Episode 5: Cults, Qanon &the GirlBaz Grifters

After years of being largely ignored outside of certain specialist reporters, the vast conspiracy theory cult known as Qanon has finally begun to come to the attention of mainstream news. In the UK this has been reflected in the sudden appearance of Qanon linked protests, rallying around the "Save Our Children" banner. Following this, and a notable uptick in people drawing links between TERFs and Qanon, we here at Blood & TERF podcast have been hard at work for a few weeks doing background research on our primer episode on how the TERF/GC/Transphobe movement exhibits multiple alarming similarities to cults in general, and modern online movemetns like Qanon in particular.

 

Contents warnings for this episode include: discuaaion of abusive social environments in the context of cult organisations and abusive relationships, as well as sexual assault and coercion. we also discuss various aspects of the beliefs of the Qanon movement, including a description of their core belief system whcih is heavily pre-occupied with child sexual exploitation

 

The BITE model developed by Steven Hassan which is referenced in the episode is available here, as is further information about how Hig Demand Groups operate: https://www.openmindsfoundation.org/the-bite-model-of-influence/

 

Further reading on cults and their internal models of organisation may be found in the works of Robert J Lifton, including "Though Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "brainwashing" in China" as well as his later and more up to date work "Destroying the World To Save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism"

 

The podcast QanonAnonymous is dedicated to covering the Qanon movement in a lighthearted and somewhat doomer-ish manner, and is available here: https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous

 

TrashFuture Podcast has also occasionally delved into the wild and wonderful world of how TERFs operate in the british political scene, and has released episodes relating to Qanon as well. They can be found here: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/

 

Music was provided by Marina Crustacean, who can be found at https://twitter.com/MusicCrustacean and https://soundcloud.com/marinacrustacean

 

If you wish to contribute music to the podcast we can be contacted at the following email adress: Bloodandterf@gmail.com

 

Our Dreamwidth, which will be used for collating more extensive shownotes, can be found here:

bloodandterf.dreamwidth.org