00:08:56.520But where so many wellness conspiracy theories and big pharma conspiracy theories and anti-vax conspiracy theories come from is just this basic distrust of what we're told.
00:09:06.540We feel constantly everybody is trying to get one over on us.
00:09:10.340Everybody's trying to screw us, trying to hurt us, trying to take our money.
00:09:14.540So that's really where a lot of it comes from.
00:09:16.520It's just this basic idea that the outside world is out to get you.
00:09:21.660And so much of that is wrapped up in corporations and in medicine.
00:09:24.980I mean, speaking of Dr. Oz, I mean, that's also almost word for word what you hear from
00:09:31.800I saw a magazine called What Doctors Don't Want You to Know at Whole Foods.
00:09:36.680This is a very mainstream message of these kind of cleanse type things that like they're keeping something from you.
00:09:44.240And it's a pretty short leap from that to they're also keeping like trucks full of children from you.
00:09:49.500Part of what makes this all tricky is like without getting too far down the tinfoil hat road, there are ways in which many people are being exploited, but they're much more banal than that.
00:10:00.700Uber comes up with a business model or Lyft or Amazon or whoever where they treat their employees like contractors so they don't have to pay them health insurance, right?
00:10:10.340It's sort of stuff that's happening out in public in front of all of us, but it doesn't have the same sort of intrigue or punch.
00:10:19.280And that's so much of what drives conspiracy movements like QAnon and wellness conspiracy theories also is this idea of secret knowledge, that there is a clutch of secrets that the powerful people have access to, the powerless people, i.e. us, do not have access to.
00:10:37.720And somehow by believing in QAnon or reading these, you know, holistic healers and all these other people who have sort of built themselves up as experts in this fringe world, you have access to the secret knowledge.
00:10:51.080You are let in to the darkest things that they, you know, whoever they is, don't want you to know about.
00:11:00.460And that's very compelling and that's very powerful, especially during a pandemic.
00:11:04.700What is your sense, Mike, of what percentage of QAnon people sort of do come in through the wellness woo-woo track?
00:11:12.520It's very hard to pin any kind of numbers on any of this, but I would say that probably during the pandemic, quite a few people did.
00:11:20.000You know, you had the explosive growth of these Facebook groups devoted to anti-5G and anti-vaccine and anti-Bill Gates and conspiracy theories about where the virus came from and whether it was a bioweapon and whether it was the deep state.
00:11:35.260And, of course, it's so easy to jump from those groups to other groups because of Facebook's algorithms.
00:11:40.740You know, you join an anti-5G group because you have some concerns about 5G Internet and then it recommends an anti-Bill Gates group.
00:11:47.000And you go, oh, well, I've heard some bad things about Bill Gates.
00:11:49.180maybe I should join that and do more research. And then it recommends a group about anti-vaccine
00:11:54.120stuff. And that recommends you a group about the Great Awakening, which is QAnon. So you very0.88
00:11:59.600quickly and efficiently radicalize yourself into a violent, anti-Semitic, far-right conspiracy cult
00:12:07.920without having any intention of doing so. So these groups had huge membership. They had hundreds of
00:12:14.540thousands of members in some cases. There's also a way in which you can get sucked into these
00:12:18.880things and not necessarily see its fundamental political nature. It's always seemed to me like
00:12:23.600the majority of QAnon is like people that are Trump supporters and like trying to sort of
00:12:30.900process the fact that they thought this guy was going to be a great savior and they voted for him
00:12:35.620and he's not doing anything. And like everything that he says in public is deranged. And it's like,
00:12:41.460uh, it's not deranged. It's, it's a secret code. Yeah, that's the ticket. But if you're someone
00:12:46.360who comes in through the wellness track or the anti-vax track, you might not necessarily
00:18:37.280Which has become sort of this like often feels incredibly transparent, bad faith argument.
