The Jordan Harbinger Show - 471: Steven Hassan | The #iGotOut Guide to Quitting QAnon

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

Steven Hassan (@CultExpert) has helped thousands of individuals and families recover from undue influence (authoritarian control). With over 40 years of experience, he is sought after as one of the foremost authorities on undue influence and controlling groups and individuals. He is the founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, and a founding collaborator of the #iGotOut movement. What We Discuss with Steven Hassan: How a disinformation crusade like QAnon takes root and thrives in the politically polarized petri dish of modern America (with a little help from its outside adversaries). Why the trope of non-human elites ritualistically sustaining themselves on the essence of innocent children should seem familiar -- because this blood libel has been most famously used to normalize the persecution of Jews from the Middle Ages to the Holocaust and beyond. How QAnon appeals not only to the predictable dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks demographic, but a surprising number of seemingly otherwise intelligent people who are counterintuitively more susceptible to its influence than most. How Steven’s BITE model applies to QAnon's manipulation of behavior, information, thought, and emotion among its followers to show it for what it is: a destructive cult with elements of psyops thrown in for good measure. What we can and should do when people we care about have been sucked down the QAnon rabbit hole and we want to see them safely tethered back to reality. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/471 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger show, You're not going to be effective helping someone in the Q&N cult by trying to be factual, by trying to point out specific things. If you ask them to go back in time, and then you ask them to walk slowly how they came to where they are today. And in that process, you're starting from a place where they're not under mind control, and you're able to then ask questions and remind them

that this was, what video was it that really captured your attention and made you take it seriously? Or was there a particular person in your life? Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, drug trafficker, or neuroscientist. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we now have episodes starter packs.

These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on this show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us, which of course we always appreciate. Today, we're doing a little bit of a deep dive into QAnon, how this bizarre cult, which is really what it is. So Q, it's hard to sort of put Q into a box here, QAnon. They claim that there are people with high-level security clearances in the government leaking important information in the form of these cryptic riddles. They post on social media, whoever it is, it's a group of people, we suspect. They post these cryptic riddles or Bible quotes or whatever it is on social media. then people who call themselves bakers go and search the internet and essentially connect dots that

are just not even there in the social media post and then come up with conclusions or predictions about things that are going to happen, such as there's a secret cabal of Democrats and shape-shifting lizard aliens that drink children's blood to stay young. And no, I'm not making that up. That is a real claim. This is a centuries-old conspiracy theory, minus the Democrats, of course, called the blood libel that has been used for hundreds and hundreds of years on everyone from Christians to Jews to now Democrats and Hollywood celebrities. They also claim that JFK Jr. faked his own death so that he could come back and replace Mike Pence as the vice president of the United States. Why he would do that, of course, is anyone's guess and makes absolutely no sense. Along with everything else these people claim, there are dozens and dozens more claims about events and people that have obviously never come to be.

I'm just giving you a small sample of the crazy here. Today we'll get into who Q claims to be why tons of people, especially baby boomer generation, are into it now. We estimate there are millions of people following this. So that's why I'm bothering you today with this stupidity, really, which is what it is in many respects. Otherwise, this would safely be ignored. But so many people are drinking the digital Kool-Aid. It's causing problems in families.

Our Feedback Friday Advice inbox is full of people just like you that say, my grandma, my grandpa, my uncle, my parents are into this insanity. What do I do? So if you want to learn why your crazy Uncle Frank just got way crazier and why your grandma is now staying up till 2 a.m. watching YouTube insanity, this episode may just give you a bit more insight here. And I've brought my friend and cult expert returning guest to the show Stephen Hassan, Dr. Stephen Hessen, I might add now, who gave us our deep dive, our two-part deep dive on cults. A few years ago, I brought him back on the show to do a dive into this and tell us just what the hell. is going on here. And if you're wondering how I managed to book all of these great authors,

thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of the network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free, whether it's for personal, job, career, whatever, over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Most of the guests on the show, they're in the course, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to this course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now let's talk about Q&ON with Dr. Stephen Hassan. So are you Dr. Stephen Hassan now? Are we going to have to update all of our... I am. I am Dr. Steven Hassan, and my dissertation is on undue influence, trafficking, mind control, thought reform, and the law. And I did a quantitative study on my bite model, and it came out very significant for authoritarian control. So instead of calling it the bite model of mind control, I'm now referring to it as the bite model of authoritarian control, which works actually quite better in terms of explaining to the public authoritarianism. It also sounds a little bit, not that the other way sounded hokey, but I got to say it's an upgrade,

because now you can talk about any authoritarian regime and not just aliens zapping us with lasers or whatever people think of when they think of mind control, right? Yeah, exactly. And when I looked at the dictionary definition of authoritarianism, it basically said blind submission to authority and suppression of your own individual thoughts and will. So I'm like, that's what it is. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's dive right in because can I just compliment you first? Yeah. Since being on your podcast the first time, I've become a fan, and you've had such interesting guests that I've learned a lot from. I'm glad to hear that. I love that you're so interested in the mind and psychology and cults and helping people to get out of situations as well as preventively educate.

So when you ask me if I'd be up for doing this, I'm like, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you could make it. I mean, I know we're doing it on a weekend, so I really appreciate it. But I know you have just as much of a passion for getting people out of cults or authoritarian mind control. I guess we'll use your term right right away. Right. You're one of the first people that I thought of when I thought of QAnon and figuring out what the heck it was.

Because I went through a few stages with this, which I assume people go through with any new movement or cult, which is me thinking, this is never going to catch on. When it caught on, I thought, what kind of craziness is this? it can't get that big. And then when it got big, I thought, well, we must just have a lot of stupid people. And now I'm in the, I don't know, what, whatever are you, fourth or fifth stage where I go, wait, there's a lot of intelligent people that are in it. There's also a hell of a lot of people that are not educated or intelligent in it, I would say the majority. But it's not just, there's people who are in it where I go, what? Why would you, honestly, how did this happen to you? And that's what got me thinking, oh, it's just like a cult. It's like those cults where you pass the celebrity center

in Hollywood Boulevard. And you go, what kind of idiot? joins that. And then you meet somebody you respect and they're in there. And you go, what happened? And then you realize that mind control doesn't just afflict Uncle Frank, who goes to Thanksgiving because he thinks that, I don't know, the Jews are invading our, you know, media or whatever conspiracy. It's not just those people. It's people that should know better but don't and have been manipulated. Right. And I would say as a generalization, everybody walks around thinking, It could never happen to me. I'm too smart. I'm educated. I'm traveled. And it's that myth of invulnerability or that lack of humility or that lack of awareness of just how the mind works and how,

I know you're into magic and how people's attention can be redirected and manipulated and impressions created. And they're like, wow, that's spiritual, that's magical. And then the cult leaders say, yes, that's spiritual, like Saibaba would do, press the digitation. Is that the right word? Prest the digitation. What is that? He would bring out Rolex watches out of thin air, and people were sure they manifested it from divine power versus slight of hand. And again, when you say it, I think what kind of done, when I'm looking at magic on America's Got Talent, I know that what I'm seeing is a trick.

I'm just in awe of how much practice it must have taken for this guy to look like he's constantly pulling playing cards out of the air when they must be, I don't know, up his sleeves or something. I mean, you just recognize the skill, just like I would a basketball player who can seemingly slam a shot from the line. Like that to me is impressive. I guess it's amazing in a bad way for me when people say, this must be actual magic. Everything I know must be wrong. And we'll get into that in a little bit.

But I want to start off with just a brief definition. What is QAnon? Because I defined it before as a conspiracy theory or a prank or a hoax, and now it's become, has it become, is it officially a cult? It sure seems to be. I do believe that it's an authoritarian political cult and it has different branches. Some are more religious than others. Some are into just believing in trafficking and saving children.

But I did a bite model analysis of Q&ON. It's on my website at freedom of mind.com. And people act like they have been programmed into this radical, sealed ideology of us versus them, black and white, us, you know, good versus evil. All the critical media is fake media. All of their stuff is true. And what their leaders are saying are correct. And just a ton of fear manipulation, hate manipulation.

So, you know, we could go. through the entire model. I didn't bring it up on my computer before this call, but it really is not just the conspiracy theory. It's an actual sciops, an authoritarian siops, and the goal is to create dependent, obedient followers who will give money and donate their time and recruit others and do political actions. When you say sci-op, a lot of people don't necessarily know what that is, but are we talking about, like what we would be talking about when we see Cold War, Russia, propaganda, or something along those lines? It's more advanced.

