Child Sexual Abuse, QAnon, Conspiracy Theories, Gen Z
Independent: I grew up in a cult and was married at 12 — in Texas
Politico: I Left QAnon in 2019. But I'm Still Not Free.
Dazed: A brief explainer on Gen Z's Birds Aren't Real 'conspiracy theory'
Independent: I grew up in a cult and was married at 12 — in Texas
"My mother was a liberal feminist; my father was a religious zealot who left the family to live by the cult leader.
Two months before I married, I had my first period. I still wore a training bra. I was 12 and had never kissed a boy, never fathomed marriage. "Repeat after me: I, Habiba, take you, Ali, to be my husband for the duration of 90 days," Ali*, my new husband, said.
Within seconds, I was married. In an Islamic Temporary Marriage, the marriage isn't nulled with a divorce, but rather a specific period is set — in our case, 90 days. No witnesses are needed, and unlike traditional Islamic marriages, the man doesn't need to support the woman. But if the girl or woman gets pregnant, the baby isn't considered illegitimate.
Two months before I married, I had my first period. I still wore a training bra. I was 12 and had never kissed a boy, never fathomed marriage. "Repeat after me: I, Habiba, take you, Ali, to be my husband for the duration of 90 days," Ali*, my new husband, said.
Within seconds, I was married. In an Islamic Temporary Marriage, the marriage isn't nulled with a divorce, but rather a specific period is set — in our case, 90 days. No witnesses are needed, and unlike traditional Islamic marriages, the man doesn't need to support the woman. But if the girl or woman gets pregnant, the baby isn't considered illegitimate.
After my parents divorced when I was five, I spent the school year in Tucson, Arizona with my Jewish mother, and summers and holidays with my Muslim father in a cult in Texas. The cult leader didn't live with the members but lived an hour away on a hill with his three wives and multiple children. Polygamy is allowable in Islam, and a man can marry up to four wives.
The summer after I completed seventh grade, I flew to my dad's as normal — but this was to be a different summer to all the others. The leader asked my father if I could live with him at his residence to help care for his four young children. No other person had been asked, so my father quickly agreed, thinking it was a wonderful opportunity for me to be close to the leader.
On the first night, the leader's adopted son Ali snuck into my room and violated me. By the third night, he feared he was behaving un-Islamically, so he married himself to me until the end of August when I'd return to my mother in Tucson for eighth grade."
Politico: I Left QAnon in 2019. But I'm Still Not Free.
Some say the movement is losing its power. But I see the opposite.
"I left QAnon back in 2019, but I don't seem to be able to walk away. I talk about my experience a lot — to the Washington Post, CNN and Rolling Stone magazine among many others. I even apologized to Anderson Cooper on his show for having once thought that he ate babies.
I'm one of the few former followers willing to go on the record with their story, which means I'm a source for journalists and researchers and sometimes also a guide for former believers who want to talk to someone who understands what they went through. I'm also one of the senior moderators of the QAnonCasualties forum on Reddit, a message board for family members of QAnon believers. I might have left, but I still have a close look into how the conspiracy theory is spreading and affecting people.
These days, QAnon isn't getting the headlines it was after Jan. 6. I guess most of the world doesn't pay attention to QAnon anymore unless its followers do something especially bizarre, like the recent gathering in Dallas where hundreds met in hopes of seeing John F. Kennedy Jr. alive. But from where I stand I don't see QAnon fading away — I see it getting stronger.
I was sucked into QAnon in the winter of 2017. At the time, I casually followed various conspiracies online and the internet led me to Q. I was living in Australia, where I still live, but I had been interested in American politics since spending six months in the U.S. a few years before. I had rooted for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary and felt let down when he lost.
When I found QAnon, I didn't just flirt with it — I fell deep. I internalized the idea that the world was run by the Cabal, a Satan-worshiping child-molesting group of liberal politicians, Hollywood moguls, billionaires and other influential elites. I believed that Donald Trump was leading the fight against the Cabal and that there was a plan in place to defeat them. I couldn't wait for the coming of the Storm, QAnon's version of judgment day that would herald the announcement of martial law and a wave of public executions. I was looking forward to the execution of Hillary Clinton, whom Q portrayed as a pedophile and a murderer. I would have cheered. QAnon showed me that I can be enthusiastic about violence, and it's hard to forgive myself for that.
I understood QAnon was a lie on June 13, 2019. Just minutes after I wrote a post online laden with QAnon conspiracies, I watched a YouTube video that reviewed the times that Trump used the phrase "tippy top" throughout the years. Q said that when Trump said this phrase, he was signaling to Anons, "the patriots," that everything was going according to the plan in the fight with the Deep State. But the video showed that Trump had always used this phrase a lot, long before he ever ran for the presidency and Q came to be. That's when it clicked for me: This was all a lie."
Dazed: A brief explainer on Gen Z's Birds Aren't Real 'conspiracy theory'
Fighting misinformation with lunacy, the parody movement's followers pretend that the US government replaced birds with secret government drones sent to spy on humans.
"In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, "Birds Aren't Real."
On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren't Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral.
Last month, Birds Aren't Real adherents even protested outside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.
The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds don't exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren't Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan.
It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren't Real and the movement's followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.
What Birds Aren't Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It's Gen Z's attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism."
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