episode 2: Pastel QAnon, Tradwives and Fangirls

Episode Title: Conspiracy, She Wrote - Episode 2

[00:00:00] CRISTEN: This podcast started in a baby pool. One of those big adult-sized baby pools that were the backyard accessory of hot COVID summer 2020. 

That's where I was getting pruney one afternoon when a socially distant friend of mine started talking way too earnestly about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the sinister goings-on of the deep state. 

"I'm just asking questions," she told me. 

Those four words said it all. My friend had been conspiracy-pilled, and I was confused. I imagined conspiracy theorists as unhinged Alex Jones.

[00:00:56] ALEX JONES: You're a hatchet man of the new world order. You're a hatchet man.

[00:01:00] CRISTEN: She'd never mentioned chemtrails or false flags or Hillary Clinton's email server. The stereotype in my head looked nothing like her. And yet there she was, across the baby pool, just asking questions.

Welcome to Conspiracy She Wrote. I'm your host, Cristen Conger.

Last episode, we met the very unlikable foremother of American conspiracism, the woman who dug the original rabbit hole that my baby pool friend was tumbling down. Also, last episode, there was no internet. That conspiracy foremother had to spend years doing her own research. 

But oh, what a difference Wi-Fi makes.

[00:02:01] ANNIE KELLY: I think conspiracy theories have genuinely become more mainstream than they were in the 1990s.

[00:02:09] CRISTEN: Annie Kelly is a researcher and journalist who specializes in anti-feminist movements, conspiracy theories, and the far right. She's also the UK correspondent for the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

[00:02:25] ANNIE KELLY: I think one of the things that we've found is that although it doesn't seem that conspiracy theories have become more common, they are much more part of our mainstream lives in a way than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago. They're much harder to avoid essentially.

[00:02:41] CRISTEN: It's also much harder to avoid women's active participation in that mainstreaming.

[00:02:47] ANNIE KELLY: So I think for one thing, women's participation in QAnon had a huge impact on just how quickly it propagated.

[00:02:56] CRISTEN: QAnon is the totally made-up conspiracy theory that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles masquerading as rich and powerful politicians, financiers, and Hollywood celebrities.

[00:03:13] ANNIE KELLY: Conspiracy theory, particularly in the 1990s, was often thought of as a very male phenomenon. That wasn't always the full story, but I think of maybe what we think of as classic conspiracy culture. So I'm thinking about things like UFOs and the JFK assassination, even 9/11. This kind of conspiracy culture, which was focused on digging into certain events in the past, did tend to attract more men.

Now, there are really notable exceptions to this, of course.

[00:03:49] MAE BRUSSELL: Good afternoon, this is Mae Bressel in Carmel, California. That's conspiracy number 200, exactly 200, June 9th, 1975. I've been on this program for four years. If you can't make tapes of these shows, you can buy cassettes for 3 dollars and 60 cents [...] compiled by a member of the House of Representatives who continues to perpetuate the lie that Lee Harvey Oswald was deranged, much less the assassin, when he never owned a rifle or shot a rifle…

[00:04:21] ANNIE KELLY: One of the highly respected JFK researchers, Mae Brussell, who had a radio show unpicking the JFK assassination and what she saw as a fascist takeover of the US government, was a woman. So it's not to say that these were spaces where no woman dared tread. 

But I think largely what was missing from this sphere was a different element of conspiracy theories, which often don't even really get categorized as conspiracy theory despite their importance to it, which is conspiracy theories that focus on religion, spirituality, wellness, health, and largely these have always been much more female-dominated spaces.

[00:05:01] CRISTEN: What was missing, in other words, was conspirituality, as in conspiracist plus spirituality. Also, as in the podcast called Conspirituality that some of y'all might have heard. 

Conspirituality is usually associated with New Age types—come for the crystals, stay for the I-don't-know birth control in your drinking water, that kind of thing. It was originally defined as an online movement, but as we learned last episode, women were getting conspiritual way before the internet. Nesta Webster, that conspiracy foremother we never asked for, believed she was a reincarnated French aristocrat, which got her just asking questions about the Illuminati a century ago.

