RedHanded - Episode 238 - The Satanic Panic: QAnon and the Case of Matthew Taylor Coleman

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

What could drag a seemingly normal man, from being a fun-loving Christian surf instructor to killing his own children in fear of their "serpent DNA"?  In part two of our deep-dive into the evolution of the Satanic Panic, we talk bout how anonymous messages left on 4chan became a global cult and started a chain of events that has led to real-world violence including the 2021 Capitol riots, and the deaths of two children. It's time to talk QAnon… May 27th London Live Show Tickets: Tickets through DICE! Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/qanon-republicans-trump.html https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/matthew-taylor-coleman-qanon-children-killing-1239151/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-murder-new-details-matthew-coleman-1315544/ https://www.npr.org/2021/08/13/1027133867/children-dead-father-claims-qanon-conspiracy-led-him-to-kill?t=1646832512872 https://www.insider.com/man-killing-wife-qanon-sex-trafficker-working-for-cia-2022-2 https://people.com/crime/matthew-coleman-the-dad-who-allegedly-killed-kids-over-qanon-theories-had-a-sudden-descent-to-madness-friend/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-dad-killed-his-kids-over-qanon-serpent-dna-conspiracy-n1276611 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/qanon-matthew-coleman-murder-matrix-b2026223.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline https://www.wired.com/story/the-weird-dark-history-8chan/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-origins-of-blood-libel/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. If you have not got your live show tickets for the 27th of May at Islington Assembly Hall, we think we're going up at 7.30. That sounds about right. You have to. Otherwise, there will be great shame upon your ancestors, great shame upon you, shame upon your cow.

Dishonour. Absolutely. Dishonour everywhere. We know that the website is a little bit confusing, but please don't go looking for it. Just follow the link that is in the episode description for this episode and also all over our social media. Yes, yes. Follow the social medias. Don't listen to anyone except us is basically the message.

That is the manifesto of the cult we shall eventually begin. The beginning, middle and end. But no cult formation today. Well, not from us. Not from us. Not from us, but from other people. Yes, from a fair few. Welcome, listeners, to the second and final part.

I feel like that's very grandiose, isn't it? To the second and final, just a two-part series, on the evolution of the Satanic Panic series that we at Red Handed have lovingly crafted for your delightful ears. Last week, if you listened to part one of this series, which you should definitely do because this will make more sense, we explored the origins of the satanic panic in the 70s and 80s with the rise of the possessed and murderous mosh-pitting teenager.

In this episode, we're going to bring you bang up to date with a look at how the noughties are not much different. Yes, as we breadcrumbed you all week last week, in this episode we are stepping out of the grainy pasto times into the terrifying 4K Ultra HD world of today, to discover how QAnon and conspiracy theories about a satanic cabal of paedophilic deep state officials running the world are just repackagings of the 70s satanic panic. But how they are still gaining traction and horrifyingly leading to real world violence and murder, like the murders committed by Matthew Taylor Coleman, a man who killed two of his own

children because they had, quote, the serpent's DNA. There's a lot to unpack this week, so to make sure all this makes the most sense possible, let's a lot to unpack this week. So to make sure all this makes the most sense possible, let's start at the beginning. And the most sense possible is still absolutely none. You know, you've done a very good job of pulling the story together, but it is so confusing. I feel like everyone knows the words QAnon, but nobody knows what it actually is. I think it's like that summary I just gave of like satanic cabal of paedophilic cannibals is probably what most people will associate with QAnon, if you know anything about it at all. But yes, I have spent the last two weeks sort of hovering around an abyss on the

internet that leads nowhere good. And my brain is quite frazzled. And in the next hour and a half, I am very much looking forward to leaving this all behind me. So some of you might not know that QAnon started with a singular Q. On the 28th of October 2017, an anonymous user named just the letter Q posted an odd message on the politically incorrect forum of 4chan. And this message read, HRC. Extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross-border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10 slash 30 at 12.01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur.

USMs will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check, colon. Locate an NG member and ask if activated for duty 10 slash 30 across most major cities. I am sorry that I made you read that out. It is so bizarre. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And if you're looking to us to solve that problem for you, I'm afraid we can't. But the glossary that might help a little bit is this. USMs means US Marshals. NG stands for National Guard. And HRC stands for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Oh, yes, there'll be a lot of her popping up in today's episode. So a few hours after this cryptic post, Q posted again, this time talking about Russia, the US's three-letter agencies. And that's what they call it all the time. Presumably,

they're talking about the FBI, the CIA, maybe the NSA. And of course, about George Soros. Q signed this message off Mockingbird 10-30-17. So that's the 30th of October 2017. And God bless fellow patriots. It's a buzzword. It's a buzzword. It's a dog whistle. So this post set those already neck deep in the world of conspiracy theories into absolute overdrive. So many of you listening might not know what Operation Mockingbird is. I didn't know this until I was doing the research for this episode.

So when Q signs off Mockingbird, it actually is in reference to Operation Mockingbird, which, as far as conspiracy theories go, is absolutely fucking real. It's a conspiracy rather than a conspiracy theory. It's a real thing. It's a real thing that happened. Let me tell you what it is. During the Cold War, the CIA launched

top-secret Operation Mockingbird, which involved bribing journalists and institutions around the world in order to control public opinion by manipulating news media. So basically, state propaganda. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on in the Cold War. Yeah, but it carried on for quite a lot longer than that. So don't believe the media. Anything. Don't believe anything. Don't believe anything.

Don't believe anything. Except us. And this story was broken by investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, who unveiled this scandal in the 70s and wrote that according to the plan, the CIA had put 400 journalists on the payroll and had them write fake stories on whatever they wanted, using the message that they wanted to get across on that particular issue. So of course, these posts by Q began attracting intense online attention. Why? Many reasons. Firstly, Q claimed to be a high-level government informant with top-level security clearance, which is known as Q-level clearance. Another reason is that all of queue's posts, known as queue drops, are incredibly vague and cryptic, which of course is deliberate because it means that just like horoscopes it allowed people to interpret the post's meaning however they wanted. To avid followers,

queue drops were like clues, breadcrumbs, to build your own conspiracy adventure. And they loved it. The conspiracy theories and the fast-growing group of people who believe Q's postings both became known as QAnon. And you can see why it became so addictive for people. When you scroll through the posts as a civvy, you would be forgiven for feeling your eyes glaze over and possibly turn to stone but when you consider posts like on the 8th of march 2018 quote everything has meaning this is not a game learn to play the game q i think for many this was a combination of mass hysteria and laughing

that's like the most 1984 shit of like what is it like ignorance is knowledge like you know freedom of slavery etc yeah yeah yeah it's just very like I get it it's very addictive that's the whole appeal of QAnon is that they're not just that they're telling you in very obvious statements what's going to happen etc they are whoever they are uh sort of hiding it in these cryptic messages that people feel like it's a game. But at the same time, it's not a game because it's really fucking serious. But it is a game because you sit at home and you get to play like detective, you know, you get to play conspiracy theory detective. that are being put out for you by Q, that euphoric rush that must happen when you feel the pieces align in your own head

must be very addictive. Oh, totally. As humans, we love cryptic messages. The Bible's fucking full of them. And we love looking for messages. We love looking for patterns. And this person, Q, is claiming to be this high-level informant, claiming to sort of be a whistleblower.

