Inside QAnon’s Bizarre Hollywood Invasion—and the Civil War Brewing Within Conspiracy-Land
On Saturday morning, protesters showed up to the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles, carrying signs. To passing drivers, the scene looked pretty typical. There have been protests in Los Angeles nearly every day since the civil uprising in June over police brutality, and the signs’ language resembled slogans popularized by the Black Lives Matter movement. One woman scrawled “CARE NOW” on her cardboard. Another sign read: “DEFUND HOLLYWOOD.”
Among the crowd was a 28-year-old resident of Phoenix, Arizona, named Tara Nicole, one of the event’s organizers. She passed out water bottles, fliers, and signs labeled “Freedom for the Children,” the group she co-founded just under two months ago. Back in June, Nicole said, a friend suggested they form a non-profit to raise awareness about child sex-trafficking. Nicole, who claims to work as a caretaker for patients with disabilities, alleges that “half of [her] career network has worked with legitimate survivors of abuse and human trafficking.”
The result was not a nonprofit, but a group with a Weebly website, Facebook page, and GoFundMe. With her co-founder, Bhairavi Shera, Nicole planned Freedom for the Children’s first event: an “annual international multi-city” march “to expand global awareness of child exploitation and human trafficking.”