweets in the QAnon universe almost right away, maybe the end of 2017, beginning of 2018. And I was seeing tweets about John McCain and Hillary Clinton wearing orthopedic walking boots, not because they'd injured their ankles, like the rest of us do, but because they were wearing ankle bracelets after they'd been secretly arrested in a great purge of the deep state called the "Storm." And I was just immediately hooked. I was just like, this is amazing. I don't know what this is or where it's going, but I want to know everything about this. And after a couple of months of following it just sort of casually, I started to realize that a lot of the promises that QAnon was making of these mass arrests and this great utopia that will come afterwards had a very similar structure to a lot of prosperity scams that I'd written about. And I cover these things in the book, THE STORM IS UPON US -- these things like the Iraqi dinar and NESARA and things like that, things where there's going to be this great financial windfall that happens and only the special people are going to get to know about it, and they communicate with these codes and catchphrases. And I realized that QAnon was using a lot of the same language, but it was promising, not a financial windfall, but the emotional windfall of seeing your enemies brought to justice. And I realized that there was a real violent tinge to this that I think a lot of the mainstream media just wasn't taking seriously. And I started really honing in on it, and that's when I really started writing about it in a much more serious way.

Chris (05:18): Yeah, fantastic. So for listeners unfamiliar with QAnon, can you explain kind of QAnon's core mythology and how it blended older conspiracy tropes like Pizzagate, blood libel myths, and the New World Order theories into this sort of new cocktail?

Mike (05:34): So QAnon emerged in October of 2017, so about eight or nine months into Trump's first presidency. And it started off as a series of message board posts on the image board 4chan, and it was written out in this kind of very elliptical code promising that Hillary Clinton and George Soros and Barack Obama and all these horrible Democrats would be arrested on November 4th, 2017. And this was timed to go along with this other conspiracy theory around that Antifa would be rising up against Trump and there would be US Marshals and the National Guard in the streets and there would be mass arrests and mass chaos, and all of it was going to be cover for arresting all of these prominent Democrats. And Q kind of strung this story along and started referring to themselves as "Q-Clearance Patriot," using that actual Department of Energy term, which is Q clearance and kind of ramping people up for this big event that was about to happen.

(06:35): Then, of course, nothing happened, and Q became this then very coded and very generic prophecy cult theorizing that all these great things were about to happen, using a lot of the same language as Pizzagate of trafficking and pedophilia, using a lot of past antisemitic conspiracy theories -- like you mentioned, the blood libel -- using a lot of sort of seventies and eighties anti-government paranoia, fusing all of this stuff together and giving it this social media-friendly sheen. But it was really very old stuff. There was a mix of these prosperity scams and this anti-government stuff and sort of classic Cold War conspiracism. It was all of these things put together in a way that felt very new but really was not new at all. And it really hooked people. It was a story that was very confusing and contradictory, but it was entertaining and it kept you on the hook and it gave you more things to do and it gave you puzzles to solve and clues to decode. And at the end there was going to be these great mass arrests and peace and harmony, and then you were going to be part of the special group that knew what was happening before it happened. And the appeal to that was very profound for a certain type of person.

Chris (07:45): Yeah, indeed. I was just going to quickly show you something. I've got a bit of a souvenir from Pizzagate, the Comet Pizza. I went there in DC last year--

Mike (07:56): Oh, nice!

Chris (07:56): My colleague, Matt, took me and I was just shocked that this pizza restaurant they thought was some sort of, what was it? It was sort of like were saying it was a holding pen for kids or something.

Mike (08:07): There were tunnels in the basement and all this crazy stuff.

Chris (08:10): Absolutely crazy. And yeah, I was completely shocked when I went in there, but very good pizza.

Mike (08:17): That's what I've heard. Every time I've been to DC I've been on such a tight timeline that I haven't been able to get out there.

Chris (08:24): Well if you do get a chance, it's worth it.

Mike (08:26): Yeah.

Chris (08:26): It's very good -- despite its unfortunate claim to fame now.

(08:32): So, what makes QAnon so adaptable and different to people's different fears and biases? And you mentioned the game-like nature and how it helped it spread a bit. And one thing I've noticed about conspiracy theories with my involvement with conspiracies a very long time ago, there is a very big social aspect to conspiracy culture and things. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that with QAnon?

