QAnon Almost Destroyed My Relationship. Then My Relationship Saved Me From QAnon.

[brooklynite]

Politico

Since it became clear that the QAnon conspiracy theory was a driving force in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Anastasiia Carrier has been interviewing former QAnon believers and hearing from them, in their own words, how they were drawn into that world and how they got out. Their stories, like Megan’s below, reveal surprising political implications of a movement that is still thriving outside mainstream scrutiny. This is the first article in the series. (Megan and Dave are pseudonyms, granted at their request to avoid online bullying that Megan has experienced in the past after posting about following and quitting QAnon. This interview was done virtually over a series of video calls.)

I was radicalized overnight. I went to bed as a liberal, a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter, social activist and a feminist. The next morning, I left the bed viewing Donald Trump — a man whom I had utterly despised — as a hero fighting a war against the Deep State. In the ensuing days my fiancé Dave would hardly recognize me, and our relationship would nearly be destroyed.

My conversion happened last June, soon after California expanded the stay-at-home order to control the Covid-19 pandemic. As an extrovert, I did not take the lockdown well. The inability to go out with my friends, work with people and interact with strangers left me feeling trapped and suffocated. At the same time, I was struggling to adjust to sharing the house with Dave after being single for most of my adult life. There were times when I desperately needed to get away for a couple of nights to reconnect with my energy … but where do you go during a deadly pandemic?

Dave wasn’t handling the stay-at-home order well either: Without the ability to take extended weekends away to unwind from his demanding job, he became depressed and increasingly short-tempered. The more he let his anger leak out and at times explode toward me, the more I felt trapped inside the house and desperate for something to change.

It was after a day of his angry outbursts when I discovered QAnon. That night, Dave was asleep and I lay awake buzzing with stress. Tired of staring at the ceiling, I decided to watch the “Fall Cabal” YouTube series a friend of mine had told me about. “It’s really weird. I’d love to get your opinion on it,” she messaged me a few days before along with a link. The 10 episodes wove together a narrative about “The Cabal,” supposedly a secret and satanic pedophile ring run by members of the liberal elite, and Trump’s secret fight to overthrow them. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Instead, I found dozens of articles and videos confirming my new political views. By the morning, I was a true believer.

[Ziggysmom]

1. Hard to imagine being that gullible. Watch a few videos and then totally believe the lies?

[brooklynite]

3. Anger at...something is a strong driver, whether on the right or left

[Silent3]

4. I can see that happening with some people, because some people's beliefs aren't deeply grounded

The views some people have of the world, even if seemingly fiercely held, aren't a product of deep consideration or real education and research, but practically accidents of upbringing and path-of-least-resistance social conformity with friends and family.

Take that, and someone already being under stress (it's hard for me, as an introvert, to identify with people who were going bonkers over a few weeks of lock-down isolation, but I can academically understand how that can be the case even if I don't feel it in my gut) and I can sort of see how slickly-produced dramatic propaganda might get through to someone like that pretty quickly.

[North Shore Chicago]

13. A sound post.

[Hortensis]

17. +1.

[yardwork]

25. Your post sums up a lot of my feelings as well.

I've often thought that the QAnon brainwashing wouldn't have been nearly as effective had it not been for the isolation brought about by the pandemic.

Other major pandemics in human history have been accompanied by a rise in social dysfunctions. Some people respond to social disruption by turning to occult and supernatural beliefs, for instance. They go on witch hunts, etc. Isolated, lonely, worried people turned to the internet and this propaganda was waiting for them.

[tanyev]

28. Yes, I've pondered the issue of introversion/extroversion as a factor

in how many people have completely lost their sh** during all of this. On a scale of 1-10, I’m probably an 8.5 introvert. It will be nice to get back to restaurants and movie theaters when it’s safe to do so, but as long as we can order food to go or have it delivered and stream movies at home, we’re fine. We don’t have kids, my immediate family all passed away a few years ago, hubby’s family is in another country, so we don’t have anyone we need to take care of or see on a regular basis. I’ve been grateful for that since March 2020.

