QAA Podcast - Episode 145: Interview with Chelsea Manning

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

The Q movement, the rise of the far-right in America, her experiences in the military and solidarity with other "clients" of the prison system. We sat with ex-intelligence analyst and network security expert Chelsea Manning who allegedly leaked the 'Iraq War Logs' and 'Afghanistan War Logs' to Wikileaks in 2010 and spent years in jail and solitary confinement since then. Follow and support Chelsea: http://patreon.com/xychelsea - http://twitter.com/xychelsea - http://youtube.com/xychelsea ↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓ https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by Event Cloak (http://eventcloak.bandcamp.com)

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Chapter 145 of the Q&ONANANANANANANAS podcast, the interview with Chelsea Manning episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Liv Egar, Julian Field, and Travis Vue.

I'm very excited for this week's episode because we are sitting down with Chelsea Manning, a network security expert and ex-intelligence analyst. As many listeners are probably aware, she served in the U.S. Army before allegedly becoming a whistleblower and releasing documents to WikiLeaks. A bulk of these came to be known as the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, respectively, because they revealed atrocities being committed by the U.S. Army in those countries. As a result, Chelsea spent years in jail and solitary confinement before having her sentence commuted by Obama in January of 2017. She was released a month later on time served. But in 2019, she was jailed once more for contempt of court after refusing

to testify in the U.S. government case against Julian Assange. By 2020, she was released for the second time because the grand jury investigating the WikiLeaks founder had been disbanded, and there was no reason to coerce her any longer. Today we'll be speaking with Chelsea about the rise of Q, the alt-right, the radicalizing effect of foreign wars, the role of the media, and lots of other stuff. And then we'll do some Q&N on news at the end of the episode. So, Let's get this going. Thanks so much for being our guest, and welcome to the show, Chelsea. Hey, that was a way more serious and intense intro than I really fits my personality.

And I do want to correct you on one thing that is that I actually spent four months waiting to be released, which was kind of a bummer. Oh. It's like, you're going to be released 120 days from now. That fucking sucks. 117 of those days were in the, we're in the Trump administration as well. well. So definitely a lot of nail-biting moments. Yeah, definitely a system that's like meant to reduce harm in the prisons, totally. So I wanted to start, I guess, at the beginning of this story. You enlisted when you were 20 years old. What were your reasons at the time? So I enlisted when I, I think it was

19 when I enlisted. So that was a summer of 2007. The Iraq War was at its height. Every single day, you just heard constant news reports about the surge that was going on and at the time I was just, I was like a teenager that was like looking for purpose in life. I was dealing with kind of trans issues at the time. I was just trying to figure myself out. And my instinct at the time was to take the advice of my father, which was like, hey, like, because my father used to just bug me about the military because he was in the Navy. He was in the Navy. You know, I figured what a way to sort of man up and bra, you know, then to like be in the military. But I had one thing that I sort of had to compromise on from my father, which was he was in the

Navy and he was always trying to get me into either the Navy or the Air Force. So I had to go to the army. And it just made sense because it was a ground war. So, you know, I was like attracted to the idea of like being involved in the action and doing stuff. And I wasn't that political either. You know, at like 19, I was pretty politically agnostic. I think around this time, my politics could easily be described as being as simple as leave Brittany alone. Yeah. It's okay. So you enlist and you get there and is it what you, I mean, what's the immediate experience?

Do you feel like you are part of this ground army and that it was the right choice to join that? part of the military? That's an interesting question because the military indoctrination process is very intense and it's very long, especially going in as an intelligence analyst. I went through several months, almost a year of going through training, go through basic training, going through more advanced training, and then training again to be in my specific unit and in my specific role before actually deploying anywhere. So the answer is, I mean, I did feel like I was a part of something. You know, like I had, you know, I had a job. And it was more than a job. It was like a lifestyle. Because like the military is like a full, it's like a full thing, right?

You know, like you're living your life. You're doing all of these different things. It's like a long process of developing relationships, developing an identity, developing like who you are and figuring out where to go, you know, what career path to take. So yeah, I think I did get, you know, I did drink the Kool-Aid, you know, I was really, you know, I was, I really felt a part of something, and I really felt like I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was feeling that role. And I was very, and I was very serious about it. I took my role very seriously. It took my job very seriously, you know. And, and yeah, I, I think, I, I, I, I drink the Kool-Aid more than most people in the military, I think. and so you're you're there among others did you have a feeling that recruitment was a similar experience for them did you did you meet a lot of people that had joined because they two were kind of searching for something no i i feel like the intelligence career track is a little different than the rest so most of my peers were just like or they were very similar to me and that they were like mostly people who had completed maybe an associate's degree or dropped out like halfway through college um because i went to a community i went to a community college and Maryland for a few years before I enlisted. So I had the, I had the education, you know, so I had, I was going down the education track, struggling to like be able to pay for it, um, and work at Starbucks, which was where I worked at the time. So I, I think, uh, I was in a much more precarious position prior to than

some of the other people who were clearly career people. Like they were very, you know, their, their family had been in the military and they really knew, like, even though my dad was, was in the Navy. He was in the Navy in the 1970s. So I had no, I was not a Navy brat. I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no military, like, I wasn't around the military ever, you know. So when I went through the indoctrination process, it was pretty clear that I was one of the least familiar with like what the military was actually like and what military culture consisted of than most. And I, that may be a little bit of an outsider at first. And so you get into your day-to-day, the operations, and you start to get involved, I guess, with what was

currently the project of the military in Iraq, right? Yeah. Well, actually, no. So I was slated to go to Afghanistan first. We had our orders changed. So I spent a whole year preparing to go to Afghanistan. And then like we scrapped, we scrubbed those order. Those orders were scrubbed suddenly. And I had to, in I think three to four months, completely change all of the pre-deployment work that I was working on for an entire year, throw all of that away and switch it over to Iraq, which was which was a nightmare. You know, it was a lot of, it was a lot of working late hours and working weekends, you know. Did you eventually start to change your mind about the foreign involvements?

Because you said you drank the Kool-Aid. Yeah. Whenever I deployed to Iraq in 2009, you know, I took my job very seriously. I, you know, I was, you know, I support, you know, I viewed myself as very much a support role. Like, I am supporting guys on the ground kind of, you know, mindset. And, you know, like that, that didn't change in, you know, that didn't change in, you know, that didn't change, you know, instantly, you know, like that was sort of a gradual process. And,

you know, it's, it's really hard to, because I get asked this a lot. I get people ask me, like, all the time, you know, what was the one thing, right? Then, you know, made you change, you know, that sort of changed your perspective and, you know, make you do these, you know, like, make you do the thing, right? And the answer is that there isn't really a one thing. It's a gradual process of learning and understanding what's going on, critically in analyzing everything, because you're basically getting this just deluge of information. And I was essentially what would be called the data scientists in today's parlance, which is somebody who digs into large volumes of data, finding patterns, doing analysis, doing statistical analysis, writing that through what we

would call machine learning now. It was a little bit simpler. than machine learning in that it's like more Bayesian statistics so it's not like neural networks or anything but you know that the the the purpose and the intent is very similar and sort of understanding like what's going on with the amount of data that you're collecting from various parts of the theater in Iraq and Afghanistan locational data attacks intelligence information and just sort of pulling it all together and trying to come up with a statistic statistical projection or kind of like a, kind of like a meteorologist, right? Like a meteorologist like gives you a forecast. And it gives you like chances and percentages.

So that was very much my role was to sort of give a forecast as to what's going to happen in the counterinsurgency threat. And so over the course of time, obviously American public also starts to change its mind about some of these involvements. What do you think the the broad effect of, you know, the foreign engagement has been on domestic politics? You know, it's interesting. In 2010, and I remember this very distinctly. I went on leave, and there was, Thomas Friedman at some point wrote an article kind of glossed over, you know, because like the Obama administration came in. It didn't really change anything from, really was just a copy paste of the same pullout strategy that the Bush administration had.