They would do things like post pictures that they would claim would be inside like Air Force One showing that they were really high level. Again, none of this is verified. There are loads of theories about who Q is. We're not going to go into that because it's so much. It's so much. But there were even people, you know, saying that maybe it was like Steve Bannon or somebody like that. We just don't know who it was. I think it was Hillary. Hillary, double bluff. Wow, the greatest false flag operation of all time. I wouldn't put it past her. So these Q drops, they were so popular that they racked up. And by 2020,

there were almost 5,000 posts. Although QAnon had started on 4chan, it ended up moving to 8chan. And if you don't know what 8chan is, it's the even more bizarre corner of the internet that unlike the already very weird 4chan, had absolutely no moderators whatsoever. No rules, nothing. You could do anything, you could talk about anything. And maybe in theory, that sounds like a good idea. But it soon, inevitably, became a hotbed of child abuse images. and it was actually taken offline in August 2019. And that's a very clear example of why we can't have nice things. Yes. But it didn't really matter that 8chan was taken down in 2019 because by this point, QAnon had already crept its way wider into the interwebs and firmly established its after 8chan life on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, with posts and videos now banking millions of views every single day. Then suddenly,

on the 8th of December 2020, Q mysteriously vanished after having spent months predicting a big Trump win. But even though Q seems to have gone for good now, like no one's heard from them since 2020, Q in on the movement continues to grow. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs.

Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up.

I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.

You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find So what exactly are we dealing with here? What are the conspiracy theories of QAnon?

Well, there are lots of them, but QAnon is now an all-encompassing conspiracy theory, one with dozens of offshoots and side plots. And these side plots really picked up during the pandemic, unsurprisingly. Not many people had a lot to do. And we know that it picked up because Google searches for QAnon went up tenfold in the first three months of lockdown in the West. The conspiratorial documentary Plandemic and theories that the vaccine is actually a ruse for the government to insert a microchip into your arm have also been popular among QAnon fans. I feel like if you're a QAnon person, it's very like in for a penny, in for a pound. It is. And I think it's also,

we'll go on to talk about this, but you know, things like a microchip being implanted into your hand or your arm, sorry, through the vaccine. Obviously, it's very easy to laugh at that kind of thinking, because it feels very much like what you would historically have said is like tinfoil hat thinking, like people hiding in a room, thinking that the government's buying on them using satellites and stuff like that. The government does do shit like that. And also it's like, typically the people that were believing in this were the people who were losing their jobs and having a really fucked up time during the pandemic. They felt like this is all just a ruse to control us. And I'm not here to say that that's like a great way to think or a healthy way to think. But I am here to say I understand how people got to that point. Yes, I think not great, but I get it. Yeah I I think you're right it's incredibly I think my default position on especially the chip in the arm theory I'm like why do you think you're that important because that's going to cost a fuckload of money yeah and there are easier ways to control people what is surprise surprise like the economy yeah like

it's you know I that's my default but I do think I have to hold myself to account a little bit more on it because like it's very easy to just scoff at it. But like there are a lot of people who really think that and it's really dangerous. So laughing at it, just like laughing at incels, is kind of not really the right thing to do. I think that is basically the foundation of this entire episode. We're going to go into the whole QAnon like depth and breadth of these conspiracy theories as much as we can and also obviously talk about the horrendous real life violence and murders that have been associated with this but I think the key at the heart of all of this is the point that we need to try and get to is understanding why people feel this way so

that we can in somehow reach out to them. Laughing at people who believe this way or who are living on the fringes of society thinking these things is only going to create further division and polarisation. And that gets us absolutely nowhere. So if your question is, what do we do about this? Well, the answer is, what do you want to get out of it? So there are lots and lots and lots of conspiracy theories that are all sort of rolled into one big QAnon bundle. But there are three main ones that we could pick out. And they are, number one, satanic paedophiles run the world. Number two, Trump is saving us from these satanic paedophiles. And then number three, the storm. Let's kick off with satanic paedophiles. Our home turf. We've been

here many times before. I really enjoyed writing that sentence. Yeah, it's just a good statement to say. I mean, it's a terrible statement to say, but you know, sometimes it's just fun. And fans of QAnon like it as well, because the idea is that a cabal of satanic paedophiles is secretly torturing, harvesting and murdering children. And that's a pretty core belief of QAnon. Yeah, you can sort of, like I said, it is very much a choose your own conspiracy theory adventure with QAnon because it is so vague. It's so cryptic. It's also so all encompassing, like you said. And it's also very importantly, open source. It's like Slenderman, right? That started off because one photography competition and then it sort of spiraled into something that gained a life of its own on the internet with people adding to it, like fan fiction. This is very much an open source conspiracy theory. And it is one that lives on the internet. So it is constantly being added to. So you can, as a potential QAnon-er, pick and choose what you want to believe or what you want to focus on. But really, the satanic cabal of paedophiles is a non-negotiable. It is at the core of everything. And these satanic paedophiles at the core of everything are also deep staters,

and they traffic innocent children because they want to drink their blood, sexually abuse them, cannibalise them, and also they kidnap these children so that celebrities can extract from the pituitary glands of these children a chemical called adrenochrome, which according to the gospel, according to QAnon, adrenochrome is a substance that allows celebrities to stay looking young. And again, I'm sure that this sounds very amusing. It does. I laughed. I laughed while I was reading this. Of course it does. Oh, how we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. It's just nonstop laughter in the office when we're reading about

adrenochromes. But it is real. These people genuinely believe that this is real. They're not, I know we called it laughing, but they think it's real. Yeah. And that is terrifying, but also why it's not really a laughing matter. So adrenochrome is in fact actually a real substance. It's produced by the oxidisation of adrenaline, but it doesn't really seem to do anything or be associated with anything specific. Rather, this theory of adrenochrome harvesting, which actually did exist long before QAnon,

just gained popularity through this recent internet phenomenon. Apparently, adrenochrome, as an elixir of youth, actually came from the 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, who actually made up the effects of this chemical. Hunter S. Thompson, I wouldn't go to him for scientific advice. No. Unless it's how to do as many drugs as humanly possible without dying. Inching toward death. That's the only advice I would go to Hunter S. Thompson for, I think. Yes. And in fairness to Hunter S. Thompson, he never intended for any of this to happen.

He actually admitted when the movie was made to the director, I completely made all this because I'm an author. I'm a fictional author. But somebody has taken that theory, run with the adrenochrome story. And now there is even a very specific conspiracy theory that sits within the QAnon sphere about adrenochrome and Hillary Clinton called Frazzledrip. Frazzledrip claims that there is a video showing Hillary Clinton and her former aide, Huma Abedin, ripping off a child's face and wearing it as a mask before drinking the child's blood in a satanic ritual sacrifice in order to obtain adrenochrome. This is going to sound unfeminist of me.

