for clues, you make connections, and you might be part of this wonderful movement that can save the world from this overwhelming evil. when you put it like that, it sounds very compelling. i m not suggesting that anyonejoins it. no. indeed. i was speaking from the point of view of a qanon devotee. do not try this at home! we won t. gabriel gatehouse and doctor irene pasquetto from the university of michigan, thank you so much for coming on the media show. now we are going to turn onto this row in bristol between a journalist and the mayor that has been troubling on this month. let me play you a clip from a press conference last week. the mayor had just got back from giving a ted talk in canada and a reporter was keen to ask him about it. i wondered firstly if you saw the irony in flying so far for a talk in climate change.
yeah, ijust want to add that we also think it s the same 0 or the same person because he used the same short code that is used on the image boards by q. that s why the community kind of recognised q as the real 0. why now? that s a good question. i think it has to do with roe v wade overturn. it s a good political moment. you know, the audience, q s audience, is paying attention to what s happening at a political level. yeah, that s one of the theories why it s happening right now. and he posted three things, i think. shall we play the game once more? it had to be done this way. and are you ready to serve your country again? remember your oath. gabriel, there is of course a lot of speculation about who 0 is. your fabulous podcast goes down that route, but tell us who you think he is. well, i mean, most people who have looked into this, and there are people who have dug into it who know a lot more
a new council leader, after the last one was deposed following the local elections, and so i have been speaking to them about what their plans are for the borough and what they are going to do differently. so that is the full spectrum of localjournalism right there. thank you. and we will hear more from both of you and others in a bit. but we are going to start with an extraordinary story from the other side of the atlantic. qanon is the conspiracy theory that says donald trump has been waging war on a cabal of satanic paedophiles who stole the 2020 us election completely unfounded theories, but believed by significant numbers. qanon supporters were amongst the mob that stormed the us capitol last year. the movement has been fuelled by the online postings of a user who signs off as q, and last week, after nearly two years of silence, 0 posted again. gabriel gatehouse is international editor at bbc news and the presenter of the radio a documentary series the coming storm that looks at
michigan school of information. irene, gabriel, welcome to the media show. hi, katie. hello. thank you. most welcome. gabriel, when we say 0 is back, how do we know this? what s happened 7 ok, so, 0 was this supposed figure who was supposed to be a government insider with high level security clearance who was revealing secrets about this cabal of satanic paedophiles that had supposedly captured the levers of government in the united states. and 0, this government insider, was posting his secrets on a little known website called 4chan, then 8chan, then 8kun these kind of very niche internet message boards. and the last time he posted something was shortly after the 2020 election. he posted a link to a song called we re not going to take it, and that was it.
the local languages. in germany, france, italy. and what they also did was to take this narrative and adapt the narrative to the local political context. it was just so much work, i guess it surprised me the amount of effort and work that qanon influencers put into this transmission. gabriel, is it in the uk? it is in the uk. i think it is not a strong draw i m not an expert on how it is taken root in the uk and europe. that s because you are a foreign correspondent. but i believe it is very strong in germany. but one of the things that irene said about the amount of work that people put in, i think that is one of the things that has helped qanon to spread. because it is a participatory thing. if you are a qanon believer, you are notjust a passive recipient of secret knowledge. you do the research, you scour the internet for clues, you make