But having a new president sort of created a public perception change, even though there wasn't a, there wasn't an actual policy change. There was a sort of perception change. So the news and the opinion articles were a lot more glowing. They were a lot more, hey, maybe we are bringing democracy to Iraq. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. And I found that just so wild and bizarre and kind of like personally infuriated. because it wasn't that cute and it wasn't that pretty and it wasn't that sort of like it was pretty clear that they were trying to repackage the war like the mainstream media was repackaging the war that they were criticizing just a year earlier even though nothing had really changed i do feel like a lot of people felt that way too just just kind of like no no no we remember what happened why are you trying to retell it in this way i mean that alone i think that reaction to the ongoing propaganda has had like a profound effect on American domestic politics and the trust in politicians and the idea that there's any justice, you know, I guess like having Obama pardon or not pardon but basically immediately say, well, we're not going to like go after anybody in the Bush administration in regards to, you know, any of this stuff around the Iraq war. I mean, we're sort of starting to see that with the Trump administration, I feel like, because it seems like every time that something comes up in which they can go after the

Trump administration, like Attorney General Barr and the Lafayette protesters, the order to clear the Lafayette Park of protesters last year. The Department of Justice is like, no, you can't go after them for this. Like, they're defending, they're actually defending, they're defending the office of the president. And they're defending the office of the attorney general in, in sort of saying, like, yes, this is, like, they're not saying that this was good,

but they're also saying, like, you can't, you can't question that. You can't attack that in a court. then that would mean that you would be able to scrutinize all of these other policies and all these other things that we do. And we don't want that. Right. Opening the floodgates, possibly holding these people to the standard of the laws, like, oh, hold on. Exactly. Yeah. And so before we, you know, kind of move on into the media and the alt-right and the fact that we both study it in very different ways since, you know, you are definitely more of a public figure. But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the fact that

during your time in the military, you also came out as trance. So, I mean, how did the weight of your disagreements with America's foreign policy intertwine with the weight of coming to terms with your gender identity at the same time? It's a good question. I can't really untangle it all. I want to be clear. I don't think that they're, like, connected. But I definitely had to go through this, like, period of time where I had to really grapple with the fact that I was also queer. So under don't ask, don't tell, which added a whole other layer of completely. complexity and confusion because it always there was always this feeling of like don't ask don't tell is in effect trans people don't get access to things in the military it is a basis for discharge at that time so there's two policies that could basically have me removed if the if the military finds out so and their policy was always to sort of pretend like it wasn't a big deal like on the ground that was what the don't ask don't don't ask don't tell policy reality was at the time was sort of we're not going to dig into

your private lives but you got to keep it secret which was always sort of a big downer so it was a it was um it was difficult but the way that i responded to that i feel like as i just delve deeper into the work right because i so i ended up having less and less of a private life and just work just took over everything you know and i went to you know when i would go to sleep before i would like dream that I was working. Like, it was that, it was that intense. You know, so I just had this, like, 24-7. I'm working constantly.

I don't even have enough time to play video games. I don't even have enough time to just watch. I mean, you know, the bandwidth wasn't great in Iraq either. So YouTube videos were a bit of a stretch. And so then, you know, after kind of serving in the military, you end up spending, how many years was your first prison stand? Was it seven? Yeah.

So I spent almost seven, just ten days shy of seven years in prison. I had four months until I was released from prison. And then the grand jury stuff happened in 2019. I got a grand jury subpoena. And, you know, it was about a year, I want to say. I don't think it was exactly a year, but it was roughly a year in three days, I think. that I was in Alexandria city jail for.

Not including like a two, I guess there was a two or three day period of time where they released me. It was civil confinement. I wasn't charged with a crime, right? It was, we're going to hold you until you cooperate with us. And I don't cooperate with grand juries

or the police ever. That's just my standard policy. So I, so I ended up being held for two months. I think it was with 59 days. then they released me because the grand jury subpoena time period ran out so they could start up another grand jury so they have to seat a new panel so I had like six days of off time until my next appearance before the grand jury which we waived so I didn't actually appear before

a grand jury a second time I said I'm not going to cooperate and then they put me back in back in the same jail so yeah it was a little weird it was so weird that you know you don't know how long you're going to be there it's a max of 18 months and they were charging you by the day and yeah oh yeah I did get I did get fined I got fined $250,000

$250,000 $250,000 It rocks It's America That is the most American thing ever charging you It's actually not legal under international law So one of the things that we discovered

And actually one of the one of the things that the United nations discovered as we went through this process was that civil confinement and civil fines for individuals is to compel them. It's actually not legal under international law. So it's actually an unfortunate sort of vestige of British common law that Britain, you know, tossed in like the 1800s. So, but I'm not an expert in that. I trust, I trust the lawyers on that. But, but, But, yeah, it started a UN, it started like a whole UN investigation, but the U.S. just can veto, I guess, because they can. They don't have to, they don't have to abide by human rights or anything, by another authority. We had a similar situation in which Jake's feet on HBO started a human rights investigation at the UN.

They're too big. Hopefully they will find him guilty of something. So, okay, so, you know, in and out of jail, and when I heard you in another interview described this period, you actually described quite a bit of solidarity with other prisoners. Can you tell me how that was like? And not only that, but also, you know, you mentioned Don't Ask Don't Tell and the transition and how difficult that might have been in the military, but now you're in prison. This is a whole new ball game and some of the conditions that they were holding you in with the solitary and all of this stuff. I mean, it's very physical stuff.

It's basically abuse. It's basically, I mean, I would qualify it as torture. So, yeah, so how was that period of what were the ups and the downs? Yeah, it's a good question. This is actually one of the more difficult things that I struggle with is that I've actually spent more time of, I've spent most of my adult life in prison. So, like, prison is the default in my mind, right? right so like everything everything in my life today that I live I view through the lens of like oh this is different than prison right because like prison is what I know yeah so I always find

it you know I always have the reverse mindset of most people because you know people are always like what is prison like and I'm just like well what's what's the rest of the world's life well you know what's the rest of the world like Chelsea's selling and buying cigarettes just randomly in her life like just like what do you mean this isn't how it works Yeah, and no, I mean, you know, like, Smokie was banned in prisons in 2006, so that might be a bummer for some people. Definitely a bummer for me. If I went to prison, the only thing I would be looking forward to is unfettered cigarette access. Yeah, it hasn't been allowed since, like, 2006, 2004 to 2006. The only result of that is that we have, like, jacked white supremacist now coming out with perfect lungs so they can, like, chase and deep down Antifa.

This is a bad policy. Do people sneak cigarettes in, though? I mean, imagine people have to smoke in prison. Of course there's a network. There's a network of everything. You can get anything. Anything you need in prison, you can get. It's just a matter of what risks you want to take

and how serious, like, how serious you want to deal with the consequences. Because you're going to get caught. Somebody's going to catch you eventually. It's a matter of time. And yes, to round this back a little bit and get a bit more serious again, yes, they had a lot of solidarity with, like, prisoners. Because the thing that I always find fascinating whenever I'm asked about prisons is people understand the inherent, like, difficulty of being in prison and the disconnection that people go through and the inherent violentness of the prison system. One of the things that I think people struggle with is that prison is a, how do I put this? the most violent people in prison time and time again were the prison staff always there was never an exception right and that's just mind-boggling because whenever you have the state you know to back you up and you have state immunity and you have authority over another person like almost absolute authority over another person and you've stripped the other person's credibility away then you can just do whatever you want and the things that they do

are just cruel you know you can not every you know sure not every prison guard is cruel but they every single one of them looks the other way at the ones who are which and backs up the ones who are so it's just an inherently horrifying experience for anyone and yeah i i i hold full solidarity you know i've always held full solidarity with people in prison who are under these circumstances because it's it's horrifying and it's some of the worst it's some of the worst some of the worst crimes that happen in prison time and time again just go unnoticed because they're official they have that rubric of well you know they're just not human right pop culture kind of does this too because like if you watch law and order there is the good you know the quote unquote good people are the cops right who do this

investigation and then there's the prosecutors who take this to trial but that's not the end of the story in the criminal justice system right you have people that go to prison and they stay in these says in these boxes for the rest you know for huge chunks of their lives for me it's it's definitely something that i i'm very passionate about that is that always at the front of my mind the cruelty of prisons and that disconnection right and they're always trying to monetize people i remember reading once about how prison wardens uh both private and public publicly owned prisons have a tendency of talking about their prisoners as clients or as customers, right? So in their parlance, whenever they're going to like conventions and stuff, right?

Because now it's become a business where every phone call, they can make money off of. Every visitation, they can make money off of. Every letter written or packaged sent, bought and sent, they make money off of. Commissary to get anything reasonable. or decent, and they have a monopoly. You don't, you know, you don't get choice. You don't get price options. You get one company or two companies to buy stuff from, and they just jack up the price because security, quote unquote. And so over time, you know, you kind of get to know prisoners, you experience the cruelty from the inside, and eventually you appeal and you're

released. Your sentence was commuted. I got pulled out and I didn't have time to process. either what the hell was going on but I got pulled aside and told that I was told like hey this is good news like you're being released for prison in 120 days and I'm like that means that I have to be here another 120 days yeah that's like 120 days like knowing knowing that like at any minute somebody could change their mind I mean I imagine like if I put myself in your shoes is that like each one of those days is like is it real though 117 days under the Trump administration too right And the Trump administration made it pretty clear that they weren't happy with the commutation via tweet. Trump actually tweeted about it.