Are you going to say that if I was ripping off the face of a child to get adrenochrome, I'd want to look better than Hillary Clinton does? Yes. Yeah, that's what I was going to say that if I was ripping off the face of a child to get adrenochrome, I'd want to look better than Hillary Clinton does? Yes. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. She doesn't look that young. No. You know, like,

she's not walking around like fucking Sofia Vergara up in here, you know? If I had to make a deal with the devil and tear children's faces off, I'd want to look better than that. Yeah.

I mean, she looks fucking great for her age, but she doesn't... She looks fine. Yeah. She's just it. I mean, we'll go on to see why, but she doesn't. She looks fine. She's just it. I mean, we'll go on to see why Hillary is such a central figure, but it's all stuff we've seen before. Yeah. But also, she doesn't fucking help herself whatsoever. Just like, just leave it, Hillary. You lost. Stop crying on the news and talking about it still. Please give up. Of course, if you have listened to last week's episode,

all of this satanic paedophile stuff is probably ringing quite a few bells and sounding very familiar indeed. Because accusations of paedophilia thrown around at anyone and everyone in power is the ultimate stain on your reputation, isn't it? It's the worst thing that people can think of. Yeah, I feel like when they're sat around thinking like, what can we say? What can I call this person? I know, I'll call them a paedophile. Call them a paedophile, but make it demonic. Exactly. Because, you know, we may sit on the left, the right, the centre, but I think almost everyone agrees that child sexual abuse is very wrong. Yes, in a very polarised world, it's one of the few things that all of us can agree on. So if QAnon claims to be all about saving these kiddies from satanic ritual abuse, and you're talking shit about them, well, then you must love murdering children too. Yeah, they've put themselves into this kind of weird dichotomy, right?

Where it's like either you're with us or you're against us. And if you're against us, you don't care about kids getting raped and murdered and harvested and of course we don't help ourselves the world doesn't help itself either when real life rich as fuck sex predators like jeffrey epstein keep epstein-ing and his twisted web of perverts including the likes of sweaty nonce prince andrew and bill clinton just keep feeding the story nothing happens to those people yeah and that's what I'm saying is like we can laugh at these QAnoners but when you see things like Jeffrey Epstein Prince Andrew etc nothing happens nothing is going to happen and that was true like they really were trafficking children to have sex with the ultra rich like that

happened so when you're a QAnon like to be honest it's not that big of a leap if you're a QAnon-er, like, to be honest, it's not that big of a leap. If I were a QAnon-er, I would feel frustrated by being like, but so you believe Epstein happened, but you don't believe the next step. Exactly. That's why it's very easy to look at people who aren't QAnon-ers and be like, you're all in on it. You're saying fine, Jeffrey Epstein happened because it all got exposed, but there's nothing else. There's nothing else going on. And it's like, I get why they feel frustrated. Yeah. And I also understand how easy it would be to want to do something about that. You'd want to tear those people down if you truly, really believed in your heart of hearts that the people running the world were eating children after raping them. If you truly believed that, then of course you would want to

do something about it. You want to be part of a movement of people who aren't being lied to anymore. That sounds appealing. You're a crusader. Absolutely. And I think that's the thing to remember. If you really genuinely believed that this was happening, imagine how angry you'd be, because that's what's going on. Yeah, of course. Like, if I truly believed that Barack Obama was eating children, if I truly believed that, I would take some action. Absolutely. So now let's come back to point two, which was, of course, that Trump is the prince that was promised.

When Trump was elected in, he offered hope to a lot of people. He was calling out the elites. He was saying that he was going to drain the swamp and he was going to focus on real working people. Now, obviously, he did none of those things. Trump didn't really care about these people. And it turned out that he was absolutely part of the swampy problem. But this cleansing of the elites,

the addressing of inequality and injustice, this is what people wanted and needed to hear. I think, you know, with the whole Trump phenomenon, the Trump years, obviously when it first happened, it was very easy to listen to the horrible things he was saying that like hit our ears very hard as people who are not politically aligned with him in many ways and be like, oh, anybody voting for him is a horrible piece of shit. And I think if now, all these years later, you're still thinking that, I think you've missed the point. Because obviously people who are racist, misogynistic, awful people probably did vote for Trump. But if you're thinking that everybody who voted for Trump is a horrible, nasty bigot, then you have misunderstood their issue and you have misunderstood how and why Trump won. He won because he was appealing to the people who had been left behind, who had been forgotten, who had been ignored by the political classes for generations. People who were, you know, who'd seen every factory and coal mine in their town closed down

and who were living in abject poverty. Yeah, drinking poison water in Flint. Exactly. They were people who were tricked by a con man who told them everything they wanted to hear. But if you pay attention to the things that he said to them, we should understand how left behind those people are. It's like anything. It's like nothing happens for no reason. Exactly.

That's why. And again, you know, if you even want to look at it, like, quantitatively, there were people who voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Trump. Yeah. You know, it's not all just aligned with people who were like, well, I don't want a fucking non-white president. I want Trump. Like, you know, you've got to look at the bigger picture. So when Trump failed to materialize many of the promises he had made on the campaign trail, QAnon offered a sort of relief from the reality of the situation.

Because here are a bunch of people who put their faith in Trump, misguidedly, of course, but you understand maybe why they wanted to believe him. And so when he didn't do what he said he was going to do, QAnon was there sort of like as a little emotional safety net. Trump didn't throw masses of his evil political opponents in prison. And he didn't expose the global satanic paedophilic cabal. Because remember, when we say that Trump was the prince that was promised his point to have QAnon, it is a really cool belief that Trump was the one who was going to come and expose all of this stuff, all of the deep state, the satanic

cabal, and he was going to throw all these elites in prison. He was going to be the bringer of the second coming, almost. And obviously that didn't happen. So QAnon kept telling them, don't worry, everything's fine. Trump is in control and he'll be making his move very soon. Q even started posting things to explain why Trump's government seemed so out of control by saying things like, it's a cover. Oh, it's a ruse. It's a ruse. The incompetence is a double bluff. So that the satanic paedophiles don't like catch on.

Oh, they don't know that they're onto them. Yeah, yeah. So it was like kind of, once again, a logical black hole where it doesn't matter what you're saying because you can sort of mentally gymnastic your way out of it. And with Trump also sort of dropping little breadcrumbs, like on the 6th of October 2017 when he said at a dinner party with military leaders that, quote, it was the calm before the storm. Well, the QAnon lot almost pissed themselves with excitement.

And that brings us very neatly on to point three, the storm. And if you have even a cursory interest in QAnon, on to point three, the storm. And if you have even a cursory interest in QAnon, you will have heard about the storm. But what is it? If you think it's a metaphor, you are wrong. It's a biblical Noah's Ark style storm that will come along and kill all of the evil satanic paedophile elites while leaving the normal people with armbands on, I assume, and like life vests. Literally.

