(CNN) – Ashley Vanderbilt says her four-year-old daughter Emmerson knew that “something was wrong with her mother”.
“I wasn’t 100 percent there as I should have been,” she recalls.
After the November election, she spent days on TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, becoming indoctrinated in the world of QAnon. On the day of her inauguration, she was convinced that if President-elect Joe Biden took office, the United States would literally become a communist country. She was afraid of having to hide with her daughter.
Many QAnon believers have clear political motives, but Vanderbilt says she is a passive participant in politics.
“I was always someone you just tell me what to do and I do it. I grew up hearing that we were Republicans, so I was always that straight red ticket, ”she explained in an interview with CNN near her home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, last Saturday.
She doesn’t watch the news. “What have we heard in the past four or five years? Don’t watch the news. “Fake news.” ‘Fake news’. “
Vanderbilt worked in a construction company’s office. But, like millions of Americans in 2020, she says she lost her job at the start of the Covid-19 blockade. Feeling depressed and with more time available, she started spending a lot of time online.
The 27-year-old mother is an avid user of the TikTok video app. It was there, she says, that she was first introduced to QAnon.
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