How QAnon Took Root in Japan

of Q and on Japan. That's right, the trump centric US online conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories has managed to take roots seven thousand miles away in Japan. Now, you might have seen Japan in the news recently due to the Olympics being hosted there and the protests that that has caused. Many people in Japan feel that the Olympics will essentially act as a super spreader event for COVID. Japan has had over fifteen thousand deaths from the virus,

with almost one million cases in total. Hundreds of Japanese citizens have taken to the streets to air their concerns about the further spread that the Olympics could cause. However, a group of people in Japan, of course, not concerned about covid ah. The Japanese Q and Ons, like their American counterparts, they believe it's all a hoax and a quote scam. DEMI to get an idea of how the hell Q and On gained a solid following in Japan, We're going to be speaking to Sarah Hightower. You've probably

heard of her. She's been on the podcast a few times and she helps with the research. Sarah is a researcher specializing in cults with an incredibly in depth knowledge of Japanese cults. She's also one of the very best Q and On researchers out there, so as you can imagine, she is very well versed in Q and on Japan. She's going to explain how this all happened. So Sarah maybe just explained to us how did Q and on managed to kind of make it infest its way into Japan.

Obviously it's a very America centric thing, so it's kind of unusual. Um, maybe give us an idea, give us some kind of timeline of how this happened. Yeah, people are still shocked when they hear the Japanese Q and On it's just like a thing. But around the Japanese internet over on that side of things, there's varying degrees of interest in Q and on since the earliest days of Q and on. Now is Q non America centric? Yeah? Absolutely, it's the gult of personality centator around this image of

Donald Trump as an infallible god game. Yeah, so it's it's it's really stupid and it is really American. But that's not all you and on is. Yeah, pull back and look at the bigger picture. What else is Q and I? Q and On is an anti Semitic conspiracy theories plucked straight out of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. If you don't know what Sarah is talking about, their the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is a hoaxed anti Semitic text from the early

nineteen hundreds. It originated in Russia and was eventually taught by the Nazi regime in schools as if it were real, of course, to demonize the Jewish people. Many parts of the Q and On conspiracy theory are very similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They don't always name Jews directly. However, the ideas are often the same, and the protocols and these anti Semitic conspiracy theories, they've also taken hard at various points throughout Japanese history. But

I think you wanted the timeline, so let's do that. Forest. By the time team rolls around over here, four Chuan has already chased given On off the site in Q and on made their home over on h Chan, now the Japanese counterpart to four Chan. At this time, it's not to channel anymore, it's five channel now. You remember from series one that Q and on first gained prominence on the Chan boards to channel five channel. These are very similar things, although most of them are just text

and they exist mostly for the Japanese audience. Whilst all of this Q and on stuff was happening on four Chan and h Chan and then a con a lot of it actually started appearing on the two channel and five channel boards in Japan as well. I know it's complicated, but there's a big mess where all of this started, and it all points to the channel boards both in America and apparently in Japan outside of the channisphere or in Happenese Internet. You have the blogger sphere, because blogs

are still a really huge still in Japan. You have these blogs are more in touch with like conspiracy theories, subculture, with the people who are just really really way to go into it, honestly, so, Sarah said, blogging is still a very big thing in Japan. As Q and On began to gain traction on the Chan boards, Japanese conspiracy theory bloggers transferred that information onto their blogs. The blogs

spread like wildfire. They've got a lot of things, and eventually some of Japan's many so called new religious movements began to take notice. In short, some cults in Japan began posting about Q and On. Quite early on. There were blogs that were owned and operated by people who are, you know, either running cults, are or affiliated the culting movements. There's one in particular as a new age a wellness cult.

It's run out of Hiurussima, and they have three blog lugs and one in Japanese like two in English, and they're already selling you privacy ship. They also have Haywald conspiracy theory newsletters with prophecies and times bullshit. They're just throwing it all together. These are like some of the original pioneers like spreading Q and on, but also showing how cu not could be adapted over here on the

Japanese Internet for their domestic audience. So basically, when Q and On came out, it was very similar to what some of these cults in Japan believe in already doomsday prophecies, all different ideas and conspiracy theories fling together to project one kind of idea that this specific cult adheers to.

Sounds a lot like Q and on, right, So instead of going against Q and on some of these cults, is Sarah mentioned just picked up and ran with it and said, yeah, this is something we believe in as well. It took a while, but over the years Q and on conspiracy theories started to gain traction in Japan because of these people that were translating them and putting them out on their blogs. So let's go to now people who are translating Q and on stuff into Japanese. They're

starting to give some actual traction. And the biggest one is ari Ari's translating all of the Q drops. She's translating q map dot pub and she's doing is professional quality. So this person Ariy that Sarah is talking about. She starts translating Q and On texts into Japanese very professionally.