00:18:42.740right and sort of arguing tactic that shows up in both places for sure yeah yeah and it's it
00:18:48.560really feeds into the persecution complex that a lot of these people have and the the grievances
00:18:53.900that have become so much a part of the right-wing culture war you know this idea that if if i'm not
00:19:01.040allowed to share my truth i'm being censored personally like right big companies have it
00:19:06.300out for me they want to destroy me because i'm a threat and q is great about doing that it's about
00:19:12.260making people feel like they are a threat to the deep state and that this little this little
00:19:18.460movement that the media writes off as oh it's just a it's just a role-playing game it's just
00:19:23.180some kooky internet stuff oh but they keep shutting us down why you know why is that yeah
00:19:27.920how much how much cuedness was there in the january 5th insurrection there were there were a lot of
00:19:33.960cute people there but i think even more than that the vast majority of people there probably bought
00:19:39.260into Q's mythology without actually knowing it. You know, the idea that the election was going to
00:19:44.640be stolen, the idea that Joe Biden was this decrepit husk of a puppet candidate and that0.51
00:19:51.320the only way he could win was if the election was fraudulent. That was a huge part of QAnon.
00:19:57.780Also, we had the Q shaman guy, the guy, the shirtless dude with the beaver hat,
00:20:02.320who then gets put in jail and he demands an organic diet.
00:20:06.520And you had a lot of the a lot of Q promoters are talking about how that guy doesn't represent us like I'm like I've seen him at Black Lives Matter protests.0.73
00:20:15.040He's a false flag. He's thrown out there to make us look like we're crazy.0.58
00:20:19.580He's a fake. We decide who the real ones are.
00:20:22.260A real Q believer wouldn't be violent because Q is a nonviolent movement.0.97
00:20:26.300I mean, it's just it's just it's logical fallacy taken to the point of delusion.
00:20:30.580It's also funny, the idea that like this guy's making QAnon look bad.0.93
00:20:33.580You know, we're talking about like Hillary Clinton, like ripping the faces off of kids and sucking up their adrenochrome.
00:20:39.980But like this guy, you know, he's really getting.0.89
00:20:42.320Yeah, we draw the line at shirtlessness.
00:20:47.180But what do you make of the guys like organic miss?
00:20:50.460Like, what do you see is like the intersection there?
00:20:52.760You know, it's totally enmeshed with that idea of we're being lied to big business, big agriculture, big pharma.0.92
00:21:03.580And you get a lot of that idea of like supplements and yoga in QAnon and like keeping your body healthy and staying away from those deep state additives and toxins.
00:23:09.000It's like we're going to take care of you or something?
00:23:11.080Like what's the promise at the end of the rainbow for QAnon?
00:23:13.760The promise at the end of the rainbow for QAnon is not so much a financial one or a health one.
00:23:18.920It's that the bad people will be gotten rid of.0.93
00:23:22.380This ancient war that's been going on for thousands of years between the white hats and the good people and the godly people who are over here and then the Babylonian cult that's over here that's been controlling you since the Egyptian pyramids.
00:23:38.880That war is finally going to be won and it's going to bring peace and freedom and you're going to be able to live your life the way you want to.
00:23:46.720So it's a less tangible motivation, but it's also almost a more powerful one because it promises the people who have hurt you and kept you down will be paraded in front of you, broken and in chains, and they'll be sent to the gallows.
00:24:03.340And that's very powerful in that community.
00:24:05.560I'm curious about within sort of the wellness pipeline, are there any sort of like known factors that put people at risk?
00:24:12.920Yeah, there's a couple of things that put you at risk for falling down the Q rabbit hole.
00:24:18.360You know, one is sort of extant susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
00:24:22.640And so many of these people who fall into Q were already believers in something else.
00:24:27.580They were already believers in wellness conspiracies, or they were believers in they were 9-11 truthers, or they were Barack Obama birth certificate truthers, or Trump spy gate truthers.0.66
00:24:40.120So the vast majority of the time, a person who finds themselves enmeshed in QAnon didn't spend their whole life watching CNN and reading The New York Times and voting Democratic and then just one day waking up and deciding that Trump's military intelligence team was leaking clues to Hillary Clinton being sent to the gallows.
00:25:00.100So a person who falls into QAnon almost always already believed something else that was unevidenced and QAnon is just the next natural step for them.
