Front Burner - Canada’s QAnon ‘Queen’ and her escalating rhetoric

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

For months, a B.C.-based QAnon conspiracy influencer named Romana Didulo has been amassing followers online, declaring herself the “Queen of Canada.” In the summer, her audience began distributing... cease-and-desist letters across North America on her behalf, demanding a stop to COVID-19 restrictions. Recently, her rhetoric escalated when she urged her followers to “shoot to kill” anyone who administers vaccines to children. The RCMP have visited her since, and one of her followers in Laval, Que., was arrested after allegedly posting threats about his daughter’s school. Today on Front Burner, Vice World News reporter Mack Lamoureux discusses this influential QAnon figure, her active base of followers and law enforcement’s response.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Angela Starrett. If you need my name, you can get it through Romana. She's the new commander-in-chief.
Starting point is 00:00:36 I'll be reporting back. So she's, Romana's the new chief commander of Canada. Oh, why? Yeah. Okay. That's a clip from a video posted online this summer of a man headed into a police station to deliver a letter
Starting point is 00:00:51 with an order to stop all COVID-19 restrictions. Not there, folks. Is what you call putting them on notice. He says he's doing this on behalf of someone named Romana, who he says is the new commander-in-chief of Canada.
Starting point is 00:01:11 He's referring to Romana Didalo, a middle-aged woman in British Columbia who's become an unlikely influencer in the QAnon conspiracy world and who's escalating violent rhetoric has now put her on the radar of the RCMP and led to the arrest of one of her alleged followers. Today, Vice News' Mac Lamoureux is here to explain the disturbing
Starting point is 00:01:32 latest twist in the QAnon conspiracy world right here at home. Hey, Mac. Hey there. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being here today and taking us through this. I'm wondering if you could bring me back to the sort of origins of this figure. You follow this world very closely. When did she first come on your radar? She came on my radar around spring of this year. And kind of prior to that, she had started this kind of go nowhere, had no follower political party she called Canada First.
Starting point is 00:02:17 But in early 2021, she declared herself the Queen of Canada and started going in more of this rhetoric that we're familiar with today of what she's kind of spreading. And that also kind of didn't go anywhere. But when some pretty big players within the QAnon movement, quote unquote, confirmed her and kind of started sharing her videos around, followers went to her and drove. She went from maybe having like 13 to 15 followers to all of a sudden having over 20,000. And that's when I kind of started paying attention to her is when her profile exploded in the spring of this year. Hello, Canada. I'm Romana Didolo.
Starting point is 00:03:00 I'm the founder and leader of Canada First. I'm the founder and leader of Canada First. As of February this year, 2021, I am the head of state and commander-in-chief of Canada, the Republic. In case you're wondering... We know that she's claiming to be the Queen of Canada. What is her role in this QAnon conspiracy universe? Yeah, so the QAnon movement revolves around this idea that there's like this secret army that's fighting alongside Donald Trump, going to war against like this evil deep state that's made up
Starting point is 00:03:39 of this sort of pedophilic cabal of politicians, journalists, celebrities, kind of the elite. And it was all kind of centered around these posts made by the titular Q, who would kind of post cryptic messages on online forums. And so she's inserted herself directly into this mythos as this figure who was put into power by the White Hats, which is the army that's fighting alongside Donald Trump. And she was put into power to lead Canada into the future. So whereas other kind of influencers are kind of analyzing the posts of Q and kind of being more analytical, she's kind of positioning herself as this kind of mythological figure
Starting point is 00:04:16 where it's been over a year since Q was posted and it's left quite a bit of a vacuum and it's allowing people like her to set up within there. Wow. So if she's the queen, the commander in chief, who is the actual queen? Like where are our actual political leaders here? Oh, they're all dead. They've all been arrested and executed long time ago within this conspiracy. Know this. Inside the Republic, the penalty for crimes against humanity, treason, economic sabotage,
Starting point is 00:04:57 and bioterrorism is death. She's even posted several times and made videos several times about how the queen has been executed. This is what they actually believe, that the queen of England has been executed. Yeah, a center part of this entire kind of conspiracy is these mass executions that are taking place behind the scenes. And it holds true throughout the entire kind of QAnon ecosystem, is that what you're seeing isn't actually what's happening. In some cases, doubles have been put in place, or that they just kind of disappear. So like, the interesting thing about this movement is that it
Starting point is 00:05:38 is kind of a big tent conspiracy movement. So there's a lot of people within it that kind of have different beliefs, but a lot of it kind of comes back to this center of violence. Wow. And I want to get to that in a bit because that's, I think, the more disturbing element of this story. But what do we know about who she is in the real world? So honestly, we don't know all that much. I've tried to speak to people who seemingly knew her before she kind of took on this new role. But at this point, I've been unsuccessful. before she kind of took on this new role.
