Former QAnon follower on how she left the conspiracy movement

Brut America

This former QAnon follower explains how she came to believe in the fringe conspiracy movement, and why she ultimately left...

Transcript

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.

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