That claim – whether it was made in jest or sincerity is impossible to tell – spiralled into allegations of a vast paedophilic conspiracy centred on Comet Pizza, a restaurant in Washington DC.Ī year later, a 4chan user with the handle “Q Clearance Patriot” appeared, claiming to be a government insider tasked with sharing “crumbs” of intel about Donald Trump’s planned counter-coup against the deep state forces frustrating his presidency. QAnon has its roots in the “pizzagate” conspiracy, which emerged four years ago after users poring over hacked Democratic party emails on the message board 4chan said that, if you replaced the word “pizza” with “little girl”, it looked as if they were discussing eating children. It’s hard to describe the movement that Philip fell into. That, Rachel says, is what led him to QAnon. Philip began to research what this sinister purpose might be. Philip was frustrated that Rachel wasn’t taking his concerns seriously: someone had to be benefiting from the situation, he insisted, and events such as Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle “eye test” only increased his belief that “they” knew the pandemic was fake, and the nation was being kept indoors for a more sinister purpose.

Initially, Philip and Rachel (their names have been changed for this article) discussed his fears, but as lockdown went on, their conversations stopped. “The regularly changing and conflicting information that was coming from the government added to the feeling in him that they were making things up or covering something up,” Rachel says now. For him, it seemed there must be more to it than the authorities struggling to cope with a novel virus and evolving expert advice. She played more video games than normal, and felt stressed at work, but as far as possible she managed. Initially, Rachel coped in the way many others did. They had to attend a family funeral while remaining socially distanced.

They were unable to meet up with their four adult sons and daughters. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, they had both been working every day now Philip found himself furloughed, while Rachel was put on rotation with other essential staff, working fewer shifts at odd hours. Almost overnight, the couple, both in their early 50s, found themselves cut off from friends, family and colleagues. A s with many others in Britain, lockdown hit Rachel and her husband, Philip, hard.

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