Mike (08:57): Yeah, the social aspect is a huge part of it. Conspiracy belief for a long time was very siloed. It was very much something you did by yourself. You couldn't connect to other people. Other people in your life didn't want to hear about it. Maybe you would get together at some hotel or at a bookstore or something. But now with social media, you have the ability to connect with people around the world. And so you'll find these very America-centric conspiracy theories, like QAnon, have these huge followings overseas because all these people are able to connect with each other. And what they're doing is they're doing this kind of share their findings and they give people a sense belonging and a sense of ownership over what's going on. It's not just something that you're reading about in a book -- not like, "Here's all the ways that the Illuminati control you." It's, "Here's all the ways the Illuminati control you, and here's how to fight back."

(09:46): So that's really what makes it so appealing is that for the first time you have something that allows people to feel like they're fighting back. And of course what they're fighting back against is different for every person. QAnon is incredibly malleable. It's not a belief system that demands you believe every single part of it. You can discard certain parts of it and embrace other parts of it and nobody bats an eye at it. So it's really sort of a conspiracy theory that both can be very personal but also has wide-ranging appeal for different people.

Chris (10:16): And how did platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and their engagement algorithms supercharge QAnon's growth and deepen this follower commitment?

Mike (10:25): Well, QAnon is an almost entirely social media-driven phenomenon, particularly early on. You started seeing get-togethers maybe in 2018 or 2019, but very early on it was entirely social media-driven. And I think one of the things that happened is these social media sites did not want to take any action banning supposedly right-wing-leaning conspiracy theories like QAnon because they didn't want to be seen as overly censorious of conservatives. I think Mark Zuckerberg said exactly that in why he didn't ban Alex Jones. He said, I didn't want to look like I was censoring conservatives. Well, maybe sometimes people do need to be reined in a little bit. I think QAnon grew almost unchecked. None of these social media platforms did anything about it other than Reddit, which banded it in I think 2019. So it grew totally unchecked. QAnon videos were very good at gaming algorithms by having a lot of different subjects, so they'd pop up in almost anything that you were watching that had a kind of fringe bent to it. And all of this growth was happening while the mainstream media just really wasn't covering this. I struggled to try to get editors to take this seriously. It was like, "Well, just ignore it. It'll go away. These people want attention, don't give it oxygen." And I think we've really learned that these things don't go away if you ignore them, they actually just grow with nobody paying attention.

Chris (11:51): And this is one of the issues with it, in a way, is it falls in the crack of the free speech debate and the difference between free speech and hate speech, which is something that a lot of social media companies are still navigating or refusing to navigate.

Mike (12:06): And it's very tricky. It's a very tricky line between what is free speech, what is disinformation, what is harassment? I mean, certainly there are aspects of QAnon that are absolutely based on harassment. All the time, I would get absolutely deluged by QAnon followers if I gave an interview about it. But how much of that can you actually ban people for? I don't know. At the end of the day, these platforms have to decide what they allow and what they don't allow. And it's not that the law or Congress or whoever is deciding what's allowable, it's that these companies are so hands-off that they just let anything go. And we've seen where that goes. I mean, if you look at Twitter now, it's just a cesspool, it's almost unusable, and there's no tools there for moderation. And the tools that they do have are easily gamed by the people who spread this stuff.

Chris (12:58): The other problem as well is, we've had this in the past on Twitter -- we're no longer really on it -- but we put episodes out that are tackling particular topics, and then we get censored because we mentioned QAnon or whatever it is that we're talking about that week. And it just seems to me that the social media companies have managed to find a great way to ban people who critically tackling these things, but then you see endless posts by, I dunno, should we say Joe Rogan, et cetera, who do spread a lot of misinformation, who seem to be running free on the internet and on social media.

Mike (13:36): Yeah, I mean, these companies have no idea what to do. And in many cases, this is all still brand-new technology. Social media has really only been part of our lives for twelve to fifteen years in most cases. And if you look at the state of radio twelve or fifteen years after it was started, it was very different. It was very, everybody was just making it up as they went along, and I'm sure future generations are going to look back at us and go, wow, we can't believe what you could get away with on the internet.