Right. Literally. That is what they think. What do Americans call armbands? Floaties. Floaties. No. Water wings. That's another thing they say. So who could really believe that that is happening? Real life human people, that's who, and quite a lot of them at that. There was a poll carried out last year by the Public Religion Research Institute and they found that 15% of Americans say that they think, quote, that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles and that American

patriots may have to resort to violence to bring these paedophiles down. 15%. That's millions. It's a country of 300 million people. And it only gets worse, I'm afraid, because in the same poll, 20% of those who were asked also said that they believed in the literal storm that is a coming. So not only the 15% that believe in the satanic pedophiles 20 of people believe in this storm to wipe out the elites which to be honest weather be crazy at the moment fucking earthquake just next to japan like again i can see why they would be like you see it's

coming of course look at all of these natural disasters. And this is perfect. They also found that a whole one third of Americans, that is one in every three Americans you could meet, at some point has believed at least one QAnon conspiracy. I know it's very all encompassing. So it does like stretch quite far and wide. And like, does that include things like Operation Mocking which are very real i don't know you can prove anything with statistics but that's still quite a lot of people and the research team concluded that the

population of the country who believe in q anon's core beliefs are probably more than 30 million. Help. But that's what they need. I'm fine. Yeah, yeah. Help them. And they also found that unbelievably, this is basically comparable in size to the entire population of white evangelical Protestants in the US. So essentially, the size of QAnon in the US now matches that of a major religious group. Good. And we thought we had problems with Scientology. Yeah. I mean, I think just like putting that into perspective, think how much power white evangelical Protestants as like a voting bloc, as like a lobbying group have in the US. Now you're saying that there is a group that is as large and is growing. I would say QAnon is arguably, not arguably, I absolutely would say it's growing faster than white evangelical Christianism. Oh, Christianism. Yeah. And

famously, they're quite a loud group. Terrifying stuff, really. Because again, it just points to the number of people that are willingly living in a sort of parallel reality. Yes. And it may go without saying, but let's say it anyway, this figure is skewed towards Republicans and those who watch and trust extremely far-right news channels like One American News Network and Newsmax. Yeah, this is an important point to point out is that it is, we're talking about extreme right-wing. Even Fox News, it only sort of, the number of people that believe in QAnon is like statistically insignificant to the people who are watching like CNN and stuff like that. It only really becomes significant when you're talking about Newsmax and One America News.

Like it is that far flung. It's people who find Fox News too liberal. Yes, right. While now some Republicans have tried to distance themselves from QAnon, we're starting to see this trend reflected in the makeup of the US government itself. According to watchdog group Media Matters for America, at least 48 candidates running for Congress, Congress, quote, have previously endorsed or given credence to QAnon.

Now, I would say, before we move on with this, is that I don't know how genuine all of these people are right some of these people know that there is just a growing group within the u.s population that they can tap into let's get that q anon that q anon vote you know and that q anon pound because when we come on when you go in to look at who's making the most money who's raising the most money these q anon congress people oh yeah i bet They're fucking raking it in. Because again, if you really believe there is a satanic cabal of paedophiles eating children, you're going to give a lot of money to a candidate who says they're going to stop it. So how genuine they're being, I don't know. I just find it so

mind boggling that there is literally one atheist in Congress because it is so like un-American to be not religious. But there's 48 alleged QAnoners running. If that doesn't show you that America might have got some stuff twisted over the years, that should be your evidence, I think. Again, I think that's the problem though, isn't it? Things like QAnon, they seem ridiculous, but they're only a sort of extrapolation of religious're a symptom not the cause yeah and it's also like America is a much more

religious country than say the UK is so when you already have a population that is primed to believe things blindly and by that I mean religious indoctrination as a child and as a teenager and as an adult you've already sort of dampened their ability to think critically. It makes them prime for things like you and on taking off. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey

to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues

around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery

Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. So we don't know how genuine some of these Congress hopefuls are, but we do know that a few definitely have said some really fucked up shit, including that Satan worshippers hide among the Democratic Party, obviously. Prime example, Luis Miguel, a man running for the House of Representatives from Florida, obviously, tweeted in November 2021, America is a Christian nation. I will never stop fighting against the satanic globo communists. Hashtag America first. Just throw communism in there while you're at it. But again, you know, we'll go on to talk about the link between the two. But I think it's, again, though, I would say, obviously, if somebody were a hyper Christian or a hyper some other religion, polite society would be like, oh, you know, you believe that Muhammad flew to the moon on a winged horse. You believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead and then pushed a rock away and then walked out or whatever.

But you believe that there is a satanic cabal of pedophiles running the government, a la Jeffrey Epstein. It's kind of like this is a modern. I'm not saying it's great. Again, I'm not saying it's great. I'm not defending these people. We're going to talk about all of the very, very insidious stuff, like antisemitism that is deeply rooted in these beliefs. But why is it that much more crazy? Is it because it didn't happen 2000 years ago? And they're saying it's happening now? Some of it is happening now. Let's talk about the evolution of the satanic panic from the 70s and the 80s to today. I think this fits very well with that comment

about satanic globo-communists. I think that, and this isn't exactly a hot take, we've talked about this before on the show, I think that things like the satanic panic are obviously fuelled by and reflective of what people are ultimately scared of in different eras. In the 70s, people were definitely scared of like the huge amount of change that they were experiencing, especially like socially and culturally. In the 80s, where we were last week,

it was very much the era of stranger danger. And also people during those decades had just come out of the Cuban Missile Crisis, McCarthyism, so yelling communist to everybody, and they were also still living through the first Cold War. So the satanic panic of the 70s and 80s feels like a kind of pivoted version of McCarthyism. Rather than communists, people were now looking for literal demons. So what about the QAnon satanic panic of today well this feels much more like a fear largely emanating from like we've been talking about those who have been left behind inequality is absolutely rampant today and it's arguably the worst it's ever been a single income household would have happily managed with two kids and a dog like imagine a family where it's like dad goes to

work mom stays at home you've got two kids a dog you've imagine a family where it's like dad goes to work, mum stays at home, you've got two kids, a dog, you've got a house, everybody's very comfortable. But those days are long gone. Oh, and after COVID, obviously inequality is only getting worse and only going to get worse. So it's no coincidence that the first time we saw anything like the Capitol riots was after four years of Trump. Because whatever you think of him, and I'm not here to defend him, he made a lot of people who had been ignored for generations by the political classes feel like they had a voice. And then you throw on top of that people telling you that the election had been rigged against him by the satanic cabal of paedophiles because he was going to stop them.