Starting point is 00:06:04 But at this point, I've been unsuccessful. So what we know is that she's a middle-aged woman of Filipino descent living in Victoria. She says she came over here very young with her uncle after her parents died. Tracking her online history, we can see that she's kind of, for a little while, positioned herself as kind of a business expert that could help you kind of succeed in the business world.
Starting point is 00:06:24 But that went nowhere. And on top of that, she kind of formed all these corporations, but also they all went nowhere. But other than that, we don't know very much about her, to be completely honest. I want to talk about her following. You mentioned her following exploded this year. Just how big is her following at this point? Yeah, so from this year, she went from someone who no one really knew anything about to having over 70,000 followers on Telegram now. And how many of those are journalists or trolls or people that are just there to kind of watch and to lurk is unknown.
Starting point is 00:07:15 But what I can say is that within that number, a good portion of it are true believers, certainly within the thousands, mostly in Canada, but across the world. And they love their queen. And Telegram, it's basically, I was seeing people on Instagram saying they'd been kicked off or they'd been booted off Instagram and Twitter. And so people have gone to this platform called Telegram, which I originally thought was just sort of like WhatsApp in a way. But what is it kind of like a Twitter? Like you can have followers. What is it? What are people posting on it in the same way as they would on
Starting point is 00:07:49 Twitter? Or is it more like WhatsApp? Yeah, it'd be more like giant WhatsApp groups. So yeah, it's a social media platform kind of just known for its very lax moderation rules. And so when you kind of get into like harder regimes, like say like China or places where being a political dissident is actually very important, this is a great tool. But within kind of Western society, it's been primarily known for being used by kind of extremists and people that are been booted off more traditional social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Do you have a sense of who her followers are? That's a really hard one because kind of with any movement, they kind of come in all shapes and sizes. But just this week, she held her first ever live stream where her followers could interact with her, which was very interesting to watch. I watched the entire thing
Starting point is 00:08:42 and let my brain melt a little bit. So within that group, a lot of them are kind of older people, many of whom seem desperate, but there's also some younger people. There was a younger woman in there that was kind of telling her she was going through a medical episode where she was losing her teeth and was begging Queen Romana to help heal her teeth. And that's one thing that's kind of constant within this group is Queen Romana is offering kind of healing abilities. And these people are coming to her with asks. But a lot of these people kind of seem to be some of the people you would see in kind of like homeopathy stores buying crystals, but you don't really want to paint the community with one brush. It's really hard to wrap my head around anyways as to how these happen. I mean, you've written that the members run the gamut from electricians to real estate agents to outdoor guides. Yeah, it's kind of, as I said, it kind of runs the gamut.
Starting point is 00:09:37 And there are real estate agents, there are kind of blue collar people. There's going to be, I remember there was one I found that works in art curation in Quebec. And it's all over the place. And a lot of it is people that have kind of been opposing kind of pandemic regulations and kind of have fallen just so far down the rabbit hole of this narrative. And this is just kind of a continuation of that. Yeah. And I mean, I want to talk about like how her followers are really loyal to her. I understand that it's hard to tell who's taking what she says seriously versus who sees it as just, you know, I guess a form of entertainment. But I guess there are some people
Starting point is 00:10:20 who are willing to act on her behalf. We heard a bit of that in the intro. So before this latest escalation, which we're going to get to in a minute, what had we seen her followers do on her behalf? Yeah, so one of the really concerning things about Romana is that she's been able to mobilize her rather large audience offline. Her audience is not passive. They are very active, as you heard in the video, as you just mentioned. I just wonder if this detachment's been served
Starting point is 00:10:50 the cease and desist order? Yeah, anything related to the authority of COVID? So like kind of their first really big, I guess you could call it group project, was to file these kind of cease and desist orders that demanded in the name of Queen Romana that businesses, institutions, what have you, stop enacting any sort of pandemic regulations. So you're not going to let me purchase this without a mask on? Okay, really? They told you gals politely. They told you politely.
Starting point is 00:11:27 It is the policy. So you've been served. You've got seven days. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay, what I'm here, I'm going to the police station right now. Right now, and I'm going to arrange a holding cell for all of you. Okay?