But if your life consisted of lots of going out to restaurants, clubs, movies, social events or church events, family get togethers, attending sporting events, going to your kids’ events and travel to visit friends and relatives, I can see that all of that coming to a screeching halt and having to stay at home would feel like being caged. Like you, I can understand it academically, but I can’t really feel it. And maybe being told to wear a mask when they do go anywhere is the straw that sends them completely over the edge. It seems like such a trivial thing to me to wear a mask. A trivial inconvenience that can save your life.

[Trueblue1968]

6. yeah it is really hard to believe and i just don't believe it !!!! sounds like a GOP myth.

[Klaralven]

10. "Fall of the Cabal" is pretty well done

The presenter, Janet Ossebaard honed her craft working on videos on crop circles. It's available on bitchute.

[Bluethroughu]

2. Think Alex Jones, a half sentence of truth combind with big fat ridiculous lies.

The people source one thing out of context, and run with that from sources made to confirm the lies. The infrastructure of the right wing media, think tanks, and all these non-profits support their crazy narratives, along with internet search engines that will give more of that kind of content. It's a dark place for the guliable and nieve.

The one thing all these people need to ask when reading this garbage, IS WHO BENEFITS? Benefits meaning money.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

5. I totally believe this a real story written by a real person about themselves ...

Oh, wait, no I don't.

[yardwork]

26. What part do you find unbelievable?

There seem to be a lot of followers of QAnon. There are other stories about this phenomenon. There was an article in the Washington Post a few months ago. The reporter interviewed family members who had become estranged from QAnon believers. Many of those folks sounded like this young woman.

I don't know if this particular article is a true report of an actual person or not, but there is plenty of evidence of people being brainwashed by this and other conspiracy theories.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

29. The part where person goes overnight from a Bernie-supporting liberal

to a Trump-loving Quackadoodle literally overnight part?

There's a lot of other parts that don't quite ring true to me but that's the most glaring.

Doesn't really matter though, I'm probably just being overly suspicious because it's Politico.

[yardwork]

32. I share your suspicion of Politico.

According to the article she stayed up all night watching dozens of QAnon conspiracy videos on the internet. She was already depressed due to COVID isolation. I don't think Bernie had much to do with it - typical Politico spin - as it sounds like she was already primed to believe in conspiracies. It didn't happen overnight.

[GulfCoast66]

7. My BS meter spiked.

By Megan? I need more than that to believe things on the interwebs.

Way to contrived. No man I know would have stuck around for that bullshit. And she is still not trusting either side? Maybe I’m just a professional sceptic.

[Silent3]

18. Why would this set off your BS meter?

Yes, of course this story could be fabricated. It's not like evidence is being presented for a court case, with dates and times and witnesses and receipts and phone metadata, etc. But that's true of most personal stories we read about, especially when people wish to remain anonymous.

There's nothing so outlandishly unrealistic about this story, however, to make fabrication the most likely explanation.

[GulfCoast66]

42. Nothing in your post I can outright disagree with.

I just find it unreasonable, to my way of thinking, that she would go down that crazy assed rabbit hole of delusion to the point it changed her entire life dynamics, then be drawn out and end up right back where she started. That is not my experience of human nature.

And her man’s reaction does not match anything in my experience. Had they been married, then yeah. But to put up with that level of crazy for so long?

But I freely admit I might be totally off base.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. Not as much of a stretch as some might first be inclined to think.

A "movement" of "working people fighting against the establishmentt."

Sometimes religion grooms people for the Q experience, sometimes it's some other group identity with similar rhetoric that makes Q seem novel and exciting yet oddly familiar.

When people are unmoored, frightened, and perhaps even predisposed by previous experiences - it's just not too difficult to see how this can happen to some of them.

[Hortensis]

20. Yes. This person was not moored to reality initially.

She was already very prone to conspiracist thinking and drawn to movements of distrustful "working people fighting against the establishment." Researchers find that among people drawn to alternatives to the broad spectrum of "mainstream" beliefs, including political, a higher percentage than average are vulnerable to irrational conspiracy theories. And she was already there.

If any of my friends ever recommended 10 episodes of an irrational conspiracist film, I'd have been seriously worried about brain damage. I have no friends who'd watch more than one to see what it was doing to others, but we are at an age when occult strokes might manifest with personality change.

