Drop 461 (Jan 4 2018)
What makes a movie GOOD?
GREAT actors?
Starting in the '90s, Italy was in the grips of a satanic panic.
Gruesome stories of satanic orgies involving children
resulted in mass hysteria.
It was fueled by the media, and opportunistic officials.
The only problem? It was fake.
That's when an anonymous collective, known as Luther Blissett,
managed to unwind some of the craze.
By doing something even crazier.
They invented a fake satanic cult,
sent out videotapes of their human sacrifices to the media.
And after the media published the tapes,
they released the real tape, showing it was a ruse.
TRIESTE, ITALY
One of the primary architects of that movement
was the co-author of a book entitled Q.
In it, the titular character, Q, is an anonymous person
spying on the rebels and feeding intel to the pope.
In other words, Q is the bad guy.
Had the persona behind QAnon read this book?
Was QAnon just Luther Blissett's latest stunt?
Or was it all simply a coincidence?
One of the authors of the book agreed to be interviewed,
under the condition that he imposes on all recorded interactions.
I wouldn't be allowed to reveal his face.
So, you wrote this book, Q.
When you look in this book, what are the parallels
between the Q that you wrote about and QAnon?
Secret messages signed Q.
And this Q presents himself or herself
as being at the top level of power
who has important information about the inner workings of the system.
And he starts to share them drop by drop.
Dispatch by dispatch. Crumb by crumb.
Of course, we don't know who's behind it.
We don't think he's an original member of the Luther Blissett Project,
because if it was a prank,
the consequences of this prank weren't worth it.
What have you been able to figure out
about the personality of who's behind Q?
You've read a lot of the drops.
Obviously, you had an interest at some point
in trying to figure out who it was.
There's something nerd-ish.
- Nerd-ish? - Yeah, nerd-ish, in it.
Not exactly a nerd, but there's something nerd-ish.
Probably a former nerd.
- How old do you think Q is? - Over 30.
What kind of person would read this book and think, I want to be Q?
I want to be the villain from this book.
A villain.
Have you ever heard of Luther Blissett?
I don't know who Luther Blissett is.
You ever heard of the novel called Q?
I don't know anything about it.
We have an army of digital soldiers.
Has General Flynn ever been in contact with you? Or General Flynn Junior?
Never.
Do you think that Fred could be behind Q?
I don't know if Frederick is behind Q or not.
If Frederick was Q, he would have latched on to the fame much earlier.
- I have a question. - Yeah?
These names you're going through are your possible list of who Q might be?
- Okay. - That's right.
Interesting. Am I on the list?
You're on the list. Sure.
Well, let's continue then.
Q: INTO THE STORM
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
The Q phenomenon was moving from, as QAnons would put it, dark to light.
Our opponents have spent millions of dollars against us in the campaign.
We've spent about 150 dollars.
And in the run up to the 2018 mid-term election,
the movement even had its very first QAnon candidates running for office.
Because as you dig deeply into all the documents
that are being released in the Q drops,
little by little, you find out
that every single organization in this country and worldwide,
was infiltrated by a global cabal.
I'm Anne Armstrong, and I'm going to be the next Governor of Rhode Island.
Her main platform is the legalization of marijuana.
She also told me, if elected,
she believes she can improve the efficiency of the DMV.
What are you both running for?
Governor and Attorney General.
We've done polls privately
and I think I'm polling around 48 percent.
One percent of voters said they supported Armstrong for Governor.
I think we're the only two candidates
to openly express our interest in the QAnon phenomenon.
And I, in particular, profess to be a high level escapee
from a CIA mind control hypnosis program, called MK Ultra.
- Can I show? - No. You may not.
Like, in the Matrix when they have that... He has a thing from when...
We even wrote a song. Want to hear our Q song?
- Of course I want to hear your Q song. - Okay, ready?
One, two, three.
Hey, Q, what do you do?
Drain the swamp and lock up the bad guys.
Democrats are vying for a potential blue wave
in this year's mid-term elections.
We are not seeing any semblance of a blue wave, whatsoever.
In fact what we're probably seeing is a red wave.
Q had been building up anticipation for the 2018 mid-term elections.
Energizing its army of digital soldiers.
Repeating ideas like panic in DC, patriots in control,
and predicting a red wave. Or even, a red tsunami.
Silent majority no more. Be loud. You have a voice, are you registered?
Vote them all out. Prepare. Red October.
What does that mean?
