The Daily Show: Ears Edition - QAnon - If You Don't Know, Now You Know

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Are Trump’s typos secret messages? Are Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks and Oprah eating children to live longer? Here’s everything you need to know about the QAnon conspiracy theories. Also, Desi Lydic sits down with a former online conspiracy theorist to discuss the appeal of conspiracy groups to people across the political spectrum and the path to getting out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Survivor 47 is here, which means we're bringing you a brand new season of the only official survivor podcast on fire. And this season we are joined by fan favorite and Survivor 46 runner-up, Charlie, Charlie, I'm excited to do this together. Thanks, Jeff. So excited to be here, and I can't wait to bring you inside the mind of a survivor player for season 47. Listen to On Fire the official survivor podcast starting September 18th wherever you get your podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central. For the last few weeks you might have been hearing about something called Q. Anon the biggest thing on the internet since that time

Kim Kardashian's butt was thirsty. It has been all over the news, social media, and this weekend, Q&N supporters even held demonstrations in cities across America. But what is Q&Oan? Well, let's find out in another installment of our ongoing segment. If you don't know, now you know. But the truth. If you know anything about Q&On, you've probably heard that it's a conspiracy theory.

But the truth is, it's more like a political cult built around a conspiracy theory and then crossed with a big book of word search puzzles. And if that sounds complicated, well wait till you hear what they believe in. For believers, Q is an anonymous government official who posts classified information about a covert battle between the president and a malicious ring of celebrities, political elites, and the so-called deep state. This anonymous poster, Q, was giving secret clues about becoming, quote, great awakening. The central theme here is that Hillary Clinton and many of the world's other politicians and celebrities are members of a murderous child sex ring.

Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and others eat children in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood group. They believe that a group of military generals recruited President Trump to break up this conspiracy and end their control of the government and the media. Donald Trump in the Q&O on view is going to save us from us in a moment called the storm. His tweets are misspelled for a reason. When he does Kaveveh and the smocking gun, it's all code for what he's telling us. Okay, I want whatever these people are smocking.

Because Trump's typos are a secret message? Man, I wish people were this forgiving when I did stupid shit. No, you guys don't get it. When Trevor threw up at that party, he was showing us. It's what's on the inside that counts. But look, this guy's also not wrong. President Trump's tweets are misspelled for a reason. And that reason is, he can't read.

Now look, if Hillary and Oprah were eating children to live longer, I would be horrified. Because that is such a waste of magic blood. You feed those kids to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, people priorities! But there's no ways this conspiracy theory is actually true. And look, I believe a lot of crazy shit, okay? I believe the TSA confiscates all our lotion in order to secretly sell it back to us at Walgreens. I believe possums thoms are just their their p p p p p p p p their their their their their their thusms is thusms is just thusms is just thusms is just thusms ever broken up with me. They've just all been abducted by aliens. But this conspiracy theory is crazy even for conspiracy theories.

I mean, set aside everything else. You're telling me, Trump is doing something heroic, but instead of taking credit for it, he's keeping it a secret. That is the most unbelievable thing I have ever heard. Plus, if you're wondering how it's possible that Trump can be leading the fight against the pedophile ring when he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years, well, according to Q, Trump has been undercover since the 90s, which I believe. I mean, if there's one thing Trump is known for, it's his famously long attention span. So how did this insane theory take off?

Well, partly, it latched onto fears about the real phenomenon of human trafficking. Partly, it fed off ancient anti-Semitic troops about elitists who drink the blood of children, but mostly, it was just the good old internet. Q&Own first emerged in the months after President Trump took office, starting on fringe internet message boards before spreading to social media. The pandemic has only made things worse. And so these people are just there all day.

Facebook groups have grown exponentially with Q&ON. In just four months, membership of the biggest public Q&O groups rose by 700 percent. We saw a lot of groups who were wellness communities, people who were interested in alternative health. People would, the algorithm would sort these people together with the Q&O people. They would say, oh, alternative health, maybe they're into anti-backs. If they're anti-vacks, maybe they're into Donald Trump. And within one or two clicks, people would go down these very bad paths. Yep. That's how this shit always goes on the internet, feels like at this point the entire purpose of Facebook

is to funnel everyone towards the craziest conspiracy theories possible. Because people will join a group about cycling, and then five hours later they're like, Hillary Clinton is a mountain goat people. She's an actual goat. And it's not surprising that the pandemic turned out to create the perfect conditions for people to get radicalized. Some people join Q&O on, some people ordered Pelotons, and neither of them will shut up about it. This also shows you how much the internet is ruining our brains.

When Shakespeare was quarantined during the plague, he was like, maybe I should write King Lear. Now people are sitting around during coronavirus going, I wonder if I could prove that Tom Hanks has sex with the devil. Either way, starting from the swampiest parts of the internet, Q&on gradually picked up followers and eventually grew into a major online movement. And it hasn't seemed to matter that many of the things it predicted overoller was secretly investigating and to indict the cabal of Democratic leaders and that President Trump was secretly working with Mueller's team. President Trump has secretly created a police force, by the way, to arrest them and force them to wear ankle bracelets.

