For years, Clint Watts worked in the FBI in counterterrorism. He is the author of the book Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, and he joined me last week on The Gist for a two-part conversation about how his career and research inform his understanding of QAnon. A portion of that conversation is transcribed below; it has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mike Pesca: If you were writing your book now, QAnon would have to be in it somewhere, if not mentioned then at least referenced in the subtitle.

Clint Watts: For sure. You know, it's interesting, I think it was probably right about the time the book came out [that] QAnon was really gaining steam. And I was on at MSNBC and probably talked to you about it. And it was like, "This is what I'm going to be more worried about over time,"--the idea that people can connect around any idea they choose and build it into a juggernaut. And that's really what's happened over the last three years. It's pretty remarkable. [QAnon has] become its own belief system in a way. For other people it's entertainment. For some, it's a conspiracy. But it's remarkable how it's really overtaken an entire body of people and grown. This is always the case when we're talking about social media influence: When do you know it's for real? It's when you see it enter the physical world, when there's physical manifestations of it. Boogaloo is one recently.

Right. So with this, we're seeing the first violent outbreaks, but also we're seeing people just claim fealty to it and winning Republican primaries, which is a little different from some ways that election hackers could cause mayhem, or from how an ISIS adherent could kill people. There's no one in the mainstream who would say, "I'm ISIS and I approve this message, vote for me."

You're right on target with it. And somebody had pointed out to me, they're like, "Oh, this is just like when the Tea Party or the progressives ..." I'm like, "No, no, no, man." I remember the Tea Party. They had a very specific policy agenda right around what they were going to advance. When you listen to QAnon, it is an alternative reality they're trying to advance. They're not trying to argue about what we're going to do with this country when they win, when it moves into the political space or what's going on in terms of the country. They're literally advocating that the government has a secret society. And then I ask, when they're running for office now--what is it you would do if you won? Could you imagine being inside government institutions? And once these people are elected, you're going to have to answer to these conspiracies? You're going to be called to testify maybe, or write up reports. I just cringe for the government employees that will have to deal with that kind of stuff here, maybe in the next year.