So conspirituality is hardly new, but mix it with a global pandemic and Instagram, and you get Pastel QAnon. That term was coined in 2021 by digital extremism expert Marc-André Argentino. It refers to female QAnon influencers who'd initially built their followings as quote lifestyle bloggers, fitness instructors, diet influencers, esoteric spiritualists, or promoters of alternative healing, end quote.

[00:06:51] INFLUENCER: Well, bravo. The designers of this plandemic have crafted their drama masterfully. 

I'm a writer, a birth witness, a childbirth educator, and a coach. If my work resonates with you, please consider subscribing to my channel.

[00:07:12] CRISTEN: If pastel were a sound, it would be that birth witness's lullaby tone of voice. 

But the pastel in Pastel QAnon is a nod to its visuals. Influencers used the same kinds of content design apps like Canva to pivot their personal brands into conspiracies. With a few taps, they could turn disinformation into aesthetically pleasing grid carousels and stories. 

Think: Quote grams in soothing color palettes, the same style as a live, laugh, love wall print at home goods, except they said things like "Save our children" or "COVID is over."

Let's take a quick break.

[00:08:15] AD BREAK 1

[00:08:41] CRISTEN: QAnon first appeared on the fringe message board 4chan, but as Annie explains, it quickly spiraled from there onto mainstream social media platforms.

[00:08:41] ANNIE KELLY: When I attended a QAnon rally in the UK, here in London—which was already quite strange because it's supposedly about U.S. politics and the U.S. President. But it made its way all the way over here and to Germany and various other countries, I think even Japan. 

And when I attended that rally in London, it was predominantly women. And nearly all of them asked me if I was on Instagram and if they could add me.

[00:09:05] LONDON QANON RALLY CLIP: Can I ask a little bit about why you're here today?

I'm here today to support all the causes and the government that's just absolutely shitting on us right now and everything that's come to light and they can't hide it anymore and everything that's coming. It's going to be a big change in the next six to twelve months. And I'm excited to see it protect the people.

Great. And your sign, which I really liked, said "Prince Andrew, we just want to talk."

Yeah.

Would you mind explaining that a little bit to me for people who might not know what you mean?

She can explain this.

Prince Andrew, we just want to talk. Prince Andrew, we know you're on the logs. Come out of hiding and talk to us. Don't hide. Come confront us. We just want to ask some questions. Honesty is the best policy.

[00:09:51] CRISTEN: What they were saying about Prince Andrew being on the logs—they're referring to Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs. 

And the whole Epstein factor in QAnon is a prime example of how conspiracy-pilling works. In July of 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. A little over a month later, he is found dead in his jail cell. It is also a fact that Prince Andrew was one of many rich and powerful people with ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The classic conspiracy template is all there. A secret cabal of wealthy elites taking a private plane owned by a convicted sex offender? Facts! But remember the three key ingredients of conspiracy thinking, the ones that we highlighted last episode: Accidents happen, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. So if someone like my baby pool friend is understandably freaked out by the whole Epstein scandal, QAnon was there with an even bigger and scarier tale to tell of deep state cover-ups, child trafficking, and blood-guzzling Hollywood celebrities.

Here's one of the organizers speaking at that London QAnon rally.

[00:11:59] ANNIE KELLY: And so it became clear to me that the story of QAnon was also, I think, a story of how it spread through women's groups and women's social media. And spaces organized around women's interests—yoga, Instagram circles, for instance. 

So essentially, you know, I think it's inseparable when we're trying to talk about why is this conspiracy theory so popular? Why is it moving so fast? Particularly if it's something that we don't really understand or we find frightening or strange. Often it's worth looking at who's involved, who's spreading it. And again, not all women, but women do tend to be a bit more adept at that kind of thing.

[00:12:44] CRISTEN: And especially moms. Not all moms, but moms.

