A former Republican Arkansas state senator appeared this afternoon on “Patriots Soapbox,” which is a 24/7 live source of content for the QAnon community on YouTube.
Linda Collins-Smith was elected to represent Arkansas Senate District 19 in 2014 and served in the office until she was defeated in primary elections in 2018 by Republican challenger James Sturch. She previously served in Arkansas’ House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013 on behalf of Arkansas’ District 80.
QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges Special Counsel Robert Mueller and President Donald Trump are secretly working in tandem to take down a global network of satanic pedophiles that purportedly involves top figures in the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Since its inception, the QAnon community has incorporated a cornucopia of conspiracy theories into its lore, scanning 8chan posts spread by an anonymous poster known as “Q” for crumbs of validation.
NBC News reports that Patriot’s Soapbox is a “round-the-clock livestreamed YouTube channel for Qanon study and discussion” that was founded after Reddit suspended a subreddit dedicated to promoting the “Q” posts. Some in the QAnon community, NBC reports, have come to believe that the people behind the YouTube channel may actually be responsible for creating “Q” posts.
On Twitter, an account called “Indy News” announced that Collins would be appearing on Patriot’s Soapbox today. Collins shared the tweet to her own profile and responded that she was looking forward to appearing on the show.
And sure enough, this afternoon, Collins called into Patriot’s Soapbox alongside Arkansas “Angel Mom” Kathy Hall.
“I’m so proud to be with you all,” Collins said as she appeared on the stream.
As Collins spoke, a QAnon post was displayed in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Above it, viewer comments scrolled by, many thanking Collins for appearing on the show. Collins did not speak directly about QAnon, but rather discussed legislation to prevent Arkansas municipalities from adopting the “sanctuary cities” model regarding undocumented immigrants. Collins said she recently met with Arkansas Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman to speak about legislation that she believes would combat undocumented immigration.
Alan Kielan, who co-hosted today’s show, has a pinned tweet on his profile with the hashtag “#QArmy.”
Collins is following at least two pro-QAnon accounts on Twitter: The first is an Arkansas-based account that displays the name “Amy Q. Patriot;” the second displays the name “Tamara Davis.” Both accounts have “WWG1WGA”—an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan “Where We Go One, We Go All”—in their account bios. A Twitter advanced search did not find any instances where Collins posted original QAnon content on her account.