Starting point is 00:11:43 I'm going to leave this with you. You're being served a cease and desist order these what you're administering are war crimes um and so they formed into regional groups where they could better organize and then they kind of went hard uh they started sending out these cease and desist orders on the hundreds they started keeping spreadsheets on where they were going and delivering it uh by hand in one case uh in alberta a group of her followers actually got kicked out of a high school for going into the high school and handing it out in there thousands of letters were sent and all of them were essentially saying, stop on behalf of our new queen or else. And I really want to
Starting point is 00:12:28 get the point across that this was a large campaign. A ton of these letters got sent out. So these are people that aren't just sitting at home and watching Telegram or watching YouTube videos and just kind of sitting on the couch. These are people willing to get up off their seat and do something for their queen. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.
Starting point is 00:13:19 I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples,
Starting point is 00:13:41 I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I suppose this is all especially concerning because her calls to action have recently escalated. How have her calls to action escalated? As I said earlier, kind of violence and kind of these mass executions have been at the center of kind of her following. But they have always been kind of behind the scenes, something celebrated but not really spoken about directly. But recently in the last two weeks, Romana has really escalated her rhetoric. It's a tad bit confusing, so bear with me.
Starting point is 00:14:26 But so essentially about two weeks ago, she issued an order to her soldiers in, quote, unquote, her kingdom of Canada's military, demanding that these kind of white hats, but also her followers who consider themselves soldiers within this group, which are a subsect, to go and commit mass arrests of the people that they consider in opposition. But within this post, she also said, and I'm going to quote directly here, shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject children under the age of 19 years old with Corona-19 vaccines slash bioweapons or any other vaccines, which is a pretty extreme thing to say to your audience. It was so extreme it actually got kicked off Telegram, which we were talking about is incredibly lax for its rules. The post has said now says this post has been removed because it's
Starting point is 00:15:16 issued a call to violence. And at the same time, she started organizing these groups called Duck Hunters, which were essentially her followers who wanted to get their hands dirty alongside these white hats and following her order. They created private chats for themselves through kind of Romana sharing these links. And I got inside some of these. And within these chats, they were sharing addresses where places were facilitating vaccines for kids. And these things, you calling them duck hunters, the Queen of Canada, they do seem very goofy on a surface level, but they're goofy until they're not. They're goofy until someone gets hurt. And I think we're nearing that precipice.
Starting point is 00:15:58 I understand someone even posted a picture of their guns. Is that right? Yeah, somebody posted pictures of kind of their hunting weapons. It was a few rifles, one shotgun and said, I'm ready to go hunting. Let's do this. And a lot of other people were being offering their homes to let the American duck hunters, which would have been the white hats coming up to stay with them, or celebrating that they were going to get this training to go out and do this. And like a lot of them were and still are ready to kind of take part in this. That's all super alarming to hear. And I would have to imagine this is on the radar of law enforcement at this point.
Starting point is 00:16:52 What do we know about their response to Romana's post so far? Yeah, so the weekend after she made this post, so about a week ago, the last weekend of November, BC RCMP executed a search warrant on Romana. That I do know. I tried to get my hands on the search warrant, but the records are actually sealed right now. She made a live stream where she kind of discussed what happened to her followers. So we're going to have to actually take her word on this because RCMP won't talk to me. But she said that she had her electronics seized and that she was taken to a nearby psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
Starting point is 00:17:24 And then she was taken to a nearby psychiatric hospital for evaluation. And then she was released. And she told her followers this in a very long and meandering kind of live stream on Telegram. And what have experts told you about this response? One expert I spoke to who has been in this extremist space for years and years said that he's never ever heard of this kind of response to somebody kind of issuing this kind of response to somebody kind of issuing this kind of decree to somebody kind of doing something that could relate to domestic terror. And I think it also points to the fact that this is an incredibly new and bizarre kind of thing for law enforcement to deal with. And I think they're still trying to get their heads around it. They're
Starting point is 00:18:02 still trying to figure out what's the best way to handle this. And that wasn't the only response from law enforcement. I understand one of her alleged followers was also arrested in the last few days? Yeah, so earlier this week, one of Queen Romana's followers was arrested in Laval, Quebec. He's a 42-year-old man who was active within the Duck Hunters chat. In there, I saw that he had posted details of his daughter's school who were offering vaccinations for the people who go there, the students. And at the end of this kind of long post detailing the address and what times the vaccinations were happening, he wrote, time to hunt, bang, bang. And we know he's been arrested by Laval police, but we don't know if he's been charged. And one of the kind of really unique things in this is that in the press release that Laval
Starting point is 00:18:55 police put out, they said directly, explicitly, that they learned about this post from a CBC article outlining it. And that kind of just shows the lack of understanding and just kind of a step behind, I would say, most law enforcement, especially local law enforcement is. And you have to be incredibly nimble to deal with these kind of things because they are so fast moving and so bizarre. And a lot of our Canadian institutions
Starting point is 00:19:26 and a lot of the institutions to the south of us are a lot of things, but nimble is not one of them. And I understand her rhetoric. It's changed now a bit, right? Yeah. So the rhetoric around the violence, she's walking it back incredibly hard. The response by the RCMP and the response by Laval police against one of her followers may have shown her that this is very real. may have shown her that this is very real. But also she's not stopping and she's not kind of pulling back in regards to increasing her following.