It's a psychological operation. And in my book, The Cult of Trump, I talk about a fourth generation warfare, which is psychological warfare, not to convince the other side to join you, but to disrupt, disorient, to delegitimize leaders, delegitimize institutions like governments, delegitimize science, you know, so the COVID was a hoax. But the idea is to make people so confused

and so disoriented that they will respond to the very confident voice that says, I know what is going on here. Trust me, everything will be fine. Well, that's interesting. You should say, trust me, everything will be fine, because one of the taglines that I see, I did way too much Q research. Of course, not as much as

anybody who studies this, but let's just say my weekend has gone down a pretty negative rabbit hole studying Q. And what you see is mottoes like, where we go one, we go all, which is a little creepy, but also is kind of along those lines. And also trust the plan. You'll see this in forums where people say things like, hey, so the inauguration did happen, even though Q said it wasn't going to happen and Q said this was going to happen and it never happened and someone will say, what's wrong with you? Trust the plan. And other people will be like, ban this guy from the forum. Trust the plan, idiot, you know, stuff like that. And it really just screams, hey, critical thinking, get that shit out of here. Like, that's what I see on the, on the forum. Yeah. So the,

as a Mooney, to remind your listeners, if they haven't heard my podcast previously with you, I was involved with the Mooney's cult in the mid-70s, so I very much understand the mindset so well. And this notion where you're trained to do thought stopping to shut down any critical thought against the leader, the doctrine, or the group, to stay centered and to be trustworthy and, in case of religious commitments to be, you know, not let Satan get to you. And people can be reprogrammed pretty easily, as many people can be hypnotized, covertly. Their minds can be hacked. And what's terrifying for family members and friends is when somebody goes down that rabbit

hole and they start proselytizing to them and any rational conversation goes out the window because they're so into it. You mentioned earlier the bite model. And I would love to talk a little bit about that for people who didn't hear our two-parter from, man, like three years ago, it was at least, I don't know, for quite a while ago. We'll link to that in the show notes where we went over the Bight model in depth. But I would love to hear what that sort of two, three minute definition is for people that have no idea what you're talking about.

You originated this, and it's basically the model that people now use to analyze mind control, authoritarian mind control, cult mind control, whatever you want to call it. So, and I did my doctoral dissertation on it, so it's actually now a scientifically validated instrument. That's cool. And essentially, when I first got out of the Moonies and started studying brainwashing and mind control, I learned all the models of former military intelligence folks, people like Robert J. Lifton, Margaret Singer, Lewis West, Edgar Schein. Then when I read the book When Prophecy Fails by Leon Fessinger and learned about cognitive dissonance theory, I thought, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and people want to have alignments between their behavior, their thoughts, and their feelings. That's like an organizing principle because people don't like to be in conflict fundamentally. I thought I could take those three, take those other models, and think about the actual behaviors that went into how I was recruited, how I recruited other people, how we indoctrinated people, and begin to just kind of break it down to the elements that are most

important. And what I realized, there was something really important missing. And I came to the realization that it was information control, the lying, lack of informed consent for people who are familiar with the law and legal concepts. So lack of informed consent would be where maybe I just don't tell you what we're going to do. And QAnon does this too, right? They say, hey, look, this is about saving the children. We're just against pedophiles. If you're, what are you, pro pedophile? You creep? And you go, Well, no, I, you know, I'm for getting pedophiles off the streets. And then it's like, dot, dot, dot, three weeks later, you're up at four o'clock in the morning watching videos

about how Nancy Pelosi is secretly a lizard person from another planet. Yes, so I kind of categorize the deception as outright lying, distortion to make it palatable, to kind of twist things and put the focus on certain things, or withholding vital information. And it's my position that any legitimate group, any legitimate movement, any legitimate relationship, you should know up front who you're getting involved with, what they believe, and what's going to

happen to you if you get involved, and not just be love bombed and welcome. We're working together to save the planet, which who doesn't want to help other people, great. But it's the information that's so vital at the top of the parent. that people at the bottom have no knowledge of, nor do they know the history of it. If they were recruiting and say, you know, Q predicted Hillary Clinton was going to be arrested in 2017, it didn't happen. That would be a very different vibe. Right. We have the top military intelligence folks that know what's really going on and who want to

purge the government of all the bad stuff, et cetera. But getting back to the Bight model, information control. I mean, information is what we exist on as human beings. The brain is taking in information at such high rates, as you've said with many of your guests, that we have this filtering mechanism through our beliefs, through our unconscious heuristics. And it's really critical, what is your sources of information? It's really critical to be able to assess. Is there facts? Is there evidence or is this a claim? And as you've said on your show, the more extreme the claim, the more extreme the proof has to be before you even take it seriously. The frame is always flipped where it's your responsibility to do the research instead of them who is recruiting you to do

the research. And then when I actually talk with people and ask what changed their mind and what research, it wasn't research. They were just being indoctrinated. Right, yeah. The common retort to me talking to people online or in person about Q is they say, do your research. And I go, what do you mean? Because that's what anti-vaxxers say to me, too. And then when I ask for the research, they send me five YouTube videos that are mixtures of other people's YouTube videos half the time, kind of smashed together with weird music or hypnotic music or just bad music. And then a voiceover by somebody who's recording this from what I can only imagine is their own or their mothers or even their grandmother's basement somewhere. And that's supposed to

be research. And then I'll say, okay, well, here's a couple articles from USA Today, another one from the Washington Post and the New York Times or even just a regular magazine about science or psychology. And they'll go, ah, you sheep, mainstream media, no wonder you don't know anything. So any source you bring that has anything to do with actual science, you're a sheep for reading it and you're an idiot for reading it, but then they'll bring out something that is the equivalent of belly button lint in written form and they expect you to just swallow it whole, right? I love the belly button lint. That's fantastic. No, as a Mooney, anything critical of Sun Young Moon and the Unification that was communist propaganda. It wasn't, you know, facts. It's that same kind of mindset.

If you accept the authority figures instructions of what you can trust and what you can't trust, and you are not using an internal locus of control, hey, it's my life, you're wanting my time, you're wanting my money, you're wanting my volunteer labor. I need to make sure that what you're saying is correct to me, and people get overwhelmed. And I guess I want to say also that people are in particularly vulnerable moments for the last few years,

but especially this last year, the pandemic, the economy. People are so stressed out. They're so anxious. So many people are not sleeping well. It makes the brain not think clearly. And it makes people much more receptive to that kind of very confident voice that we know you'll see. You know, Trump thinks five dimensions more than you do.

So don't make evaluations. It may look like he's silly, but it's actually. He is part of the plan, as you said. Right, right. We hear, like, people say, well, General Flynn is playing 5D chess. And it's like, really? This guy who was going to go to prison

until the last second is really five steps ahead of everyone else? You know, it just, it doesn't make any sense. You know, you get backed into the corner by an FBI in a very elementary lie that was quite easily disproven by their own surveillance and information. That's 5D chess.

But then they're like, no, no, that was also part of the plan because then he was inside, and recruiting other people on the inside. It's just a bunch of... It's called rationalizing and justifying and trying to fit pieces together that actually don't make any sense.

Right, and it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. I don't want people to be like, oh, this is just some anti, I guess Flynn, I don't know if he's political now or just kind of outside the politics box figure. He's very political. He's got his digital soldiers and he's making a lot of money.

No, I think for me, the issue is authoritarianism, not right or left. Right. That's what I guess what I mean. mean it's not there's a lot of people who listen and they're like hey i voted for don't trump am i qanon knucklehead and i'm not trying to say that i'm trying to say there's right and left and then there's people that the right and the left could both agree we would look at them and go what the hell is wrong with your grandma what is she talking about or what you know what's wrong with your brother he's

crazy that's what i'm trying to help right now no there are a lot of trump supporters and believers that think uan on is patently nuts and stupid right and i hate to even mention his name but I think I will. Steve Bannon even recently said QAnon, it's BS. Like anyone who believes that is nuts. The architect of Trump's entire presidential run said Q&ONN is nuts. But if you're a Q&N believer, do you think you're going to take that seriously? No.

No. No, you either say he's the enemy now, he's been brainwashed, or you say he's supposed to say that so that he seems like an ally of the people that we're against. and therefore... You got it. I mean, I had a long weekend. Let me tell you. Yes, yeah. I heard everything in the past 48 hours

from anybody Q-related that would sit down and talk to me online, and I had some pretty disturbing conversations with... Here's the thing, with perfectly nice people that I really felt bad for because it has ruined some of their lives. There's people that have lost their jobs because their coworkers found out

that they were spreading this stuff around. been docks, their family's getting harassed, or they're alienated from their family. I've had people right into the Feedback Friday inbox for the show that say things like, hey, my grandma's being really weird. And then a month later, okay, I figured out what it is. She's watching YouTube at 4 a.m. because this person was waking up to like texts and emails from her grandmother that was awake at an hour where she's half the time getting up in an hour to go to church, you know? And now she's up watching YouTube at that hour. It's like this, unfortunately. rabbit hole that a lot of people are going down. And it's not just young people. It's not just

old people. It's not just uneducated people. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is to outline this because I think there's a lot of people right now that are at home going, what's happening to dad? Why is my uncle being so weird? And they don't even know what it is. Or they heard of the Q thing, but it didn't really register that that was the thing. They thought it was one of a hundred weird things that their uncle had been rambling about and they don't know. And you're right. I think now that a lot of people are maybe unemployed or just working from home and have a lot more time because they can't go anywhere to watch and consume this stuff, I know for me when I started working from home in 2007 or eight, it took me a long time to figure out how to be very disciplined

and work from home all the time in a very efficient way. If somebody just got thrown into working from home in 2020, there's almost no way that they are not just wasting tons of time doing whatever they're doing, Candy Crush or something else. But unfortunately, a large number of those people, I think, are watching YouTube videos and going down rabbit holes between Zoom meetings, and sometimes those rabbit holes lead to what is it, the protocols of the elders of Zion animation series

or some craziness? No, exactly. And until relatively recently, the algorithms, the AI thing on YouTube were radicalizing people to the left and the right because they wanted more time and attention. So they would do suggestions, if you like this video, try this one,

and it would get increasingly more crazy and radicalized. You know, the whole digital revolution is a new thing for the human species, and we have yet to develop the wisdom to apply it to tech in a way that makes sense and doesn't really do a lot of harm as it's doing a lot of good in other areas. And we really need guidelines

of ethics for these platforms because they're made to be sticky. They're made to release dopamine and norepinephrine and all kinds of chemicals to make us feel like we need to do more, we need to do more, we need to do more. And we need to be in control of our devices. We need to be in control of what information we're consuming and not the other way around doing what it's telling us to do. For people that don't necessarily know here, Q, we don't know who is controlling it.