Definitely a nerve-racking experience. And we had a pile of lawyers because a reversal of a pardon has not been tried in recent times. But it's an open question still. I think ultimately one of the reasons the Trump administration didn't pursue a reversal is because they didn't want their own pardon's reversed. Right. And so over the last four years, and I know this question is, going to sound bad because you actually spent part of it in jail again. But what have been some of the highlights of being a free woman?

It's a good question. So I've spent most of my time in pandemic, in the Trump administration. So one of the most remarkable things about being released from prison was when I got out and I started actually interacting with people. So I stayed in New York for a few weeks before I moved to where I'm from in Maryland. And whenever I got out, I was like, oh, this is different. Everything's changed. And it was just like, it was pretty clear that the world was not the same. And I was like, oh, okay.

And I had, you know, like the cognitive dissonance, like, was broken and shattered for me. So I was like, this world's on fire. Like, you know that right. And everybody else is like, it's like, it's. like just trying to like live in a days it was like 2017 right and so like i literally saw everything that happened in the last four years i was like oh this this is coming right so i have it hasn't been uh a it has it's been kind of bittersweet you know like yeah i can go yeah i can go to the i can go to the store when there's not a pandemic and you know just kind of chill out

and i can talk about my experience of prison and i can play video games on on twitch right um but But, you know, being, like, the idea that I'm quote-unquote free is a little bit of a misnomer, I feel like, especially given the fact that society and the United States, as a, as an institution, not just as a, as a nation, but as an institution is sort of starting to reach the end of its, the end of its legitimacy cycle. Yeah. So before we get into exactly that, I was kind of fascinated by the fact that the New York Times and the Washington Post failed to show interest in the documents that eventually made their way to WikiLeaks. So do you think that some of these institutional media outlets are just poorly prepared or just unwilling to shine a light on these kinds of things? I don't think it wasn't that they weren't interested. So when I reached out to the Washington Post in 2010, in early 2010, it was pretty clear that they didn't really understand you know because I wanted encrypted communications and they're like no just send me a text like it's safe it's fine right and I'm just like no you don't understand yeah and it never quite got that was the issue right it was it was an understanding of you know because I think journalists at the time were pretty old hat and they weren't really aware of how dangerous their job really at how like how how how how how half hazard sharing this kind of information was and they're having to learn this in a very quick in a very short period of time because I you know my leave was two weeks and then I was back to not having strong internet again right it was like dial up right it was pretty clear that you know I was not going to be able to overcome this lack of understanding of risk how to mitigate that

using technical means like using email encryption or you know some kind of encryption protocol or meeting in person without electronic devices that it just was and there was a blizzard in the middle of all this just to add on top of everything else yeah people act like I had this like plan or I had you know like I had the intention of giving it to a specific person or anything like that and it was no I want this out I want this public I don't care what means yeah it needs to happen and I'm running out of time like I only have a specific amount of time before and because I didn't want to go you know I didn't want to go awall because that means I've been trouble right you know I wanted to like go back I needed to get back to work

so I had like this limited amount of time to to do this really big thing and not a lot of time to communicate so I don't think it was I don't think it was that the New York Times or the Washington Post weren't interested I think it's that they they there was a gap in understanding at the time now they've obviously changed their policies so Nowadays, the New York Times, the Washington Post have more secure policies. So you can do what I did in 2010 today through those institutions because the means and methods of change. I wanted to just jump back quick on something that Chelsea said because I'm fascinated by this. And this might be a stupid question.

But you said, you know, you were talking about, you know, life outside of prison. You talked about being able to stream video games on Twitch. And my question is that when you got out, did you see, like, like what video games were like at that point and be like, oh my God, the graphic, there's so much better. Or like, was it kind of disappointing or? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, it improved a little bit.

I mean, I was kind of like, oh, okay. Yeah, 10 years. Yeah, if you remember, like 2010, like, the difference between, like, you know, I mean, it came out after I was jailed, but, you know, like Red Dead Red Dead redemption, the original Red Dead Redemption is around about the graphics quality and the sort of storyline quality.

And then I came to come out and it's Red Dead Redemption 2. So, you know, there's a jump, but there isn't that big of a jump. No, no, no, no. And it's not like I don't, it's not like I can't, it's not like I can't get video game magazines.

Like, I know what the hell's going on, right? Yeah, okay. And I'm around, I'm around soldiers, like, who are between the ages of 18 and 25 every day. The idea that I don't, that I don't know what's going on in the video game world is absurd. So I wanted to speak a little bit about, you know, the things you have gotten up to while you were out of jail, you know, basically covering the far right. You said you kind of saw a lot of this coming and kind of washed it develop.

And we've done the same thing. We've gone either undercover or just kind of we just don't call our attention to ourselves. And we've been criticized for that, you know. But you had an incident where there were these photographs that surfaced at this alt-right gathering. just can you tell us what happened there yeah so i there it's a very cringe moment of mine where um i viewed i i viewed the all the the alt-right as a threat um and one of the things that i that i wanted to do was to be able to use my privilege and access to uh gather a lot of information about them and it's a lot of stuff that you know it they don't really hide very

well if you get close to them right you know it's like it's like when one of the they're going to do stuff, when they're going to have events so that way you can have protest to disrupt it, right? And so I got close, I got a little bit closer to them because there was actually a huge supporter of mine. Cassandra Fairbanks, who was a Bernie supporter, actually, and had left-leaning politics for many years. And I knew her. So I was at a protest in Berkeley in 2017. I won't tell you what went down at that protest. But it was a pretty hairy event. But I noticed I saw Cassandra there.

And I'm like, what the hell is Cassandra doing up there? Because I know her. Because she was like with Milo Yanopoulos, right? And I was just like, what's going on here? So I wanted to like scratch that a bit. And so I worked with some journalists and some just activists, right, to sort of unravel this group. And I ended up meeting some of these people in my off time.

I just kind of was trying to figure out where is this going? like who are these people and I just kept on gathering notes and recording things and trying to pay attention to like where what they were up to because they weren't hiding anything that they were saying or doing they're grifters right you know they they don't believe what they say they just want people to make money off of it and then I ended up at this I ended up getting an invite to I don't know like I didn't had no information about the event but I ended up going to this event um doxing the event and we managed to get a protest outside of the venue out in, I think it was the meatpacking district in where it was either Chelsea or the meatpacking district in New York. And I ended up going to go, actually going inside into this event and being surrounded by proud boys and like extreme like it was literally like the, it was I think the last major gathering of the far right before the Trump campaign. And I got kind of trapped in there. And it was a really bad look because I'm there and I'm just sort of like scared and surrounded by people

who obviously don't like the fact that me being a trans leftist person is there and I needed to figure out how to get out of there and by the time I got out of there you know it was sort of like swirling on on social media that I that I like was chummy with them or friendly with them and and I really fucked that up like I ended up sort of boxing myself into really looking like and I really regret and I I deeply regret like you know sort of like going down this path and I was a mistake but uh I did have the best intentions of sort of trying to undermine a genuine long term threat as I viewed the right at the time because I didn't one six did not surprise me one bit right we all like all of us who were doing anti-year anti-fascist work in 2017 to 2018 saw a lot of the stuff coming

and at the time I think that more liberal-minded people were just sort of like Trump bad Orange Man bad but they didn't what they weren't they viewed the electoral system as the main way to deal with them and I was and I was a lot more skeptical

because of coup attempts because of putches you know which were I viewed as a real thing in 2017 in 2018, and that played out. So I viewed more extreme and or creative methods to disrupt them and to deal with them as being legitimate, as being proportional. And this method, I think, ended up not being the best, an appropriate thing for me and

my role and my position being an extremely public figure because they were able to flip the script on that. Right. But I still, you know, I still support those who do that kind of work, right? Mm-hmm. And so, you know, speaking of the proud boys, before we jump into the fact that you somehow were into QAnon before us, so cooler than us. I saw this coming. Definitely cooler than Live. Live is last. Let's be very clear. She got to this two weeks ago, all for the clout. Yep. Yeah, what is this QAnon thing we've been talking about? I've just been going along with this. Oh, so yeah, one thing that I can do.