Starting point is 00:20:11 So she's been going more so on the direction of offering kind of healing for her followers rather than kind of promising that they can take part in violence. But again, it's so fluid and it happens so quickly that you don't even know what's going to happen day to day. But again, this is it's so fluid, and it happens so quickly that you don't even know what's going to happen day to day. But it's changed quite a bit. And this whole thing, as I mentioned earlier, is mutating. So it's going to be interesting to see where this ends up.
Starting point is 00:20:34 Hopefully, it doesn't end in tragedy. I mean, this all just sounds so strange. And it also almost sounds, I know this is controversial to say, but it sounds like a cult. I would be in full agreement with that. I consider a lot of stuff to do with QAnon to be very, very cult-like. We're seeing something actually happen down in Dallas right now surrounding this kind of cult that believes JFK is going to be coming back. JFK is alive. You'll find out. JFK is alive. He's alive. He's a president.
Starting point is 00:21:10 So is Junior. And people are actually leaving their homes and going to follow this guy who goes by the name Negative 48. And they're kind of going and living with him in Dallas, and they're talking about kind of setting up maybe some sort of a commune down there. And some journalists, I know my colleague, David Gilbert has been following along very closely and they just recently
Starting point is 00:21:31 held like a big talk where they discussed having to escape. I think the mortal coils through real death to kind of further their journey, which is incredibly alarming. Do we have to experience that physical death? Let go of where you go and come out on the other side, burn everything that is in front of us, burn all the lies away and all this love, just the truth. Yeah, all of this sounds really hard to grapple with.
Starting point is 00:21:58 You know, in one moment it sounds so absurd, so ridiculous. Then the next it sounds, you know, actually deeply disturbing and violent. And then also really sad to think of all the people who are susceptible to believing in this. It's really sad. When you kind of dig down deep into it, and you kind of see these followers in real life, see them speaking to her, and some of them are crying. And it's really heartbreaking. These people aren't here for a laugh. They're not here for a joke. They truly believe this. And it's sad.
Starting point is 00:22:34 And I hope we can help them. I don't like to think these are people that we are going to write off. I hope we can figure out a way to, you know, bring them back down to earth and carry on a normal life. This is such a, like such a wild story, you know, for anybody to listen to, to go down these rabbit holes. I'm wondering if you could just explain, though, why you report on fringe conspiracy figures like this. Why do you think it's important that we talk about them? And what questions do you grapple with when you're talking about them in this way? I think it's really important to kind of report on this
Starting point is 00:23:25 because it is something that's kind of unfolding in real time and has taken a lot of people's loved ones away from them. We've seen violence does come from this kind of fringe activity and these fringe conspiracies. We know that kind of the QAnon movement has millions of followers across the world. And on another sense, we know that, as we spoke earlier, law enforcement is having a very hard time dealing with them. So I think it's important that we have reporters who kind of understand this to kind of fill that hole.
Starting point is 00:23:59 But I also think this is something that you shouldn't report on willy-nilly. also think this is something that you shouldn't report on willy-nilly um because when you do report on these groups you know you're gonna drive people towards them um it's we work very hard to only report on things that have either reached a precipice of real world activity like we saw with the cease and desist letters or something something that we feel could be a danger, like this call to violence. But I think this is something that you need to be very cognizant of. And it's hard, but worth it, I guess I would say. Mack, thank you so much for this today and for all your reporting on this very bizarre and disturbing story.
Starting point is 00:24:46 Yeah, thanks for having me on and letting me kind of rant about it. I really appreciate it. Before we go today, an update on last week's story out of High River, Alberta, where employees at the Cargill Beef Process processing plant have narrowly averted a possible strike and lockout. On Saturday, workers there voted in favour of a new contract, which includes provisions to ensure worker health and safety benefits and new rights for sick employees. and new rights for sick employees. This comes in the aftermath of a massive COVID-19 outbreak at the plant in spring 2020 that left hundreds sick and three dead. The union representing workers at the plant called the contract vote a bittersweet victory and said reforms of the meatpacking industry are still needed.
Starting point is 00:25:42 That's all for today. And if you like this episode, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angela Starrett, in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to Frontrunner.

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