[00:12:48] ANNIE KELLY: Particularly in recent conspiracy movements, there has been a really strong positive self-identity for women involved in them. I'm thinking about things like QAnon, but also the anti-COVID vaccine movement. They often offered an identity for women as a kind of warrior mother who was protecting her family, shielding them from these poisonous and very dark malevolent forces that were trying to penetrate not just the family unit but their very bodies. 

I noticed in one of these groups they were sharing approvingly these funny TikTok videos which were kind of making fun of themselves. Where it showed a kind of absolutely baffled husband watching his wife as she read all of the kind of ultra-processed food chemical ingredients that were on their cereal boxes. She read them and kind of threw them all out while he just watched in astonishment. 

And on the one hand, it's sort of laughing at yourself. It's sort of saying I'm aware I'm going a bit extreme and I look a bit crazy to other people. But on the other hand, I felt it was actually a positive identity that these women were rallying around. It sort of says I go to extreme lengths to protect my family.

[00:14:12] CRISTEN: Have you noticed any ways that women's participation and visibility in QAnon has evolved since its kind of peak pandemic peak?

[00:14:25] ANNIE KELLY: I maybe didn't anticipate how this would often result in a dismissal of some of the I think understandable ways that women are drawn to conspiracy theories.

[00:14:40] CRISTEN: For example, Annie noticed a recurring theme in an anti-vax Facebook mom group she joined slash infiltrated for research. The group was made up of mostly women in the UK. And these women were, of course, suspicious and frustrated by what they perceived as doctors pushing the COVID vaccine on them. 

But discussions would often evolve into broader complaints of not being taken seriously at the doctor's office. Many would cite their own negative experiences during and after childbirth, feeling abandoned by the health care system as soon as they were no longer pregnant. To these women and mothers in the anti-vax group, if they couldn't trust doctors to properly care for them postpartum, then they couldn't trust doctors about vaccine safety.

[00:15:40] ANNIE KELLY: Now I think, you know, that is quite significant actually. That these women had connected what we understand is often quite a traumatic experience and that these women were essentially using that experience as a foundation for their lack of trust with something as crucial as vaccines. And it particularly concerned me when they were saying there's no way I'm getting my child vaccinated. 

So I think it's good that there has been a recognition that women are just as vital to the role of these conspiracy theories and their spread. But sometimes I'm concerned that that means that we've got a new sexist way of dismissing these conspiracy theories and particularly the ones which might, in terms of their content, sound ridiculous and obscene, but in terms of their appeal to people, they might have something important still to tell us about something that we do need to resolve. 

And so this kind of, you know, dismissive tone of kind of "Oh, anti-vax moms, crunchy moms," and things like that, I think can sometimes miss out on that aspect, that genuine trauma that I think I was reading about there. And I think, yeah, this is something very socially bonding that those groups offer. It also is a positive identity, an empowering way to conceive of yourself as a mother in the modern world.

[00:16:59] CRISTEN: Are tradwives part of conspiracy culture?

[00:17:04] ANNIE KELLY: So I first wrote about tradwives a long time ago, 2018, when it was a very niche subculture. And one that was very connected still to the alt-right. You know, there are still very clear white nationalist tradwives. But there are also ones who, um, I truly believe don't really have any kind of racial supremacist leanings, but are very committed to this specific gender role. 

But I think the way that conspiracy theories have become just the lingua franca almost of social media means that even these more mainstream, more palatable tradwives, I often notice will discuss how there is a conspiracy essentially to attract women away from this role, which is so obviously the natural and better way for women to be. 

It speaks to the fact that if you're very committed to this role as a stay-at-home mother and you don't simply believe that it's just better for you personally, but better for all women. Then you do kind of have to address the fact that there are lots of women out there who don't agree. Who actually like having a job and earning money and things like that. Which wouldn't make sense if it was just our natural biological instinct–unless those women had been tricked by somebody very powerful. 

So I think that's the connection there.