I feel like sort of quickly disappeared from news cycles was this revelation that Enrique Tario, who served as the leader of the Proud Boys, had been working with the FBI since at least 2012. So, like, what do you think this beats for the relationship between the feds and the ongoing violent actions between 2012 and now that the Proud Boys, like, literally organized, participated in so many ways? Yeah, they're, they're super chummy. They're super chummy.

Like, feds are super chummy with all the far right groups, really. because they like them, right? You know? So I think that with Tario, for instance, and it wasn't just the FBI, it was like multiple law enforcement agencies, right? You know, ATF, you know, he was an informant for so many different law enforcement agencies, especially in Portland, I think. Like the PPB, the Portland Police Bureau, for instance, you know, you've got like Joey

Gibson, who's extremely chummy with the Portland Police Bureau. the PPA, the Portland Police Association, or in here in the NYPD, with New York, you have both the New York Police Department and you have the Police Benevolence Association, which is a pretty interesting name to call yourself whenever you're a police union, when you're a police quote-unquote union. The good guys company. But yeah, you know, I think it's less indicative of like, of course all these things. people are snitching on each other, right? Because they're all trying to get better positions in leadership positions and have better relationships and also avoid getting in trouble for what they're doing. But also I think I think it's important to remember that a lot of these federal agencies are sort of pulling a whitey bulger here where they're like, oh, well, if we're chummy

with some of the organized criminals that we do like, then we can we can go after some people look good and all we have to do is sort of give these folks a pass. So I think that it was a two-way I think it was actually more of a two-way street that ended up biting them in the ass, obviously after one-sixth, right? Because they can't possibly be excited about one-sixth. They can't possibly be like, this was the goal. They can't be stoked. Because the fascists finally turned on the police, on the police agencies and the federal, like the federal agencies they finally flipped right they finally went a cab and they did and as soon as that happened they're like okay all this stuff that we've been digging up dirt on you like it's their

game now and so okay so tell us about um you know uh finding out about Q and on before us humiliate us okay so Q and on were a couple of weird drops that I noticed right this is before the big bakers came in this is before the griff started, right? And a few of these accounts, and I'm not sure if I actually beat you to it, I think it was around the same time. So I'm not going to make that claim, right? But in early 2018, I became aware of this individual calling himself Q that was posting

on either, was it 4chan or 8chan. I think it was 8chan. It's now 8chan. It started on 4chan. Yeah, 4chan at first, and then it moved. Yeah. And I saw the stuff just started to start. to sort of catch fire and it was it was it was a little bit before they started going with the like elder the elders of Zion approach where it became like extremely pedophiley but it it caught people's attention because it's like i have information Hillary Clinton is going to be arrested right and it is sort of like that was like the key thing was like oh there's all these indictments it sort of became a counter to the molar conspiracy theorists that were going on on the on sort of the lip among libs.

right at the time that was how i viewed it at the time was like oh okay like the indictments are coming in the in the miller report any day now right you know if you if you if you follow palmer report right you know you know trump's going to prison like 3 p.m you know like it was just it was just it felt like a it felt like a counter to that at first for me but i thought i but what i found interesting was the the the same network of signal boosters that i noticed in the alt-right would share this information with all of their different groups and signal boost it, right? Because they have like an A-B test, right? So the way the Alt-Light at the, in 2017-2018 operated is they would post something wild and cringy with a smaller account, right?

And they would A-B test to see what catches fire and what doesn't. and they would have the bigger accounts do the bigger and bigger things. Like the things that caught fire, so they were able to construct a narrative out of what would go the most viral fastest. And I felt that Q, that Q posts and Q drops at that time were A, B tests because not every single Q drop caught fire. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And it also is a perfect extension of what was already happening on the chance. they were just always like a, B testing memes until like the right one took off.

One's actual extremely, extremely well educated into actual Nazi ideology and actual fascist sort of strategy came into being. That's when you started seeing the, the, the, the, the, the, the, um, pedophilia. That's when you started seeing the, uh, the like 1488 type stuff. Because it, you know, it was like, it was like, there was like, there was, like, like, there was, like a change in the tone with Q drops right yeah and there was a change in how they were baked and a lot of this happened i feel like not not as a result of but certainly came after a lot of the um the sort of bans and attacks of accounts um that were uh on um more mainstream platforms um around the time that Bowers, the Pittsburgh shooter happened, right?

Because that happened in late 2018. And I feel like what may, you know, I've always felt that what happened is that the Q community was a lot of people who had these very explicitly Nazi ideologies who couldn't post as Nazis anymore. therefore they found a way to bring this this weirder, more anonymous culture and sort of latch onto it and sort of like buy into the anonymity. I don't know how you feel about that, but that's sort of the direction.

That's sort of when I noticed a direction change was right around late 2018, early 2019. And then things obviously blew up as soon as the pandemic. happen right and so in 2019 you uh saw uh like this kind of cue community passing around this um this video of aOC dancing and so you texted her about it what happened there i did oh yeah so one of the funniest moments is that in january 2019 it was like january 9th of 20 of 2019 um a q anonon account that i was that i was paying attention to um it was like cue anonymous 17 176, right, was like the account name, like typical on brand, like a cue baking account, right? They dug up this video, this extremely cute video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like dancing in college, right?

Which was like on YouTube before, but they signal boosted this and they tried to use this as like a smear attack. And it was funny because it went, it immediately went viral. but it went viral in a completely different way. And I texted Alex as soon as that account posted that. I was like, hey, hey, this video popped up. And it actually makes you look great. You're like, you're look of awesome. Like, this is one of the coolest things.

Like, you're one of the coolest people of the world for this. And, yeah, and it blew up. And I, you know, it became sort of a meme at the time. And it became such a positive boost for Alex at the time. that this QAnon account just it just disappeared, like deleted its account and it never reappeared again.

It had a ton of followers. It had like 70,000 followers. This is a big account. Instead of remaining in the fringes, Q jumped into the national spotlight, in part due to the success of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Green. You know, what do you think of her rise

and others like her? You know, what I find fascinating about Marjorie Taylor Green is that she is like a perfect example of, somebody who has been there the whole time, right? It's pretty early. She was an early adopter of cue.

I don't think she's a grifter. I actually don't think that Marjorie Taylor Green is one of the, like, all, she differs a little bit from a lot of these alt light folks who do it for the grift. It's all about the money. I feel like she is a very much a true believer in this stuff. And I think that she's like having to grapple. with the fact that while she's been a true believer in this stuff, now she's like in a different position, a different role. So she has access to different information. And now she has to like

navigate that. But it's interesting because she was always there. She was always in the background. She was always involved in the stuff. She harassed Alex in like 2019, right? Whenever Q was not, before Q became mainstream, you know, she was already fully on board with the stuff doing like direct action protests, like physically being physically present. doing stuff and really engaged in this stuff. So yeah, I think she's like a perfect, her history is like a perfect microcosm of like the rise of the Q universe, right? And you know, you kind of mentioned this earlier, this crisis of legitimacy, people being dissatisfied with the material conditions of their lives in America. The institution is looking less and less like a solution and more and more

like an obstacle. Do you think that like January 6th in a way was a turning point for that? And, you know, was it good for the far right? Or, yeah, how do you see that whole thing? So I view 1-6 as one of the most significant moments in American history. And I think it's funny because we all pretend, like it seems like mainstream folks are pretending like it didn't happen right now because of how grave a threat it is to the legitimacy of the United States as like a nation. because you weren't able to keep your process and your buildings secure. One of the most secure buildings the world was overrun, right?

And the world saw that. And that creates a crisis of legitimacy, right? Because you've punctured the invincibility of this institution for once. Now, then one can argue, okay, like, yeah, the fascists already own that building. So, like, of course they can overrun the building, because it's their building, right? They, you know, like, it's, these institutions already sort of fit the framework and the mindset that they have and they already have a presence inside of them. But I do think that from somebody who has like a counterinsurgency mindset and understanding of this kind of thing, that's an event that you can't go back from, right?

An attempted push that was, that successfully managed to end one of the most important legal. processes in the U.S. legal system in one of the most secure buildings has punctured the invincibility of the United States permanently. And I don't think that I don't think that Americans are able to grasp or understand what's happening yet. But the depth of what this means is going to last decades, right? Like they're, like, I think of it like this, right? The United States came out of the Second World War with this in this air of invincibility, this air of heroism, this air of power and elevation, right?