That's what we're trying to figure out,
what the Red October either there's gonna be something going on
where a lot of people are gonna instead of voting democrat,
are gonna change.
The importance that Q was placing on the 2018 election
was making Jamie more active in politics than ever before.
People want to know, who is Q? Well, nobody knows.
So, there's nothing to attack. There's no Q building. There's no Q rally.
We go to Trump rally wearing Q stuff,
and we're all part of the Q movement.
Q's impact was permeating politics in other ways.
Rising MAGA star DeAnna Lorraine was using her platform
to attract Q followers.
Thank you so much for being here. You guys are so courageous.
I know we've all lost friends and family
because we've walked away and stood for the truth.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene was just getting her feet wet.
Both would run for congress in the next election cycle.
Q is a patriot. We know that for sure.
But we do not know who Q is. Okay?
But I'm just going to tell you about it,
because I think it's something worth listening to.
And paying attention to.
On October 2nd, 2018, Q simply writes, 53-47.
It was days before the Senate was scheduled to vote
on the next Supreme Court Justice.
Let me take a step back, and explain high school.
And Q followers seemed to believe that this was a prediction
for how the vote would split.
Mister Carper, no.
But it went a little differently. Had Q made a mistake?
Or was 53 to 47 intended to mean something else?
I just believe Q is worldwide,
and I feel like it's my duty to help share,
if people are genuinely want to know about it. And want to follow it.
When I see the news now, if I ever watch the news,
it does nothing to me at all.
The political, you know, I just go for Q.
This is the real news. I see that stuff, that's a show.
Q says vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, like a million times.
Says, will you answer the call? Your country needs you.
ELECTION DAY NOVEMBER 6, 2018
- Hello. - Hello. I like your shirt.
- Thank you. Have you heard... - Have you heard of the Q?
- The what? - QAnon?
There's no new Q drops at all. Since earlier.
It's just the last one just protect the votes.
If there is a massive wave, and we take seats and gain everything,
and just unbelievable, I think Q will be more and more telling.
CNN can now project
that Democrats will win the majority in the US House of Representatives.
Basically, we're saying...
They're saying that chances are
that the House is gonna swing Democrat.
The House? Right here?
New Congress will be divided, with Democrats leading the House,
and Republicans in charge of the Senate. Expanding their majority.
After the election, the Senate split 53 to 47.
Q reminded its followers of a drop from a month earlier,
declaring Senate was the target.
The implication being that Q somehow managed to predict
how the election would turn out.
Of course, this doesn't quite jive with Q's other prediction of a red tsunami.
Nonetheless, QAnons were satisfied.
I think this is to bring down the House.
I think this is gonna show that they were so corrupt.
Let them think they won.
- Enjoy the show. - Yeah, enjoy the show.
Neither Anne Armstrong or Alan Gordon managed to win their race.
But the movement was clearly gaining traction.
In early January of 2019, I got an anonymous tip
that forced me to revisit my investigation into Jim and Ron Watkins.
You see, one of their former employees was leaking out information online.
The ex-employee who goes by the handle IWillRedpillU,
had worked for Jim and Ron's website, The Goldwater.
Welcome to The Goldwater.
Where we provide an informative view
on today's alternative news headlines.
On the website, they kept a running tally
of how many people the Clintons had murdered,
some alien stuff, and had a few mentions of Q here and there.
The Goldwater curated theories that were generated on 8chan,
and then repackaged them as news for the working man.
But The Goldwater wasn't getting much traction online.
And come Christmas of 2018,
Jim decided to lay off most of its employees.
Now, one of those ex-employees had gone rogue,
logging into The Goldwater's US Twitter account and airing their grievances.
There was one message that really stuck out.
The author claimed to have insider access.
Saying that the truth about the QAnon movement would crush people.
And that they didn't want to be the one to do that.
A bit of digging around this anon, produced the name Courtney Tubbs.
Courtney posted an email address in The Goldwater's Twitter bio.
So, I reached out.
She responded to me saying, whatever Jim and Ron told you,
they would have undoubtedly agreed to a narrative prior to your arrival.
And their entire goal while you were in house,
was to make that perception seem legitimate.
In another email exchange, Courtney Tubbs appeared to claim
that Roger Stone had been funding The Goldwater.
Now, Roger Stone was another likely suspect for Q.
He had the skills, the motive, and the connections.
He also has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
Some pondered if an oft repeated phrase in the Q narrative, keystone.
And the keystone to doing that of course...
Was a reference to the involvement of both WikiLeaks, and Roger Stone.