00:25:10.120That indicates that some of this wellness stuff is kind of a gateway drug.
00:34:29.200You know, you can you can live a very productive and happy and healthy life and still believe that JFK was murdered by a conspiracy.
00:34:38.040Yeah. That doesn't necessarily turn you into a violent anti-government militia member.
00:34:43.700But with QAnon, it's a heck of a lot more likely because it's an it's an intrinsically violent conspiracy.0.92
00:34:49.840And it has a body count. Right. There have been people who've been killed by QAnon supporters.
00:34:54.760Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, murders, vandalism, arson, kidnappings. Nobody should
00:35:01.100have been surprised by the violence committed by Q believers around the Capitol insurrection.1.00
00:35:07.100Like, they'd been doing it for two years already.1.00
00:35:09.720And in a lot of ways, it has its roots, right? The sort of rhetoric of the deep state and
00:35:14.900the New World Order, all of that stuff has its roots in the Oklahoma City bombings and to
00:35:22.120ruby ridge and to sort of bigger face-offs that uh my fellow older millennials may recall from
00:35:29.160our childhoods right that like this is all also sort of an extension of some like original recipe
00:35:34.920uh anti-semitic conspiracy theories right yeah yeah q anon is i mean this idea of the deep state
00:35:41.120or the cabal it's the new world order it's the illuminati it's the trilateral commission it's
00:35:46.820bohemian grove it's the council on foreign relations it's the freemasons it's the catholics
00:35:52.540it's the jews i mean there's there's always been this need for a powerful organized group of0.91
00:35:59.140shadowy string pullers and q is just the next version of that but q is really the first one0.77
00:36:05.700that allows you to take the fight back to them yeah the bigfoot people don't do that no no they
00:36:11.720don't. I mean, even a lot of wellness people don't do that. I mean, the other thing that is
00:36:17.260sort of coming to mind as we're talking about all of this is I'm just thinking about there is no
00:36:22.360part of my worldview that really aligns in a meaningful way with any part of the worldviews
00:36:28.520of many of the folks who are involved in QAnon, right? And at the same time, I am also thinking
00:36:33.140about how profoundly lonely a lot of this must be, right? To sort of lose family relationships,
00:36:40.460to lose friendships, in some cases to lose jobs, or to go to prison, or what have you, right?
00:36:47.440That all of this seems profoundly lonely and isolating. And if the community that you have
00:36:54.680is this sort of like internet community of other people who believe the same things that you do,
00:37:00.660it's really easy to see just on a personal emotional level, how folks continue to sort of
00:37:06.480gravitate away from folks who are rejecting them or laughing at them or poking holes in this.
00:37:13.100You can see how our collective responses for folks who are not part of QAnon to QAnon
00:37:20.020also sort of accelerate some of those dynamics.
00:37:23.760Yeah, you have a real sense of isolation and of loneliness and of not taking pleasure in the
00:37:31.340things that used to give you pleasure because all you see in them now is the evil. There was
00:37:36.220one thread of this a couple years ago on vote the now defunct absolutely horrible reddit knockoff
00:37:43.220of people just like talking about stuff they couldn't enjoy anymore and i don't know why
00:37:46.800it's this one sticks in my mind but it's this guy talking about how he's like i used to love the band
00:37:53.280tool but now i i can't imagine they're not cia funded so i can't listen to them anymore i'm like
00:38:00.040first of all of all the bands i know tool's good leave too out of this you guys yeah like no tool
00:38:06.820like tool should be on your side here yeah theoretically but the absolute specificity
00:38:12.820of his misery really stuck with me i feel like sort of the further that i get into q anon world
00:38:19.140the more i'm just sort of overcome by this deep sense of sadness right from the folks who are
00:38:25.320there from sort of the cultural impacts of it, all of that kind of stuff. And also earlier with
00:38:30.520Mike, when you were talking about people don't take pleasure in the things that they used to
00:38:33.600take pleasure in and they feel really sad. I was like, are we ticking down the list of
00:38:39.580DSM symptoms of major depressive disorder? Because it really, I mean, it's really sort of striking.
