Q believers and Alex Jones fans are the REAL pedophiles. Seriously. I can prove it.

Before I get to the meat of this piece, a couple of points:

Bill Maher's takedown of Q was the funniest thing I've seen since Jon Stewart's takedown of Glenn Beck. When paranoids inspire parody, magic happens.

There is a Q confession. Well, a semi-confession. Okay, not even that. It's...it's...

Well, whatever it is, it's this. This alleged behind-the-scenes revelation came out three months ago but popped into my consciousness just now.

What I am admitting to you is that “Q” is fake. The real people behind “Q” are those that are affiliated with CBTS, as well as some from 4chan and 8chan, and some from reddit. It’s a big group and yes I was a part of it. That’s all it is, one big research group with skill sets to make this all believable. I have no reason to lie.

And we have no reason to believe this "confession," since the source is anonymous. 

Interestingly, I learned about this confession from Henry Makow, the Canadian far-right conspiracy-monger and anti-feminist whom I have discussed in previous posts. He says that he disbelieves in Q.

In the past, I've argued that Makow could be Q. My suspicion is based on Makow's association with a small group of people notorious for producing bogus conspiracy texts. The group includes Peter Stahl, Gregory Douglas and Walter Storch, who may all be the same person, as Makow himself admits. Hell, as far as I know, the "group" could be one man using many names, including the name "Henry Makow."

They (or he) came out of The Barnes Review, a spin-off from The Spotlight, a notoriously pro-fascist conspiracy rag published by Willis Carto. During the Dubya years, The Barnes Review published an elaborate fraud called "The Voice of the White House," which now seems like a dry run for Q-anon. These funsters have also dabbled in high-stakes art forgery.

Since there is such a strong overlap between Makow's writings and Q's claims -- for example, they both seem obsessed with JFK Jr. -- I still suspect that our leading Q suspect is either HM or one of his buddies from The Barnes Review. If I'm wrong, I'll happily apologize.

Why Q believers are the real pedophiles. My second video in the Fear Marketeers series was about Roman Polanski. (Do me a favor and punch up the view count, willya? It stands, at present, at an embarrassing 1.) The latter part of this short film touches on the popular right-wing claim that Hollywood is run by Satanic pedophiles. To "prove" this assertion, rightists point to Roman Polanski's rape of Samantha Geimer, a crime which occurred forty years ago -- and never mind the fact that Samantha Geimer mentions nothing about Satanic cults or massive conspiracies in her book.

While researching the video, I decided to learn what psychologists have to say about pedophilia. Turns out the Polanski case is best described in terms of hebephilia, not pedophilia. (Not that this excuses anything, of course.)

Just how common is pedophilia? Merely asking the question is disturbing -- and the answer is more disturbing still. From Psychology Today:

The prevalence of pedophilic disorder is unknown, but the highest possible prevalence in the male population is approximately three to five percent. The prevalence in the female population is thought to be a small fraction of the prevalence in males.

Other online sources give similar numbers -- and frankly, those numbers are much higher than I would have suspected. To put the matter in perspective, here are the numbers on homosexuality:

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a sexual orientation law think tank, released a study in April 2011[82] estimating based on its research that 1.7 percent of American adults identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent identify as bisexual.

Popular culture has led many Americans to think that homosexuality is far more common than it actually is. In short and in sum, current science indicates that there are more pedophiles than gays.

I find these results almost impossible to believe.

Unnervingly, the number of pedophiles substantially exceeds the number of hebephiles. Nota bene: Not all pedophiles actually molest children, and not all child molesters are pedophiles.

Why go into all of this? We need to know the current state of research in order to argue against the right-wing conspiracy-mongers who believe that a pedophile cabal runs Hollywood and the political world. There is no evidence of this cabal. But obviously, there must be pedophiles in both the film industry and in Washington, because the science says three percent of the male population has pedophile tendencies.

That percentage must hold true in all groups more or less equally. Right?

Wrong.

Researchers have also uncovered another fact about pedophilia -- a key finding which the Q believers and Alex Jones fans probably would prefer not to discuss.

Testing individuals from a variety of referral sources inside and outside the criminal justice system as well as controls, these studies found associations between pedophilia and lower IQs, poorer scores on memory tests, greater rates of non-right-handedness, greater rates of school grade failure over and above the IQ differences, lesser physical height, greater probability of having suffered childhood head injuries resulting in unconsciousness, and several differences in MRI-detected brain structures.

Now, there's no way to determine if people in Hollywood have a greater-than-normal incidence of childhood head injury and left-handedness, although I doubt that such is the case. But IQ is something we can address.

Everyone loves to pretend that Hollywood is run by idiots. But the truth is that the film industry attracts many incredibly smart people -- witty, sharp, well-read and college-educated. It's a notoriously difficult field to enter, due to the fierce competition for jobs. Slow-witted, inarticulate individuals don't get those high-paying gigs. Even the gaffers aren't dullards.

Visit YouTube and watch some interviews with screenwriters. Now watch a few videos featuring Trump-supporting conspiracy buffs. You tell me which group is more likely to attract people who sound like Lenny in Of Mice and Men.

Frankly, movies are dumb because the audience is dumb. Thoughtful, gripping dramas in the tradition of Eugene O'Neill don't make money. The next Avengers movie will make a billion dollars.

IQ testing may be controversial, but it's still a useful metric. In this Washington Post ranking of states by IQ scores, the blue states generally do better than the red ones, though there are exceptions. (Hawaii, you need to step up your game.) California -- the home of Hollywood -- comes in at #34, which I find shocking low. But California is a big, BIG state which includes many agricultural areas and rural communities.

Again: The intense competition for high-paying jobs in the film industry means that very few low-IQ people will ever find employment in that field.

Now look at the YouTube videos produced by people who listen to Alex Jones and who believe in Q-Anon. Do these individuals seem well-read? Are their messages delivered with eloquence and grace? Do they offer literary allusions and wordplay? Do they seem smart?

Or do they seem like the kind of people who might have been dropped on their heads in childhood?

The research is clear: Low-IQ people are much more likely than smart people to have an unhealthy sexual interest in children. If you take Q seriously, you probably aren't the sort of person who makes Sheldon Cooper feel envious. If you've purchased Alex Jones' magic pills, you probably aren't the sort of person who spends his time translating Finnegan's Wake into Chinese.

The Q believers think that the world is run by a pedophile cabal. But science tells us that pedos are unintelligent. If the people running the world are dummies, why are they running the world?