Byline Supplement — QAnon Goes Mainstream
My latest report in Byline Supplement explores the mainstreaming of QAnon through the human trafficking film ‘Sound of Freedom’
One of the advantages of being a veteran investigative reporter during the Great Information War, I’ve been peering around dark corners since the ‘80s — when the Fourth Estate still had a few good years left in it.
So when we were hit in 2016 with hybrid warfare to steal the presidential election away from Hillary Clinton, I was already trained to be hyper vigilant. I will never forget the morning of November 9 — the creepy quiet on Twitter — the lying operatives of the Internet Research Agency from St. Petersburg slept in. We’d been had. We were had in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and pretended it didn’t. We were had again in 2016, when a ‘megacrook’ — just another Yanukovych to Putin — was put into the White House.
‘MAGA is a Russian op.’—me, on Twitter.
As Ruth Ben-Ghiat told me, the installation of a ‘megacrook’ was a triumph for international evil.
Producing an investigation show on disinformation and radicalization with brilliant co-hosts — interviewing the smartest people in the world each week — allows me to recognize ops pretty quickly, and when I saw the trailer for ‘Sound of Freedom’, alarm bells went off. I immediately called HiFi, my RadPod co-host, and within seven minutes we tracked down the questionable funders of the film and more alarm bells went off.
When I told Peter Jukes at Byline Supplement about my findings, he said it sounds like the mainstreaming of QAnon. I believe he is correct — the entertainment industry is being used as a vehicle for mass radicalization. The conspiracy theories on the Russian propaganda platforms had jumped out of the dark corners of the internet and into the mainstream.
As Jason Stanley taught us, conspiracy theories are central to the fascist creep. In order to mass radicalize people you must first make them believe in unreality.
The report below features an interview with Dr. Mia Bloom, who many of you met in one of our ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salons and who wrote the book, Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon. She is also featured on Ep57 of RadPod explaining how women like Ashli Babbitt are lured into QAnon with traumatic imagery.
In my Byline Supplement report published today, Bloom explained how the film is an indoctrination event designed to spread a violent apocalyptic theology throughout American politics — just in time for the 2024 election.
Many of you already support the Byline Supplement team of global investigative reporters, which allows us so to keep doing this vital work. The above link has a preview, and here are some quotes from Dr. Bloom featured in the report:
How does the film mainstream QAnon?
Bloom: Many of the primary tropes from QAnon are embedded in the film, some more blatant than others. First of all, like most conspiracy theories there is an element of truth. Human trafficking is a problem and something about which the US Government needs to do more. However the film implies that there is a shadowy cabal of influential politicians and government agencies actively involved in trafficking and that the US agencies are doing nothing about it. It also implies that the government is complicit.
With your expertise in QAnon and how people are radicalized, what most concerns you about film?
Bloom: The major concern is the same concern I have for the content of the QAnon channels — the traumatic imagery and outrage will increase the number of people who believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory.
According to many polls, there are already as many as 30 million US adults that believe in the basic premise, that there is a blood drinking cabal of child trafficking pedophiles. Worse yet, the film — and QAnon — divert attention and resources from actual child trafficking both in terms of the false leads called into law enforcement
What is your warning to people?
Bloom: I would warn people that we need to take the underlying issues seriously, no one is pro-paedophilia or trafficking, but the ways in which these wedge issues are being used to manipulate people is dangerous for the health of democracy.
To read the full report, please subscribe to Byline Supplement here.
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We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.—David Pepper
I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.—David Pepper
The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.—Martin Sheil
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