[andym]

9. Story illustrates the power of anti-establishment populism

when distrust of powerful elites and government is one's major belief and one faces a crisis like Covid that one wishes weren't true, the door to brainwashing is opened. Of course, anyone who is liable to be brainwashed like this needs to have very strong blinders to ensure that they don't see the contradictions.

Here's the key paragraph on the author's transformation:
"I think the fact that I was already a big supporter of Bernie Sanders primed me for the transformation — a process people call being red-pilled. One thing QAnon and Bernie have in common is the belief that there is a group of corrupt elites that makes it hard for everyone else in the country and the world to stay afloat. I hadn’t trusted the government entirely before 2016 — for example, I didn’t find the explanations of 9/11 or the assassination of John F. Kennedy to be satisfactory. But my distrust only strengthened when I started to support Bernie that year. I started to think that the news media, billionaires and the Democratic establishment conspired to keep Bernie from the presidency. This was a significant part of my bridge into QAnon."
---
It tells us that her primary motivation was distrust-- a perfect victim for conspiracy theorists.

[PunkinPi]

12. Yes, and sadly this person's transformation from Bernie to Qanon is not the only one.

The "rigged" narrative that Bernie claimed in 2016 (and has continued as recently as Nina Turner's loss) contributed at least in part to TFG's big lie.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

30. Not to be paranoid but doesn't it seem like there's a concerted effort to put forth the idea

That Q-followers are from the Far Left?

[andym]

36. In these cases the former far-left Sanders supporters became far-right Trump supporters

So they were/are from the far-right, and were no longer far-left--so the narrative that Q followers are far-left is false. I think that's what she meant by red-pilling in the article. However, in any case these former Sanders supporters are a small minority of Qanon believing Trump supporters.

[PunkinPi]

37. I haven't seen a concerted effort saying that Qanon is far left. nt

[andym]

31. Not surprising that there are other examples of this phenomenon.

I forgot how some Sanders supporters believed in rigged primaries, but it does suggest that fertile ground exists for other similar conspiracy theories.

[Hortensis]

21. Bingo! It always has that effect on some.

With Sanders' LW populist revolutionary movement, we saw what seemed like increasingly irrational behaviors in a subset of supporters who became passionate believers in various conspiracies about his opponent. The ongoing narrative fed to them, that dozens of state Democratic Parties were stealing the primary elections, was not at all too far out for them; each new claim was additional proof of the giant conspiracy against him.

I remember some (who left DU) were sure Sanders would never have endorsed her unless she forced him to; one version was that she had him kidnapped and beaten into submission, another that she threatened to kill his grandchildren. Sounds crazy until you remember all those bodies of murdered enemies that she was seen dragging around the WH grounds in black plastic bags.

Of course, some others are comparatively conspiracist lite, satisfied by more conventional conspiracy narratives of evil establishment and business.

[karynnj]

38. Careful reading suggests it was not because she was a big supporter of Bernie,

but rather that she became a big Bernie supporter because she READ INTO BERNIE her own anti establishment ideas.

While it is true that Bernie cares deeply about income inequality, he is not against government. Think about the fact that Democratic Socialist are actually in favor of bigger government. In fact, a Burlington area Rabbi, who was a close friend of his for years constantly mentioned that he should speak of FDR - who championed programs in line with things Bernie spoke of rather than speaking of Denmark! In addition, Bernie himself, to my knowledge, never claimed a conspiracy against him. This is true even though it was clear that the Democratic party quickly lined up behind Clinton.

More importantly, she admits that she already was prone to considering conspiracy theories rather than looking for more prosaic reasons. I suspect that the same "follow the dots" type logic in some left wing conspiracy theories - where the lines between the dots start out believable then gradually become more questionable requiring progressively more willingness to accept connections that require a lot of stretching.

That said -- I don't believe this account is real. Consider that at the end, it says Dave lost his job because he couldn't do it and cope with her. This even though they limited the number of times she could speak of Q. It is hard to believe that she had time for all her research and a job. Yet, nothing is said about the consequences of no longer having income.

[andym]

40. Agree with you

Last edited Sat Aug 14, 2021, 07:48 PM - Edit history (1)

that she probably supported Bernie because she could superimpose her own anti-establishment ideas on him, ignoring as you state that Bernie is actually an advocate for big government.