Tell Roger that my people are sitting at the table.
Okay, so like a table for like, seven or eight?
You might remember Jack Posobiec. The guy who did the pizza gate live stream.
We're going to go in, and we're going to infiltrate Comet Pizza.
Jack had built a relationship with Roger Stone.
Presumably from their days working together on the Trump campaign.
What's your plan tonight?
I'm having a private dinner with Roger.
And in the months leading up to the 2016 election,
8chan was sending a lot of traffic to the Trump campaign website.
In fact, the ninth most traffic of any site in the world.
Thousands of referrals a day.
So, it seems plausible that someone from the Trump campaign,
which had a masterful digital strategy,
would have made contact.
But I think you're going to see a more aggressive digital campaign.
Did you ever have any interaction with The Goldwater?
- The website? - Yeah.
Not in a very long time. They used to send me their articles,
asking for retweets. That kind of stuff.
You never saw any connection between The Goldwater and Q?
Not that I'm aware of.
I haven't looked at that website in a very long time.
- It's just the same owner. - Oh, really?
Yeah. Owner of 8chan owns The Goldwater.
Fascinating. Excuse me one second.
I've got to... I think this is Roger's guy.
My guess is that they are here.
I don't know if Roger wants to be on the record, though.
- Stone. We meet again. - Sorry about yesterday.
How are you, sir? Good to meet you.
Roger Stone was not inclined to go on the record about Q.
Now, just six days earlier,
he'd been arrested for making false statements to the FBI.
As part of Robert Mueller's investigation.
Mueller's probe was investigating whether Trump, WikiLeaks, and Russia
had colluded to release hacked emails.
Ultimately damaging Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.
Mueller found that Roger Stone had been back channeling
with WikiLeaks with the help of none other than Jerome Corsi.
Who outed himself as being person number one in the indictment.
They wanted me to be the key link between it was gonna be me,
Roger Stone, to me, to Julian Assange.
And then they'd have all their collusion together.
It'd be Roger Stone, to Steve Bannon, to Donald Trump.
Remember Jerome Corsi?
He's that early QAnon promoter and political operative
who worked for Alex Jones?
Now that pretty much authenticates
that again, QAnon is very close to Donald Trump.
When I reached out to Corsi,
he was eager to give an interview, just not about Q.
A couple weeks later,
another guy who had been arrested from Trump's inner circle,
George Papadopoulos, was throwing a small party for his wife in Las Vegas.
Though, it seemed that the terms of his arrest
actually prevented him from showing up.
But the party went on.
With openly MAGA and openly gay pop star, Ricky Rebel,
leading the karaoke sesh.
Which seemed to be unconfortable for evangelist and Qtuber, Craig James.
...sleep in heavenly peace...
There were a few congressional candidates in the house.
Omar Navarro, and his then girlfriend, DeAnna Lorraine,
who was planning to run for Nancy Pelosi's seat in the 2020 election.
However you feel about the Q movement, what it did do,
is it brought millions of patriots together around the world.
As it turned out, they were also being groomed by Roger Stone.
Omar is a kind of hard charging young performer
that I think we need in the congress.
Let's say I'm in contact with Roger Stone, who I know him and his wife,
I know a lot of things about them
that could implicate myself in something
that I shouldn't be implicated in for no reason.
Like, let's say I'm in contact with General Flynn,
and he's a personal friend of mine.
Now, it was funny that Omar mentioned General Michael Flynn.
He was another likely suspect for Q.
Who could be working with Roger Stone.
Flynn had also pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI
related to Russian interference.
Q was a huge advocate of General Flynn,
as well as the Army for which he served.
An untold number of QAnons now consider themselves
to be part of his digital army.
And would include three stars in their bio
in order to show support for the three-star general.
We were all talking to General Flynn and some other people.
And we were making hints about QAnon.
And Mike Flynn was like, "Where we go one, we go all."
What are you alluding to?
I think there's about 10 people that are part of it. Seven to 10.
And he's part of it.
I couldn't say that. Because then I couldn't tell you that.
- I know you can't say it. - So, you have to stay out of that.
About make America great again. It's not just a mob, it's a mindset.
Let's put it this way, it's gonna be big.
And you've probably have heard the same things from people in your camp.
You think there's 10 people, right?
I know there's probably seven. I know two of 'em.
And they're people that have so much information about the government.
Let's put it this way, when I was at the American Priorities Conference,
there were a few people who were with Roger
who gave me a wink and a nod and...