Of course you're going to go and riot. You think it's true. And also we are in a world where we're more connected than ever. So we're also hearing news from other parts of the world constantly about elections being rigged, all of the stuff that the Democratic Party was pushing about how Russia had rigged the election, rigged the election, rigged the election. Then of course, the other side was going to yell the same thing when Biden won. So no one's hands are clean here. No. There are Democrats who literally spent four years screaming that the election was rigged against them, Hillary Clinton. So imagine someone who's living paycheck to paycheck and they hear about QAnon, start to engage with it. They would start to wonder why their lives are so hard

compared to the rich and powerful that are being shoved down their throats all the time. They're wealthier, they're better looking, they're more successful. And you start to think maybe it isn't just expensive plastic surgery. Maybe the reason rich people look so much better than the rest of us is because of adrenochrome and deals with the devil. You can see it. I guess if you are, say, a 50-year-old woman who's lived a very ordinary but very hard life maybe, and you look at J-Lo and you're like, she's the same age as me. It's got to be the devil's work. Literally, I can understand how you wouldn't even be able to fathom or you couldn't even fathom that this must be something that is normal. It must be something ungodly. I can understand. And if you were this paycheck to paycheck, fledgling QAnon-er, you might be thinking, why would God subject me to a life of such hardship? It can't be because he doesn't exist. It can't be because he's not actually as benevolent as

we believe him to be. It must be because the devil is also at play here. And if he is, he'll want the ultimate sacrifices from these elites who have lived such a glorious life. Yeah, he's not just going to be giving it away for nothing, is it? If J-Lo gets to look like that, she must be doing something pretty fucked up. Yeah, and I think in a lot of fundamentalist Christian situations, the belief universally is that the earth is in the devil's hands already. Oh, really? Interesting. Oh, yeah. And by being a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness or whatever,

you are choosing the light because the earth is in the hands of the devil. Oh, I see. And so our pay-to-pay check QAnon-ling, our Q-ling, wouldn't want to make a deal with the devil because they're a good Christian person. And also because if they did make a deal with the devil to look better and be richer, that would mean they would have to rape, torture and murder children. So forget the old boys club. It's the devil's gang and everyone who is rich and successful is in on it. So for some who maybe aren't obviously quote unquote left behind or struggling with income inequality, why would they get involved with something like QAnon? Well, obviously, there are other reasons for why people may feel left behind. There's definitely a lot of mental illness at play in these situations, and other types of

disenfranchisement or sort of social lack of status, let's say. And I think this status thing is what really sort of cinches it. Because in his book, The Status Game, Will Stork, who is a journalist, talks about how people compete for status in the modern world in three ways. Competence, dominance and virtue. And for those who perhaps can't compete on dominance, and here we're talking about the paycheck to paycheck QAnon, but also maybe people who aren't economically in that situation, but still believe in QAnon. If they can't compete on competence, and also feel powerless, and therefore dominance is out of the window, well, then virtue becomes the only answer. And it's exactly like you just said, Hannah, they will be looking at these people

who are leading such successful lives and be like, why don't I have that? Oh, I don't have it, because I'm a good person. And I wouldn't collude with the devil and do all of this horrible stuff. That's why I don't have it. So the only way to change this is to bring down the devil and bring down these people who are happy to suck on the fucking necks of kids and look as young as they do. And Diane Benz-Cotter, who's a cult expert and founder of an organization called Antidote, which is basically a cult deprogramming group. They help people get out of QAnon and stuff, said, quote, that it makes people feel better about themselves, this idea of belonging to a group or a movement like QAnon. They feel a sense of self-righteousness. They feel like they have comrades fighting this good fight and they have an enemy that they can now blame for whatever's

going on in their life that maybe they're not happy about. But it also requires an all-or-nothing commitment. So you can't just be like, well, I kind of believe these things and that's why I'm not really happy. You've got to go whole hog. And they do. And all of us watched in horror as this community leapt off the pages of the internet and into the very real world, into a mob storming the Capitol building in 2021. Many of these people truly, in their heart of hearts, believed because they had been told

that the election had been stolen from Trump. For them, it was the only explanation for how he could have lost. After all, he was doing the Lord's work. So it must have been a conspiracy to get him out of office by the satanic paedophiles because they don't want him there because his job as the Crown Prince of QAnon is to get rid of them and expose them and if I really believed that I'd be pretty pissed off too. Absolutely. I don't know if I'd be furry hat pissed off but you know I could get there. You could get there if you had spent 24 7 consuming that information I think you could have got there. Now we're not going to go much more in detail into the capital riots themselves but if you want to know more about it, there is a

really good podcast I can recommend called The Coming Storm by BBC World Service. And it's well worth listening to if you want a take on the Capitol riots one year on. In this podcast, Gabriel Gatehouse, who is the international editor of BBC's Newsnight, goes in search of the origins of the satanic cabal theory and finds that it seems to have all started back in 1993 with the suicide of a White House aide named Vince Foster. Vince died during Bill Clinton's presidency and almost immediately sort of these accusations started flying around that the Clintons had killed him and that they were some sort of murderous and corrupt couple desperate for more and more power. And with this, the Clinton body count began. And in 2016, many of you may remember the bizarre accusations made against John Podesta,

the former White House chief of staff and then Hillary Clinton campaign chair. A series of his emails were leaked. One of these emails was an exchange between his brother, who's called Tony, and performance artist Marina Abramovich. This email read, Dear Tony, I'm so looking forward to the spirit cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you'll be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina. And I think you can probably predict how this went down. This sent QAnoners and the far right into an absolute nuclear meltdown, with Alex Jones running headfirst into the crazy. According to Infowars, spirit cooking refers to, quote,

a sacrament in the religion of Thelema, which was founded by alleged Satanist Alistair Crowley. No, it wasn't. I am particularly au fait with Alistair Crowley. No, it wasn't. I am particularly au fait with Alistair Crowley. Nope. All he did was write poems about gonorrhoea. Like there's no... And rip off Anne Rind.

Exactly. It's not... Sorry. No, that unfortunately info wars. That is just not true. But even WikiLeaks, which I was really disappointed by, tweeted, the Podesta's spirit cooking dinner, question mark.

It's not what you mark. It's not what you think. It's blood, sperm and breast milk, but mostly blood. Obviously, maybe not so obviously, I don't know anymore. Who am I? Who's the president? What year is it? We are not convinced that spirit cooking is blood and semen and breast milk. We are reasonably convinced that spirit cooking is actually a reference to the name of a series of etchings that Abramovich debuted in the mid-90s. You can look up the performance art. Yeah, she's using blood or what looks like blood. But if you look at this email through the lens of confirmation bias, it will obviously look a lot more like a satanic ritual than a bit of 90s drama art.

I had a look at Marina's work. It's very 90s. So 90s. It's very like like you know what it reminds me of it's like when Shia LaBeouf just sat in a room with a bag on his head like that it's that but 90s yes but more bloody like quite Tracey Emin you know like it's everyone was fucking at it it was shock value 90s performance art precisely. And everybody went fucking nuts for it when this email came out. Well, as an artist, it's what you want. I mean, yes. Though, there were

some, like, weird repercussions from this. Like, there was a lot of, like, hacking that happened to Marina and stuff like this because people, like, really believed it. It was nuts. It was nuts. And, like, WikiLeaks doing that, I don't think that WikiLeaks really thought it. I just thought they're being trolls here. Yeah, they love that too.

