The squat man with hair as white as snow slowly lifts his hooded head to the camera. His eyes full of fear dart back and forth before he quickly pulls down his hood.
“Hi,” he says, his face suddenly brightening. “I hear I’m wanted.”
This is Agent Margaritaville. He’s a YouTuber, a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and, since May, a wanted man. The 57-year-old, whose real name is Gerald Brummell, is wanted on two charges of engaging “in conduct to impede performance of justice duties.”
Toronto police told VICE that Brummell has yet to be arrested or turn himself in and they are “actively looking for him.”
Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Brummell has been a bit player in Canada’s conspiracy world for a long time—well before QAnon was on the scene. He’s been active since at least 2013 when he started a website about the murderer Russell Williams, an army colonel who was found guilty of killing two women, and how he believes police officers covered for him. He’s also spoken out repeatedly out against children’s services that he believes kidnap children.
This isn’t the first time Brummell has dealt with the law. Court documents confirm Brummell has been convicted of numerous types of fraud and has pretended to be a lawyer. In a 2015 lawsuit, he alleged there was a conspiracy against him and sued his neighbours for $7 million. The judge described him as a “recreational litigant who appears to enjoy playing the part of a lawyer to the point of holding himself out as such for the purpose of committing criminal fraud.”
“I am of the view that his determination to bend the evidence and the law to his particular view is only limited by his imagination,” reads the decision that went in favour of his neighbours.
VICE reached out to Brummell through several emails connected to his social media profiles but did not receive a response.
But Brummell has addressed the charges several times on his YouTube channel and has even posted a video focusing on an officer he believes is hunting him. In the video he shows photos of a police officer and his family (which include young children). Brummell also includes links to social media pages of the officer and his family. Near the end of the video, the officer’s mother appears with a target over her head and text that says she and her husband “are fucked.”
A Toronto police spokesperson told VICE that “due to the nature of the charges, we are unable to provide more detail at this time as we would not want to potentially identify any victims.” Typically the charge means threatening or intimidating a witness, a justice system worker, or journalist and is punishable with up to 14 years in prison.
In a rambling video about the charges, Brummell says police are sending swat teams and canine units after him. He says he was charged after calling a judge about a conspiracy he believes he found regarding a number of other judges. Brummell has often targeted judges and lawyers, saying in one of his most popular videos that the majority of them should be “hung.” Brummell also uploaded what could be called a diss track against those looking for him featuring him reading rhyming couplets over a hip-hop beat.
Like many other theorists, Brummell, who isn’t the most prolific or interesting theorist, seized upon the massive, ever-changing conspiracy of QAnon. His YouTube channel has posted 284 videos since June 2019 that have garnered over a million views in total. On other social media channels, such as bitchute, he’s uploaded popular QAnon “documentaries” for his followers.
Brummell was able to parlay these views and an aggressive, and frequently suspended, Twitter persona into a small following which he calls “the Children’s Army." Brummell and his team are “investigating” into a pizzagate-type conspiracy in Canada, purporting that the justice system is made up of a cabal of pedophiles. The members all take codenames: there’s Agent Sputnik, Agent Sky High, and Agent Monkey Wrench. One of his followers even has “Special Agent at The Children’s Army” listed on a LinkedIn page they made.
“This isn’t a social club; you're going to be going out and finding out information about bad people,” Brummell says in a recruitment video for the Children’s Army posted on YouTube. “You’re going to be staking out bad people’s homes. You’re going to be staking out cannibal restaurants.”
Some people say there's a Trudeau to blame
Brummell picked a good time to begin recruiting as there has been an explosion in conspiracy believers during the pandemic. “People feel that they’ve lost control and the moment that happens some people turn to conspiracy theories,” Stephen Lewandowsky, the chair of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, told VICE previously. “It provides psychological comfort to think that there’s this cabal of bad people out there who are responsible for this.”
Do you have information about far-right extremists or conspiracy theorists? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Mack Lamoureux securely on Signal on 1 780-504-8369 on Wire at @mlamoureux, or by email at mack.lamoureux@vice.com
Earlier in the year, Brummell became known outside of his niche Canadian conspiracy circle after claiming he had proof of a $68 billion money transfer Jeffery Epstein made to a Canadian bank. Despite the pleas of many of his followers and co-conspiracy theorists, Brummell did not make his evidence known. His most popular video lists celebrities who have visited Epstein Island. His second most popular video shows him standing in front of a green shipping container that he claims was used to traffic children. In the video, he says the name on the container, Evergreen, is a reference to Hilary Clinton and that the pandemic is a cover as “marines are now rescuing millions of children from the underground.”
Canadian conspiracy players tend to intermingle. Brummell frequently amplified Norman Traversy, a conspiracy theorist who has raised over $140,000 in his mission to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from office. After Traversy handed over documents to the U.S. embassy, which he promised would lead to the conviction of Trudeau, Brummell made him a congratulations video. Frequently Brummell has said Traversy and a former People’s Party of Canada candidate were members of the “Children’s Army.”
Two videos on his channel showcase 24 Sussex Drive, the home of the prime minister and his family. In the first video, posted in February, Brummell and a collaborator (who is wearing a shirt that implies the Trudeau Foundation has the same logo as a pedophile group) go to the home's gates. Brummell starts shaking the gates and a guard tells him to stop over an intercom. In the second video, taken on July 1, the man with the Trudeau shirt—referred to only as Agent A1—goes back to the gates.
“A1 quietly returned to the #Pizzagate and reminded Justin what we promised him in February,” reads the video’s description.
The next day, a different man, this one heavily armed, rammed down the gates of Rideau Hall (where the prime minister and his family currently live). The man, Corey Hurren, had previously posted QAnon and far-right memes on social media. Hurren allegedly had a note on him that outlined several grievances he had with Trudeau, including how Canada was “becoming communist.” Hurren was arrested after a two-hour standoff with the RCMP and currently faces 22 charges.
According to police and the agent himself, Margaritaville remains at large.
Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.
from VICE https://ift.tt/3jzEEre
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment