Vanderbilt
How a South Carolina mom went from believing in QAnon to becoming an anti-Trumper in under a month
On the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration, 27-year-old Ashley Vanderbilt was glued to her television screen.
The stay-at-home mom from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - a devoted follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory - was awaiting an explosive event.
"I was convinced that we were going to have a blackout and the emergency broadcasting system would go off," she told Insider. "Joe Biden, the politicians there, the Hollywood elites, they would all be arrested."
Vanderbilt stocked up on groceries, filled her car up with gas, and prepared herself for the advent of 'The Storm.'
Joshua Zitser
Sat, February 20, 2021, 2:10 AM
ashley vanderbilt qanon supporter
Ashley Vanderbilt was a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory until Inauguration Day. Getty Images
Ashley Vanderbilt, 27, started believing in the QAnon conspiracy theory last fall.
After Inauguration Day, the South Carolina mom started to question the fringe group's beliefs.
In an interview with Insider, she described her transformation from a QAnon fanatic to a potential Democrat voter.
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On the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration, 27-year-old Ashley Vanderbilt was glued to her television screen.
The stay-at-home mom from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - a devoted follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory - was awaiting an explosive event.
"I was convinced that we were going to have a blackout and the emergency broadcasting system would go off," she told Insider. "Joe Biden, the politicians there, the Hollywood elites, they would all be arrested."
Vanderbilt stocked up on groceries, filled her car up with gas, and prepared herself for the advent of 'The Storm.'
The Storm is the day on which many QAnon followers expected former President Donald Trump to miraculously hold onto power, arrest liberal elites, and execute those considered to be traitors.
QAnon forums had predicted that following the deadly US Capitol insurrection, the prophesized reckoning would occur on Inauguration Day.
"When Kamala Harris was sworn in, I started to get a little nervous," Vanderbilt told Insider.
Then, her television glitched. "It froze and my heart dropped," Vanderbilt recalled. "I thought: 'Oh my god, it's going to happen.'"
She then watched horrified as Biden, to her disbelief, was sworn into office.
"I started crying, the tears were flowing, I couldn't stop," Vanderbilt said.
'I was wrong'
For many adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, as Vanderbilt once was, Inauguration Day was the realization of their worst fears.
Like other QAnon believers, Vanderbilt believed Biden's victory would have terrifying consequences.
"I thought that anybody who was registered as a Republican would get sent off to reeducation camps," she told Insider. "The Democrats were going to start shutting churches and it would escalate to the point of them beginning to execute Christian people."
Vanderbilt was inconsolable. She called her mother in tears.
"I was crying, saying that China is going to take over, that we were all going to die, that we were not going to be able to go to church anymore," she recalled.
She went on Facebook and decided to check-in with her fellow QAnon believers to make sense of Biden's swearing-in. "I wanted to see what they had to say," she said.
Many in the Facebook group were still holding out hope for The Storm. Many clung to March 4 - the day that Trump's most fanatical followers think that the former president will be sworn in.
The belief that Trump will return to power on March 4 is rooted in the "sovereign citizen" movement's outlandish beliefs.
The conspiracy theory is that a law enacted in 1871 secretly turned the US into a corporation. All presidents before 1871 were inaugurated on March 4. According to the sovereign citizen movement, the next valid inauguration will occur on March 4, 2021, and Trump will become the US's 19th president.
Vanderbilt, however, is done with these tangled fantasies.
"I just didn't believe it anymore. It just didn't make sense to me," Vanderbilt told Insider. "I didn't know how a president could be sworn in, it could look so official, and then things could still change."
Part of her newfound skepticism came from disappointment. "The heartbreak and letdown that I felt from us being wrong, it was like somebody had died or I'd gone through a horrible breakup," she said.
Having accepted that Trump was out of office, she decided to post a video on TikTok.
"I was wrong," she told her followers.
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