i mean, you can be really smart, right? and you can think logically. and yet, get sucked into these conspiracy theories. it seems like so much of it is emotional, right? after you go through something traumatic, as you said, it becomes an emotional thing. look, it has to be emotional. otherwise, it wouldn t make sense, otherwise, for so many people. like my dad, who has three degrees, who is probably the smartest person i know, to fall into it. so it s it s a it s more like a cult, i guess. like, a conspiracy cult. but not exactly but that s a good way to describe it. and the thing with this kind of cult. it s it s about being human. it s about humans are social creatures. we all have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone. and we seek connection and meaning and, you know, a sense of self-importance and affirmation. and so, it can happen to anyone. anyone. the only thing that needs to be needs to be before that is to be human. and now, as you look back to
at the last minute, issue a national broadcast alert, that electricity was likely to go down, water was going to go down so everyone needed to stock file food and water to be able to survive a couple weeks. and then president trump would rightly take his place for his second term as president and there would be no president biden. i joseph biden, jr. do solemnly swear. but as we ve seen with many qanon followers in the past, false predictions don t deter them. the conspiracy cult s beliefs simply evolve. now some qanon adherents claim trump is still secretly running the government. one wrote anything that happens in the next four years is actually president trump s doing. others are suggesting president biden might actually be working for q. a lot of them will maintain they ve just misinterpreted the signals, that, you know, the real inauguration is going to happen in march instead of january or that, you know, joe
has gone viral. the star of television hit like the west wing and the hand maid s tale will be joining us tomorrow us tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. the cnn special report, inside the qanon conspiracy starts now. announcer: the follow is a cnn special report? in january, we aired a special report on the conspiracy cult, qanon. it s been hard to pin down exactly how many americans believe in this conspiracy, but a new poll from the public religion research institute says that 15% of the american population believes in the core tenants of qanon. that s almost 50 million americans who believe in a fantasy. over the next hour, we ll take you inside the cult of qanon.
they talk about how their grandkids are coming to visit next week. and for a lot of believers, this has become their primary social life. and so they get more out of it than just politics. they get affirmation, they get friendships, they get meaningful sort of missions that they feel they can be a part of. what surprised me was the number of people i met who, yes, they were pro-trump, but more than that, they were deriving this sense of spiritual satisfaction from q. and there was a lot of sort of, you know, i heard from people that they felt a sense of peace or serenity in their lives that they didn t have before they started getting into q. and that s what s really led me to understand, this is ant political movement. it is only a conspiracy theory, but really, it takes on the contours of a baby religion born on the internet. it raises questions sort of about like what s a religion versus what s a cult versus what s a conspiracy theory
on january 6th, qanon came out of the shadows. what had started as an online conspiracy theory had quickly become a kind of cult. and for some qanon followers, this was the day they d been waiting for. i m here because q sent me. they made their presence known in the crowd of trump supporters in washington that day when a mob stormed the capitol, many qanon supporters were on the front lines. freedom! at least one supporter died that day. this woman, ashley babbitt, tried to break through a door inside the capitol. she was shot to death by a capitol police officer. she was a 14-year veteran of the air force and the air national guard. this is her in a qanon shirt at a trump rally in september. how does a veteran fall into a deranged conspiracy cult? to understand what qanon is, you have to go down a rabbit hole