Chris (14:09): Yeah, indeed. And what do you think companies could be doing better about this? What should they be doing?

Mike (14:15): I think it's hard because you don't want to censor legitimate discussions. And of course, we've seen that where it was impossible to even talk about any of these things because it was just certain key words were being banned. And I don't think that's particularly useful, but I do think that anything that crosses the line into harassment, antisemitism, racism, glorification of violence -- I think that, to me, should be a fairly easy thing for most people to not want on their social media site. It's the analogy of a bar: If a person walks into your bar and is screaming antisemitism and threatening people, you have the right to not have that person in your bar. You don't have to allow them to harass your patrons. This is sort of the basic kind of property ownership rights that a lot of the far right really used to extol, and now they want the government telling them what to do in every capacity -- as long as it's Trump.

Chris (15:15): Yeah, yeah, indeed. Do you think -- I was talking to Alicia Wanless about misinformation, disinformation, and one of the things I brought up was whether there should be more responsibility on the individual on the internet, and whether, because we're able to broadcast now like a national newspaper, should we be subjected to more regulations like a public broadcaster would?

Mike (15:45): Yeah, it's a very, very hard line to walk because as an individual person, at least in free countries, you have the right to say things and you have the right to believe things, even if those things are stupid and if they're harmful to you. You don't have the right to harm other people. I think what we just don't know is what does that mean? Is it harmful to other people to be sharing QAnon videos? It might be, it might also not be. I think these are almost philosophical questions that unfortunately they're up to each individual person to decide what their philosophy is. And unfortunately, I think the internet and social media and the sort of viral addiction have enabled some of the worst aspects of these things. And I think they've enabled the worst instincts of a lot of people who now think that free speech is just, "I get to say whatever I want, and I don't care what you think." And maybe that is technically free speech, but I don't know if that's morally free speech.

Chris (16:46): Yeah, it's a good question actually. Yeah, because there is this sort of rise of people thinking that they could just say what they want and that's somehow honest and--

Mike (16:55): Yeah. Right, exactly.

Chris (16:56): Not good. Yeah, you see that with politicians and things, they're like, so, yeah, so uncensored and all that. Yeah, yeah. It's a very strange thing, that. Let's take a break and we'll be right back with more.

(17:07): Your research has shown that Russian-linked accounts have helped amplify QAnon content early on, and platforms like 8kun, which was 8chan previously, have now found hosting in Russia. So how significant was Russian involvement and how does it fit into the broader pattern of Russian active measures?

Mike (17:43): Everything that I've seen with QAnon, looking at it from the very beginning, to me shows that there was not a lot of involvement from Russia, and probably very little. There was amplification early on of QAnon tweets, but it was a very small amount given the number of tweets going around about QAnon in late 2017 and early 2018. And the tweets that were shared got almost no traction. I would tell people that one tweet from a major QAnon influencer, all of whom were based either in the US or the UK or Australia or Western Europe, would have significantly more impact than any amount of Russian amplification. And I think there was an assumption that this just had to be Russia, like only Russia knows how to do this, and I just don't think that's true. I think what powers QAnon is the same thing that powers a lot of other conspiracy cults and movements.

(18:41): It's that need for belonging, that need for feeling special and feeling like you know what's going on, feeling like your enemies are going to get what's coming to them. Russia and Russian intelligence and Russian trolling might be able to amplify certain things, but they don't create those feelings. Those feelings are in us. They're in all of us. And conspiracy gurus are very good at exploiting those things. And they have been for centuries, going way, way back to the very beginning of the written word. People have always known how to use written words to manipulate emotions. That's just a very human thing there. There's nothing in QAnon that would specifically require Russian involvement. And it's just not the kind of thing that they do. Putting a few posts on 4chan and just hoping they take off is not really what an intelligence agency does.

Chris (19:36): So you don't see -- so you feel then that Russian active measures and Russian involvement might be a little bit overblown in the case of QAnon and QAnon conspiracy theories?