The, the city on a shining hill as Reagan would put it, right? The branding of the United States for 70 years, you know, people around, the world would take the United States seriously. People in the United States would take the idea of freedom of democracy seriously. That has been punctured. And I don't think you could, you really need an event as epoch defining as the Second World War to elevate you, to elevate the branding and the legitimacy of an institution like the United States in order for you to get the ability to say, with a straight face, we're bringing freedom. and democracy through use of force in some in some place that isn't even within our our direct

that isn't a direct threat to us or isn't that we don't have any back you know we don't have any influence over we don't have any you know like what does the united states have to do with vietnam what does the united states have to do with iraq right so in order for that those sort of policies to exist you had to have this branding of like the united states as like being a beacon of freedom of democracy and you can't do that after a push so from here on out whenever joe biden tries to say with a straight face or you know this the head the state department hey we're about freedom of democracy people are just going to chuckle right and like that perception was punctured by a guy with a shaman hat and like a fake spear yeah you know like a lot of the coup people weren't

particularly competent so it's like imagine if they were right nor did they feel like they were in an ideological war against the institution. They went in and they were like, oh, look at these beautiful paintings. They weren't tearing them down or defacing it. They were taking fucking like souvenirs home from this awesome, cool place they love, which is, yeah, that's a very strange aspect of this version. And then it opens this vacuum. So what is next?

Like, is this good, like I asked, you know, good or bad for the alt-right and what does it mean to have this, I guess, revolutionary possibility? open up in such a weird and ugly way? I don't. It's hard to say that it's good for the right because it has significantly disrupted them. Like being involved in this many court cases, having a lot of their central leadership sort of sideline, having Trump have his Twitter account banned 13 days before he left office has been kind of shattering for their motivation and their energy.

which I think is real. The concern that I have is that the right is able to co- is able to now re-coeless, and they aren't going to be as friendly to the idea of a central federal government round two, I don't think. I think that the far right is sturdy to coalesce around the idea of we need to take state houses, we need to have we need to eliminate voting rights like for anybody apart from you know apart from essentially like white patriarchal male men right um i think that's the end state goal is to just is it just ship away is to just continue what they've been doing for the last 70 years right since since fDR and ship away at progress but using the state houses using the governors using

the um because they can win those seats and they can gerrymander those places and people and the mainstream media sort of just like it's just like oh red states ha ha ha isn't it isn't it funny how texas wants to you know ban trans people from you know playing sports like what ha ha what kind of issue is this right but they're accomplishing it right they're doing these things and i think the federal government is ironically in less of a position to be able to assert authority over states than it did because of that. So I think in the short term, it hurts them. But in the long term, the crisis of legitimacy that it's created allows them to create a sort of counter to the United States, a sort of more explicitly fascist, more explicitly nationalist, although not necessarily the United States.

And don't forget, the Confederacy was very nationalist, right? The Confederacy believe that they were the real Declaration of Independence people, right? They believe that they were really what the founding fathers wanted, right? So they dressed themselves up while actually committing this act of war and treason against the federal government. They claimed to be the genuine keepers of the mantle of sort of national identity, right? And I think that that's what we're going to start to see it happen. Now, does this mean that Kentucky or Texas secedes from the union? No.

I don't think we're looking at a sort of traditional secession of union kind of thing. But I do think it's going to be a situation where we have a more and more extreme patchwork quilt where you cross the border and the laws and rights and frameworks that you have and the guarantees that you have in one state are just so significantly different that it's almost like you're in two different countries. Well, and we're even seeing that now, the Q&on rally that Travis and I went to a couple weeks ago that was in, you know, on Hollywood Boulevard. There was a woman there who's running for governor against Gavin Newsom, and she was going around talking to people saying, hey, we got to run for local office, you know, we need to take these seats, we need to do this. And that is a far cry from what people were saying at Q&N rallies just, I don't know, a year and a half ago. Yeah, the strategy is to take the state houses because you can take them.

And so, but meanwhile we have, I mean, there are obviously active and organized people in this ideological movement like we were just describing. But then there's some that are just like sitting, you know, in the kind of narcotic haze of terms like, where we go on, we go all. And like dark to light. And, like, these people seem to have a weird, warped yearning for solidarity and justice, transparency in government. And, you know, they're also looking to reveal atrocities they believe are real by way of an anonymous leaker. I mean, so, you know, how do what, how is this going to work out as far as that?

And is there, is there a way to get some of those people back into reality? That's a difficult thing because I, the pandemic has sort of scrambled everybody's brains. and I've talked about this in another podcast, right? The experience that everybody's had in the last year, being in quarantine, having to deal with the pandemic, having to lock down, having to see the one of the largest mass casualty producing events, we had mass graves here in New York City, right? to have for the first time in history a contraction the first time in the first time since since the last pandemic we had a contraction of the U.S. population right for it was a brief period of time we're now going back up up but we had a brief contraction where the population of the United States was going down faster than it was going up that's a traumatic experience and I'm noticing

that people are people are doing what they do what what happens. happens whenever you go through solitary confinement or you go through some kind of restrictive confinement conditions where people who are going through that, all sorts of stuff happens to their brain, right? You start to become more susceptible to believing in stuff, right? And you have less information to confirm or deny your reality and you have less distractions so you can really go down your rabbit hole, right? And I think that's what happened with the Q stuff, right? is people started with social media allowing them to be exposed to this and not having the experience of their daily lives to contradict them they just start going down this rabbit

hole right and this happens in solitary confinement this happens in restrictive housing unit conditions right where you have limited numbers of people you start believing things you start people seek conspiracies and I think this is fascinating people who are in restrictive housing units like they they start seeking different religious ideas they start seeking um they start believing in different things they start questioning different things they start wondering whether things are connected it's just i think human nature to sort of have to deal with a traumatic thing that's happening to you and a and dealing with a traumatic thing to seek meaning in that and to find and to find some some greater purpose and find some greater meaning in that then

than the reality. And so without anything to ground you, I think that that's what happened. But it's also happened with liberals, too, where they're just sort of like, they're sort of just dealing with the same things. And me, I've been going out, and I've been quarantining,

but I've also been, like, communicating with people who are out and about and doing stuff. So I've had this, like, contradictory opinion, and I've gone through this cognitive dissonance before. And I think that what I see is I now see people coming out of that and they're just in a days, right? And I think as people come out of a days, they're going to start to come. Now is the time where they're going to start to have to grapple with reality for the first time. And I think a lot of these people are going to struggle, but all of us are really going to struggle.

And I think we just need everybody just needs to sort of chill and take care of yourself, right? because it's not that it's not that the lock it's not like there's anything wrong with the lockdowns right and I want to be clear about that because I think that that's come up before is like no the lockdowns were necessary for public health reasons because we had a mass casualty event hit the United States and we needed to to try to keep people safe but the the impact of being locked down for a significant chunk of time is going to produce is going to produce an added layer of that trauma and we just kind of have to take care of ourselves and and be just gentle with ourselves. And I think that people who go down the queue hole, you have to be gentle with them. I, because anything that you, if you try to throw them facts, if you try to argue with them, they have, that's not going to, it's right, it'll just brush it, you know, they're, they're too far gone, you know, you can't, you can't do that. What you can't do, I feel like, is, and it's, it's hard because some of them are so far gone that, you know, they're dangerous and some of them are are only so far gone that um that you could start to pull them out

if you if you engage with them but not engage with them on the topics that they're talking about so like if you instead like play tennis with them or you play basketball with them or you have a you know if you have a more positive if you have like a constructive relationship with them that has nothing to do with politics, maybe you can, maybe you could start to ground them again, but it's a hard, it's, it's hard to know because some, some, some of them are so far gone and so dangerous and unstable that there's a hazard and a risk in that, and even doing that. So, you know, I think, I think it's a case-by-case basis. One question I have, and this is, you know, speaking to their kind of belief system,

many of them you know they kind of go either way on whistleblowers many of them love assange but they'll like hate snowden they'll call one person a traitor and the other person's a hero so what do you think of this weird inconsistent relationship they have uh with that i mean because there's just no i mean their their their facts aren't grounded in reality so they they construct their you know one of the things that i find fascinating about cute right is that it's sort of a it's unlike religion which has like a unlike an organized religion which has like a unlike an organized religion which has like a clear doctrine and clear rules. Q is sort of like a pick.