The belief is that somehow the late JFK Jr. is alive and helping Trump clean up the deep state. Nearly all of these clues, including that Hillary Clinton was arrested, turn out to be wrong, but the batting average doesn't seem to matter. You can present them with evidence, you can demonstrate how the predictions have gone wrong, and they don't seem to care. It's just again and again that Q is bigger than anything that they can be presented with to the contrary. That's right. It doesn't matter how many of Q's outlandish predictions fail to pan out, it never seems to have an impact on the movement. And that, my friends, is the classic sign of cult behavior. Once you're invested enough in something,

you will make any excuse for its failures. So please, don't be looking for logic here. That's not how cults work, okay? Cults don't follow logic. They follow whatever the cult tells them. That's why you always see cult leaders go so quickly from, the sacred aliens have chosen us to, weird news, guys, the sacred aliens told me I should bang all of your wives. I guess it must be for our redemption or something to go somewhere. I pick her. So, thanks to this religious fervour, Q&N took over the internet. And it would have been fairly harmless if it had just stayed on the internet, you

know, like Momo. That thing was a joke. That was weird. But the scary thing about Qanon is what happened when it jumped from the screen to the streets. This is not just a bunch of online crazy talk. It's dangerous in real life. The FBI says Q&O and their many conspiracy theories are a potential domestic terrorism threat. The North Carolina man who shot up this D.C. pizza restaurant looking for non-existent pedophiles believed in similar theories.

On more than one occasion, people believed to be followers of Q&ON have shown up, sometimes weapons, in places that the character told them were somehow connected to anti-Trump conspiracies. In June, a man armed with a rifle and a handgun drove an armored vehicle to the Hoover Dam on what he said was a mission from Q&Own. the shooting death of a reputed mob boss. His attorneys argued he was motivated by Q&Oan. Written on his hand in the courtroom were Q&Oan symbols. You cannot be serious. Can you imagine being a mob boss and you get whacked by a kid from a message board? Not a rival, just some random kid.

You'd almost want them to lie in your obituary and say you were a snitch. But this is insane. Q& on people are out in the world doing real things, shootings, hijackings, kidnappings. Of all the bad advice I've gotten on the internet, nothing ever came close to make me murder a mob boss. The worst advice I ever got was to use toothpaste to get rid of pimples. But I ate the entire tube of toothpaste,

and all I got was a tummy ate. Pimples didn't go anywhere. And even with sporadic real-world violence, it might be tempting to dismiss Q-and, there are roughly 50 Q supporters who ran for office in the Republican Party this year. And it's almost certain that one of them is actually going to be in Congress next year. Although maybe that's a good thing.

Nothing will prevent them from getting anything done better than being in Congress. Congress, the only people with a lower approval rating than Q&N. And then, of course, there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's the president their their their the only people with a lower approval rating than Q&N. And then, of course, there's President Trump. He's the big hero in all these Q&N stories. So he could just shut this down quickly by saying, guys, none of this is true. Q isn't a real person. And besides, if there was a sex group with all the most important people in the world,

you know I'll try to be in it. Yeah, that's what he could do. But instead, he has come out and declared that Q and on are some very fine people. At President Trump's rally in Tampa, the image was hard to miss, the letter Q, on signs and t-shirts. We are finally putting America first. The Trump even included Q& on signs in an ad. President Trump has used his own social media accounts to promote Q&O followers and content, nearly 200 times.

President Trump praising supporters of the bizarre Q&O-N conspiracy theory. He told reporters he heard that Q&O followers are people who love the country and him. Well, I don't know much about the movement other than I understand. They like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don't know much about the movement. I have heard that it is gaining in popularity. These are people that love our country, and they just don't like seeing it. Well, at the cross of the theory, it is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles

and cannibals. If I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to put myself out there. Yeah, you see, it doesn't matter that Q&O-N is a dangerous cult and all of their beliefs are complete fiction. President Trump is on board. Trump's approach to Qanon is basically the same as asas as asas as doesn't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love him. And honestly, people, nobody should be surprised that Donald Trump is embracing Qanon. Donald Trump was always going to embrace Qanon. The surprise is that he's president.

So that's Qanon in a nutshell. It's a violent delusion that spread from the internet to pray on vulnerable people and infect an entire political party. Or maybe I'm just saying that to throw you off the real story. And if you don't know, now you know. Streaming soon on Paramount Plus. This is Dr. Frazier Crane. I'm listening. He's back again. Hey dad, I got a question about punctuation.

Ooh. No, stay on task. And he's more Frazier than ever. How do I look? Rich. Just what I was going for. Oh my God, they traded your baby for wine. John for white Zinfandel, or any wine? Frazier, new season streaming September 19th on Paramount Plus.