Mike (19:48): Absolutely. I think there's a sort of reflexive knee-jerk pointing at Russia because Russia does a lot of bad things in the disinformation space. It's just that QAnon is so specifically Western and understands internet culture I think in a way that only hardcore internet users understand. And it's just exploiting things that are very innate to American paranoia and American need for control and revenge. I mean, that's very easy to do that. And in terms of the work that I've done, every QAnon influencer who has been unmasked is a Western figure -- is either US, Australian, Western European, British, French. These are not guys working in some basement in St. Petersburg, these are guys who work at banks and tire companies and schools and just want something more to do in their boring lives. And so they get into QAnon.

Chris (20:53): Yeah. And is there really definitive evidence now pointing at who started QAnon? Because I feel like there's a few people who've been named, but I haven't seen anything solid myself, but--

Mike (21:03): It's one of those questions I think people really focused on very early: Who's doing this and who are they working for? And I think once you get past the idea that who's ever making the Q posts has any sort of government involvement -- and there's no evidence that, you know, Q never revealed anything classified, anything secret. Anything that Q believers think Q revealed, you can kind of trace it back to cold reading techniques and shotgunning out predictions that are so vague that at some point one of them is going to come true. Once you get past that, it kind of doesn't matter who did it. And I think everyone who really looks for who did it kind of comes to that same conclusion, that it kind of doesn't matter who typed the text into the box and hit post. It's, why did people believe this? Now, I think we do generally know that it was Ron Watkins, the son of the owner of 8kun, who probably made the bulk of the posts and did a great deal of the work, making sure that 8chan was running to the point where Q posts would get a lot of attention. The writing style is very similar. Once Ron was tweeting quite a bit, the tweets read exactly the way Q drops read. I mean, there's just no separation there. And he's always denied it, but his denials are very thin and not particularly believable. So I think if you have to point to one person to be linked to the Q drops, I'd say it's Ron Watkins -- but it's not like he did anything illegal, so it doesn't really matter in the end.

Chris (22:38): Indeed. So how did QAnon evolve from an online conspiracy to fueling real-world violence, particularly in the lead up to the January 6th attacks on the US Capitol?

Mike (22:49): It really started to drive these real-world acts of violence. It started to become this philosophy that people saw desire to take into the real world. And the one that really started to get people's attention was the guy who barricaded himself in his car outside Hoover Dam. This guy was armed in the teeth, he's in this mobile homemade armored truck, and he's saying things into a video that he's shooting in his car that are directly referencing things that only QAnon ever talked about. And suddenly there's all these references to QAnon and a lot of media sources are going, what is this? What is going on here? What does all this mean? And I think there were researchers who are going, "Yeah, we've been telling you about this for the last two years, you just haven't paid attention because it's too weird." I think it dragged on long enough, and there was so little action actually taking place by Trump and the people around Trump to actually do anything about the people that Q was targeting, that people started to take matters into their own hands. And that was the thing that I was afraid of in the very beginning is that you can only tease a person so much that Barack Obama and George Soros are going to be arrested and hanged at dawn at Guantanamo Bay. And it doesn't happen, and they say, "Well, they're not doing it, so I'm going to have to do it." And that's where you really start to see the spillover into the real world.

Chris (24:09): Yeah. And in your view, does QAnon represent a kind of new form of domestic terrorism, or is there a better way to define the threat it poses?

Mike (24:18): I think it's a form of what domestic terrorism looks like right now. Certainly most of the people involved in it will not pick up arms and go blow up a federal building or whatever, but they are people who are by nature believers in a conspiracy cult where taking up arms against the Democrats in the deep state is part of the whole thing. It is an inherently violent movement. So I don't think that you can call every person who believes in QAnon a domestic terrorist, but at the same time, every person who believes in QAnon believes in a movement that is directly tied to domestic terrorism.

Chris (24:54): Yeah, indeed. And where do you see QAnon influence lingering in US politics today? Is it still forced behind the scenes, or is it morphing into something else?