If we had to point to what it is, aside from the cult, I mean, is it a social media account, a series of social media accounts? Where does the information or the misinformation or the disinformation actually, where does it come from? Where does it start that we know? Where can we trace it back to? So this past year, I collaborated with a number of disinformation experts, people like Dave Troy, an alternate reality gaming expert, Jim Stewartson,

other people who are scholars and data mining on Twitter, and they pretty much tracked it back to the original drop and who did it and who followed it. And so we have a pretty good idea of its genesis, but it's been morphing, and there appears now to be a number of individuals who've been linked directly to Q&NON. I believe Vice has a three-part series of justice breaking that resonates with everything that my

fellow researchers have found out. And they're using hypnosis. They're using alternate reality game theory, again, to make it stimulating to people to figure out what the cue drops mean and a whole community type contagion effect going on. I need to just say that a fellow named Greg Housh, who was at the very beginning of the anonymous movement, I met him in the context of these massive protests against Scientology a bunch of years ago all around the world that I had never seen before. I remember those. Guy Fox masks and everything. And I had been protesting Scientology since I got out of the Moonies in 76, so I didn't need to wear masks. But they were wearing masks to protect themselves from being harassed. And anyway, it turned out. It turned out,

he was centrally involved in the whole effort to out Scientology. And I asked him about QAnon. He said, oh, I know the people who started that. It was a goof on the Trump people. He said, anyone who believes that's stupid because it was a goof. It didn't go anywhere on Fortune. They went to A. Chan. Then they realized they could sell merchandise.

So Fortune and A Chan, for those who don't know, are like these, they're not, I won't say Dark Web because they're not really that, but they're just sort of very much off the beaten path message boards that are nihilists. and they're full of crazy dark humor and negativity and also some pranks originate there that are like misinformation pranks. Yeah. Mims originate there. So it's no surprise that something like QAnon was dreamed up by a couple of,

there's plenty of normal people that use these boards, but a lot of them are kind of like basement dwelling neck beardy type people too, right? Yeah, I think they're hackers, a lot of hackers that I'm aware. But the point is, from his point of view, it was not started as a minors. military sciops. It was started as a joke. But then he said the Russians got involved. I believe this. But he didn't name anybody. Yeah. So I can't name anybody. But it turns out that there's a Jim Watkins, his son Ron got was involved. These guys own, they own what was A-chan, right? The message board. Right. So the Q drops couldn't be done unless it was coming

through them. Right. They maybe they weren't writing the drop, but they were posting the drop or allowing it to post it's posted so they know. And then this guy named Thomas Schoenberger, then Flynn. There's all these, what shocked me is their former military intelligence people who are involved with this, you know, operation. It's very frightening because they're anti-democracy, they're anti-rule of law. What do you make of that? So the, of course, people who are interested in Q say things like, well, look, if there's all these ex-military intelligence people, then that lends legitimacy. And I don't totally disagree with that. I mean, if I found something in a bunch of ex-CIA guys were saying, hey, this is legit, I'd probably go, oh, well, why would I think that I know

better than you? So, but also, this is a, Q is almost decidedly anti-America. Now, somebody who is with Q will say it's the most American thing ever, but it's really not. It's very anti-democratic, like you said, what's going on when someone like General Flynn or somebody else whose ex-military intelligence says, hey, I'm just going to go along with this, even though we're pretty damn sure that it's not only a goof, it's also a grift that sells merchandise and makes people rich, and possibly also being used by Russian intelligence to basically screw with us. Right. So in my research for the cult of Trump, that was one of the central questions, like, what is this thing? And so a lot of the research popped up former Russian CIA experts and stuff.

such, we're like, this is Russian propaganda. This is Russian compromise and firehose of propaganda and active measures is the term. It's a very good documentary in 2018 called active measures. I highly recommend if anyone's interested. We'll link to it. I've seen it. I don't remember it too well, but we'll link it in the show now. But it documents Russian involvement in 2016. But what I realized is that Trump is kind of this thing that is being used by very powerful forces for their own purposes. And he likes attention, he likes money, he likes power, but it's not his idea. There are people influencing him. So then you say, well, who's who else?

And what was clear is that there is a Christian right movement that's been going for decades. When I wrote the book, I was not aware of Anne Nelson's work on the Council of National Policy that she names the main figures in that. And they're the same figures of what I came up with when I talked about Mike Pence being in the family, which is a cult that started the National Prayer Breakfast. And there's a documentary on the family on Netflix. Netflix, right? And it's called the family, right? Yes. It's five and a half hours. It's highly recommended. And it turns out in watching that and reading Jeffrey Charlotte's books, I realized my former cult leader who claimed to be the Messiah, who wanted to take over the U.S. government, he was involved with the family.

Was that the prayer breakfast brought to see Nixon during Watergate? Then next thing, I'm fasting for three days on the Capitol stairs with hundreds of Moonies because God wants Nixon to be president. He doesn't want Nixon to resign or be kicked out of office. So, I mean, I was there. That sounds familiar, right? When you were doing like, was it 60s or 70s version of Storm the Capitol, except you were just starving yourself on a stairway? It was 74, and I was believing that democracy was satanic. God needed to take over Congress and centers.

We need to put infiltrators inside. No kidding. Is it 44, 45 years since you were in the Moonies and you've been tracking this? Yeah. My deprogramming moment was May 11th, 1976. Wow. So it's almost like you had an internship, and then you decided to go into tracking a cult,

but first you had to have a practical experience. Yeah, let me share a quick story. So I have a cast on my leg because I fell asleep at the wheel of a Mooney van, almost died, which is how my family found me to deprogram me. I was exposed to Chinese communist brainwashing models. that's what gave me a framework to go, because I was sure I wasn't brainwashed

and I was sure I wasn't an occult. I went through all of that, and I did realize, when's a liar, how could he be of God if he's a liar? And I went to Robert Lifton, the guy who wrote the book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,

I'm this college dropout, ashamed, embarrassed, like broken soul, like, who am I, and how could I have fallen for this? Mm-hmm. And he's this Yale, psychiatrist and he's listening to me and I'm telling him how Moonies work. And he said, you know, I've only studied this secondhand, but you've lived it. They did it to you and you did it to others.

And what you're describing is far more sophisticated than what the Chinese did in the 50s. You need to study psychology and explain it to people like me. Later, I became a therapist. They became a mental health professional, but that's called a therapeutic reframe. It's like, Okay, you have lemons, make lemonade. Right. Enjoy the taste and make some juices. Yeah. Well, it's some sweet lemonade, man, because I am always interested in your stuff.

And I just, I really do. I hate puns. Devour your material, but there we are with the lemon pun. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Dr. Stephen Hassan. We'll be right back. Now, back to Dr. Stephen Hassan on the Jordan Harbinger show. It really is so useful, especially right now. I mean, you and I've been talking about Q for years.

And I just kind of, there was a part of me that thought, again, it's not going to catch on. So we don't really need to do a show about it. And then it became kind of like, okay, is this going to go away or what? And now I'm like, for God's sake, just go away. Right. But even if it does go away, we still have to understand it. Because even though Joe Biden's the president now and maybe a lot of people will exit Q because one of their chief predictions was that their inauguration would never happen,

Trump would still be the president, et cetera. There are people that now say Trump is the president. It's just a big secret. Joe Biden was never inaugurated. He's in prison somewhere. He got arrested. That's why he had that cast on his leg because they tackled him. I mean, there's just people jumping through even more hoops. And what I learned during my deep dive this weekend was a lot of the QAnon supporters were or are just flat earthers that have found the new thing. So there's going to be another thing, whether it's more QAnon stuff or whether it's just some other type of mind control baloney that's just flat earth Q3. it's going to keep happening because the victims are still there and the victims are what make the cult possible in the first place. Yeah, it's sad. The key of all of my work, helping people exit, is learning how the mind works and how unethical influence is done and teaching people about other cults so they won't be thought stopping, but they'll actually be able to

learn about nexium and how Keith Rennary was covertly hypnotizing people and they were were branding women by their genitals, by looking at other cults and going, hmm, how does a billionaireist get into that? Yeah. Or how does an actress allow herself to now be facing jail time because she was part of this conspiracy for a women's empowerment group to swear slavery and give collateral of what would be damaging if she ever left, right? And if you haven't seen the vow, we will link to that in the show notes.