They're well done. Everybody can understand them. This gives Air some credibility within the global Q and On movement, and before you know it, she is then promoted by the regular US Q and ON crowd Q and on h Q Q and on General Command whatever, the main group of people that have helped spread this all over the world. So then Area is getting promoted by them. The circle is complete, the networks are made, and Q and On starts to grow larger in Japan. So this little movement

starts to can't call less around Area's propaganda output. Aria's little movement would become Q Army Japan Flin. That's right, she said, Q Army Japan Flynn. This is in regards to Mike Flynn, Mike Flynn being one of the biggest Q and On proponents in the US, probably in the

whole world. If you remember. Mike Flynn is a retired U. S Army lieutenant general who became the twenty five U S National Security Advisor for Trump before he was sacked after twenty two days for lying about his connections to Russia Q Army Japan. Flynn was one of the first properly organized Q and On groups two for men a following in Japan. Obviously, they have this big allegiance to Mike Flynn, who many in the U s q and On scene also have an allegiance to. They call him

the General. You know how it goes coincidentally or maybe not, Mike Flynn was following several Q and on Japan accounts on Twitter before he was banned from the platform. One of the other Q and on groups in Japan, as if this wasn't complicated enough, became known as j NN. J Anon is a more mainstream friendly, looser collective of standard nationalists who buy into a lot of stupid conspiracy

theory stuff. But they are balls too well insane rep and Mike Flynn and saying that the emperor is like murdered and replaced the shadow clones in eighteen hundreds and there hasn't done a genuine emperor since then. So what's interesting here about what Sarah just said is that Q and On Japan at first took on the regular U s Q and On ideas and conspiracy theories but as you just heard, it later began to form in its

own region specific conspiracies. Take for example, Q and On's belief that Joe Biden is a body double and that he actually died some time ago. As Sarah just said, some of the Japanese Q and Ons are incorporating a very similar conspiracy theory into their own mythos, but they're drawing it from their own culture. Essentially, Q and on is the framework, but the followers are creating their own law. It sounds to me is if Q and On Japan

is a successful Q and on franchise. What's more, jn On was formed within an amalgamation of several different well organized cults in Japan. Jann is organized by offshoots of the Unification Church that carry around guns the gun needs standard Unification Church, Happy Science, Happiness Realization Party offshoots, and Yeah Fall and Gone. All of those groups mentioned, as I said, are fairly powerful cults in Japan, or New age religious movements as they like to be called. So

Q and On Japan is still spreading. It's got the backing of influential cults, and it feeds off of Q and on us to then form its own theories locally. So should people in Japan be worried about Q and on Japan, Well, it depends as the number of people

actually involved in it is kind of unknown. Sarah Planes, I think in a recent interview air from a you know, Q Army Japan flin and she said they had around like five hundred members, which means they have like five hundred members who have signed up to be like an actual member member, and they have been vetted and granted actual like membership status into an actual group, and they meet up at each other's houses and pastile propaganda train stations.

Now you might hear that and think, Okay, well five hundred there's millions of people in Japan, that's not such a big deal. But just think about what Sarah said. That's not just five people that are vaguely interested or are reposting the stuff that Airy puts out. That is five hundred people that have signed up as start up

members of Q Army Japan, Flynn. That's a very big movement that is connected, has very specific goals, and they all go out onto the street and spread the proper ganda, meet up at people's houses, talk about this stuff that isn't just an internet movement anymore. That is five people who sound highly motivated by a deeply worrying conspiracy theory that has already had dieret consequences, as we saw with

the Capital Building storming in January of this year. Now, hopefully Ariy is lying and there isn't five hundred members, but either way, Q Army Japan FLYNN is actually by the sounds of it, pretty well organized. And that's just one faction and you've got you know, the j and on that we discussed, the more magat oriented. You know, it's still like really not good ship. I don't really know how many you got there, but what I do know so is that like it doesn't really matter because

we know it's there and we're seeing it. We know there's a Q and UN presence here. We know that the cult is here, and it is a destructive cult. Destructive cults in Japan have a serious history. Take for example, am Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult responsible for the country's largest domestic terror attack. Members of am Shinrikyo released Sarah nerv gas onto the subways of Tokyo. They killed fourteen people in this attack and caused several thousand more serious injury.

They did this as a means to bring about some kind of apocalyptic scenario in Japan, when they believed only all members would survive. What's interesting about am shin Rikyo is that they had many, many members, They had hundreds of millions in cash, and they went on to form a global movement. Their ideology, much like Q and On tour families apart and ruined relationships is a destructive cult.

Innocence that it causes lasting psychological, in emotional damage to anyone who gets drawn in is a destructive cult, and sense that it's tearing families apart. And it's a destructive cult in the sense that, as we've seen demonstrated multiple occasions, there's a prevnsity for racticalization viles. How concerned should we

be about Q and On Japan. I'm not gonna sit here and say I think they could be the next I can say that they are similar to them, and I can say that they're a destructive cult in all the ways that own ones. But I also don't think that you have to have, you know, multiple murders and terrorist attacks on your hand to then be taken seriously I think people should be concerned because there is a cult that's actively recruiting and hurting people. So that is

q and On Japan. Born from the radical ideas of the more conventional U S q and On crowd, the q and On Japan crowd seems to have started franchising itself into more radical groups, and some are even organizing with proper membership lists and activities for the other q and Ons to do. Now, I just want to say, hopefully me and Sarah are wrong. Hopefully the comparisons to

aum Shinrikyo are completely baseless. However, I think it is very much worth mentioned in such things in the context of a cult building up building steam in Japan, and one that specifically caused for violence against people that don't believe the same things that they do. Hopefully none of

this ever turns violent. To get an idea of how badly q and On has begun hurting people, hurting families all over the world, next week we're going to hear firsthand from someone who helps families affected by human on. In one case, the results of the q and On ideology was potentially deadly. Q Clearance is brought to you by I Heart Radio and Coudata Media. I'm Jake Hanrahan. You can find me online at Jake Underscool Hanrahan. That's h A N A h A N. You can get

Q clearance merch at dark wash dot net. This episode was produced by myself, with fact checking and additional research by Sarah Hightower. The music is by Sound Black and the sound was mixed by Thomas Griffin at Splicing Block, Unperple and Unpert Countle