This former QAnon follower explains how she came to believe in the fringe conspiracy movement, and why she ultimately left...
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Their conspiracy connected all these different dots for us that it was all part of this big deep state
00:07and that in the center of it all, Donald Trump was going to be the one to dismantle all of it.
00:12Hi, my name is Linka Perrin and I'm here to tell you how I got drawn
00:16into conspiracy sites such as QAnon and how I got myself out.
00:30I was a part of a very large group of individuals who were all Bernie supporters
00:38and we were in the tens of thousands and, you know, we resonated with his message.
00:44And we couldn't understand why not only was the Democratic Party not getting behind
01:01someone like Bernie and specifically his platforms,
01:04why were they going out of their way to silence him and undermine him?
01:10Information drafts started coming in and we weren't really aware of who was putting these
01:18drafts out here. All I really know is we were all reading it and sharing it, clicking it,
01:22right? And they were like, I consider them like breadcrumbs of information
01:28that was slowly leading us in a certain direction.
01:33We found ourselves glued to our social media pages. We found ourselves losing sleep. You know,
02:00when you think about child sex trafficking and pedophilia, that's a very disturbing subject.
02:04A lot of us are parents. And at the same time, you had a lot of people in these forums
02:11opening up and sharing how they were sexually abused as children. So,
02:15it became a very emotionally draining space to be in. So, you know, it was affecting relationships.
02:24A lot of people affected their work.
02:30We've got this whole social media machine and the algorithms. So, every time you click and share
02:39and view within hours, your newsfeed has 10 more links and videos of similar conspiracy-based
02:49content. And we all know that social media, the way it's designed, it's kind of creating
02:54our reality for us, right? Kind of this like illusionary world. So, you know, whoever's
03:03designing these conspiracy influences have figured out the addictive qualities of social media.
03:33For me, it was information drops about sealed indictments of Hillary Clinton,
03:43John Podesta, and other Democrats who were, you know, breaking this law or that law. In our minds,
03:51these were black and white laws that were being broken. And there's this powerful force getting
03:57ready to arrest them all. But I also was reading news sources outside of the conspiracy, you know,
04:04chats and stuff. And I would see Hillary Clinton enjoying a vacation in Hawaii at this very time.
04:12I remember it. And I remember seeing John Podesta giving a speech somewhere,
04:17and they literally were not acting like anybody who was under indictment.
04:22Trump was actually being painted as the hero who's going to take down all this corruption
04:28within the Democratic Party. And that, right off the bat, did not make sense to me. I mean,
04:35I was watching him do the very same things like we were angry at, like the Democratic Party for
04:42doing. He was appointing corporatists, right, and his corporate donor friends to key administrative
04:50positions. And we've all heard his recording, you know, talking about women in a sexual way,
04:57and his connections with Jeffrey Epstein. And I literally could not fit what we knew
05:05about Donald Trump into that image that was being created in Q. So, that was when
05:14it was very clear to me that just the Democratic Party was being targeted.
05:25For me, I have a lot of guilt, because all of my family and friends, you know,
05:30they have the utmost respect for me, and they trusted me. So, I have a lot of guilt for
05:36sharing all of this information with them, because they trusted me. And I ended up
05:43taking them right down the rabbit hole with me, which is a whole nother way that this is all
05:48spreading around the world, actually. We just were talking to each other, and we're sharing links
05:54and private messenger chats. So, we're like, inadvertently, or deliberately pulling people in.
06:01What people have to understand is they keep using, like, QAnon as, like, the cause and the thing for
06:06us to be worried about. But I've been sitting here watching all these offshoots. There's
06:11similarities and all of that kind of, like, cult-like mentality that's being created in all
06:16of this. It's no different from the COVID, the anti-mask, the anti-mask, the anti-mask
06:25It's no different from the COVID, the anti-mask, this is a hoax.
06:34They're being led to, like, actually scream and have outbursts in public if anybody tells
06:39them to put on a mask. Like, this stuff is driving people to behave in ways
06:45they would never normally behave like.
06:56Just like you wouldn't attack, say, somebody who's declaring, I'm an alcoholic and I want
07:02to come clean. Like, we would never attack them, right? We'd support them. We'd love them. We'd
07:06encourage them. And I would encourage people who aren't in the conspiracy world to approach it that
07:12way. Otherwise, they're adding to the divisiveness, and I'm pretty sure that is the
07:18ultimate intent of people creating conspiracies, is to divide us.