4.4 • 767 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2021
⏱️ 53 minutes
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By the end of the big new documentary series on QAnon, the filmmakers show off a pretty damn strong case that a shitposting systems administrator named Ron Watkins is the guy currently behind “Q.”
But the docuseries doesn’t fully capture—at least not in detail—all the crazy lengths to which Watkins went in order to finger Steve Bannon as the head of the violent, culty conspiracy movement.
“Ron actually had been planting the seed for Bannon from the very first time I met him,” Q: Into the Storm director Cullen Hoback tells Will Sommer and Swin Suebsaeng on the new episode of FEVER DREAMS. “So he had known me for, I think, less than 48 hours. And at the end of that interview… he pulls me aside and he just says, ‘You know, you should look into Steve Bannon.’ Which I immediately found pretty suspicious... Right from the get-go, he was planting the seed.”
Hoback wasn’t the only guy Watkins was trying to convince. Even in his own shop—the notorious troll-haven 8Chan—Watkins was attempting to shine a light on Bannon. “It seemed like he had even done that internally. Somebody who works with them [Ron Watkins and his father Jim] at one point… showed me a chat they'd had that went all the way back to early January of 2018, where Ron was internally suggesting Steve Bannon.”
Hoback adds, “It seems that this was a red herring. This is my interpretation, that it was a red herring that he had been planting for some time. And I suspect that he had put a lot of work into this and wanted someone to pick up on it.”
As the documentary shows, Watkins even produced a supposed “data set” meant to demonstrate that “Q” and the former top Trump strategist were in the roughly same place at roughly the same time.
But suspicion eventually swung back to Ron and his dad, even though they were almost certainly not “Q” originally. (Most likely, it was a group of folks.) Back then, you might be surprised to learn, “Q” was treated as a joke—one of a whole gaggle of “anons” claiming to have insider knowledge the nefarious workings of the deep state. There was even one character named “BigDickAnon,” Sommer says.
“It's interesting reading the first posts where everyone's like, ‘Get outta here, Q, you're a total loser.’ There's a really funny line where Q's like, ‘I must go dark, the deep state is closing in’ and someone's like, ‘Yeah, time to log off. Mom's meatloaf is ready, loser. Get out of here,’” Sommer adds. “It's just fascinating to see how people treated Q initially and how it turned into this thing that would have people in Congress—and storming Congress.”
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0:00.0 | Last minute party, what will I bring them something unexpected? |
0:06.1 | Let's play scratch cards. |
0:09.3 | Trying to find something a bit different. |
0:11.4 | Why not add some play to Christmas? |
0:13.2 | With scratch cards from the National Lottery. |
0:15.4 | Pick them up in store now. |
0:16.6 | Please gift responsibly. Rules and procedures apply. |
0:18.5 | Players and gifters must be 18 or over. |
0:31.2 | Thank you. Please gift responsibly. Rules and procedures apply. Players and gifters must be 18 or over. Hey guys. This is Aswin Tsub Singh, but please call me Swin. And welcome to The Daily Beast's fever dreams. |
0:37.4 | Hi, I'm Will Summer, a politics reporter at The Daily Beast, where I dig into all the darkest |
0:41.9 | recesses of American extremism and extremely online militants. I'm currently working on a book |
0:47.3 | about QAnon and its disastrous impact on our society. I'm also a senior political reporter |
0:52.2 | at The Beast and co-author of the book, Sinking in the Swamp. |
0:55.4 | I've spent years covering the intersection of entertainment and politics. |
0:59.0 | And in the post-Trump era, that seems like the only sensible way to cover politics in this beautiful, hideously stupid country of ours. |
1:06.4 | On this podcast, we're going to take you on deeply reported plunges into the sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary fanatics infecting the way that millions of Americans view the world and how they vote. |
1:15.8 | Even in the aftermath of the Trump administration, the energy of these conspiracy theorists, |
1:20.4 | the grifters, and the influencers is still pushing our mainstream political landscape |
1:24.7 | closer and closer to a breaking point. We're here to help you better understand how and why this is happening, and who in the halls |
1:31.1 | of power are letting it happen. |
1:32.7 | Along the way, we'll regularly bring on guests, including political pros, hard-nosed reporters, |
1:38.0 | and some influential voices from Hollywood. |
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