00:38:46.700Well, I also think, okay, maybe we should end on like a slightly more optimistic note of what would
00:38:52.060all of us recommend for, I guess, like wellness spaces or alternative medicine spaces, right?
00:38:58.660Because you can imagine those communities being really positive for people, or you can imagine1.00
00:39:03.260those communities sinking down this like nihilistic abyss with the QAnon people. Like,1.00
00:39:09.840how can we make sure that the wellness stuff we talk about isn't becoming a gateway drug to this?
00:39:15.360Yeah, that's a really good question because it's so individualized how everybody takes that
00:39:21.180journey through the pipeline from just some sort of gentle conspiracy theorizing and wanting answers
00:39:28.100to storming the Capitol. But I think what we have to do is kind of monitor the people in our lives
00:39:33.940and just make sure they're okay. Make sure they're not falling down these rabbit holes. And if you do
00:39:40.020start to get those signs, like step in early and let them know, hey, I still care about you. Hey,
00:39:45.760let's talk about this together. And if you step in really early and let that person know they're
00:39:50.440not alone. They're not being persecuted. I think if we have a way of stopping this before it gets
00:39:56.580really bad, that's probably it. I would also say for folks who are in any kind of leadership role
00:40:03.760or active role in wellness spaces, particularly online wellness spaces, I would say really
00:40:10.440stripping out that what doctors don't want you to know kind of logic. Just getting that rhetoric
00:40:17.640out of your life feels really important. The other thing that I would say is, and this is like a big
00:40:22.400ask of folks, and I recognize that, is like actually fact-checking stuff that you share.
00:40:28.620If you are hearing from folks about oil pulling or anti-vax stuff or like whatever sort of the
00:40:36.040realm is, like citing things that look like facts without knowing whether or not they're facts
00:40:42.840is a passive but still very harmful thing to do it's also difficult for sort of people like us
00:40:50.420who talk about like institutionalized fat phobia or institutionalized racism or something to say
00:40:55.680that like this entire system is against you in some cases that's true yeah yeah there really
00:41:00.940are blind spots in institutions right like and that's what a lot of good journalism does is
00:41:05.980point out those blind spots but i think it's really important to realize the limits of that
00:41:11.260sort of us versus them kind of framing of every single issue and making it seem like there's some
00:41:17.320sort of deliberate conspiracy of you know doctors don't want you to know this and you know there's
00:41:23.040some meeting once a year in switzerland it's like no the knowledge is being suppressed yeah yeah i
00:41:29.460think like the deliberateness is usually when i start to get nervous because oftentimes it's like
00:41:35.600it's it's an institutional blind spot because like schools don't teach it and it's not part of sort
00:41:40.080of residency training requirements and so people who are doctors have these kind of institutional
00:41:44.500blind spots but they're not necessarily like sitting around like let's destroy fat people's
00:41:49.080health right it's much more inchoate than that and that that's what we know about real conspiracies
00:41:54.520as opposed to conspiracy theories is that it's just a lot of like cluelessness and not thinking
00:41:59.460things through and not people who are members of those groups being in the room it's not like
00:42:03.900people twiddling their mustaches no it's it's so much more of just people not being good at their
00:42:09.080jobs, just not thinking things through or not taking that extra step and understanding not just
00:42:14.760that these things are happening, but why these things are happening. And I think you have to
00:42:18.980understand that it does provide something to people and it does fill holes and it does answer
00:42:23.740questions. And if you were able to get your head around that as nuts as it seems that somebody
00:42:28.800could find meaning in this insanity, you're going to go a lot farther to being able to combat it.
00:42:34.540This feels like a good sort of clarion call for all of us to get better at separating out responses that are personally satisfying or cathartic to us versus responses that will actually help reach someone and help them sort of escape the path that they're on, right?
00:42:51.980And in some cases, your goals might be to pull a family member back from QAnon.0.98
00:42:58.200In some cases, your goals might be to protect your own boundaries and your own sense of0.91
00:43:03.080self and whatever, and go, I can't actually do it anymore.