So the vow is a multi-part series. I always forget where this is. Is this on HBO or was it on- It's on HBO, and Mark Vesenti, who was a filmmaker before he got into the Nexium cult, was deemed the filmmaker in the cult. So he got to film Keith Renehary and all kinds of things. So when he left, he had all this footage. It's one of the most complete documentaries you'll ever see because this guy recorded seemingly

every phone call. He's got videotape of them playing volleyball at 2 o'clock. in the morning and then the cult leader giving a talk. He's got interviews with everybody in the cult. He's got footage of every seminar. You just never see a documentary that complete unless the only thing that has more footage is got to be like those planet earth documentaries where they take 10 years and film Lions in the Sahara or something. I mean, this guy has every. No, it's really, it's very unique and I really want to give kudos to Mark Vescenti and Sarah Edminson and Bonnie and Nippy Sarah's husband for the bravery to not only leave

the group and sue, and because Githrinaries in jail has a sentence of 120 years, had the nerve and the chutzpah to take them to court and win, but to be public and show their journey and to document it. Because for me, it shows the attractiveness of how people can be sucked in incrementally into one of these types of groups. But if I can get back to Q&ONON, for a minute and just say that. So I've been helping people get out of groups for decades, and my approach has evolved over time, especially when the digital age happened and cell phones happened.

It became almost impossible to do a spring on somebody. Hi, we'd like you to talk with someone for a few days. You know, don't go back to the group and just give us three days and cry and beg for a voluntary thing. You can't do that anymore with cell phones unless they give up the cell phone. Because they're just getting reprogrammed via text message. They're being constantly monitored and texted and notified. It's impossible. So I had to develop a different approach. And what I realized is who a cult member is going to most be influenced by is someone they loved or loved, friend, family member, people that had real relationships with. And what was missing is,

they needed coaching on how to talk in a way that would be effective, where they wouldn't feel like they're being screamed at so that they have to defend and cut off contact because they can't take it anymore, which is basically what's been happening with millions of Americans who are like, I can't stand my brother, I can't stand my uncle, I blocked him, I muted him, I haven't talked to him in years. For me, as a cult expert, that's the worst thing you can do if someone's in a cult is to isolate and not have good connection with the outside world, because then it just reinforces the black and white bubble of being in the cult. Instead of cutting them off, we, maybe if we need time for ourselves, we can take a time out, circle back. You shared this on a Reddit forum that was

about, you did an AMA in, is it QAnon casualties as the forum? Exactly. Yeah, that was, there were like 65,000 casualties, and I believe tripled in size because there's so many people realizing, you know what? I'm worried about my brother. I'm worried about my sister. I'm worried about my aunt or my uncle. What do I do? But people want like an easy fix. Like say this abracadabra and they'll wake up. And it doesn't work that way. It was a process of indoctrination that people got into this rabbit hole. and it's a process of ethical influence. And respect, kindness, curiosity, taking a frame. I know you're an expert on frames.

You don't want to use their frame. You want to use a frame of, look, I just want to know what's true. And I respect you, you're smart, you have integrity. I think I'm smart. I think I have integrity. Whatever stands up to scrutiny, then we both should follow that, right? Yep. So you say that this exists, please show me the evidence and convince me.

But instead of getting 60 links, you know, that would take you three months to go through, you say, send me one thing. I'll watch it or we'll watch it together and promise we'll discuss it. Yeah. And then I'll take a turn and I'd like to give you one thing and promise me you'll discuss it. So it becomes a matter of not I'm right, you're wrong or you're right. and I'm wrong, but we're looking together to try to understand what is real and what's proven and what's not.

You also recommended Celeste Headley's book, We Need to Talk. She does TED Talks, we'll link to that in the show notes. She also did, of course, she did our show because she's a friend of mine, episode 423. That's how I learned about her was on your podcast. Goodos to you. Great. Thank you. Yeah, the book has nothing to do with cults, by the way, folks.

It focuses on teaching people how to talk and mostly listen with curiosity rather than judgment. And again, that's 423 of this show, and we'll link that in the show notes. I think we're going to have a lot of links in the show notes. No, it's the basis of rapport and trust building in my book Freedom of Mind. And she does more of the scientific research of what actually works in communication. What's bizarre to me and what's interesting about Q also is that, okay, so there's posts on 8-Kuhn or whatever it is now, and Twitter, that are these drops. And going back to what you'd mention about alternate reality games, the quickest explanation, I guess I could give of an alternate reality game is

it's kind of like a very complex real-life scavenger hunt, you know, where you're running around the city with your friends, and they give you a riddle, and it takes you to a sporting good store, and outside the sporting good store, there's a flyer board, and one of the flyers on the board has your next clue. Alternate reality games are like that, but they involve the internet. They're also involving real life and there's very complex puzzles. So for someone like me who loves escape rooms, it's actually really cool to look at these things. The problem is, it goes back to your concept or the concept of informed consent. If I'm playing an alternate reality game and I'm in an escape room and they say, hey, there's a real life component to this. I go, hey, cool, let's play this with a bunch

of friends. But if you tell me that this is an alternate reality game and then suddenly you're making me do things that are very weird, like you're trying to get into my bank accounts and make me isolate myself from my family and then you're telling me just kidding all the Jews are lizard people from another planet and by the way the government is a bunch of pedophiles that drink children's blood which by the way are not things I just made up these are actual cue beliefs this is unethical and there is no informed consent and you're just leading me down this weird path I thought we're playing a game and then it's like I wake up three months later with no job no friends that'll still talk to me and I'm watching videos at 4 a.m. like I mentioned before but let me tell you that most people in my

understanding, don't even know about alternate reality game. No, nobody does. I just found out about them and I went, oh, that's what these things are. I never even thought that there was, I guess I just never even thought twice about it. I just play escape rooms and that's kind of where I begin and end. In my research, Jim Stewardson shared a five-minute hypnosis insertion of Cicada 3301, which was the peak cursor of Q&ON, into Assassin's Creed and showed it to me. I had never seen, you know, this assassin, you know, coming into a chamber and the voice is talking about.

I mean, that was all new to me. And I'm like, that's how they're getting people. I can totally understand. I mean, Assassin's Creed is a very popular video game. I've played it. I enjoy those types of games on and off. I'm not a huge gamer. But there is the booming voice and there are these puzzles.

And I'll go, what the hell was that? Because I just play the game. I don't go down those rabbit holes generally. but I'll Google, what was the deal with the moth and the tomb in the middle of the desert that doesn't seem to be related to the game at all? And there's whole discussion forums that are like, actually, that's a head nod to this other thing and then that thing. And if you have unlimited amounts of time, you can find out that that, it's mind-blowing to say this. I can't even believe it. It can drag you into this sort of 8-chan hacker-gamer alternate reality world that's not

necessarily healthy. That's beyond gaming and beyond some harmless fun that leads people into playing puzzles. It can lead you straight into something like QAnon. And I know that sounds ludicrous. And I'm sort of putting an asterisk by it because I think most people just enjoy the game. And then they sort of, that's it. But there's definitely a percentage of people that went to into the Capitol building and are now getting pursued by the FBI because somewhere in their past, they got involved in this. And it really makes me sound like my parents who say, these things are gonna rot your mind, you know, these video games. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is harmless fun. And now I'm like, they're accidentally right. This is a broken clock is right

twice a day situation, but they were right, kind of. And this is one of those examples where they are. Right. I guess what I want your listeners to understand that it really is a myth if you think you're invulnerable. Like if you're dead, then you're invulnerable to unethical influence. if you are a thinking, caring person who wants to improve and cares about the world and cares about relationships, unless you have a toolbox of how to reality test things. And unless you have, this is another point I wanted to make for your listeners is I'm recommending that you create like a web of trust with key friends and family members that you can reality test things. If something comes your way that's so different, you go, what do you think?

of this and choose people that aren't just thinking just like you like choose friends who are oppositional that's a really good idea and it reminds me of uh when i had Shaquille o'neal on the show he talked about the panel where he'll get an idea from somebody and then he'll ask at the same time on the same conference call i think it's like his old coach his uncle his mom his lawyer and his accountant and there may be somebody else and i could be getting some of these wrong but the reason he did that is because if his accountant brought up the idea, he thinks it's good, but maybe the accountant has, there's something that he's not seeing. So the lawyer might catch that. His manager might catch that. His mom might catch that. And if his uncle brings in an idea, the lawyer and the accountant might

say, hey, it sounds good, but they're going to screw you over in these other ways that you guys just aren't thinking about. Or more than likely, and he said this has happened too. Someone will bring him an idea and he'll say, hey, I love this. And the accountant says, sounds profitable. And the lawyer says, don't see any issue here. And his mom goes, you're going to hate that after like two weeks. he'll go, yeah, you're right. And then he just doesn't do it. This is a really good idea because and my wife does this for me, but I also have other folks in my life. I've assembled this panel, not just for the business, but I'll bring ideas to them and they'll say, but I don't get why this is not the dumbest thing in the world, you know, explain it to me. And they'll make me explain things.