They are. They're just like, let's signal boost this bullshit. So reality really does feel like it's sort of become split down the middle. I think when people were watching the whole Trump-Hillary thing play out, I think a lot of people were either seeing Trump as this absolute villain or as Hillary as an absolute villain. There was like no middle ground for people. People weren't looking at the nuance of the situation. But that's what happens when people are poor and disenfranchised and unhappy. It happens all over the world in every single country. It absolutely does. But I

would also argue that in this case, and in many cases, that the other side was doing exactly the same thing. Oh yes, exactly. I think it's the black or white thinking part of it. Absolutely. And also, we have seen not just this hyper-polarization, hyper-partisanship, we've also seen the rise of negative partisanship, which I hadn't come across as a term before. But what it means is, essentially, you look at your political opponents. So anybody who sits on the other side of the political framework to you, you don't look at them as somebody who just has different opinions and different views. And you don't even look at them as somebody who maybe wants the same end goal as you, but has a different opinion

on how to get there. And you can have like a good faith conversation with them about why certain type of monetary policy wouldn't work or why welfare is a good idea or something. You look at them as being evil. You look at them as being fundamentally evil and corrupt and wanting the total opposite from you. And I think it's such a shame that that's where we, because I don't even think it's, I think that rhetoric is so pervasive today. It's like if you politically disagree with someone

or disagree with someone on anything, they hate you for it. Like, how did we get here? I think like we could all benefit from becoming a little bit more comfortable with disagreement absolutely and I think that's the thing isn't it because I have definitely been this way in my 20s I would say but definitely when things like COVID happened and people had very like hyper partisan views about that it really did make me rethink a lot of the ways that I had been thinking. So speaking to some of my friends who had more right-wing views, and I was like,

oh my God. And then I listened to them. I was like, we want the same thing. You're not evil. You're not like a sick person who wants people to suffer. You just have a different idea of how we get there than I do. I think your political views and stuff should constantly be changing. If it's not, it's probably because you're stagnating. But I think this negative partisanship idea really feeds the QAnon war machine, because it feeds that idea that somebody on the opposite political spectrum to you is not just wrong or not just thinking about things differently through the lens of their own experience. They are evil. And then it's a short fucking hop, skip and a jump to calling them a satanic pedophile. So you'll also be massively unsurprised to hear that those people who believe in QAnon are much much much much much more likely to also believe in other wild conspiracy theories

and we've done a deep dive before into why people believe in conspiracy theories we're not going to do it again here because like I said we've done it before. And if you missed that, go back and check out our episode on Max Spires. But essentially, today, what we need to understand is that people like to feel like they have some kind of special knowledge that other people, ordinary people, don't. Look at fucking solicitors and accountants. Classic fucking example. This is my theory, right?

And I'm going to get dragged for this, but I don't care because I feel very strongly. And also, if you disagree with me, that's fine fine we'll just agree to disagree solicitors and accountants aren't smart they just go to university to learn a secret language and they don't tell anyone else that secret language and that's how they pretend to be important there you go Hannah's hot takes it's the same thing but unlike accountants and lawyers who are famously unemotional actually emotionless robots these beliefs for QAnon people are based on emotion. Their beliefs are based not on evidence or facts, but in spite of evidence and facts. So conspiracy theories like QAnon can't be battled with facts or even reason.

Actually, evidence against these conspiracy theories can itself become evidence of the claim's validity in the minds of the believers cannot win it's like you know it's the logical black hole yes so the harder you try to disprove a conspiracy theory the more you actually just reinforce it because it's a big cover-up yeah especially with these ones right how are you going to sit across it from a q and honor and then be like there is a deep state of satanic paedophiles running the world or trying to run the world. And you'll be like, no, there isn't. And they'll be like, well, explain Jeffrey Epstein. Look at what he did. Facts, facts, facts. How are you going to argue your way out of that? I can't logically argue my way out of that. Because how am I going to disprove the things that they're saying? This sort of logical black hole is particularly true,

particularly present when there's a lot of confusion, pain, chaos, and or hype around an event or a situation like 9-11, the moon landing, Sandy Hook. And this brings us back to our inequality argument, because we'd absolutely argue that the biggest challenge facing us today, right now, this very moment, is inequality and poverty. And the ramifications of that inequality and poverty are that there now exists an ever-growing group of people so disenfranchised that they choose to live in another world altogether. And on the flip side, you have an ever-growing group of people who feel like so smug about their lives, looking down on these people, feeling like they're stupid and you're

seeing that ultra polarization. And while these conspiracy theories of satanic cannibals running the world seems terrifying, they oddly and ironically give the people who believe in them a sense of order. And if you're brought up to believe that God can do good for you, then again why would it be so weird to believe that the devil is real and doing bad things it just seems like if you can be taught to believe one i don't see that it's a far leap to believe it's not it's two sides of the same coin and i think like also people will be like oh well you know these people are awful blah blah yeah we're gonna go on to talk about how awful some of them are but i think it's also a massive indictment of like the failures of our education system so yeah things are. And when bad things are

happening, what do we know happens? That's right, racism and scapegoating. And this movement QAnon is no different. QAnon is absolutely brimming with ugly and old school antisemitism. Jacob Rothschild and George Soros are often key figures of hate among this group. And it doesn't stop there. Because the whole drinking of children's blood thing, well, that's about as old school anti-Semitic as it gets. Blood libel, which is the slur levied against Jews that they just love to torture Christians, especially Christian children, and use their blood in their Passover rituals, which then, of course, became a justification for atrocious crimes against Jews in the Middle Ages and far, far, far beyond. This accusation seems to have kicked off in medieval England where nothing bad ever happened. And it started with the murder of

a young boy named William of Norfolk way back in 1144. That's way back. That's before the English even invaded Ireland for the first time. It's that far back. So the murder of William of Norfolk didn't really gain too much traction at the time of his death, presumably because everyone was too busy dying at 30. But the poor boy's death would soon be connected to history's favourite pastime, blaming the Jews. A monk named Thomas of Monmouth wrote that as the Jews began to celebrate Passover in Norwich in 1144, they had abducted William and tortured him. Apparently, they then shaved his head and stabbed at him with thorns. Then they tied his feet up with chains and pierced the left side of his body. Sunday school

graduates will know where this is going. And this idea still sits at the very heart of the blood libel conspiracy theory that Jews are obsessed with reenacting the torture and killing of Jesus Christ. Specifically on Christian kids. Yes. Because the whole Jews killed Jesus argument, it comes from Pontius Pilate, right? And he's in front of this crowd in Jerusalem, and he thinks that Jesus should be let go. And then the crowd vote whether Barabbas dies or whether Jesus dies. And Pontius Pilate says, I wash my hands of this. So that's where it comes from. If Jews killed Jesus, is the people in the crowd voted Jesus's death over Barabbas, right? That's where it comes from. How fucking ridiculous.