Mike (25:02): The unsatisfying answer is that it's both. It's definitely morphing into something else. It's definitely leaving behind a lot of the trappings of QAnon, the drops and the codes and the riddles and all that stuff. When Donald Trump is the president, you don't need that stuff anymore when you've got hardcore conspiracy theorists like Kash Patel and Dan Bonino running the FBI, and you've got Pam Bondi as the attorney general. I mean, these people are as dialed into conspiracy theories as you could possibly get. This stuff is not fringe anymore. This is now the backbone of Republican politics -- that the election was stolen, that the deep state's trying to take out Trump with assassination attempts, that Ukraine is a hub for biolabs and trafficking. That's all stuff that's started on the far-right fringes and is now part and parcel of mainstream politics. At the same time, Trump is still sharing Q posts. He's still sharing QAnon memes. He's still retweeting this stuff that has QAnon hashtags in it. So it really is like they've left it behind, but they're also really happy to see it acknowledged whenever one of their heroes mentions it.

Chris (26:12): Yeah. You mentioned the assassination attempt on Trump. The guy, I've forgotten his name right now, but the suspect struck me as the sort of person who would be into conspiracy theories. Have you seen any links to him and QAnon or believing in QAnon in any way?

Mike (26:27): I haven't specifically seen any links to him. I think -- Matthew Crooks, or Thomas Crooks -- or Thomas Matthew Crooks, I think was his name. Of course, everybody went looking for it. And he, to me, seemed like kind of just a catchall conspiracy believer. I think he was into far-right conspiracies, far-left conspiracies, which is very common. There are many, many people who believe this stuff who are not ideologically straight one party or the other. It's just a whole grab bag of things. It's anti-Biden stuff, but it's also anti-vaccine stuff. It's anti-5G stuff. It's anti-trafficking stuff. It's all over the place. It's a worldview that doesn't really make any sense except to the person who believes it.

Chris (27:13): Yeah. And do you think COVID had a big effect on kind of mainstreaming QAnon?

Mike (27:19): COVID had a huge effect. I mean, really, QAnon did start to seem like it was maybe starting to fade out a little bit and then COVID supercharged all of these conspiracy theories by putting a traumatic event right in the middle of it. COVID, especially the early days of lockdown, it's this time where suddenly everybody's inside, everybody's cut off from their social circles and their families. Many people have lost their jobs or they're working from home. People are bored, people are isolated, and people are looking for who did this to them and why is this happening and who's in charge and who can we trust? And I think conspiracy gurus were right there to say, "We know all the answers. Trust us. Buy our products. Here's who the enemy is." And suddenly, all of these different conspiracy worlds started mingling together, and now that's really the norm, unfortunately.

Chris (28:10): Where does QAnon stand today? I don't hear it mentioned as much as it used to be. Is it still as popular, or has it now sort of morphed into the mainstream and now it's no longer needed?

Mike (28:23): Yeah, it's definitely at that point where it's really no longer needed. I think there are a lot of people, especially right-wing influencers, who were like, "Yep, Q was right about everything." But they don't really know what that means. They just say it because a lot of their people believe in it. I think, if you want to use sort of an animal kingdom analogy, QAnon has kind of left its chrysalis and it's the butterfly and it's flying around and it's everywhere now. It doesn't need all of this stuff that it used to need. And in fact, actually a lot of that stuff kind of repels people. I mean, most people don't want to spend their time decoding nonsense on 4chan. That's not palatable for most people. Most people are just like, "Yeah, tell me who the bad guys are and what I can do to help." That's where most people are right now. It doesn't need all of this stuff.

Chris (29:09): Yeah. And how did QAnon ideology spread beyond the US and what consequences are we seeing internationally now?

Mike (29:17): It spread around the world very quickly. It became very popular in the UK, very popular in Germany with a lot of the anti-government movements there. It became very popular in France with the far-left yellow vest movement. It's very popular in Japan. It's very popular in Brazil. It really taps into this sort of weird paradox of being both anti-authority but also authoritarian, if that makes any sense. These people all want government out of their lives, but they also want the government to crush all their enemies and tell them what to do. And it's this weird paradox that's really at the heart of Trumpism. And so when you find any country where people don't like the leaders and think that there are sort of secret power players -- who are probably funded by Jews running everything -- QAnon is going to take root there because it really taps into a universal kind of fear of manipulation and need to fight back against the people who feel like they're controlling you.

Chris (30:16): Indeed. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

(30:35): Let's shift into the psychology of belief. I find this area quite interesting. So what is it that draws smart, seemingly rational people into QAnon, and why do so many find it so hard to break free from it?