It's sort of like a pick cherry. You can pick and choose the realities that you want. It's sort of a choose your own adventure, right? So I think that's one of the reasons why that happens is because it's, you know, they don't actually, they're not actually think about this stuff or care about this stuff, but they're trying to find facts and realities that fit within their framework and their, their sort of, idea framework and you know i think that having uh having a uh an extremely lefty trans woman uh whistleblower who you know i don't even i don't even like the term whistleblower it it's it's like a night

it's like a it gives me the it conjures up the image of of a of a of a 10 police officer who's about to be like a union organizer right you know that that that's what that's what i see right you know so i don't like that term i just view myself an activist, right? But like to be this activist person who is viewed as a whistleblower is a contradiction of sort of their value set, right? You know, because it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very far left on, I have no interest in, I have no interest in upholding your, your, your, uh, your, uh, your, uh, dream political framework. So I think that's one of the reasons why that sort of happens is, is they already have their, their viewpoints and they're pit, they're cherry picking

their facts to, to, to fit that. Something I noticed with like just like an anecdote with like a distant like family friend who had who is like was sort of Northern Canada relatively country person who was like not didn't want to get the vaccine was like vaccine denialist. They thought that the vaccine was sterilizing everyone who took it. But and she was like should I take it as okay if I've been hearing about this. And the response that got them to take it was just like yeah, a bunch of people taking it were fine. like close relatives around people who are just like they see them and are like no this is fine this is a good idea you know the experts whatever will actually help a lot of people and one of the reasons why the a lot of this stuff has gotten so bad is because of like quarantine and isolation yeah yeah i think it's a direct consequence of quarantine and isolation one of the reasons why that's one of the reasons why q blew up i feel like um and so yeah i think i think but yeah arguing with them on twitter or arguing with them on facebook is not a good idea. Don't do it.

And so Liv has some questions for you, including a bunch of stuff on crypto, because of course. Before that, I wanted to ask you one last question about, you know, can you describe what happened when Harvard gave you a visiting fellowship? I read about this interesting snafu, and what does it say about the relationship of academia with this kind of military industrial complex? So, yeah, this was a fascinating thing. happened in 2017 so harvard but kept on bugging so harvard institute of politics the kennedy school um started bugging my agent my speaking agent at the time about coming to Harvard to speak right i said no right because i they weren't it wasn't a paying gig right so i had just gotten out of prison

i needed to to make some money and you know um i was like yeah yeah you know i i don't i don't feel that that this is like, you know, unless you're going to pay for travel and pay some amount of money, I don't think I want to do this. They bugged my agent multiple times, time and time again. They asked four times with four rejections. Fifth time, I actually had an event in the Boston area and I was already going to be in town, so I accepted it. And I said, okay, yeah, I think I can fit this into my schedule. So the Harvard thing actually wasn't that big a deal. Like they do this with a lot of different people and it was literally just me showing up

to Harvard for three hours to do a speaking engagement, which I do at universities all over the country all the time. All right. This is not, this was, there was nothing unusual about this. Then social, then the right wing, I think was Liz Cheney, tweeted about it. Michael Morrell from the CIA, a former director of the CIA who really doesn't like me. He has, like, a personal vendetta against me. Tweeted, also tweeted about it and wrote a statement saying,

I am withdrawing from my fellowship at Harvard University over this. And it just sort of like snowballed into this thing. And we were in communication all of this day with the Institute of Politics and the head of the school. And we're just like, look, this is becoming a thing. We don't really want this to be a thing. can we should we just pull out like you know like this is this seems to be more trouble than it's worth from my perspective right and the institute of politics was like no we want you to come we want you to be here we want you to engage with the students the students asked you to be here

we're not backing down and they made a very firm like 3 p.m. Pacific time 6 p.m. East Coast time which was their time they gave us the ultimatum they're like like, no, we're never backing down on this. I went to go speak and I actually, I was accepting the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for 2017, right? I actually did an acceptance speech for the award. As I'm coming down off the stage, I get pulled aside by my agent and my manager and a bunch of other people and we get pulled off to the side. We have this emergency meeting and they pull up the Institute of Politics, the head of the school, who's on the phone. It was like this awkward conversation where it's like, after further review, blah, blah, blah, blah, we would like to withdraw you from, you know, we would like to withdraw your invitation to the Institute of Politics, you know, to the Institute of Politics as a visiting fellow, blah, blah, blah, you know, we'd still like you to come and I'm just like, I'm just like, you, this is, you created this problem.

Like, I said no, multiple times. I said, sure, there's a controversy if we don't want to deal with us. Like, it's easy for us. I didn't get paid for the gig. I was going to make no money off of it whatsoever. And it just became this huge controversy. So I think it says a lot about how these schools use controversy to drum up their interest in support for events. and they they chose me with like Sean Spicer

and a bunch of other like right wing people that were big names right like Hillary Clinton's campaign advisor from the 2016 campaign right and so all these big names and they slot me in because I'm a big name that year and they created this controversy and was contrived and we didn't want anything to do with that

it became this big thing and I'm I wasn't mad about it or anything like that it wasn't that big a deal Like I do speaking events all the time. But yeah, it was definitely, it's definitely a very telling incident. And I think it says a lot about the priorities of these schools whenever they have these speaking engagements where they bring far right people, right? They do this stuff to like generate controversy and generate publicity. I have a couple of questions.

Someone related to your upcoming YouTube video, which does relate to technology as well as Bitcoin. Surveillance is obviously an increasingly prevalent issue in our society, like facial recognition software, tracking protesters, you know, Amazon workers' efficiency being automatically monitored in warehouses. And it seems like, you know, both resistance movements in labor are deeply affected by uses of these developing technologies. Is there a way out? Do you think, can these technologies be used to foster resistance? Can they be resisted? What are your general thoughts? Yeah, I think there are ways and means and methods of resisting these kinds of things. The framework that I use is an expert, as a security expert. We use this term.

called threat modeling, which basically says not every single person's threat amounts are the same. So Julian is going to have a very different security framework that he needs from Live, right? Because you're different people and you're exposed to different threats, right? And if you're a protester, you're going to have to take additional precautions and do certain things to protect yourself electronically, right? Whereas if you're me, you know, like obviously I have a much wider range of potential threats, including state actors. So, you know, you just have to view each person's threat model as sort of the framework that they have to work within. And I think that you're going to use different tools for these different things. They're not going to be

specific to each thing. And I think that one of the things that a lot of Bitcoin bro, try to do a lot of people who don't know about the stuff is they try to give you a one-size-fits-all. I highly recommend that people just automatically encrypt their conversations, like, no matter what. So I adhere to the idea that you should use signal as a means of communication over the phone. But that doesn't mean that you should use cryptocurrency in all instances in all situations, right? Some people, certainly those who do sex work or people who deal with illicit substance transactions, consensually. They obviously have an interest in using Bitcoin for anonymity purposes or at least having something that isn't like paper money or that is electronic that doesn't require the

credit card system like stripe or some payment system. And so yeah, I think that it depends on what you're trying to do and who you are and what you're like who the threats that you're dealing with our are they are you trying to keep stuff from the police are you is that your threat if you're a protester if you're a sex worker um are you trying to do with the frar right are you know in which case sometimes avoiding crypto might be a better option because it's easier to get on the ledger a sort of trail and to get you doxed unless you're using a theorem and there's different people who they just live they're just living their lives they're being chill um and how how much protection they need to make, or how many precautions they need to take.

And I think that normal people should do more than they are doing, but that doesn't mean that they need to have custom routers or server farms or using multiple phones or, you know, having a shell company, right? There's different threat models. What about tactical Oakley's? Tactical Oakleys? Yeah, I use tactical Oakleys because they look cool, not because they keep me safe or secure.