And also they were Romans. It's not, it never happened. Yeah. And also two points there, which is one is this idea of the original sin idea from Christianity, right? This idea that if those Jews did it back then, thousands and thousands of years ago, everybody who is Jewish now still today is culpable of that crime.

Like, what the fuck? This idea of collective guilt is so, so, so fucking dangerous. And I think that, again, people like sort of shun it when they don't like it. Obviously, when we're talking about things like racism, but they fucking love it in other contexts this is why i hate the whole like all white people are racist nonsense i'm like what the fuck are you talking about it's nonsense it's nonsense and i think collective guilt is some fucking bullshit stop saying it because tell me how that's okay and this isn't okay like it's all nonsense. Let's not do that, please. So let's get back to William. Just like the Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the death of the King of the Jews, it's quite difficult to

prove any of the injuries that William sustained, since Monmouth, the monk that wrote about it, claimed all of those things quite a few years after William's murder. But that didn't stop the monks moving William's body into their monk cemetery. And Monmouth started to report that William's body still smelt fresh, even after all that time. And apparently, a rosebush on his grave kept its flowers all year round. I think Mr. Monmouth is hungry for a canonisation is what I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This guy Monmouth, he is fucking obsessed with starting the cult of the William of Norwich. That is what he wants. He wants, like, this kid to be what?

Like, made into a saint so that he can be the one who told the story of this saint. So maybe he gets something in return for that. Like, he is mad for it. He spends his entire life basically harping on about this and at the same time creating this vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that still exists today. This was in 1144 just to remind everybody. It's madness. So despite Monmouth's best efforts the blood libel story actually only kicked into the mainstream years later at another murder trial. To understand this one, and I know, guys, we're dragging you all over the fucking shop in terms of, like, historical timelines, but just bear with me. To understand this murder trial, we need to look at the Crusades.

Not the first Crusade, because that was actually pretty successful for the Christians. They got Jerusalem back. They had a good time. Richard the Lionheart. Yeah, they took a lot of spoils. The second crusade, 50 years later, which presumably was like, hey, that worked out really well for us, maybe we try it again. This one, however, was a bit of a shit show. They had absolutely no spoils to enjoy and these crusades only left the people who got involved with them in an absolute ton of debt. And much of this debt was to the church, but some of it was to moneylenders. One man named Simon de Novas owed quite a bit of money to a Jewish man who was his moneylender. So in 1149, five years after

William of Norwich's death, Simon de Novas decided the best way to handle this was to just kill the man he owed that money to. And because violence against Jews was sadly becoming pretty commonplace at this point, I think de Novas thought that he'd just get away with it. And he did. But what's interesting is his defence in court. Because this is what set the blood libel story on its unstoppable path, one that we are still seeing today. De Novas was defended by Bishop Turb, who argued that the Jewish man that De Novas had killed was actually the one who had killed William five years ago. Good. Yeah.

There's about 10 people in England at this time. Yeah. They're like, he did it. And Turb didn't specifically point the finger at anyone else, even though the accusation from Monmouth was always that a group of Jews had done this. He doesn't point the finger at anybody else except the murdered man. But he made it clear that even though he wasn't going to point the finger at anybody else because he had absolutely no fucking evidence, all the Jews of the world were guilty of this crime.

So, yeah, collective guilt. She's tapping her temple as she's saying that. Don't do it. After that, William's remains were once again dug up and moved to the local cathedral. We don't know how fresh they were smelling at that particular moment in time. Poor William. He gets buried in the forest, dug up, moved to the monk cemetery, then dug up again and moved to the... just leave him alone. And then, seeing the wonders that this had worked for De Novas,

William's story was used repeatedly at trials of other people who had killed Jews. And when people in other places found out about all of this, thanks to Monmouth and his book, The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich... Which you can still get as a fucking Penguin classic or something. Shut up. I promise you.

Oh, my God. I know. So, obviously, the Monmouth monk is you know he's making mad stacks with this book so everyone's like oh that must be completely fine he's a man of god and they started to make the same accusations of jews in their local area yeah because they can't keep blaming this like william of norwich like oh he killed him as well even though he lives in france so they just start saying it everywhere that the jews that they knew had done it to some other kid. And the French are at it too.

French King Philip II tested the waters by charging some Jews with the murder of a 12-year-old boy from Bonne-Trois. And by 1182, this ludicrous accusation was widespread and powerful enough that the king kicked out all of the Jews from France and took all of their money and their property and their belongings. Handy, isn't it? It should be like you all did it. Every single one of you. And we're taking your money and your property.

Because we're in all of this debt because we accidentally went to Jerusalem again and lost. Yeah. And a century later, back in jolly old England, in Lincoln specifically, when the body of a young boy was found in a well, 18 local Jews were hanged. In the Italian town of Trent, when a two-year-old was killed, the Jewish community was tortured until they confessed to things like having used the boy's blood to make matzo balls. They were then burned at the stake. Like, this is just, it's all so unbelievably fucking crazy. Obviously, we all know that this happened.

But just skipping ahead a few centuries, because this doesn't go away, it just gains traction, if anything, because people keep seeing how it works. So yeah, skipping ahead a few centuries. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were again accused of the Passion of Christ-themed torture sessions that they were apparently running on all the local Christian kids. In the mid-19th century, the Jews of Damascus were charged with the death of a Christian monk that they supposedly killed and used his blood in their religious rites. And this happened in the mid-19th century, right? Or allegedly happened in the mid-19th century. Apparently what happened is that monk just disappeared. Like, that's all they have. But in 1983, Mustafa Tals, the then Syrian defence minister, wrote a book in which he included this alleged ritual murder in Damascus in the fucking intro of his book, as if it was a fact. And in 2014, 2014, a Hamas spokesman told a Lebanese television channel, quote, We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians in order to mix their

blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence. Yep. And when he was asked for evidence to back up his claims, the man surprisingly couldn't do it. So it's hard to ignore the glaring similarities to the QAnon blood drinking and adenochrome theories. And on top of all of the gross antisemitism in QAnon, we're now starting to see real life violence spill over from the internet forums. In 2019, the FBI identified QAnon as a domestic terrorist threat, which is a fact. And, you know, it sounds poor taste perhaps, but we've actually wanted to cover QAnon for ages, but we had to wait until there was an

outright action of murder connected with it. We didn't wish for it, but we did sort of know that it was only a matter of time. In August 2020, a woman in Denver, along with the help of a group of QAnon followers, tried to kidnap her son from a foster care facility because she believed he was going to be abused and killed. The same month in Texas, another woman rammed her car into another vehicle, claiming that she was saving children from being trafficked and that Trump was, quote, literally taking down the cabal and the paedophile ring. Weirder still, in 2019, 24-year-old Anthony Camillo killed Francesco Frankie Boy Callie, a leader in the Gambino crime family. He lured him outside of his home and then Anthony pulled a gun from his car and shot Frankie Boy dead. In court, he claimed that he was trying

