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Sophie
Call Zone Media.
Robert
Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast brought to you by no major streaming networks. That's not a thing that we're doing. Ignore whatever it is Sophie says after me.
Sophie
That was so fucked up. That was so fucked up. That was so fucked up. I can't even tell you guys how many meetings that I've been in. I can't even tell you. I was, like, up at 5 in the morning clipping together something for I work so hard. And Robert's like, mind you, you work so hard.
Robert
We're trash.
Sophie
Anyway.
Robert
Hard for our network. That has nothing to do with a major streaming service.
Prop
Anyway, try so hard and come so far.
Sophie
Wow, I'm really glad. Props here for this. Anyways, just. Just wanted to give a little PSA at the top. That if you're an audio listener, not a single thing has changed for you, my friends. You can still listen to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. IHeartRadio, Apple Podcast, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's a PSA at the end, if you're forgetting what I'm saying. Up top. Also, full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. So hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode.
Robert
Yeah, and look, I know what you're all saying. Netflix only had one demand, which was that we stop making actionable threats against.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
So, you know, I feel like that's a fair compromise. Yeah.
Sophie
So hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. And then for clips in older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Yeah.
Prop
Respect.
Sophie
That's. That's. That's what's up. Yep.
Prop
Look, Mom, I'm on Netflix.
Robert
There you go. Well, let's stop talking about streaming and start talking about something important, which is our guest for this episode, Jason Petty.
Sophie
AKA Prop, The Best Guy Family. I'm so excited. We.
Robert
We're back.
Prop
Back, baby.
Robert
Back in the New York mood. Not really.
Sophie
We got photos back from the live show we did last year, and I was just looking at it, and it's the three of us. I was like, damn, I got to frame this shit.
Prop
We look, you know, like.
Robert
It's like. It's like.
Sophie
It's like a family photo album. I need it. I love you guys.
Prop
Listen, it is a blessing and honor to be here to talk about some sort of piece of shit, and, yeah, we are. Yeah, man. You know what I'm saying? Talking about, I was just over here jamming some Barrington Levy, calling Ice Murderers you know what I'm saying?
Sophie
I have shocking news to start this episode.
Robert
What's that?
Sophie
The bastard of this episode is not a man.
Robert
No, no, no. We're doing. We got a lady bastard this time. Prop. We've got. Things are dark in the old United States these days, so I figured we'd take a trip up north to our normal and mentally healthy neighbors, where nothing crazy ever happens, obviously, in Canada. And let's talk about one of Canada's most notable bastards of the moment, Queen Romana Diddulo. The Queen of Canada, which does not have a queen, notably, I mean, kind of did for a while.
Prop
AKA who?
Robert
Yeah, so she is.
Prop
I'm talking about.
Robert
She's essentially a QAnon influencer who started in like 2021, declared herself the Queen of Canada, and she's been declaring things ever since, living in, like, an RV caravan with all of her followers. It's good stuff.
Prop
Oh, my God. On behalf of everyone whose just nervous system is beat to crap, man, thank you. Thank you for giving me something this absurd.
Sophie
She's a mystical creature.
Robert
No genocide, no real body count.
Sophie
She's a. Oh, man, I needed this. So she's. You know, in Robert's script, it says she might be an alien.
Robert
She might be an alien.
Prop
I love it.
Robert
She might be an alien, she might be psychic, but she's definitely a cult leader. Right. Thankfully, she's not a good one, which we don't talk about enough, you know?
Prop
Oh, God, dawg, listen, man, I was here for the Thomas Jeffersons. I was here for the Lost Cause, for the crack attack. I was.
Robert
Yeah, let's get something fun. Let's do something good. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna do Himmler. Yeah, I feel like this is also, you know, Cause Himmler. If you're comparing. If you're out there trying to make your mark as a monster and you're comparing yourself to someone like Himmler, you know, you're just gonna wind up feeling inadequate. And I don't want any of the cult leaders that listen to this podcast to feel inadequate. You know, there's been a series of threads going around on Reddit where people are pointing out that, like, you know, how few people actually make over $100,000 to be like, hey, if you're making less than that, you don't have to feel bad. And I wanna do the same thing to the cult leaders out there. If you're a working class cult leader, you know, really busting your ass to keep a dozen or so people, you know, locked mentally in the Chains of slavery to your insane will. This is for you. You know, you can't all be L. Ron Hubbard. Can all have a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles.
Prop
You know, again, I appreciate you saying this. This is like the. The. The DEI affinity group of that's right bastards in cold obsessed with you. I appreciate this, man. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, listen, man, all of us don't start off, you feel me? Like, we all don't start off with the privilege of being a six foot white dude, you know what I'm saying? With the money endowment where you can just buy land, you feel me? Everybody ain't Jim Jones, you know what I mean? Like, some of us gotta get it out the mud.
Robert
Yeah. You have to get people okay with the fact that like, if all you can do is really completely destroy the mental freedom and sovereignty of like 10 people, you know, that's enough.
Prop
That's it.
Robert
You're valid as a cult leader. And that's what we're telling Romana, you.
Prop
Know, I get it. And also, you know what I'm saying, if we talking about Canada, I mean, they got stuff like healthcare and you know what I'm saying? So they're kind of like Justin Bieber. They kind of really don't got nothing to complain about, you know, so to get somebody to fall into a cult in Canada, like, I mean, good for you.
Sophie
I do feel like they have something to complain about.
Robert
They've got stuff to complain about. Largely the cult leader that destroyed their lives. Yeah, true.
Sophie
I was gonna say. I was gonna say Drake, but I.
Robert
Was gonna say Tim Bits. But he's already been Canadians. I was going to say.
Sophie
But Kenny took care of that.