There we go. It's a good double-sided purpose. It does both. Yeah, on the question of Bitcoin, it does seem like there is this double-sided nature to it. They could be used for sex work, for instance, possibly good causes, but then again, we can think of, like,

it used on the right as well. I mean, I can imagine, like, with the stuff going on with Matt Gates, that if he didn't use cash app and the with his name where it was like this is for you know prostitution of 17 year old in in the message but then used let's say crypto instead yeah he would have been far less in hot water at the moment what do you think are are going to be the longer effects of something like cryptocurrency like is it here to stay as a currency model is it going to get more relevant is it a passing fad i don't view cryptocurrency as a currency

model personally. Well, I do think it is a, is it, cryptocurrency is real, but I don't think that it's a viable alternative to fiat currency. And the reason why is because there's no enforcement mechanism, right? And you see this with NFTs, for example, right? Non-fundgible tokens are basically these, these certificates that say, you know, encryption certificates that say, I own this, this easily reproducible digital items. right and this can be verified by the ledger right i am the thus the owner of this jpac right

which is i mean it's an absurd notion right because there's no there's no enforcement mechanism right for because it's easily transferable it's easily movable and you can't really do anything with it right like what is it like what does it mean to say like i have a certificate that i've spent an enormous amount of energy trying to obtain and a hash value for and apply it to this JPEG file, like, what does that mean? Like, it doesn't mean anything. Because society still uses fiat currency and it still uses physical ownership and enforcement and protection of these things in order to, in order for the world to work, you know, as a currency system, right? Which is one of the reasons why at the, at the end of the day,

you know, Elon must say it best, you know, in, in his SNL skit, where it's a hustle, right? It is. cryptocurrency is a way of using the scarcity of certain hash values and the energy expenditure of calculating a ton of hash values, throwing them out, finding the right ones that meet certain criteria, which uses up an enormous amount of energy, because you have to do mining, which requires an enormous amount of energy. So you have to be rich in order to get the mining apparatus. the mining equipment because you can't do this on your on your laptop you can't do this on your desktop like you need an actual facility to do this stuff and you have these rich people who are

able to do these things obtain this gather these certificates that say that they that they own possession of these hash values and those are real those are tangible and those are provable so I think it's fascinating because these certificates that are generated through the mining process do have a kind of value but they're as a replacement to fiat currency I don't think that it's viable in that way so I think that it is a that it is a true commodity but it is not an alternative currency right and I the question of like Elon Musk like he seemed to have been on the crypto train for a while right with like dogg coin and then he suddenly is seemingly left it citing you know environmental reasons for instance is there a rhyme or reason to that do you think did he did he use that for his personal advantage or was it really just like he didn't realize the ecological response and that it looked bad I think he cares more about it looking bad because one of the problems that

that that Tesla as a corporation has now is that they're there don't have the air of responsibility that they had and the air of being ecologically responsible as they used to so whenever they're trying to say hey like we should coup Bolivia right they have less sway right and in saying that they're the good guys right so I think I think that's I think it's a branding issue for Tesla I think it has more to do with a branding issue for Tesla than Elon Musk actually caring right maybe the the board of execs being like Elon you have to stop posting well they're having they have shortages of materials now in fact in fact i one of the

things that i just that i've been learning about is how car companies are removing components from their new models of cars so for the first time in several years cars that are being made for the 2021 and 2022 um purchase cycle are less capable than they were in the previous cycles because they're less advanced. Now, the main portions of the cars for these model years are still arguably changes and maybe better in some way in terms of efficiency and they look better or whatever. But these cars, because they're short,

they have shortages of components, they're having to just scrap like electronic speedometers, right? So instead they'll just go. back to a analog speedometer or analog gas meter because there are such a shortage of components and parts because the supply chain is strained so much. And they can't guarantee and they still need to make these models of cars. Tesla is going through way worse in this regard right now. So they need to have good relationships with countries in which they can do resource extraction. And it's hard for them to do that whenever you have Elon Musk basically just sort of wrecking

the credibility of the industry. Yeah, tweeting, we coo, whoever we want. Not a good look. Exactly. And so I think that's one. So I think it has more to do with sort of capitalism and extraction of resources

and trying to be actually bad than, because in a sense, shooting himself in the foot is what he's done here. He's made the company less viable. He's made the ability to extract resources less available to him and doing these sort of risk brand moves of, you know, promoting Dogecoin or being viewed as off the wall or off the cup

or being eccentric, right? Because, you know, Tesla is now a major corporation and it has to do, and it has interest to deal with. And it can't, it can't stay on top unless it remains competitive. And the car companies have realized, the other car companies are able to now produce electric cars. So Tesla will not be the only name in the game going into the next decade. And going a bit back to crypto, people generally view it as like super decentralized and impossible to be like used by state actors or other erroneous sort of larger actors. Yet it seems like this is sort of not the full story in a lot of ways. Can state actors use crypto to their advantage and like how? Yes, they regularly do in fact. So state actors, not necessarily the United States, but other state actors use cryptocurrency to hide the trail of sending, I mean, it's even. sent like they're even sending money to their like intelligence officers on the ground right to like have a have a less traceable way or a more difficult to trace way of moving funds around without having to send it in a diplomatic pouch or something right you know so state actors can use it uh cryptocurrency is not untraceable it is traceable even ethereum you can untangle it if you're a state actor you can untangle it you can untangle it you can untangle it you can untang the ledger and find out with the mixnets who is who it just becomes the cost is much higher right

you need to have an active role and engagement you have to be able to invest the resources to be able to untangle this and it's not clear that the juice is worth the squeeze for them so if they need to state actors can untangle cryptocurrency um i don't think that this is currently something that people that are using cryptocurrency should be concerned about, but the idea that your Ethereum transactions are perfectly secure and will never be traced is, I think, a misnomer. Tell us about a video game you like. Let's jump off the crypto train.

All right. I have been playing video games during the quarantine. I am very disappointed in the fact that the video games industry has basically sort of hit a rut right like red debt redemption too came out blew my mind and I haven't been able to find a game

that a new game that has really gotten me since right yeah it's at the bar you and me both and I don't know what to do about that because I've just been playing so many

classic games so many games that are old so many like I've been going back to old games throughout the quarantine and the last year because, you know, the new titles are just meh. So what are the old ones that you go back to? So I, what are the old ones that you go back to? I mean, it can be just like civilization four, right? Like, not civilization five, not civilization six, civilization four, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good one, I have to say. Yeah, you know, playing games like City Skylines, which is like five, six years old. I play a lot of paradox games. Like, I'm currently playing a lot of hearts of iron for right now. I'm doing that as my streaming bit right now. I play a lot of first-person shooters that are like spacey, like kind of like Halo.

So I've been playing the Halo games. I know that Mass Effect has, and I think it's interesting that one of the most creative things that's happening is that some of the franchises are doing remasters of classic games because they can't come up with their own material. Yeah, Diablo 2 is coming back. Just like Hollywood.

The liquidization of the video game industry is very disappointing to see. Have you tried Elite Dangerous at all? They just had a new expansion that adds like a whole first person sort of aspect. It's supposed to be like a Star Citizen Killer. It's pretty cool so far. I've only played a little bit of it. No, I haven't. No, I haven't, but I definitely know that I've definitely heard of that game.

Yeah. Star Citizen Killer, that just describes like anybody. I don't know if it's possible to kill a game that's been a game. an alpha for like seven years. It hasn't even started. It's so dead. Star citizen killer sounds like a dream for Elon Musk. And so tell us about this YouTube series that you're working on related to science and technology.

Okay. So I, first off, I'm going to start off with the fact that at one point I was bored during the quarantine. And I needed to figure out what I was going to do. So I started Twitch streaming. And another thing that I was going to do was I was going to, for the first time, start to do content production. and I decided to do

use video because I have an interest in film and recording and so I was like okay I'm going to dive into making YouTube videos and it's really hard so so I'm able to record

really easily I'm able to come with ideas really easily and in summer of last year I said hey I'm going to do a YouTube I'm going to do a YouTube series I'm going to start posting YouTube videos. I had a bunch of material and I started putting it together and I open up I opened up a video editor for the first time and I'm very familiar with Photoshop. I'm very

familiar with illustrator. I'm very familiar with audio editing programs from I used to be a DJ in fact. So I have experience with photography. I have experience with recording. No idea what I'm doing. I open this thing up and I'm like overwhelmed, right? So I take film classes. Last autumn, I was like, okay, I have no idea how to do digital film editing. I need to admit that. So I took film classes. And so for the last, for the last six or eight months, I've been learning how to do video editing. And what I've been doing is I've been producing a YouTube video, a YouTube video series that is documentary in nature. I'm working on the length. It looks like it's going to be closer to 30 minutes now for the YouTube video length.

I don't want to do these long-ass video essays, right? Where you have these video essays that are boring and they're like an hour and a half long or two hours long, right? Yeah, it's just a humanities essay, basically. Like, I have the intent of having something a lot more, a lot more like Bill Nye, the science guy. Like, I'm a STEM person, right? Like, I work in science and technology.