[00:18:31] CRISTEN: We have these themes then of tradwives and QAnon moms, you know, kind of deriving a sort of self-empowerment validation from conspiracy beliefs. Do you see a similar kind of positive identification at work if we're talking about celebrity and pop culture conspiracy theories as well, especially where maybe women and even girls are more openly visible in those kinds of spaces?

[00:19:09] ANNIE KELLY: Well, one thing that I found really charming about the connections with fandom and conspiracy theory culture is how it's actually much older than we think. I researched recently for an episode for QAnon Anonymous the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory.

[00:19:27] CRISTEN: Paul as in Paul McCartney of the Beatles. In the late 1960s, a conspiracy theory began circulating that he died in a car accident and had been replaced with a Paul McCartney lookalike contest winner to keep the band alive. Beatles fans scoured their music and album art looking for clues to confirm their morbid curiosity.

[00:19:56] ANNIE KELLY: The Beatles fandom was obviously primarily made up of teenage and college-aged girls. Now, they weren't the only ones who were propagating this, but I think it shows that this kind of thinking, this kind of pattern recognition, this way of bringing together all the clues, of acting like the detective, is not just the realm of men and it's not just sort of recently become a female phenomenon. 

With things like fandom as well, there is a real thrill I think that the participants get out of collectively researching and collaborating and bringing all of the facts that don't fit together and coming up with a theory together. 

So I think there's something kind of like very communal and very joyful about those activities, those behaviors.

[00:20:45] CRISTEN: And on that note, let's take a quick break.

[00:20:53] AD BREAK 2

[00:21:29] CRISTEN: You know, we have these two kinds of worlds of there's the political conspiracy theories with the more active and direct harms, and then we have this world of pop cultural conspiracy theories where there is fandom and pleasure and more positive forms of community building.

 Can we put them in conversation together or are they really kind of separate spheres?

[00:21:29] ANNIE KELLY: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great question actually because one thing that researching this "Paul is Dead" episode taught me was that maybe we were thinking about things like QAnon a little bit wrong and maybe we ought to have been researching them not just as a conspiracy theory, which everyone obviously understood QAnon was, but also as maybe a fandom phenomenon–but with a group of people that we typically don't think of as fandoms. We don't tend to think of politicians as having fans. And when we think of fans, we tend to think of teenage girls. 

But maybe I sort of noticed that a lot of the patterns were the same. This kind of understanding that Trump was sending the true believers of his fanbase secret messages. You would see QAnon groups go, you know, uh, light because they were so certain he was secretly signaling something to them. Now, you know, these groups were often made up of middle-aged people, primarily men, so we didn't think of it as a fandom phenomenon. 

But it's really not so different to the way that, you know, the top 1% of the fanbase, the one person who's really prepared to do the research, to dive in deep into the symbolism of what it is your idol is saying. There's actually a very similar phenomenon across the Beatles to One Direction and Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. And Donald Trump, strangely enough.

[00:22:56] CRISTEN: To be clear, Swifties hunting for Easter eggs about Taylor Swift's next new album is hardly equivalent to Trump stans storming the U.S. Capitol. But both point to the very nature of conspiracies.

[00:23:15] ANNIE KELLY: So I think this is really important to remember about conspiracy theories is that fundamentally they always are articulations about power, about who holds it, about who should have it, about how they're using it. Whether they target the powerful legitimately or claim to target the powerful, that is always the argument that they are making.

[00:23:36] CRISTEN: It's also part of the slippery nature of conspiracy theories is that often there is some kernel of truth or reality in there.

[00:23:50] ANNIE KELLY: Yeah, I think that's really true. I can think of conspiracy theories as something that people will often turn to when they need to bridge two facts that don't fit in their mind. And I think people do this quite a lot, including myself, a lot of the time when people do debunking efforts, what they're trying to debunk is the conspiracy theory that somebody has come up with to rationalize two facts that don't fit. 

