Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny Explain QAnon
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, reporters at NBC News. Writing at NBCNews.com, they report on disinformation and misinformation in health and politics. Their work covers a lot of ground, but for this episode, they discussed one increasingly prominent issue on that beat: QAnon, a conspiracy theory built around anonymous posts on an internet forum claiming that Donald Trump is waging war against a deep state and a vast network of child sex traffickers. The conspiracy theory has inspired acts of violence and is becoming increasingly mainstream, with several candidates for U.S. Congress being QAnon believers. They talked about how QAnon started, why we need to take it seriously and how the internet—and big technology platforms—have allowed the theory to spread.
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | They're doing everything sort of in lock stuff and you know the largest anti-vaccination |
| 0:39.3 | group is also very much a Q&A group and so they've really managed to boost their numbers |
| 0:45.3 | and so has Q&A and they've both been able to feed on that that distrust which and that's |
| 0:51.2 | the distrust in institutions is the thing that binds all conspiracies and so you know that's |
| 0:56.6 | what they have to keep going this fear and just supplying this fear and inordinate amounts |
| 1:02.0 | whether it's the fear of your child being injured or killed with a vaccine or you know |
| 1:07.6 | your child being swept up in this sex trafficking ring. |
| 1:12.8 | It really is all so similar. |
| 1:15.9 | I'm Kwenja Juresik and this is the LawFair podcast August 6, 2020. |
| 1:23.8 | This week on our Arbiter's of Truth Series on Disinformation, Evelyn Dwick and I spoke |
| 1:28.6 | with Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrasni, reporters at NBC News. |
| 1:34.0 | Writing at NBCNews.com, they report on disinformation and misinformation and health and politics. |
| 1:40.0 | The work covers a lot of ground but we asked them on the show to discuss one increasingly |
| 1:44.1 | prominent issue on that beat. |
| 1:46.4 | QAnon. |
| 1:47.4 | The conspiracy theory built around anonymous posts on an internet forum claiming that Donald |
| 1:52.2 | Trump is waging war against a deep state and a vast network of child sex traffickers. |
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