And as I'm explaining, I go, yeah, this just sounds dumb or sounds bad or it's a terrible idea or it's going to fall apart and I hadn't thought it through. But since they're asking me these questions, either deliberately or not, I'm forced to go through the thought process, the critical thinking process that often has me talk myself out of something that is not a great idea in the first place. Yep. So it's highly recommended, but as you were talking, I was remembering when I exited the Mooneys, my whole, I realized my whole family had been traumatized, like for years. Sure. And they were so scared I was going to go back to the Mooneys or get into some other cult. And I can imagine there millions of Americans worried about their loved ones, even if they've left QAnon.

Sure. And I felt for them. And they said, but we try to tell you it was a cult. We told you, Moon, couldn't be the Messiah. How come you didn't listen to me? And I'm like, I wish I had. Trust me. I wish I could go back in time and do it differently.

But then I came up with the idea of doing an invisible card. I said, I'm going to give you a card that you can use for the rest of my life that says, if you ever see me doing anything or seeing anything that concerns you, you take the card out and you go, Steve, remember you gave me that card that I could help you reality test and you would listen to me? Yeah. And you would explore and research what my concerns are. And I'm like, I'm giving this to you all my closest family and friends. And that helped them a lot. But it is definitely there is a therapeutic recovery. period when you wake up from one of these totalistic because there's a dissociative phenomenon where you have a whole new belief system and you think your mind isn't working the same way. Of course. And so there really is benefit to getting help from therapists who know how to help, not just any therapist. And also listening to former members who are speaking out about their experiences

because a lot of people come out. They don't remember too much. But then they're watching a podcast of someone and another cult. And they're going, oh, we did that too. Oh, yeah. Or that reminds me also of that. And it's very important to process. How did you get in? And how do you protect yourself so that you never get sucked in again to anything? That's interesting. It's almost like becoming the victim of a con or something and you go, wait, okay, so why did I become a victim here? And I've done an episode on why people fall for scams. And it's often some of the same reasons that people fall for that calls like you, vanity, they think they know something that other people don't and that they're ahead of the curve. They feel a sense of control. There's a million other reasons. I won't go down that road.

But if you want to see why people fall for scams, me and Gabriel Mizrahi did an episode about it for this show. I can't remember the number, but we'll link it in the show notes. Why People Fall for Scams, I think is the title. Yeah, I listened to that one too. Like I said, you're doing a lot of great content for your listeners. And frankly, we want the planet to get educated about how these things work because, you know, each person is a valuable contributor potentially to making the planet work versus going, yeah. The only form of self-defense you can have is understanding the mechanism by which you became a victim the first time. Otherwise, you could just very easily dive into something else. And I see this a lot. I'm sure you see it more. But I noticed a pattern.

in my life, or I should say were people in my life, they will, let's say I know somebody who is an ex, and I don't want to throw shade on a religion here, but people who are X, let's say Jehovah's Witnesses, because this is the actual person, and I don't, look, nothing against Jehovah's Witnesses, right? But I've done a lot

of work with Watchtower, so. Plenty of people who are listening of this show and maybe are Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'm not trying to insult you, but I know a lot of people who've come out of being raised in that type of religious group, and they are the first people to go straight into something else. And I noticed this over time, and I thought, what is the

deal here? And Jen, my wife and I were talking about this, and she said something pretty insightful. She goes, well, maybe when you're raised to not question anything, and then you leave that thing because you started questioning it, your questioning of things doesn't necessarily carry over to the new thing that you're into. So you might leave Jehovah's Witnesses and then get right into multi-level marketing and then get right into conspiracy theories and then get right into psychic mysticism. And we've got a friend who was raised a Jehovah's witness, and she thinks that she can channel spirits, but she's otherwise normal. She's not mentally ill.

She just believes in a lot of things where I go, that's not true. And here's why. And after talking with her at length, sometimes she says, maybe you're right, but I still like to believe it. And I go, aha, okay, so we're there. But she will jump from one thing to another. Yeah. I didn't understand it for the longest time, but tell me what's going on here because I feel like there's a hole in her psyche where she was raised with this, this ironclad steel ball

that was in this one place in her mental, in her psyche, right? And then she removed that thing. She ripped it out and said, this is a bunch of crap and hasn't done me any service. But now there's a hole there. And all this mysticism and other stuff fills that hole for her and it makes her feel comfortable. Yep. So this is a very important point. This is a chart on my website.

You can have a PDF for your thing. Yeah, we'll link to this. But ethical influence, unethical influence. And if you're raised in an authoritarian family or, cult or religion, the highest virtue is obedience. And if you're in a group that has corporal punishment or you're beaten as a child unless you obey, your authentic self can't really grow because you have to grow in the image of the cult. Then you leave and you don't know who you are. You know, it's very different for me. I grew up here and I was 19. I got in at 21 and a half, almost 22,

I got out, I had a reference point for like ego and security, et cetera. Just physically leaving doesn't help the brain understand what's normal, like what's normal and what's healthy. And so when I'm working with people born into cults, I have to explain to them as a mental health professional what a normal childhood would be like. Right. So this reminds me of those people that are raised by parents that are, say, narcissistic or physically abusive, and then they end up with a partner that's like that, and you go, what the hell? You didn't learn your lesson from being raised in there? And the answer is, their brain literally formed around that environment. Exactly. It's familiar. And there's a quest that I believe that we want to heal ourselves. So we want to heal our childhood.

So we get ravitate to a guru. You know, you got sexually abuses a child. You wind up with the guru who's going to sexually abuse you too because of these unconscious things firing out. But having healthy role models, understanding what's normal and healthy, and reprocessing your indoctrination. If I can take a minute to just talk about that for a minute. So a very powerful technique to help people heal is a visualization technique, for lack of a better way of calling it, where I ask people, once they've learned about brainwashing and cults and mind control, I asked them to imagine going back to a moment in the cult where something terrible was done to them. And I asked them to imagine if they knew then what they know now,

what they would do differently. So I'll give you an example. In my experience, I was a creative writing major in college. I wrote poetry. And in my Mooney indoctrination, they wanted to get rid of my real identity. They told me about Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice the thing he loved the most, his son. And they gave me the speech about my poetry was my Isaac was I prepared to sacrifice it. And they told me to throw it in the garbage can. And I did, right? So I'm out of the Mooney's and I'm missing the bulk of my creative works of my entire previous life. So to do this technique, I go back to that moment where they're giving me the speech about Abraham and they're telling me to throw it out. But now I'm out of the Mooneys. I know what cults are. And I say, no way, this is my

poetry. This is a cult. I'm leaving and walk out the door. Even though I know historically what actually happened, it's very empowering. And you're kind of redoing personal history with a focus on here and now power. Like, I have assertiveness. I can say no. I can say get lost. I can walk out the door if I'm in an unhealthy relationship or cult. That's interesting. And I thought about that. You told me that years ago, and I thought, oh, my gosh, would I ever delete the podcast? And the answer is, I can't, because there are millions of other people that have copies of all of these files. So we're stuck with that. It's in the, it's in the, it's in the ether forever. Going back to some of Q beliefs, like, I read these predictions. And I just,

So these are posted in social media, and then these people named, who call themselves bakers, they literally pull something straight out of a beautiful mind, right, where they're taking a string from this phrase that was in the cue drop, the little post. It's got three words, and one of them is misspelled. That's not an accident. If you take each letter of that word, it makes this acronym out of these things, and they're all from this book of the Bible. And then if you look at that book of the Bible and the names that come up the most in the that book of the Bible are James. And so who's in the news right now? James General James Mattis, that's the guy who's going to make all the arrests. And it's like if you're looking at this and you're

not in the queue bubble, like you're just doing, you're me doing research on it. You go, holy hell, that's a leap. Like that's leap after leap after leap after leap. Yeah. And it doesn't make any sense. One particularly dumb prediction, I know, I shouldn't say dumb. One particularly ridiculous prediction is that JFK Jr. faked his own death in order to come back later as Trump's new vice president and replace Mike Pence. Obviously, that didn't happen. It's too late for it to happen. And when I asked people, hey, what do you think about that? They go, well, what could happen? It was supposed to happen this time. But what we think will happen is that Trump will run again and he'll win. And then it will happen again. We just got the dates wrong. And I go, you know, this reminds me of

those people that say the world's going to end in 1997. Oops, sorry, I meant 2007. You know what? I meant 2012. Actually, I meant 2020. And then they vanish for three more. years because it's 2021 and it hasn't happened. And they're going to come back in 2024 and go, 2025, we were wrong the whole time. It's definitely happening next year. This has been happening for thousands of years with cults. Yeah. And you've talked in your show so many times about confirmation bias and how we tend to look for things that confirm our existing beliefs and ignore everything else. and you're not going to be effective helping someone in the QAnon cult by trying to be factual, by trying to point out specific things.