Mike (30:49): Smart people really are drawn to QAnon. I think this stereotype of it's just sort of Midwestern flyover country rubes who've never gotten out of the fifth grade -- I mean, certainly there are people like that who are involved in these movements -- but a lot of these people are very well educated, very high-placed jobs. They're executives at colleges and banks and high-profile writers and thinkers, and they just get drawn into this nonsense of this kind of worldview of this great secret war between good and evil because you feel like it explains so much of these things. I think a lot of these people really didn't like Hillary Clinton, a lot of these people really didn't like Barack Obama, are very distrustful of Jewish power, and that can impact anybody. And it's almost, like, the smarter you are, the more you think you're not susceptible to this stuff. And of course, you may actually be more susceptible, and you stay with it even as it continues to fail because you have now devoted so much of your life and your time and your energy to it, and you've probably pushed away a lot of the people in your life who think it's stupid and you should go find a more productive hobby. You don't want those people to be right. And a lot of people, they feel like if they walk away from QAnon at the wrong time, well they're going to miss out on it, they're going to miss out on the great, the mass arrest.

(32:12): There's a great academic study from the 1950s, a book called When Prophecy Fails. It's a little bit dry, it's written very academically, but I think it's a really important book to understand how we got to where we are. And it follows a Midwestern UFO cult, and it's maybe twenty or thirty people who are being led by this housewife who claims she's getting automatic writing messages from an alien guru. And she says, "There's going to be a flood and the world's going to be destroyed. Gather with me and we'll go out into the streets and we'll be picked up by the aliens." And so on this freezing cold December night in Chicago, two thousand people go outside, they wait to get picked up by the UFO. Well, the UFO doesn't come. They've already left their families behind. They've left their jobs. They, they've burned their lives to the ground. They can't just go back and say, "Well, I was wrong." You stick around because where else are you going to go and who else are you going to talk to? The cult, the group is the only thing you have left. So it really becomes the center of your world, and you don't want to walk away from it. It's too important to you.

Chris (33:18): Yeah. One observation I've made about conspiracy theories generally: I've noticed a lot of people from a creative background particularly get drawn into it, because I know a lot of filmmakers and artists who are very conspiratorial on their thinking. And I dunno if you've seen anything about that.

Mike (33:35): It's the storytelling aspect that I think draws a lot of people in. I think you get hooked on it as this sort of -- it's like STAR WARS but real life, and you get to be the Rebels and you're fighting against the Empire. I think it also, it's really interesting -- I don't know if anybody's ever done a full-on study of it, the link between authoritarian conspiracy theories and failed artists. I think a lot of artists and writers and actors and comedians who maybe get rejected by the mainstream industry, they gravitate toward these fringe communities because they get to use their storytelling skills in a way that they never were allowed to by the mainstream power bookers -- oh, who happen to all be Jewish or bending over backwards to kowtow to diversity. So it kind of allows you to take your resentment and turn it into something really impactful. And of course, now you've got these conspiracy films and conspiracy books and podcasts that are hugely profitable, and you find a lot of failed creative types who get into this.

Chris (34:43): Alex Jones you mentioned earlier, makes millions each year out of Infowars. I jokingly say sometimes in this podcast, if I just shave my head, did steroids, and believed in conspiracy theories, I'd probably be a millionaire by the end of the year.

Mike (34:56): Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Chris (34:58): Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy. So, from your research, what are the kind of common patterns in how QAnon fractures families and relationships? I've certainly seen a lot of friendships broken over it.

Mike (35:10): Yeah, I think it's different for every person because it's so individualized. But I think with a lot of these movements in general, they take over your life. It becomes a kind of almost an evangelical zeal of a recent convert. It's all you want to talk about, it's all you want to do, and you bombard your friends with links and articles, and after a while, you don't want to be subjected to this stuff. People don't want to be bombarded with all this stuff about pedophiles and trafficking and microchips and vaccines and whatever. And I think there comes a point where a lot of people are like, "I don't want to talk about this anymore. Please, let's go back to what we used to talk about." And the convert says, "No, no. This is the real world. I've had my eyes open. I want to help you. I want to rescue you." And for most people, it's like, "Just get away from me. I don't want that anymore." And that's really what fractures the relationships is one person becomes obsessed to the point where you don't want to be around that person anymore, and they're starting to harm themselves, either through withdrawing from their life or through leaving their job or spending all their money. Often drugs are a part of it. It becomes kind of a safety valve to just push that person away. And you see fractures in relationships and friendships all the time because of it.

