An English professor at a community college in Arizona started out the new school year by showing students a QAnon YouTube video during class, the Phoenix New Times reported.
According to four students who spoke to the Phoenix newspaper, Douglas Belmore, a part-time English professor at Mesa Community College, showed the 14-minute video in at least two different classes. In one class he played it after discussing the semester syllabus and in another while he spoke about the conspiracy theory that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and is posing as the infamous “Q” user who started the theory on the controversial website 4chan.
QAnon followers believe that cannibalistic pedophiles are working to run the American government, the media, and the entertainment industry. They also subscribe to the conspiracy that President Trump is leading the charge to arrest those involved in the pedophile ring, which, some adherents believe, includes the Obamas, the Clintons, the Bushes and even late-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
After Belmore showed the video in one class, he reportedly used several more minutes of class time to discuss his beliefs about the theories — that JFK Jr., who died in 1999, is “Q” and that Trump will catch all the criminals. Another student told the New Times that the professor raised the QAnon topic “out of nowhere” and was just “babbling” about it throughout class. The students told the New Times they didn’t really care that their professor used class time to talk about his conspiracy theories.
“It’s a chill class because he goes over the quizzes with us,” one student said. “It’s weird though, because you have politics being spouted at you for an hour instead of being taught actual English stuff.”
When a New Times reporter confronted Belmore about the videos after one of his classes, Belmore repeatedly answered the reporter’s questions with: “Who is Q?” Belmore did not immediately return TPM’s requests for an interview.
A spokesperson for the community college told TPM that the school is dealing with the issue currently and will take “appropriate action” once they have more information about what took place.