to help Trump and stop the deep state by killing the mobster. And to be honest, this list goes on and on and on. But the next case we're going to tell you about is easily the worst we've seen. On the 7th of August 2021, a woman named Abby Coleman in Santa Barbara, California called 911. She was worried that her husband had abruptly taken their two children, two-year-old Khalil and 10-month-old Roxy, and disappeared. He wasn't responding to any of her messages anymore, and his Find My iPhone app showed that he was in Rosarito, Mexico, 250 miles away from where they lived. He hadn't even taken a car seat with him. The police actually called in the FBI because it all looked so weird, even though Abby kept saying that the pair hadn't

argued and that she didn't think her husband would hurt the kids. Two days later, on Monday the 9th of August, 40-year-old Matthew Taylor Coleman was found and detained when he tried to cross the border back into the US. When the FBI searched his vehicle, the children weren't with him, but their blood was in his van. Within hours, Coleman had confessed to having murdered both of his children and he gave the police the locations of their bodies and the murder weapon. Kalia and Roxy's bodies were discovered on a remote ranch in Rosarito under a willow tree covered in blood and wearing only nappies. They had both been stabbed multiple times with a spear fishing gun. Coleman who has a job title that is quite something, was an evangelical

surf instructor and he claimed that Q was actually talking to him and he really believed that Donald Trump was secretly battling a satanic cabal of paedophiles in the upper echelons of the government. To those who knew Coleman, it was all completely unbelievable. He'd been a totally normal, happily married guy. He ran a surf company, and him and his wife, Abby, had been together for ages. Until a year before the murders, Coleman had been a devout Christian.

But these beliefs had actually quickly become displaced and replaced with an obsession with QAnon. He even started to believe that the church and church leaders were a part of the conspiracy. Again, paedophilic church leaders, sure. Then his paranoia started to spread to his friends and family, even his wife Abby. Then in the week leading up to the killings, Coleman had started to talk about hand gestures of evil that he was seeing on social media. And these hand gestures of evil that Coleman is talking about

is basically when he sees people do the peace sign. Ah, yeah. He publicly began accusing people of being in on it. Coleman's deterioration seems to have happened incredibly fast. That's why people were so surprised. He seemed normal one day and very, very quickly he deteriorates. And Coleman told the FBI that he had been, quote, enlightened by QAnon and that he had been receiving visions and signs telling him that his wife, Abby, had passed her own serpent DNA onto his children. He claimed that he knew what he had done was wrong when he had killed them, but that he had had to because he was afraid they would, quote,

grow into monsters. Coleman has since pleaded not guilty to two counts of foreign first degree murder. So there will be a trial. And the issue in court will be, was Coleman insane or was he totally in control and just believed QAnon so much that he killed for it? I think it does seem like a not guilty by reason of insanity case. It feels very Andrea Yates. It does. I think if they can prove that he was insane at the time, and while you can be insane, know that there is a difference between right and wrong

in terms of the laws of this planet, but you think there is a high and noble purpose for which you're operating, it's still not guilty by reason of insanity. But is he just saying that because it's the whole virtue card and he's saying, I know it was wrong, but he's still, I don't know. It's very complicated

and I wouldn't like to be the prosecutor or the defender on this. No so we'll have to wait and see what happens. But of course QAnoners have been quick to take to the interwebs and dismiss the entire horrific incident by claiming that it's a false flag operation to discredit them because you can say that for everything. Absolutely. And for an organization so gung-ho about saving kiddies from all of the Satan paedophiles, seems pretty odd that they would just write off the death of these two children. But then again, what measure of normalcy makes any sense this week? I think with basically all of these cases, there is absolutely an element of mental illness involved.

And that isn't to demonise people with mental health issues, but I think a woman who spoke to Vice in 2019 described it really, really accurately when she was talking about how her mum, who deals with a lot of mental health issues herself, has been sucked into the world of QAnon. And this is what she said, quote, she had a hard time anyway, dealing with the real world. And now the world is so much worse for her because of all the horrible things the cult deals with. Devil worship, sex trafficking, children being tortured and eaten or used as sex slaves. You can see how somebody already dealing with a lot of issues emotionally or mentally, that's going to create another tipping point. Absolutely. And like we've talked about before, including last week, when people have delusions, their delusions are shaped on the

information that they have been exposed to on a daily basis. So extremely religious people tend to suffer from religiously themed delusions. And so it only stands to reason that if you really believe that the world is filled with satanic paedophiles, it could cause a mental break and then also go on to shape that very psychosis. So what now? What's next? What's coming up? Unfortunately, nothing good. The satanic panic of the 70s and

80s ran absolutely rabid and was fuelled by religion. It went on for decades. But QAnon has become a religion in and of itself. As we saw with Coleman, he actually turned his back on the church the more QAnon took over. And also, QAnon has real political power. Whether the politicians involved are true believers or not, or just exploiting the movement, doesn't really matter. The effects are the same. And despite the bans and all of the incorrect predictions Q made, don't think QAnon's going anywhere, especially as we're now seeing it tip over into Europe. And when it's sort of founded on nothingness, it can go on forever, can't it?

Yeah, and again, it's that coming back to that open source nature of it and the builder and adventure nature of it where people can interpret it however they want, add whatever they want to it, and it's just going to keep getting worse and worse. And I think that this isn't going anywhere. It's only going to get worse, especially as we see the rising cost of living, hyperinflation and inevitably, absolutely inequality getting worse and worse.

And on that it's, because obviously, you know, I don't believe it's true. But the people who really do believe it's true, believe it's true, because they're not being served by the current system. Yeah. And I think that it is comical. I'm not saying it's not. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It is hilarious in the things that they are believing. Of course, it is just in the same way that we find religion the same way. But I think that, again, it comes back to that,

what you do or how you react to this depends on what you want. And if you want people to come back into the fold, come out of the fringes of this way of thinking, then you can't reach them with denigration or with facts and reason. You have to reach people through emotion. And to do that, you have to understand why they think the way they think. So that is that, guys. That is the end of our two part uh on the evolution of the satanic panic all the way from the 70s to today hopefully you enjoyed it was a bit of a different one but we

really enjoyed putting it together for you and next week we'll be back with a much more classic shall we say true crime case if you would like a palate cleanser come hang out with us on under the duvet immediately after this if you don't know what under the duvet is it is of course the official after party here at red handed exclusively on patreon and i finally have an empty-handed update because i'm back on the scene oh yeah and it's uh it's uh it went badly it went badly so if you want to hear about it you're gonna have to pay for it come and come and over to patreon if you don't know what empty-handed updates are they are dating updates from the world of hannah and sruti so come check that out and we also have a ton of extra content over on patreon in the month of february because it was of course the month of love we did an entire bonus episode

on hyperistophilia where we looked at the likes of dorian Leoy and of course the Night Stalker and Karl Homolka and Paul Bernardo. So come check that out. We'll see you probably next time. Goodbye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall. That was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media.

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