If you ask them to go back in time to the first time they heard of Trump, for example, which I've done with some people, most of the people had negative things about Trump. So it's asking them to go back in time, oh, I saw the apprentice, he was a jerk. or I thought, you know, he was a playboy and he cheated on his wife, you know, so many different wives, et cetera. So you bring them back in time and then you ask them to walk slowly how they came to where they are today. And in that process, you're starting from a place where they're not under mind control and you're able to then ask questions and remind them that this was, what video was it that really captured your attention

and made you take it seriously? Was there a particular person in your life? Was it your wife, a coworker? I've heard so many people tell me that Epic Times is what convinced them. Ah, see, I used to love Epic Times, and then I found out it was a Falun Gong sort of right wing, also run by a cult newspaper,

and I went, damn it! With a leader who claims to be enlightened and is it part of an alien conspiracy. Is this your source of data that you really want to run? rely on. Right. Or my former cult has the Washington Times to the state. Right. Not the Washington Post, the Washington Times. But my point just is what I want to get to is to say that I take the position, not that my job is to get people out of cults, but my job is to empower people to think for themselves

and make their own decisions and share my journey and share my knowledge with them, but they're the ones who will decide if they want to stay in or leave. And one of the universal mind control techniques that all cults use is phobia indoctrination. Oh yeah. The inculcation of irrational fears that if you don't stay in the group, terrible things are going to happen to the world, terrible things are going to happen, the babies and children, whatever. But in the mind of a cult member who's been indoctrinated, they can't imagine leaving and being happy and fulfilled. And that's a very important question for people who have a loved one or a friend who's involved with QAnon to ask, you know, what would happen if you decided that this wasn't what you thought it was?

Can you imagine being happy and fulfilled? And usually they are very even uncomfortable to even consider the possibility. But then if you get them to visualize other people who've left and are happy and glad that they've left, then all of a sudden it opens a door. And this is a reason that cults don't like ex-members in particular, who are articulate and who are happy and successful because we are the walking phobia cure of, hey, I'm not possessed by Satan and I'm not drooling,

and actually I'm married with a kid and have a very nice life. Thank you. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. Stephen Hassan. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to this show. I know this episode is almost brutally painful just in how we're being forced to cover some of the most ridiculous things that I've ever heard in my entire life. But I know this subject is near and dear to your hearts for many reasons just because there are family members getting sucked into this. And it's like a slow-motion train wreck you just can't stop looking at. And I do appreciate when you support our advertisers. That's what keeps us going. All of the deals, all the links. They're all in one place on our

website, all those codes. You don't have to remember that stuff. Just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please do consider supporting those who support us. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode. Those might be particularly important, especially with this whole Q&on and what to do to help get your relatives out of here. If you want some of the drills and exercises talked about today during the show, those are also all in one easy place. There's a link to the worksheets in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right.

Now for the conclusion of our episode with Dr. Stephen Hassan. You're their worst nightmare, right? It's like Scientology has that, well, every cult has this, right? It's, hey, they got out and they seem fine. They don't want people to even be near that. I think another thing that keeps people indoctrinated in something like Q or any cult or any scam even is shame, right? People who've been tricked, people who thought, for example, that there's some grand

plan to overthrow the government and have mass arrests and now they're facing jail time of their own for throwing a brick through a statehouse window, right? These are often the strongest believers, and it works with financial scams too. Nobody wants to bear the shame of admitting to themselves and to their family and friends that they got tricked. It's such, shame is such a powerful human emotion. And so the side effect is if people start having doubts, they push people away who might have said, hey, you're in the middle of a scam or a cult. So these Q believers will only socialize online or in person with other believers,

which then reinforces their beliefs, which keeps them. in the orbit and then makes them feel like, well, crap, even if I don't 100% believe anything, what am I going to not have any friends now, too? Right. And the shunning that the Jova's Witnesses do and other cults is a real thing. That's not a phobia. That's an actual thing where people will be mean to you. I wrote about David Weissman, who was a self-professed MAGA troll, and he interacted with Sarah Silverman online, and she started treating him with respect as a veteran, and asked him what his solution was for gun control, and it made him think. Oh, a celebrity is asking me what I care, what I think about something.

And I'm not even sure. I just was against, you know, what the Democrats were saying. And he got out. And then all of his buddies turned on him, you traitor. And I'm like, that's exactly what Colts do. Yeah, exactly. I know that one personally. Yeah, yeah.

It's close to home. You know, I got to say, one thing I was surprised by but probably shouldn't have been is how heavily monetized Q is. There are stickers. Okay, fine. There's stores. There's clothing. There's events. There's books. There's coffee. There's keychains. There are online events that you have to pay to attend. I mean, it's just flat earth all over again where people may not even necessarily believe in it, but if you're at the top of it, you're just grifting so hard that you're like, Am I going to quit? I'm making $150,000 a year selling Q coffee and books about Q that get me on the speaking circuit where I then sell more books about Q and then people buy my sweatshirts that say,

I don't know, where we go one, we go all, or whatever sort of motto there is. I'm killing it. What am I going to do? Just go broke now? And then they kind of stay in there. But rarely do you see something that is so heavily monetized? I mean, I'm sure there are Mooney T-shirts and things like that. But holy cow, are there a lot of Q items that you can buy? I mean, just a million. They're trying to get amplifiers, right? And who's more motivated if you're selling merchandise and going to make some money from it? And my understanding is Russian propagandists would approach different podcasters and feed them stories.

And they would make money from you putting up YouTube videos and whatever. And so there was a motivation to make money, not because they believed the stories that they were generating, not realizing that they were working for an enemy of the United States. Yeah, I've gotten a few of those, and they're always suspicious. It's like, hey, do you want to make $25,000 having a self-published author on? What self-published author has a marketing budget that has to be multiple six figures to put their crap out there for free? Like, this doesn't make sense. Right. Something doesn't add up.

No, and your reputation, your integrity, you know, you want to be able to look in the mirror at night. You want to look in your wife's eyes or your kid and feel good about yourself. In the end, like I learned my lesson really well by being in the Mooney's, but don't think that people haven't tried to get me into multi-level marketing groups and a million other things. Oh, yeah. I'm like, let's see your tax forms for the last three years if you've made so much money. And they never. I always say that. That's the end of the conversation.

I've never gotten an email reply with anything other than either a dodge or, you know, a giant middle finger in so many words. Show me your schedule C. What? You know, the form that shows me how much profit you made. I want to see that. And then it's just like, well, if you're going to be insulting, I mean, look, if I'm telling you that I have a great business and that I'm in a great business and that you should be

in a great business, the first thing I'm going to show you is how much money I'm making. Yeah, 100%. And it goes for religious groups, too. The legitimate religious groups, if you ask to see their accounting records, they show it to you. Yeah. And the cults and the authoritarian groups, they're like, what's wrong with you? Are you having trust issues? And they try to turn it around on you because you're asking.

And you're like, no, you're a nonprofit. You said we can look at your books. I want to see them. Nope. You know, another thing that fascinates me about the Q movement here is, and someone phrased this really well in another documentary called, I think it's called seeking a flat earth or searching for Flat Earth, we'll link to it, it's a YouTube video, really, really well done, anti-flat Earther, who then takes a hard right turn and goes into Q stuff, and it's just brilliant. The guy's super

brilliant. He calls it a big tent conspiracy, which means, and I don't know if he invented this, but basically other conspiracies can fit inside it. What you'll notice about Q, which makes it a little bit hard to pin down is it'll start off with, hey, Democrats and Hollywood people are drinking children's blood to get adrenochrome and stay young. And then it's like, and then they're buddy says, well, yeah, 9-11 was an inside job and also adrenochrome. And then somebody else says, well, also Obama's coming to get our guns or whoever, Biden's coming to get our guns. And there's just almost an infinite number of these, but they're also kind of underneath now the Q umbrella, but also doing their little sort of sub-crazy, right? Yep. And it's movement jacking, I think,

is what the technical term is, right? Yep, but I want to say in defense of Q believers, at least the the recruitment videos that I saw that were very effective, they started with truthful things. So they start with, you know, the CIA did mind control research, M.K. Ultra. You know, and then they did Operation Mockingbird where they were recruiting journalists and media people. And then paperclip is where they were bringing in Nazi scientists and doctors. All of those are true. Like, that's not a conspiracy theory. that is real, but in hypnosis, there's something called creating a yes set where you say something true,

another true, another true, another true, the mind starts going into an inertia of, well, the next thing must be true too, but you say something a little vague, right, and you build it in. But there are some very real things, like there is black ops and there is such a thing as mind control, experiments using hypnosis and electroshock and LSD. And where I get to be effective is where I'm telling them about the Mooneys. And they're like, oh, that was a cult for sure, the mass weddings and everything. And I'm like, well, there was a congressional investigation into Korean CIA activities in the U.S.

And the founder, under oath of the Korean CIA, said he organized and utilized the Unification Church for use as a political tool to bring. brainwash people in South Korea to counter North Korean brainwashing, and I know you're an expert on North Korea. Yeah, well, sort of. But it became like an op to stabilize the South Korean government that got brought to the U.S. because of the anti-Vietnam War movement to stop the commies. And that's where I got in. So when I say, you know, I'm MK Ultra 2.0, like I was a victim.