Chris (36:28): Yeah, yeah, indeed. Especially over COVID.

Mike (36:32): Sure.

Chris (36:32): Yeah. I had friends of friends who lost a lot of friends over COVID and people believing in the conspiracy theories around it. It was crazy.

Mike (36:39): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Chris (36:40): Have you seen if there's a particularly good way to help someone exit QAnon without pushing them deeper into paranoia or mistrust?

Mike (36:52): Yeah, it's really, really difficult to do. Certainly the sort of standard thing of grabbing somebody and throwing them in a van and deprogramming them, we know that that doesn't work at all. We know that belittling or mocking somebody to try to get them out of it, shaming them out of it, that doesn't work. That only drives them deeper. There's no form of debate or debunking that will get these people out. It really has to happen when they see something in it that doesn't work for them anymore. The few people I know have really truly left conspiracy theory movements behind, there was something that happened or something that Q wrote or some video that just said something that just did not make any sense to them, and they just couldn't reconcile it with their worldview. And when you lose trust of one aspect of it, you really lose the whole thing. It all falls apart. And of course, that's the point where you start to go back to your friends and family, and most of them, they don't trust you anymore, and they don't necessarily want to let you back in. And I think if you can be a person who is a safe person to talk to -- not about the conspiracy stuff, but just about real life -- if you can maintain that connection and check in with that person every so often to see how they're doing -- you don't want to talk about QAnon, you don't want to talk about the trafficking, or how Trump is going to ascend to be the king of kings. You can just say, "Hey, how are you doing? What's going on?" Being that one person who's just some lifeline for them, and then that's who they will turn to when the conspiracy stops making sense. But it's hard to do that because that's a lot of work, and it doesn't usually pay off.

Chris (38:35): No, no. I mean, I unfortunately parted ways with an old friend of mine over conspiracy theories just because it was exhausting in the end. Because every time -- yeah, every time you met with them, they just were using it as an opportunity to try and "wake you up," was the term usually used.

Mike (38:54): Right, that's exactly it. They want to wake you up, they want to red pill you, and you're just like, "No, I don't want that. Please stop." And they can't.

Chris (39:02): No. And every discussion ends up turning into a massive debate, and you feel like you have to prepare for such a conversation.

Mike (39:11): You have to bear down and do your research to go hang out with a friend. That's exhausting. It's like we can have friends who are less needy of our time.

Chris (39:23): Yeah, indeed. And unfortunately, then all that feeds into their isolation. And yeah, it's a bit like with the whole incel thing and the way they behave. It puts women off, and so it--

Mike (39:34): Oh, totally. Oh, it's like--

Chris (39:36): Yeah.

Mike (39:37): Yeah. You act like an incel and women don't want be around you, and then you're like, "Why don't women want to be around me?" Well, because you're acting like that.

Chris (39:46): Yes. Oh my goodness, yeah. No, it's unfortunate. So, this might be a hard one because of current American politics, but what should governments really be doing and civil society be doing to counter QAnon -- and also, I suppose conspiracy culture? Is there anything that can be done? It feels to me like a mental health crisis in many ways.

Mike (40:07): Well, it's absolutely a mental health crisis. And unfortunately, it's one that the mental health profession is still really struggling to understand. The mental health profession, the legal profession, the media -- I think we're all still really playing catch up on what this stuff means, why it matters, how to help people, what to take seriously, because it's so weird. And of course, it's all happened so quickly.