- Roger is, yeah. - I know.
- He's one of 'em. - And so's Mike Flynn.
I did ask Doctor Corsi for a round up memo.
I do think there's a possibility
that Roger Stone is deeply connected with Q.
And it has crossed my mind that he's one of the Q.
Reporter's interest in that memo, proving yet again...
- You asked him about Q. - I did.
Mister Stone, do you have any comment on QAnon?
I do not.
- Do you buy it? - Absolutely not for a second.
There were just a few too many coincidences here.
And with them, more questions.
So, I reached out to Jim, Ron, and Fred.
It had been several months since I'd seen them.
But now, I had a good reason to follow up with them.
I wanted to see if I could find out
more about Courtney Tubbs' allegations
that Roger Stone had connections to The Goldwater.
If Stone was involved, maybe Q really was someone close to Trump.
Let's have the 1930s German pen, and the Italian pen.
So, Jim, what has changed since the last time I saw you?
I've found out I had 90 percent hearing loss.
Which is why I was angry at everybody.
I thought they were mumbling. You know? Saying, "Speak up!"
Last time I saw you,
we did the interview, I just thought you were being highly evasive.
I was not being evasive.
I either wasn't hearing it. Or not understanding.
We talked a little bit about Q last time.
You didn't seem to know very much. Do you...
I don't actually read the Q board. I'm not a real political guy.
But I know more about Q now.
Since we've talked.
You say you're not a very political guy,
but you were involved in The Goldwater.
Which was a political website, right?
It was a news website. Objective news.
Redpill took over your Twitter thing for a while there.
That person made a lot of claims.
One of those claims was
that Roger Stone was actually funding The Goldwater.
Who's that? I don't know who Roger Stone is. I'm sorry.
The first time I asked Jim if he knew Roger Stone, here's what he said.
I don't know who Roger Stone is.
You don't know who Roger Stone is?
I'm sorry.
Roger Stone, he has like a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
- Really? - Yeah.
He was the youngest in the Nixon Administration...
Is he like, gay for Nixon, type thing? It's like, "Hi!"
Every time you do me, you see Nixon.
I've heard of Oliver Stone. Is that a relative?
While Jim's hearing aids seemed to be working, perhaps his memory wasn't.
My next stop was to see Ron. This time on his home turf in Japan.
SAPPORO, JAPAN
Real quick, just do a mic check for me.
Count in Chinese to 10.
So why did you start The Goldwater?
At the time, we were thinking heavily
that all these mainstream media websites
were not publishing the full truth.
Or they were leaving out tidbits.
And why did you hire Redpill?
Redpill was hired by, I believe, my father.
From what I understand, the person that was being paid,
their name was not Courtney Tubbs.
I'd recommend you try to reach out to Redpill
and figure out that mystery. I'm curious myself.
When that was happening, I reached out
'cause I had no idea what was going on.
Suddenly, you had somebody making a lot of very strong claims,
who had taken over the account.
One of the comments I guess, that had been made.
And the reason that I'm asking about it,
is the truth about the QAnon movement would crush people.
And I don't want to be the one to do that.
He or she certainly did not get information from me about that.
I don't know.
It was not my job to vet that person.
But you are registered as the president of it.
I don't remember if I'm registered as the president or not.
You don't remember if you're the president?
I don't remember what title I have.
So, the person who is behind the Redpill account said
that Roger Stone was the one subsidizing The Goldwater.
And that when Roger Stone stopped paying for The Goldwater,
that's when everyone got fired.
That's false.
So, you've never had any contact with Roger Stone?
I've never had any contact with Roger Stone.
And Roger Stone was not funding The Goldwater.
Roger Stone was not funding The Goldwater.
To the best of my knowledge that is.
So who is paying for The Goldwater?
I believe it was my father.
A guy named Tom Reidel was listed as the treasurer of The Goldwater.
So, if anyone knew about payments from Roger Stone, it should be him.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES
Okay.
To your knowledge, has Roger Stone ever been involved
in anything you guys have done?
I've never met Roger Stone. And to my knowledge,
Roger Stone has had no contact with anyone in our group.
But I thought he was funny on the Alex Jones Show sometimes.
He's quite a character.
'Cause Redpill said that specifically emailed saying
that Roger Stone had been funding The Goldwater.
That is where that question comes from.
Well, Redpill...
I couldn't guess what the motivation would be for Redpill to claim
that The Goldwater was associated with Roger Stone or any outside force.