Like I turned my back on my family, my religion. they're like, really? Tell me more. And then I can explain Chinese communist brainwashing, which, you know, they're all negative on China, love Russia. They seem to just that or neutral to Russia, but they definitely will listen to anything about Chinese brainwashing or traffickers and pimps. They're interested to hear my work helping victims of traffickers. So I can talk about the techniques. And it's really, it's the bones of the effort of helping. helping people to start critically reevaluating what their beliefs are. What about somebody listening right now who is into Q or is on the fence?

First of all, they've probably turned off this podcast. Minutes. Don't say that. You never know. You never know. That's true. You have a lot of fans. And I bet that there's a bunch of people who would listen, even though you have me on.

Yes. Right. There might be some that when I can, I already know what QAnon is. I'm not going to listen to this. I changed my opinion. I used to think Q believers were just, you know, obvious idiot. I don't think that anymore. I really do think that it's really easy enough to fall into this.

And I know if you're listening and you're on the fence or you're into Q, you're probably angry at us by now. But a lot of people do trust me. And I hope that you, even if you're believing in Q, you trust me as well. You know that I help people on this show. I want people to know that we're here for them when it comes to untangling this. We're not going to make fun of them, make them feel stupid. And that we can help them make some sense here if they find themselves getting sucked into

this. And I noticed that in your advice on Reddit in the Q and on casualties forum, what you'd said for people who have friends, family, loved ones in Q are getting sucked into this is stop trying to win the argument of who is right or who is wrong. Take your ego out of this. Talk about your relationship and how you care about the person. Say things like you're not sure, right? That gives them permission to question too. Because if you insist you know the truth, that often makes people dig in deeper. So I hope that we haven't, I hope people don't feel dumb for having gotten manipulated into something like this or for starting to go down that path because the last thing I would want is for somebody to say, well, even Jordan thinks I'm an idiot. Well, screw them and then they're going

whole hog into this. You also said, and I thought this was very insightful, you said that trying to reason, provide facts and win the argument, it's only going to backfire. So you have to adopt a curious, concerned approach and focus on rapport and trust building first before. or anything and apologize if you said harsh mean or derogatory things. This is extremely important because I can imagine, I'm trying to think of how my dad would handle it if I were joining a cult or my mom. They wouldn't be like, so, what do you think? They'd be like, you're an idiot.

Damn it. Let me give me your checkbook. That's what my dad did. If I can share a quick story with my dad, so I'm in the cult. I dropped out of college, quit my job, et cetera. My father calls me at the Mooney Center and he says, hey Steve, my father had a hardware store. It can't be called the Mooney's Center though, right?

It's called something else. Unification Church Center. That makes more sense. I just thought, what a terrible. Yes. And CARP, a collegiate association for the researcher principal, which I set up after I dropped out of college as a student club. But that's a whole other story.

But my father says, and I should say, you know, all in the family, like that's the area I grew up in, like all in the family. attached house. Yeah. Yeah. My father wasn't as bad as Archie, but... No one was as bad as Archie. Yeah.

That's the point. In any case, he goes, Steve, I read in the newspaper that Moon has an M-16 gun factory. What kind of Messiah has an M-16 gun factory? Yeah. Okay? Legit question. Right. Yeah.

So Steve the Mooney goes in his head, crush Satan, crush Satan. Glory to heaven, peace on earth. True parents, true parents, true. So I was trained to do thoughts stopping. when I was being attacked or when the group was being attacked. And he said, no, really, I want to know. And I said, we don't have a gun factory, I can assure you. And I hung up.

Which is a lie, right? So I went to the leader after I hung up. I said, my father said there's a newspaper article that says we have an M16 gun factory, do we? And he said, no, we have an air rifle factory. But we don't have any M16 gun factory. But my father never followed up. And all he did, his intention was to help me, but he drove me deeper in. And at that point, the cult said, it's clear your father's possessed by Satan. The communist media has gotten to him,

cut off contact. What my father should have said if I could go back in time and coach him is if he called me up, he said, hey, Steve, I have a problem. Yeah, what's up, dad? Well, the neighbor said something that was very upsetting and I didn't know how to answer him. Okay, dad, what? Well, He said that there was an article in the newspaper that said the Mooney's had an M-16 gun factory. What kind of Messiah has an M-16 gun factory? And I didn't know how to answer him. How should I have answered him? And that would have made me think.

That would have made me problem solved. That would have made an alliance with him to help the neighbor. I still would have gone to my leader. I still would have gotten a lie. But I would have called my father back and said, I asked my leader, We don't have a M-16 gun flag. It's just the air rifle fact. And then my father could have, if I was coaching him, could have said, oh, that's such a relief.

But now that means they can sue. I think it was the Washington Post or New York Times or something. That means they should sue for writing something that isn't true. Yeah, defamation. Yeah. Right? And I would have been, yeah, thanks for the tip. I'll go back.

And then I would have gone back to the leader. And then my father could have followed up. So was the lawsuit filed? I'd like to see it. And he could have kept it going. It really would have created dissonance. And it really could have made me stop and think. And then that we could have gotten the proof that there was an M-16 gun factory.

Steve, you said that your leader said they don't have it. Now you know they do. It doesn't sound that trustworthy. Can you really, you know, trust your, you know, that person? Yeah. He lied to you about that. What do you think of that? Yeah.

Yeah. That's the technique that's. that's going to get through a question, help me out. I'm trying to understand. I'm curious. I'm motivated. I really want to believe in you. Steve, you're an extra honors student. You think this is real. Tell me why. I take this a similar attack and I probably should actually do more of this. But I occasionally get like white supremacists that will hit me up because they'll say, oh, look at you, you kike or whatever. You know, they'll say something horrible. And I'll say, what makes you say that? Oh, well, you know, you are, you type.

of people are all the same and this and that and Hitler, this and that. And I'll go, how did you get interested in all this? And I really take a curious approach. I don't do it as well as you do, but I do take a curious approach. And I will tell you that there have been times where people come back and say, yeah, you know, I don't know. I just, my brother was into it. And so I saw, like, I would look at it, but, you know, you're sitting here talking to me and like, I don't know. I just, I don't know. Do you play Xbox? And I can tell that what's happening in their brain is they're going, if Jews are all bad, and I'm talking to one right now, and it doesn't, really make a different, and I'm looking at all these things, and I'm thinking about where the

source is, and I'm thinking about whether this is good for me, and none of it's quite adding up, and then you just find, always, the conclusion is always that the person is super lonely. That's almost exclusively what I find with really hateful people, is they're extremely lonely. It's lonely. The paradox is being nice. Right. My friend Arno McAilis, who was a major white power recruiter, he had a band and everything. I've done a few interviews with him. He was given a job by a Jew. So he was making money. And the owner saw him, he wasn't eating lunch with everyone else. He said, are you hungry? And he gave him half of his sandwich. And that was not supposed to happen. Right. But it's that kind of getting to the humanity, not the ideology, but the humanity of you're

hungry. Let me help you. I love this. There's so much more we could talk about. I do want to leave on a very practical note though, okay, so what if our brother, family, grandma, whatever, is in Q, how do we start or in Q that you're not really in, you're just following, right? What do we start with? What would be the Q equivalent question of the gun factory example that you just gave? So a critical thing is, did you cut off contact? If so, how long? Were you the one cutting off contact or was the other person the one? Because you really need to customize. Yeah. And if it was you that was being mean or you that was blocking and cutting off, you start by saying, I miss you. You're my brother. You're my sister. You're my uncle. I really miss you. You're so special to me. I really want to

ask your forgiveness because I was rude. Like, forgive me. Can we do a redo? Because you mean that much to me. It's going to be some tears on these phone calls. And what got me to agree to a deprogramming, because I was such a fanatical. I would have died on command or killed on command. What got me to agree was my father cried. He looked at me in his tear and he said, what would you do if it was your son who dropped out of college and got involved with a controversial group? How would you feel? But he was crying. And it got me right in the heart, like right past all the Mooney indoctrination. It's like, the dude really is worried about me. He sincerely cares. And I'm like, but dad, I'm not brainwashed. I'm not in a cult.

He said, so give me a few days and prove it. Just open your mind, listen to what they have to say, ask questions. And then if you want to go back in a few days, I'll drive you there myself. But at least your mother and I will be able to sleep at night, knowing we did the responsible thing. That was a killer deal closer. Like, of course I want my parents to sleep at night. Yeah, exactly. I love my parents.

And I'm not sure that I'm not, you know, you know, under mind control. Wow. So we call these people, we tell them, we miss them, and we reopen the dialogue if indeed it's been closed by us or them. Right, but don't start by, you must be really, you know, feeling confused or some type of judgment because you don't know what they're feeling. Right. And they may say, I'm not ready to talk to you. And you go, well, I want you to know as soon as you are, my heart is open, my phone is open, I would really love it. And I promise you I'll be a much better listener than I was in the past

because I care about you. And love is stronger than mind control. I keep saying that. But love is about not behavior, but being this. Like, I love you for you. And you're my brother. And I love you.