But actually what they want to be doing, if they're really interested in changing this person's mind, they need to be going back to first principles in what sense. They need to be going back to what were the first two facts that didn't fit for that person that meant that this conspiracy theory made sense to them.

[00:24:30] CRISTEN: Is there any example that comes to mind of kind of the two facts not fitting?

[00:24:36] ANNIE KELLY: I'll give you two examples of this. 

When I was researching anti-feminist websites for my PhD, I noticed that the users would often end up coming up independently with conspiracy theories or drawing in existing conspiracy theories because there were two facts that didn't fit in their minds. 

One was that women were naturally inferior in almost every way—intellectually, emotionally, physically. And the second was that women dominated over society, in their mind, that men were an oppressed and subjugated class thanks to a very powerful feminist movement. So how does a group that's so clearly beneath you gain domination over you?

 This is actually something that a lot of supremacist groups will struggle with, this very simple problem. And it's also why conspiracy theories are so attractive because then you can say, well, they had outside help, you know, whether it is a kind of cabal of kind of financiers or Jewish people or just the Illuminati, anyone who is hell-bent essentially on turning society inside out for their own ends.

So that's quite an extreme example. But I'll give you an example I think from my own life, which is an example of me coming up with a conspiracy theory because two things don't make sense to me.

[00:25:57] CRISTEN: This was the early days of the COVID pandemic. Infection rates were soaring. Hospitals were overwhelmed. That is fact one. 

Fact two is how quickly the UK government allowed large indoor spaces to reopen. And those two facts did not fit for Annie. 

That is, until she heard that it was all because of insurance money. And since many members of government were also insurance company board members, it was in their financial interest to keep spaces open. Allegedly.

[00:26:41] ANNIE KELLY: No. This is one of those things where I didn't fact-check it. It just made sense to me. And you know, it just sort of solved essentially a problem in my mind for trying to figure out what was happening at quite a confusing time. 

Now that was an example of me, someone who researches conspiracy theories, basically just accepting a conspiracy theory because it sort of fitted something that didn't make sense to me before. 

So I think it's worth saying basically that this is something that we all do. It's just a kind of shorthand in a sense. Most research that's been done on the prevalence of conspiracy theories will find out that they're more normal than not. 

So the kind of image that we have of somebody who is in a tinfoil hat and is ranting and raving is not really accurate because I think most research that really drills down into conspiracy theories will find that it's actually you're stranger if you don't believe in any than if you do.

. . .

[00:27:46] CRISTEN: This season on Conspiracy She Wrote, rather than cold-plunging deeper into QAnon, we're keeping our all-seeing eye on famous women and celebrities. 

We'll get into absurd fictions about fake people, pregnancy bellies, satanic dance moves, a Super Bowl Psy-op, and so much more.

[00:28:11] MOYA BAILEY: One of the things that I think is so important about thinking about conspiracies and some of these issues is that they do have material consequences. They do impact the way that people are able to move through the world.

[00:28:27] CRISTEN: Why are certain famous women the target of conspiracy theories but not others? What kinds of real and imagined power are these conspiracy theories attempting to explain? And why are they sometimes irresistibly entertaining to engage with?

[00:28:50] BRIAN DONOVAN: We've also seen how celebrity can be weaponized and how when celebrities get involved with politics, sometimes there are unexpected consequences to that.

[00:29:05] CRISTEN: Grab your red string and follow along. 

You can follow Annie Kelly on Twitter @AnnieKNK and catch her appearances as the UK correspondent for the podcast QAnon Anonymous. 

Conspiracy She Wrote is an Unladylike Media production created, hosted, and executive produced by me, Cristen Conger. Lushik Lotus-Lee is our producer, Ameeta Ganatra is our engineer, and music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

Coming up next time.

[00:29:43] BRIAN DONOVAN: This is so strange. But the one conspiracy theory that is absolutely bonkers but is kind of interesting is this idea that she is the secret daughter of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey.

[00:29:59] CRISTEN: You're about to send me down a Google image rabbit hole, Brian!