Courtney Tubbs, or whoever IWillRedpillU was,
stopped responding to my emails.
It begged the question,
were they just a disgruntled ex employee,
or did someone convince them to keep quiet?
The threats terrified me, and my kids.
While I was in Manila, I'd also arranged to meet up with Fred.
In the months that had passed, it seemed lots had changed.
You see, he was no longer working for Jim.
- I don't know if I met her before. - This is my wife, Grace.
- Hi. - And that's May.
- It's nice to meet you. - Grace, it's good to meet you.
What do you know about Red Pill?
Are we talking about Courtney Tubbs?
Courtney Tubbs actually had a big falling out with them.
That's what I'm most curious about.
This person who'd taken over the Goldwater account,
and seemingly had information about Q.
And was involved in the inception of Q in some way.
For sure, Redpill had information about the Goldwater and Jim's companies.
Does he know who Roger Stone is?
I would be shocked if he didn't know who Roger Stone was.
'Cause he's very political.
I'm not a political person, myself. I'm like a non-political guy.
I haven't been keeping up on politics for a while.
Politics? Boring. I'm not into the politics stuff.
The other thing that Redpill had said,
was that Roger Stone was funding the Goldwater.
I mean, look, if you can prove it. It's interesting information. But I don't...
I have no ability to prove that.
And neither do I. Soý
Did you hear the story about why I quit? I mean?
No.
So, October 2018, I was having some trouble just at work.
But I just wanted to take a week and maybe go somewhere, clear my head.
Come back. So, the way Jim's system works is,
he pays you not only in money, but also in-kind benefits.
From the looks of it, you guys had some good times in the beginning.
You seemed like good friends.
Well, I was nice to him.
And he lived in the apartment building just right above me.
And in an apartment that I rented for him.
The lease was in my name.
Everything is in his name.
But he's paying for it, so that kind of makes sense.
Okay, but it's an in-kind benefit for employees.
And he has you live there. And it's implied that it's your space.
And that he's not gonna just enter it whenever he wants to.
You realize at that time he was my office manager, and he wasn't at work.
I wasn't dressed at all. I was totally nude. All I had was like, a blanket.
And I knocked on the door, and they let me in,
and I told him I was coming over.
Totally naked, and then Jim Watkins comes, boom, boom, boom, boom.
You can't just say you're takin' time off.
And I talked to him, and I talked to him
like an owner to an office manager would talk.
He looked like he was gonna punch the wall. You can't do that.
If he can't handle what he'd been dishing out, then that's his problem.
That's when he came out with this, this is my unit shit.
Right then and there, I decided I can't live here anymore. That's it.
A lot of these powerful men, you have like a cult that forms around them.
And Jim Watkins is no different.
He has people that would put their lives on the line for him.
I believe that. They are an extremely insular organization.
It is kind of a code of secrecy.
You are constantly swearing to the made men,
that would be Ron, Jim and Tom,
that you will keep their secrets.
You swear it all the time to them.
Honestly, it's kind of a lot like the mafia in that way,
and it takes years to work your way up to where I was,
and I did not even know everything, right?
Like, Tom Riedel has worked with them for 20 years,
and he might not even know everything.
I know Jim from way back.
We started working together when I was a college student,
and we started designing websites together.
He was looking for a designer. I was an art student.
Yeah, over the years it grew into a large web hosting company.
This thing is great.
So, I want to get rid of that screen or oops! There you... I got porn.
Whenever I need it.
Just, that's why that toggle is great.
Just always a vagina one button away.
I spent basically all of my adult life with Jim.
He gave me every opportunity to excel
and really just kind of guided me through life.
- Excuse me. - Like that.
Wait, how did you guys meet?
We were in Pittsburgh.
I had two roommates.
They came home one day, and I was nerding on my computer.
They they would come running in
and they're like, we met the King of Porn.
I think I read somewhere that you were the King of Porn once upon a time.
I've been called that but I'm, but that's really overstating me.
And when you say the King of Porn, was he doing porn websites back then?
Yes.
More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more!
The Asian Bikini Bar.
That was, like, his website that first made money
where he got around Japanese law by hosting a porn site in America,
which was totally uncensored. That's what I know.
And PokeAMaN. You don't know PokeAMan?
Oh, yes, I do know.
What is PokeAMan.com?
That is a website that is owned by Nintendo.
They purchased that website from me.
It was a homosexual website,
and Nintendo purchased the domain name from me
because they didn't like it.