Online conspiracies, they're the second most search thing on the internet after Joseph Gordon Leavitt dancing. Talk about a triple threat. Mamma Mia! But recently, more insidious theories like Pizza Gate, 5G COVID towers, and Q&O-N, have climbed out of the dark corners of the internet to cause real-world violence, influence elections, and splinter democracy. Mamma Mia! But how do people get sucked into these extreme online cults? I infiltrated

the dark web via something called Gmail to find someone who had escaped these pernicious groups. But if she was going to trust me, I have to start off nice and easy. Give me your name. How did you find Q&O? Is QU? My name is Linka Perrin. I'm not Q. I don't know who Q is, but I'm a mom of three and I'm a risk manager for an insurance company. Okay, mom risk manager, that seems relatively normal. How did you get involved in these conspiracy communities? I didn't join them. They kind of found me, which is sort of how this works. How did you get involved in these conspiracy communities? I didn't join them. They kind of found me, which is sort of how this works. Right, right, right.

You're a Trump super fan constantly posting about rigged elections, JFK Jr. still being alive, always looking for Trump clues for the impending storm. Not at all. I was a Bernie Sanders delegate and supporter, and I found myself getting pulled into conspiracies in late 2016. I'm sorry, according to every news outlet, you're supposed to be a Trump fanatic. You said you're a Bernie supporter? Absolutely.

Still am. I even voted for Joe Biden. Okay, I'm gonna need a minute. I guess conspiracy theories are one of the few things that are bipartisan and Facebook conspiracy groups have millions of members. So how did a working-class Bernie Mom get swept up in all this? It started with the conspiracies following the Wikileak DNC emails. So when we opened up the WikiLeak emails what we essentially

were reading was pushing Hillary emails. So when we opened up the Wikileak emails, what we essentially were reading was pushing Hillary Clinton across the finish line and undermining Bernie Sanders, and we were devastated. And so we started, you know, we were in the question of if they can do that to us, what else are they capable of? And in comes the conspiracy generators who are saying, well, let us show you what else they're capable of. I want you to walk me through some of these conspiracy theories. Okay, so the conspiracies were around the indictments of Democratic politicians. They see the Democratic party as baby killers. You add conspiracies about the COVID vaccine actually have microchips

in them. You've got the Wayfair furniture conspiracy that they were sex trafficking children by taping them up and hiding them in big cabinets and so forth. So they were saying that Wayfair was hiding children in their furniture? Yes they are and yes they were. Thank God that theory is not true. I cannot afford another kid. With all these sensational narratives, people just got hooked. So how is Linka able to escape? It started to feel more, more cult-like.

And if you dared to qu question the narrative like I did, it very quickly became like a very kind of buliish kind of playground to be in, where critical thinking and questioning wasn't welcome. It's like showing up to an orgy and being like, let's talk about the weather and everyone else is like, no, we're gonna fuck. It's very similar to having a loved one who has some kind of addiction, or if it gets ropeded into, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, no, we're gonna fuck. It's very similar to having a loved one who has some kind of addiction or gets roped into some kind of extremist cult. All they wanted to talk about was the conspiracies.

So that's when you decided to leave? Yes. That's when I exited, and I've been watching everything really grow and devolve since then. Linka was lucky enough to get out, but how are these groups th th th th th th th th th th th th the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups the groups to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to be to be to be to be to be to be to be toe? to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to toe?? toe. toe. th. th. the. the. the. thea. tooooooooooooooome. together. together. together. together. together. toe. toe. toe. to. Linka was lucky enough to get out, but how are these groups able to spread so quickly to begin with? Are you finding that things are a little more click bait, like some of these theories are a bit clickbatey? Oh, there is absolutely a method. Facebook is suggesting that you join this group

or that group because you might have something in common with them. And before you know you haven't fed your kids and you're calling somebody to say can you believe it's happening at three in the morning you're excited about what they're saying is going to happen tomorrow. So you're telling me you'd spend all day scrolling through Pizza Gate stories and it's because of social media algorithms? Exactly. And our news feeds create our realities. The algorithms are set up to send you, you know, dozens of YouTube and graphics and Facebook selections. And it's a multi-billion dollar industry now. Turns out big tech companies don't love microchips and mind control. They just love money.

Why are social media fed conspiracies attracting people from both sides of the political spectrum? It's not like disenfranchised Americans are finding themselves powerless to a corporate ruling class, right? Exactly. People feel economically insecure, and conspiracies have become a great outlet that makes people feel empowered. So to decrease the online conspiracy world,

all we have to do is give power back to the people and break up big tech monopolies that control our news feeds. Oh, mama mea. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show week nights at at 11 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has been a comedy central podcast.

Survivor 47 is here which means we're bringing you a brand new season of the only official survivor podcast on fire and this season we are joined by fan favorite and survivor 46 runner-up Charlie Davis to bring you even further inside the action Charlie I'm excited to do this together. Thanks Jeff so excited to be here and I can't wait to bring you inside the mind of a survivor player for season 47th. Listen to on fire the official survivor podcast starting September 18th wherever you get your podcasts.