of the qanon fringe group are actually rebranding. they are doing things like running for local offices, school boards, and the like. and what they say is that it is to save children i m quoting what they say to save chirp from critical race theory and other made-up conspiracies. well, we have nbc s ben collins who wrote this exclusive story for nbc news. i want to interview you ben now on all you wrote here. i am curious first of all how widespread all of this is. how can a qanon follower even rebrand? is that possible? i hear q, i hear it is not anone. can you clarify? qanon supporters are well aware that their branding is toxic. that if you say you are a qanon supporter, you go to a school board meeting and talk about the cabal, if you say you are a qanon supporter you are going
doing, too little, too late. they could have stemmed the tide of disinformation coming from movements like qanon several years ago. but as we know, from various reports, they didn t want to seem too heavy handed in what they believed would be censoring conservatives. and unfortunately, we ended up with facebook groups full of conspiracy theories that led straight to qanon. which led straight to january 6th. so it s a nice gesture. but i think that this is too little, too late. right. and wouldn t qanon believers look at a warning like this and say, oh, this is big tech trying to sensor me and i am not going to trust anything they try to warn me of? absolutely. qanon believers take any kind of confirmation from big-tech companies or the mainstream media as being proof that they re actually right. that they re over the target and these companies are panicking, and doing anything they can to stop them from getting the truth out. you know, in reality, this is a this is a band-aid. th
do nothing but put band-aids on these gaping wounds. i m just curious, more generally, is from your research on qanon, the followers. are certain people more predisposed to become a qanon follower, than others? have you seen any sort of pattern? i think, what predisposes people to believing in qanon is belief in previous-conspiracy theories. you know, i i like to say and i say this a lot in the book. that qanon is never somebody s first conspiracy theory. you know, you don t just wake up one day and think there is a demonic cabal running the world. people come to qanon through things like the barack obama birtherism conspiracy theory. the trump spy gate stuff. then, the pandemic, people were coming to it from anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, anti-bill gates conspiracies. if you were already plugged into that world, qanon really is just the next, natural step in your
report. this was a qanon reference to a real-inspector general report that, supposedly, only donald trump could declassify. that would blow the lid off of all the fbi s corruption and all of the deep state s attempt to stop trump. since then, you have had multiple murders. you ve had child kidnappings. you have had vandalism. this this movement presents itself as peaceful researchers but they are not. violent ideation is, absolutely, baked into qanon. it has been, since the very beginning. and we should note, on on the insurrection, january 6th, the fbi identified, i think, it was something, like, 20 followers of qanon who were there, part of the insurrection. you have officials, now, also from the department of homeland security telling cnn that they are particularly concerned about this lie that trump is going to be reinstated in august. we know qanon followers are hoping this audit in arizona could be the first step. how concerned are you about what s going on there in arizona
his party but is now the face. matt gatetz is now tweeting a nw theory which is on fox news that the fbi is involved and that federal officials incited it and a qanon follower killed in the attack was executed by law enforcement. their leader kevin mccarthy sets the example. he set the bar pretty high there. here is what he said about president biden at the summit in geneva. and spoiler alert. it is also a lie. he knows it. quoting from a portion of mccarthy s statement yesterday he said, president biden should have used today s summit to stand up for our national interests and send a message to the world that the united states will hold russia accountable for its long list of transgressions. unfortunately president biden gave vladimir putin a pass. now, look. you can agree or disagree with the president s russia policy. we re not here to support any political party s policies. you can raise questions about how the president plans to