Now, if you're thinking these guys seem to be into porn,
like more than the normal amount, you would be right.
But Ron takes it to another level.
Just got a new toy.
Secondhand, but it's pretty nice.
Ron had suggested that while we were in Japan, we visit Soapland.
Later when you go back to your hotel, you should search Soapland
and see if that's something you're interested in experiencing.
Looking it up online, it was a one-of-a-kind Japanese experience
where girls lather you up, then rub you down with their full body.
I got the impression this was a gatekeeping exercise.
Maybe he wanted some collateral.
Also, I was curious, both about Soapland
and where things might go
once we'd established some semblance of trust.
It's like Disneyland but with soap.
Soap. Better than Disneyland.
One thing I've tried to figure out is,
there must be something more in it for Ron
than just documenting him around, running around Japan,
philandering about or whatever...
I can imagine what you got there. Did they bring you to a Soapland?
Yeah, you have to go.
Fred's expression said it all.
And listen, we have to get into the story of the blue Q.
I'm not looking forward to it, but we have to.
You caught me at a time I did not want to take unnecessary risk with Jim.
I felt like, you know what, this guy that's making this documentary,
he's making it about something stupid, QAnon.
I'll talk to him. I don't care. I was careful about what I said,
and I protected Jim by talking about the Q.
Fred explained that the blue Q
he had claimed was mysteriously left at his apartment
it was actually a ruse that he had planned with Ron.
I don't want to necessarily say that I went along with it.
Because in the post we always wrote,
could be something, could be nothing, if you look at the post.
And, when Q didn't repudiate it and even agreed with it,
why would Q have done that?
Fred's post had become a QProof,
so by maintaining this lie about the origins of the blue Q,
it did seem to protect the perceived authenticity
of 8chan's most valuable asset.
Q had brought immense growth to 8chan,
and according to Ron,
had helped propel 8chan near the top 1000 websites in the world.
So, when Q switched from 4chan to 8chan,
was Q simply out of options, or was that always part of the plan?
Ron communicated with me and told me, we want to attract QAnon to 8chan.
And he strongly implied that he was in communication with QAnon.
That's another reason I think
that the people that are 8chan are heavily involved with Q.
A lot of people think
that because you have so much control of what happens on 8chan
that it would be inconceivable that Q would not have contacted you
and given you more information
and be working with you in some way shape or form.
The only way Q has contacted me
is via the publicly accessible Q Research board.
So, Q has communicated a lot with Codemonkey.
I think there's eight or nine posts directed to CM.
So, he was another potential suspect.
Some people thought maybe he was working with Jim
or maybe everybody was working together.
Do you think it's possible
that Ron could in some way shape or form be involved with Q or behind it?
I couldn't say whether or not Ron could have spawned Q.
And, for us as a group, I could totally debunk that,
because if we were to create Q,
we would have made another website.
Why put it on a website that is such a stinker?
It started on 4chan.
And then it pulled users over to 8chan.
Okay. If, okay, Q, I...
I couldn't tell if Tom was skirting around my question.
I hadn't asked if Ron had created Q. He almost certainly hadn't.
But, as Admin, he could easily have taken control of Q.
Now, Q's operational security was lacking from the beginning,
which Codemonkey would have recognized right off the bat.
Tripcodes can be hacked fairly easily if you know what you're doing.
And in December of 2017, Q's first password was either hacked or leaked.
We're not sure.
And it's revealed to be none other than Matlock.
Fucking Matlock.
No numbers, no symbols.
Just the titular name of a character
not bound by the rules of evidence or courtroom procedure.
One of the funny things about the whole tripcode things
is that if you actually believe QAnon is this Deep State person,
this operator, Q's technical expertise is basically zero.
Like, his operational security is non existent.
In early January, QAnon is starting to pick up steam
and there's a dispute over who controls the Q screenname.
And, Paul Furber, who's running the board,
comes out and says, this is a fake Q.
This is not the Q we know.
Q has been taken over by some other unknown actor that's not the real Q.
Ultimately, I blame Codemonkey, because without his help,
fake Q would have gone absolutely nowhere.
'Cause every time he posted, I would have said, you're a LARP.
And I would have banned him, and I would have deleted the post.
But then Codemonkey said, no, this is the real Q,
which was absolute bullshit. I knew it wasn't true.
The person who had the final say on determining
whether or not Q had been hijacked was none other than Codemonkey.
However, there was one other thing that did seem to change.
Q's writing style.