So my opinions on stuff were kind of more fluid, but I really, really want to do it explain your videos because I feel like some issues that are talked about a lot, people don't actually understand what they're talking about. They'll have opinions about something that they don't actually understand. And I felt that way about cryptocurrency. I feel that way about artificial intelligence. I feel that way about encryption. I feel that way about surveillance. I feel that way about automation. I feel that way about a lot of different tech issues, right, where people really don't understand what they're talking about. but they'll have hella opinions about it right so i that's what i want to do is i want to create

video series in which i addressed that and so my first video is on cryptocurrency and it's just it's just a fun meme filled adventure that delves into what cryptocurrency is how it works where it came from and what the actual environmental effects of it are because they do think that people who don't like cryptocurrency are exaggerating it a bit and so I want people regardless of your political beliefs regardless of your philosophy I want you to be like more educated

and more aware of what these issues are and what they consist of and so that's what I'm trying to do as I'm trying to produce that and where can people find those videos uh working on that so I'm currently in video editing hell I have a Patreon

if you want to support me right now because I'm actually financially I am in pretty I'm pretty tight right now which is actually slowing down the process you can find me on patreon.com forward slash XY Chelsea you can also find me on Twitter

at XY Chelsea go and support her folks yeah please support me I really need it right now because I'm nearing the end of completion of this video I said it was going to come out in May. I'm under delivering here, which is unfortunate, but, you know, I've had a lot of, I've had a lot of difficulty with sort of the reopening and everything, sort of like all,

all this del user request coming in all at once as soon as, like, I got vaccinated. As soon as I got fully vaccinated, everybody's like, Chelsea, you need to come on. And Chelsea, you need to come do this. Chelsea, you need to come do that. So managing all of that and trying to be a video editor all by myself has been difficult. You can also subscribe on YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash XY Chelsea. I'm also on Twitch. So I have a Twitch,

I have a Twitch channel where people can hear about what I'm doing. It's a Twitch.tv forward slash XYChelcy 87. And yeah, you know, I've been, I've been busy. I have been working, you know,

80, 90 hours a week trying to get this video out and doing a bunch of other stuff all at once with all the reopenings and things. So if anyone wants to see the first Chelsea drop, it totally exactly,

It exists. It's a secret drop. It's a half-hour video drop. And to get that drop working, we're going to need you to go to Patreon and get this patriot movement going. Yeah. So I have fully morphed into a grifter, Julian. Welcome aboard. You've sucked me into this world. That's very unfortunate. But it turns out that it turns out that being, being humble. on the left and having

actual principles isn't very profitable so I got I got to change my tune yeah yeah well I didn't want to say that early on in the podcast we did a Q&A with some listeners and they asked me what my dream guest would be and I remember saying Chelsea Manning

so I don't know the podcast that's true that's over we're wrapping it up folks this is it last episode all right bye Yeah, I wanted to thank you for coming on the show, Chelsea. And also invite you if you'd like to stay for the QAnon News, which is the final little segment here.

Yeah, we're going to have a little segment where basically we're just going to talk about the big event in Dallas that's going on right now because we're going to need to touch on that if we're going to be a respectable Q&N podcast. Q&ONON News. For a main story, Q&OFLERS and promoters gather in Dallas for the biggest Q&ONO event yet. If you all remember back in September of 2019 on a sweltering 9-11, Julie and I gathered for the first ever Q&O event in which a few dozen Q&N followers gathered for a small, free sort of gathering right in front of the Washington Monument. And since then, things have gotten a little out of hand because over Memorial Day weekend here,

there was a three-day event in Dallas that was $500 ahead, or $1,000 if you sprung for the VIP tickets. It's Cuechella. Yeah, it was packed. There's three days of adrenochrome calling for coups. It's a fun time for all. Attendees could hear from Q&N promoters like Jordan Saither, Red Pill 78, and the Kate Awakening. They could also hear from Q&N heroes Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn in a sign that the movement is gaining even more mainstream acceptance.

They could also hear from Congressman Louis Gomert and Tate. Texas GOP chair, Allen West, so... That's quite a lineup. Yes, it's quite impressive. And you know what? I have to say, I don't want to have to give it to them, but it was well produced, too. Everything was well lit, the live stream had like three cameras that transitioned really well.

Yes, the amount of money going into this is terrifying, especially because the logo for the actual event, the cowboy hat that was kind of their sort of like mainstage logo, had WWG1WGA on it. I mean, they were not really trying to hide the fact that it was a blatant, you know, Q and on. Right, yes. It was organized by a guy who goes by the name Q&O and on John,

who in a couple, in a couple of interviews with media outlets, he tried to deny it was a Q&O rally or event. It's absolute madness. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend. I had bought two tickets for myself and Jake, but the organizers refunded them and then told me that

I was not welcome because they thought I was lying about the Q movement. They kicked me out. For freedom of speech. Liv, you should have asked your CIA contact for access. That's true. They let CIA people in for free, I think, or they got a bonus, so I should have took advantage. I saw at least one of them called Brace. Yeah, Will Somer, he also bought a ticket, and he did make it, but he was kicked out on the second day.

The organizers, it was right in the middle of the event, as, as, as. as Michael Flynn was ranting about the media, apparently. The organizers claimed that they had canceled Will Sommers' ticket, but this was evidently not true at all. I think they confused him for you. I think that they, because they were saying that they refunded his ticket. So Jordan Sather basically got Will Sommer kicked out. He filmed the whole thing.

He then showed it to Flynn later and claims that Flynn laughed because other people in the QAnon community were like, this is not us. We don't kick people out. So, yeah, it's that little weasel And he had the only genuine joy that I've ever seen cross His tawdry little visage As he fucking escorted him out on video

And the cops were like borderline If Will slowed down, it felt like the cops would have manhandled him Like that was the level of escorting him out that was happening Well, I mean, you know what they say When you're over the target, you could flag And the female cop said you know, don't be coming back now. The event featured Sidney Powell speculating that Trump would simply be reinstated as president

after all the supposed fraud is discovered. He can simply be reinstated that a new inauguration date is set. And Biden is told to move out of the White House. And again. And President Trump should be moved back in. I'm sure there's not going to be credit for time lost, unfortunately, because the Constitution itself sets the date for inauguration. But he should definitely get the remainder of his term and make the best of it.

That's for sure. Yeah, what they want is, like, not only for Trump to be reinstated, but also get the extra months of Biden's presidency to make up for all that time. lost, high ask. But this speaks to what you were saying, Chelsea. It's like there's going to be like a coalition of 12 states inaugurating their president while like halfway across the country like another coalition of seven or doing their president. We can all have our own presidents. Let's just inaugurate people whenever we all feel like that's something we need. I think it's interesting that Sydney Powell, who is essentially one of the least credible

people in the world is just going full, full on with this stuff, right? Because like the right is kind of moving on, and they're trying to figure out how to deal with this, this cognitive dissentance that's happening between the Q movement and the far right. The event also featured General Michael Flynn endorsing a military coup, like the type that happened in Myanmar. I want to know why what happened in Minamar can't happen here. No reason. I mean, it should have a year.

No reason. But that's right. One more. Now, I don't see why not this country called I think it's Minimart. I think that Babard had it right. Yeah, I'd use a mnemonic technique like minimizing my browser. Oh, my God. Minimard.

I mean... We need a full fascist military. coup we need to take over everything it'll be great there's no way to protect freeze peach other than to establish a totalitarian dictatorship but this one has an open

bar see this is the thing about the right is that they just want to win if there's anything I've learned from being like around people on the far right my entire life it is that they just want to own lips they just want their enemies to lose and if that means killing

themselves in the process, then yeah, let's go. Yeah, suicide cubs. Isn't there rules against former members of the military sort of advocating for the overthrow of American democracy or something? Yeah, but...

Yeah, but, okay, guys, one of those, you know, we'll let it slide this time. I gotcha. I think that hallway monitor's been asleep for a couple of decades, maybe even centuries at this point. He didn't do anything, and no one did anything, and no one can remember. He did nothing wrong, right?

No one should be able to remember anything. We should abolish Wikipedia. We should all be born today. Cool. So yes, thanks so much again, Chelsea, for joining us. Yeah, fascinating stuff. Thanks so much, Chelsea. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Q&ONANANANANIS podcast. Please go to patreon.com slash Q&ONANANANANUS and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. Please also go to patreon.com slash XY2. Chelsea and subscribe there for five bucks a month to help Chelsea continue making video content doing all the amazing stuff that she's doing. When you subscribe, you help us all stay advertising free and editorially independent. We usually stream twice a week at twitch.tv slash

QAnonanonymous. Other Twitch handles you can follow are Julian Field, Live Agar, Florida Flynn, which is me, and of course, XY-87 on Twitch. For everything else, there's the website, QAnonanonanonymous.com. Until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact. And now, today's AutoCube. wrapped up in foil you wonder if she can uncoil Here they come now

See them run now Here they come now Chelsea girls Here's room 115 filled with S&M Queen's Magic Margaro

You wonder just How high they go Here they come Here they come now, see them run now. Here they come now, Chertze girls. Here's Pope dear auntine, Ronis treated him so mean, She wants another scene she wants to be a human being. Here they come now.

See them run now. Here they come now. Thank you.