As for the veracity of the story, I can't draw any conclusions, because the subjects claim they wanted anonymity, only the author could verify whether the story presented was true. It's also difficult to know if they changed small details to ensure that their friends could not guess it was them.

[questionseverything]

11. Imaginative bashing so early today!

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. I find it hilarious that people are rejecting this story.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

33. I'd buy that it's a amalgamation of characters/persons interviewed

Like a composite story, created by a writer.

I'm skeptical that a single person 'Megan' sat down, wrote exactly this story themselves, describing their own experience (and Dave's).

[WhiskeyGrinder]

34. "Megan" didn't.

By MEGAN, AS TOLD TO ANASTASIIA CARRIER

(snip)

This interview was done virtually over a series of video calls.

[hatrack]

15. No, no, I'm not a rabid, gullible lunatic - I was just . . . UPSET by the pandemic . ..

So was I, "Megan".

And I didn't fall for a steaming pile of pathetic bullshit cobbled together by some asshole crouched in front of a laptop in his basement "War Room".

Last fucking thing we need now is Q apologetics.

[sanatanadharma]

16. At the deepest level of their self-awareness, too many people do not like themselves

At the deepest level of their self-awareness, too many people do not like themselves

They are uncomfortable being alone because they do not like, do not accept their self as they understand that self to be.
The inability to be alone with one's self is too common.
There a near constant need for diversions, entertainments, etc. to distract from one's own discomfort as an individual.

Frustration grows in beings who are never satisfied with 'what is' and are continuously chasing some brass ring on the merry-go-round of their not merry lives.
Frustration leads to lashing-out anger and that is an impediment to what one wants, which is to be connected.
This is not a problem that percolates in saints, sages, monks, yogis, hermits and rishis.

Now imagine if one self-identified, not as some limited body-mind-sense-complex-being who always needs external fulfillment, but rather as though a bubble of the totality. Imagine being identifitied with the inside-whole that remains when the bubble bursts. A soap bubble film seems to have an inside and an outside but the reality is that the inside is non-different from the outside. The seeming separation of bubble from world is a thin, temporary, translucent film (a flim-flam) that doesn't really divide space into two.

namaste

[Johnny2X2X]

19. Very informative

One disappointing the in his that after she left Q, she didn’t reach out to the Q followers she was interacting with. You’d think that’s the least she could have done.

She’s not recognizing that she did harm to the country, she damaged others by spreading ridiculous lies. I would hope she realizes that and tries to help others.

[harumph]

22. I think the number of liberals falling for Qanon shit

is very low (as a % of the total) as to be statistically insignificant. But shit - let's
all talk about it!

[Generic Brad]

41. For a few weeks I thought my kid was on the verge

She was an avid Bernie supporter but then started trying to convince me that Wayfarer was smuggling in children for a pedophile ring in furniture shipments. She also was deep into the Joe Biden is a rapist rumors too. And she is no dummy - she is deep into her PhD.

As she tried to get me to accept these things I kept demanding to know her information sources. Every version of those stories were coming from people she had met through Facebook groups. I told her that news is just like academics - prove the source or its not legitimate. Fortunately she soon admitted defeat after being unable to cite any legitimate sources.

[yardwork]

44. I saw the same thing. Specifically the Wayfair conspiracy theory.

[brooklynite]

23. If you don't believe people can gravitate from the progressive left to the conspiracy theory fringe

...pay a visit to your old friends at JACK PINE RADICALS

[yardwork]

27. Thank you.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

35. I haven't been there, but did they all turn into Qacks and Trumpophiles?

I agree that far left AND right folks can and often do fall into CT rabbit holes ... but the same ones, where DJT is the hero?

Seems unlikely to me, but I don't spend time in radical circles of either side.

[yardwork]

43. In 2016, a lot of JPR posters were supporting Trump.

I haven't been there in years (does the site still exist?) but around 2016 there sure were a lot of self-identified former DUers stating that they were going to vote for Trump.

[karynnj]

39. I believe that -- but the story here does not ring true

Dave is as unbelievable as Megan.

I can imagine that plenty of left wingers, who fell into rabbit holes and believed conspiracy theories would be more prone to following Q than anyone in the middle.

[FakeNoose]

24. She was a Bernie-Bro who left the Democratic Party in 2016

Doesn't this have a familiar ring to it?