Q went from writing complex, evolving Socratic questions
to posting shoutouts, sharing obviously doctored photos,
and using an increasingly absurd amount of exclamation marks.
In fact, an AI analysis by Swiss company Orc Analytics even showed
that there was an obvious style shift
between December of 2017 and January 2018.
The style changed completely.
I thought, nah, something wrong here. Just my radar went off.
How was Codemonkey so sure it was the same Q?
It's a waste of time trying to fight him.
It's like, it's trying to fight someone who owns their own platform.
You're not going to defeat them. So, I just didn't even bother.
I could tell in my conversations with Ron.
Ronald was trying-trying-trying to keep Q.
Q to him was like a-like a prize pig with a big blue award thingy.
He wanted that pig so bad.
In August of 2018,
seven months after Q had been allegedly compromised
and moved off of Paul Furber's board,
Q's current tripcode gets hacked.
But this time, it seems the hacker has a motive
and possibly insider knowledge.
Using Q's account, they post a link to a lengthy diatribe
that provided a psychological profile for the person
they believe to be behind Q.
It is my belief that Q is a young, untrained American man
who is playing games with your faith, your hope, and your love of country,
mostly because he finds it amusing.
In order to regain control, QAnon logs into its own board on 8chan,
where it's the board owner, this time posting with a secure tripcode,
a type of trip code verification that Codemonkey had re-engineered.
This secure tripcode that Q had just implemented,
it only works on 8chan, which meant Q was now tied to the site.
This Q poster linked himself so hard to 8chan, and no outside comms.
This platform only. And that became, like, a canonical statement.
Ronald Watkins knows that most of the traffic comes from the Q people,
and that most of the growth, if there is gonna be any growth,
is gonna come from Q.
So what are you getting at?
I'm getting at that most likely they know who Q is.
They engineered Q to specifically need them.
This is a mochi hammer,
so officially we're gonna be making mochi at the peak.
It's also a good hammer for smashing things.
It says be really careful of bears.
Scientifically, huge and aggressive.
So, I'll have to hit on the way down and the whip and then down again.
I'll try to hit it three times before it kills me.
What do you want me to do?
Just film it while I'm smashing this bear in the face.
And while it's eating me, you can run away.
I guess what I'm saying is that it feels
like the mission of Q and some of the ideology of Q,
and the mission of 8chan and some of the ideology of 8chan,
even if the definitions are a little bit different,
the goals are kind of the same.
I can't speak for the ideology of Q. I've never met the guy.
No idea what Q is or who it is.
And don't really care to know.
I'm sure someday it'll come out, but...
I have a lot of theories of what or who Q might be,
but sometimes the mystery is more important.
Why do you think that the tone of Q has seemed to shift?
Their team might be going on the offensive now.
When you're on the offense, you keep as quiet as possible.
When you're strong, you look weak.
When you're weak, you look strong.
And that's the very basics of military strategy.
Q says all the time what makes a good movie.
Yes. Good actors. We're all just actors at the end of the day.
The day after I left Japan, Q made a post claiming
that they would now be going on the offensive.
It was a major shift in Q narrative,
and it was also a notion that I'd heard just days before
out of Ron's mouth as we were coming down the mountain.
Their team might be going on the offensive now.
How in the world did Ron seem to know exactly what Q would post next?
They are moving on the offensive. But I can't speak for Q.
When you're on the offense, you keep as quiet as possible.
When you're strong, you look weak.
When you're weak, you look strong.
By spring of 2019, Q had expanded in its global reach
and increased traffic was coming from around the world
from Germany to Australia.
Although the Q board had become the most popular board on 8chan,
it still sat alongside boards like /pol,
which remained steeped in white supremacist content.
In fact, the users on Pol enjoyed poking fun at QAnons,
annoyed that they were in the same playground.
But the games were about to come to an end.
How does, sort of, your ideology fit in with the types of ideologies
that are hosted on your site?
Think of 8chan like a platform or a utility.
A power company has no ideological say
in what the people do with the power that they generate.
Every thread or post is allowed to be created equally.
When someone makes a thread,
we do not go through and approve or disapprove each thread.
There's the American model that hate speech is allowed, obscenity is fine.
Just total free speech. The good ideas will win out in the end.
It's very American to only focus on the United States impact of all of us.
But there is a global impact.
MARCH 15, 2019
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND
Let's get this party started.
After 200 meters, take the second left, then turn left.
Godspeed anon.
Best of luck.
Who did he kill?
You never did anything.
He did.