(40:33): Government -- and I've been asked this question by members of Congress, by congressional staffers, -- like, government can't stop people from talking about certain things, and nor should the government stop people. It's not the government's job to make sure that QAnon goes away, but I think resources can be applied. I think leverage can be applied to social media companies to say, just do a better job of taking things down that not only are not true, but are actively causing harm to people. I mean, certainly you saw that with the vaccine stuff. I mean, these social media companies were allowing people to put up their recipes for homemade vaccine detox and homemade industrial bleach that would cure your COVID. People were dying because of this. Social media companies were just saying, "Oh, nothing we could do about it. It's free speech." And I think maybe that is a place where government can step in. But unfortunately, this battle really needs to be fought in our own homes and in our own friend groups and in our own workplaces of when we see people falling into this stuff, we just say, "No, that's not true. That's harmful. That's racist. That's hurting people." And most people just don't want to do it because it is so high effort. And unfortunately, it's these tiny little microscopic battles that have to be fought by each individual person. And look, we're all busy and we're all getting so much thrown at us, it becomes easier to just shut it out.

Chris (41:58): Yeah, yeah, indeed. And sort detox from it all. Yeah, yeah, I see that a lot. What worries you most about the next wave of disinformation threats, whether it's linked to QAnon or something new?

Mike (42:11): I mean, what worries me now is that the people at the very top are the ones spouting this. I mean, you've got people like Trump who are just relentlessly spreading conspiracy theories. You've got people like Dan Bongino and Kash Patel who have relentlessly shared this stuff. And of course it bites them when they have to then disclaim a lot of him. You look at what's happening, the Epstein stuff, and these people spent years making money off of Epstein conspiracy theories, and then they're in power and like, "Well, yeah, he killed himself and there's no list. Sorry." And then their followers are like, "How dare you?" But until these people actually feel consequences for their relentless lying, nothing's going to happen. It's just going to have to be up to us. And what really worries me is that you've got these people sharing this stuff, and there's just no consequences for it at all.

Chris (43:01): No, indeed, and that is a real problem. If someone listening has a loved one caught up in QAnon, what's the single most important thing that they should know or do?

Mike (43:12): Oh, that's a good question. I think for most people, it's to realize that they're not alone. This is not their fault. There are millions and millions of people struggling with this, with people who have lost loved ones to conspiracism -- whether it's QAnon, anti-vaccine stuff, which is all kind of the same thing now. You're not alone, you didn't do it, it's not your fault, and you don't have to save that person. If that person is unsafe, if they are hurting themselves, if they're hurting other people, it is not your duty to pull them away from it. Now, if they do start to walk away from it, you can be there for them, but you don't have to do that. You don't have to save that person, because ultimately, the only person who can save a conspiracy believer is that person.

Chris (44:01): Indeed, indeed. Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to add or anything that gives you hope in the fight against conspiracy culture and disinformation?

Mike (44:12): I think what gives me hope is that there are more people talking about this now. There are more people in different worlds who are really talking about this. In the last couple of years, I've been able to go on a lot of different shows, a lot of different podcasts, hitting a lot of different audiences to talk about the danger and the appeal of conspiracy theories. So I think the thing that gives me hope more than anything is that more people are really recognizing how harmful and dangerous this stuff is. Because even ten years ago, there were like five of us who were doing this, and now there's a lot of people, and it gets covered a lot. And I think almost too much in some ways. And a lot of the coverage is like, "Oh, you wouldn't believe that kooky thing that Q believers are saying this week." I don't know how helpful that is, but a lot of people are taking this really seriously, and I think that is giving me some hope that at some point there will be kind of a mass awakening and a kind of rejection of this. But that's maybe going to be a long time from now.

Chris (45:12): Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it probably will be. Where can listeners find out more about you and your work and also learn more about countering disinformation?

Mike (45:21): I have a website, it's "the mike rothschild dot com." I'm on Twitter and Bluesky at "rothschildmd." You can find my book on QAnon, THE STORM IS UPON US, pretty much anywhere books are sold. I've got another book that came out two years ago called JEWISH SPACE LASERS on the Rothchild banking family -- to whom I'm not related, I always need to add the disclaimer. So yeah, if you ever have a question, a concern, if you're dealing with this stuff, just reach out to me over direct message or email. My contact info is all on my website. I'm always happy to talk to people and help people through this stuff, because it's still very in the early days of understanding all of this stuff.

Chris (46:04): Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Well, Mike, thank you so much for your time today. It's been great to have you on.

Mike (46:09): Yeah, thank you.

Announcer (46:41): Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.