Okay, so we reopen the dialogue and then how do we start to get them to question some of these J.FK juniors really alive type of things. So the critical thing for me is encouraging the person to go back in time to how they got involved and what was important to them initially because it's probably different now. Right. Like the whole save the children thing. Like I just wanted to defend children against abuse, you know, that kind of. Exactly. And if they wanted to save the children, you go, that's such an admirable thing. Children need our help. Tell me what your understanding.

of what practical things people were doing to help trafficked children, would you be interested to meet someone whose full-time occupation is helping trafficked children? Because I can introduce you. Right. Or something like that. But the bottom line is they have the key for how to get them out. And you want to empower them to help themselves to get out, where they feel empowered, not where they feel pressured or coerced by you to adopt your belief system. Dr. Stephen Hassan, this has been great. I'm so glad I can call you a doctor now because I think I did it before by accident and we had to correct it and I felt really awkward about that.

And now it's true. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, I rebelled against the idea of getting the letters and... Why? Because it's elitist because, you know, I knew more than doctors on the subject and people said I didn't need it. But then about five years ago, I started realizing the law is 100 years out of date. Yeah.

In terms of understanding the human mind. And that nothing was changing policy-wise because the law needs to be updated. So I was encouraged by a law professor, emeritus Alan Shefflin, to stop calling it brainwashing, talk about undue influence. And then I got involved with this forensic think tank associated with Harvard Medical School, the program in psychiatry and the law. I did a presentation, and they were like, this is really important. You can come to meetings if you want. And one of the professors said, you should go get a doctorate. I'll supervise your research.

Judges want quantitative scientific stuff, not anecdotal, qualitative stuff. Right. Qualitative stuff. You need to make this a real thing. And so he said, I'll help you, I'll supervise you. I talked with my wife. She's like, go for it if you want to. Great.

And I'm like, I'm 63, can I do this? And I'm like, I really had self-doubts. But it was great from my brain and learning so much. I got better at writing. I learned how to write academically. And I'm hoping it's going to open up some doors to legitimacy for former members to go. I think so. Intelligent, educated people can be a cults.

And they're good people who can make a contribution. We need them. I think it'll also take a bite out of the criticism that you were facing before. where people say, you know, this guy, he's not, this isn't science. This is the guy who wrote a book. He makes his money off of deprogramming. You know, it's a grift. And now you're like, well, no, this is science. I made the science. So try again. Well, I did a scientific study. What I'm hoping is many more people will check my results. Right. And do more research. And if my research is off, they'll, I've created a framework where I'm connecting the dots with brainwashing, thought reform,

mind control, coercive control in the UK, trafficking law in the U.S., undue influence with the elderly, and then my model. And so there's a framework for judges and jurors to look at any case and go, influence, what were their unique vulnerabilities, influencer, predator, qualities of malignant narcissist, and systematic techniques used over time to create a radical personality change that's different and let a judge and jury decide. Well, it's important work, and I'm glad to be your friend, and thank you for coming on today. This is fascinating. It's long overdue. We've been talking about it forever. I'm really glad we finally got a chance to do it. I want to thank you for one more thing, if I may. Sure. You can cut it out if you want, but I joined you at the maximum security prison for your

40th birthday, and it really did alter my experience of reality and really put to the four how much justice reform needs to happen. So thank you for doing that. Thank you so much. Once again, fascinating. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Keep up the good work. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, Anthony Luciano Ramondi was born into the world of organized crime, spent much of his life as a mob enforcer, and played a part in heists and assassinations, allegedly. Here's a preview of my conversation with a former Italian mob enforcer. So I'm in the club and I'm putting some of the envelopes together. This guy walks in.

So I get up, I said, excuse me, can I help you? Because yeah, I want to talk to you. Pulled out of the gun. I still got the first scar right over here. This guy beat me so bad. I don't even know how I made it back downtown. I was crawling out of the place. Literally, I was crawling out of the place.

And I remember it saying, you come back here. Your mother's going to have to have a close coffin for you. I'm going to blow your fucking head off. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. D.S., my cousin takes me up from the hospital about five, six days later. They told me who this guy was. And when they seen Joey D, we went to the basement, all weapons.

His family were gun runners. I mean, if you want the B-52 bomb, he'll tell you, I'll get it for you in three days. He'll have her at your doorstep. I mean, they have bazookas, they had hangar. I mean, they had stuff like you never saw. He goes to me, pick out something. I take them a cousin's car, and I drive the 3rd Avenue, and I park. Right in front of the place, there's parking space.

I got the gun on my waistband. I got to go in, and doke you the bartender street. He goes, what are you doing here? I just, don't worry about him. Don't worry about this. I want to talk to him. I figured I would really talk to him. When I walked through and I turned around, I seen him.

He had his back to me. And he was talking to this girl, Karen's school. I never forget Cameron. The music goes down and I hear her tell him. She says, Anthony's behind you. For whatever the reason, before she said it, I had the gun in my hand. This guy gets up. What did I tell you, you dirty, motherfucker?

Your mother's going to have a close coffee. I'm going to blow your fucking head. He opens his jacket and I seen the gun in his waistband. He puts his hand on it. I just picked up my hand like this and then he'd be the whole clip into him. Joe, give him a drink. He gives me a seven and seven. Look at this kiddie. He goes, he just killed somebody. He's sitting there kill me as a cucumber. For more with former Italian mob enforcer Anthony Riemondi, including the many creative ways mobsters have gotten rid of bodies over the years,

check out episode 425 on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Ugh. All right. Well, this has been enlightening. It's not quite the right word that I wanted to use here, but I suppose that that's true. We did another episode on conspiracy theories with Mick West about why people follow conspiracy theories in the first place. There's a lot about the psychology of why people get sucked into these things just generally, not Q&N specifically, and why people like to believe this craziness. People are building little followings inside it to validate their ego, right? There's people who think that they have specific information that only they have figured out, and so they've got a few thousand followers, and people just get drunk on these fake internet points, this clout they

imagine they have. Also, with cults, this is sort of something new that I've learned after doing our episode with Tim Ballard about human trafficking and child trafficking, there are so many front groups. And one of those that is driving legit child trafficking experts like Timothy Ballard crazy are things that QAnon does like save the children. It's a common hashtag, but a lot of these so-called anti-pedophile groups that are popping up now, they're not doing anything to help. They're just creating noise that gets in the way of real trafficking work. And they are recruiting for QAnon. So you got to be really careful here. You think, oh my God. I want to stop pedophiles. Let me donate. Let me go to this rally. Let me go to this meeting.

And then suddenly you're getting talked to by all these Karens about how our children are being trapped in a basement and there are secret underground tunnels. And it's all just garbage. And it's just creating noise. QAnon is like a real life scavenger hunt or LARP, right? A live action roleplay. You ever see those guys that run around in the forest and they have like foams, swords and shields and they're pretending to be medieval doing battles? It actually looks really, really fun. I'm not going to lie. The internet in Q&ONON is kind of like a LARP, except it's highly unethical. It forces people in. They'll say something like, if you care about children, you'll join us. And if you don't, maybe you're on the other side. And also,

it gets people involved that really think that there is a serious problem that Q is solving. It's just a complete waste of energy. It's like people in search of a flat earth. They want things to be simple, and yet then they go and overcomplicate things in a totally random way that doesn't actually affect anything and damages their life, in fact. One of the practical exercises that we didn't really get to touch on is if somebody you know is getting sucked into QAnon, you can find another cult that they think is bad. So child trafficking, Chinese Communist Party propaganda, whatever it is. Get into the details, get into the conspiracy theories there. And discussing this will often help conspiracy theorists see the holes in their own thinking. Mick West and I talked

about this as well. You can't say, look, there is no flat earth to somebody who's a flat earther. What you can do is say, what about those people who think that lizard people control the media and they'll go, oh, this is dumb because, you know, there's no evidence for it, and people have repeatedly debunk that, and they get to see the holes in their own thinking. It doesn't happen instantly, but it does create a frame where they can think critically, for the first time and a long time about the other group, and then eventually some of that will seep out into their own group. But this takes patience.

It takes a lot of effort, so it's really only worth doing for close friends and family. It's very unfortunate. People convert themselves relatively quickly into these things, but the deprogramming is what takes, unfortunately, takes a very long time. Big thank you to Dr. Stephen Hassan. Congratulations. Again, my friend, on becoming a PhD. That's very impressive. And it's a relief, because I accidentally called him Dr. Stephen Hassan in our first episode when he wasn't yet. And now I don't have to change anything. I can just lazily be right. Links to all his stuff will be in the show notes as well. Please do use our website links if you buy books and things like that from the

guests. They do help support the show. Worksheets for the episode in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on the YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or you can hit me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with you there as well. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same systems, software, tiny habits. I built something called connectionfox.com that you all can use as well.

But I teach you the systems and the software for free over at our six-minute networking course. That course is at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. the well before you're thirsty people. You've got to create relationships before you need them. Don't be the person awkwardly inviting your friends that you haven't seen an eight years out for a cassidia and then asking them for a favor. It's just cringe. So dig that well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to this course and the newsletter, which we never send out. There's no spam. Join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association

with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's getting sucked into Q&N, share this with them. If you know somebody who knows somebody who's getting sucked into Q&N, share this with them. And if you know people who are interested in the phenomenon of conspiracy theories and cults, this is a great one to share. I hope you find something great in every episode because I bust my butt making this for y'all. So please do share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on this show so that you can live what you listen.

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