A gunman with an automatic weapon has opened fire
on a mosque in Central Christchurch.
We are on standby for a statement
from the prime minister at four o'clock.
NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE ATTACKS
AT LEAST 40 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED
In the aftermath of the shooting,
the world was in a collective state of shock.
The shooter had posted on Twitter, livestreamed on Facebook,
and uploaded their manifesto to numerous sites.
But it was on 8chan where they found a familiar and welcoming audience.
The comments were horrific,
a fact which media outlets around the world gravitated towards.
As soon as this went live,
other members of this community in this thread started kind of egging him on
and celebrating what was happening in this really vile way.
You know, they left up the Christchurch shooting thread
until they got the maximum number of posts.
It received 750 posts, that's the maximum.
Families and friends of the victims mourned
as community leaders sought ways to prevent such a shooting
from ever happening again.
We call upon governments around the world
to bring an end to hate speech
and the politics of fear.
There is no question
that ideas and language of division and hate have existed for decades.
But the form of distribution,
the tools of organization, they are new.
We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist
and that we're to sit on them.
It's not the responsibility of a place where they're published.
They are the publisher, not just the postman.
This terror was born in the darkest corners of the internet
In response,
New Zealand and Australia both banned all access to 8chan,
and pressure mounted to hold websites accountable
for the actions of their users.
MACAU, CHINA
A month after the tragic event in Christchurch,
I met up with Ron in Macau.
He seemed unphased by what had happened, and in some ways,
the international outrage appeared to only strengthen his resolve.
Right after the Christchurch massacre,
every major news outlet in the world reached out to us
to get our opinion on it, and we ignored them all.
This is the first time I've said anything about it actually.
And all these news outlets,
they're waiting for me to say something wrong so that they can use that
to push for the closure of 8chan.
8chan is one of many online breeding grounds
for extremist views and violent ideas. So what, if anything, can be done?
Jim Watkins should not keep running boards
that are inciting that kind of violence.
The lunatics are running the asylum.
I think it's going to impact the entire internet negatively
if more manifestos get posted there.
What's your take on the publishing of the manifesto?
Why do you think that people want to take it down?
I think people are worried it's gonna be a...
It's gonna be used to radicalize more people
to do the same thing that he did.
Do you think that that is warranted?
And-and/or do you think that it matters?
It doesn't matter to me.
His document is not illegal, so we're gonna host it.
By banning his text, it would immortalize it actually.
That kind of thing makes it more, like,
it makes it bigger.
This is what I do to strengthen up. Hit.
Two days later
I started learning martial arts from a very young age,
I would say two years old. And I've been working on it since.
There's been a shooting at a synagogue in Poway,
which is about 20 miles northeast of San Diego.
We're learning more about the alleged shooter in some postings
that he made on social media.
That's right, the site is called 8chan.
This happened a few hours ago.
The copycat shooter shot a bunch of people at a synagogue.
I believe there's one reported death and a few injuries,
and this 18, 19-year-old kid made a manifesto,
and then he posted it on at least 8chan,
but maybe in multiple places also.
We deleted the thread within minutes of it being reported to us,
but someone took a screen capture of that,
and they sent it to all the mainstream media groups.
And they're all attacking 8chan now.
A 19-year-old posted anti-Jewish and anti-Trump messages
in an open letter
that law enforcement investigators are calling his manifesto.
We're preparing a statement on Twitter about the Poway... Poway? Poway?
Poway. Let's say it's Poway. About the Poway shooter's post.
Okay, so the Poway shooter's post was taken down
within nine minutes
of his thread creation.
Nine minutes.
Within 10 minutes.
Nine looks better. It's more precise.
The only, it's only... Only should only be used once.
There are only, and then the only groups.
The only groups publicizing this crime, giving attention to this criminal,
are the fake news media.
Yeah, in that manifesto, which we did find online...
That's better. It's...
The only groups publicizing this crime, giving attention to this criminal,
are the fake news media.
We are collecting digital evidence, and we're aware of his manifesto.
There are only screencaps available, and no third-party archives exist
since the post was deleted so quickly.
Does it fit within the tweet? It does?
So really punching until it bleeds.
Yeah, and then it'll scar over. It'll be stronger when it scars over.
Okay, I think it looks good. Let's post that.
The shooters posted extremist messages
to an online forum called 8chan.
I don't think that society is gonna tolerate
a site like 8chan for much longer.
Hate crimes are up in major U.S. cities, including right here in L.A.
8chan should not continue.