Prop
Yeah, Kenny. Coral. Kenny already took care of that. I've also like to say that, like, not that I would ever, ever, ever give a high five to any sort of western world leader, but Matt Carney just got his bars off. Like, I. I'm a. I'm a give or Mark Carney.
Robert
He was a good little Davos speech.
Prop
Yeah, yeah, he got his bars off. I appreciate that. He was like, can we just stop capping, y'? All? Can we just stop pretending, like.
Robert
And again, that's part of why I support the Queen of Canada. Right? Is that for too long, Canada has sat in the shadows as American cult leaders have gotten all of the attention, you know, just cause we're better at cults than Canadians, you know, A lot better. Like, way better. But that doesn't mean there aren't Canadian cult leaders and Today we're gonna talk about one right. This is an iHeart podcast.
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Robert
Now, as I noted, Americans are better at cults. And so before we get to Her Royal Highness, I want to talk about a different cultic movement that people generally say helped prepare the ground for. For Romana's cult. And this is an American cultic movement, the I am activity. And it's always spelled I am in all caps and quotations and then activity with a capital A. That's the name of the movement. And it's like a Christian faith movement from the United States kind of that turned into like a self help cult. You got it cropped up.
Prop
You got to say the whole thing. Like a pimp named Slick Back.
Robert
It's like a tribe called the I am. Exactly. The I am activity. Yes.
Prop
You have to say the whole thing.
Robert
You can't abbreviate it. People won't know what you're talking about. So it cropped up during the peak of the Great Depression at the start of the 30s, which is, you know, a good time to be starting a cult. A lot of our New Age movements have, to some extent, their origins in the Great Depression. And the I am movement has its roots in the city of Mount Shasta, which is the least surprising thing on earth. If you've ever been to Mount Shasta.
Prop
Any Californians in the chat, y', all.
Robert
Like, they're already in cults.
Prop
You already know, like, you feel the cult vibration as soon as you leave the Bay Area.
Robert
Like, smells like you live in Mount Shasta. You've already been told to cut ties with your friends and family, you know, and hand all of your money to a carousel.
Prop
Don't get gas over there, boy. Oh, you better not be gas up in yre, brother.
Robert
Wow, it's a lovely town. But Mount Shasta is a big volcano situated in Northern California, not that far from the border of Oregon. It's very pretty. It looks kind of like a lady. And the town there has a reputation for being a hub of the New Age movement and various cultic groups. Like today, if you go there today, there's a lot of woo shit in Mount Shasta. And this has been the case for a long time. Mount Shasta kind of helped give birth to the New Age movement.
Sophie
Wait, the mountain looks like a lady?
Prop
Yeah, that was a new one kind of.
Robert
Yeah, yeah, the mountain, it kind of has like the silhouette of a lady. So the native said. And it does. If you look at it during the sunset, it looks like it. You can see her face oh, cute.
Prop
I kind of know. I always think she's a pretty mountain. I tied Shasta with just like white women with dreadlocks.
Robert
Well, yeah, there's them there too, but they didn't start being there, so it has a reputation for being a hub of the New age movement. There's also persistent rumors that aliens live in sight the mountain. Right.
Prop
Didn't know that one.
Robert
Yes, yes. And I can confirm that there are mushroom aliens living inside Mount Shasta via four independent interviews that I conducted with guys I got stoned with at grow houses in the area. So, you know, that's. That's as solid evidence as you're going to get that there are in fact aliens living in Mount Shasta.
Sophie
Yeah, I mean, that's a triple source confirmation.
Robert
Exactly, exactly. Any newspaper would print that. Yeah. Anyhow, the root of the proud tradition of kookiness in Mount Shasta starts with a local man named Guy Ballard, who, while hiking on Mount Shasta, received a vision from Saint Germain. Now when I heard that, I was like, oh, this guy's probably Catholic. Some saint visited him. Right, that makes sense. You know, Catholics are always talking about the saints visiting them. That's not what Saint Germain is. If you look up Saint Germain online, you'll come across two different things. One is a kind of elderflower liqueur that you've probably seen in bars. It's got a pretty distinctive looking bottle. Okay. And I think it's named after a long dead confidence man who was not at all a saint, who described himself as a count, and who made a bunch of famous friends, including Voltaire, and told them stories about being 500 years old and all knowing. Right.
Prop
Oh, I love this guy.
Robert
Yeah. This was a guy a few hundred years ago who just kind of. He got famous for going to parties and lying about himself. Right. Which was easy to do back then. Yeah. You know, who's going to check?
Prop
Who's going to check if you wasn't 500, like.
Robert
Yeah, exactly. As long as you're. As long as you're in a different city than you're from, no one's figuring this shit out.
Prop
There's a little bit of like, I kind of like, like gaze back longingly over those days because I just feel like, like, if you think about, like the whole plot of like the Bourne Identity, it just. With, with facial recognition, you just don't have a movie. Like, this guy got all kind of like passports to say where he's from. It's like, excuse me, sir, can you step over here, please? Like there's just. You can't have a fake id, you know what I'm saying? So the idea of saying, because the Internet exists, that I could be like, oh, yeah, no, we're. We're actually royalty. I'm from Ethiopia. We're royalty. Like, there's no way for you to check. Like, now it's like, sir, you were born in Inglewood.
Robert
Yeah. Yeah. And Guy Ballard is. Yeah. One of these. He sees this St. Germain fella, and I don't know exactly how to categorize Saint Germain. I think we have to file him under the category of, like, con artists whose cons have been lost to obscurity because he's. He's hanging out only around rich people and he's lying to them incessantly. But I don't know, like, entirely what the grift was. Right. Like, what was he getting out of this? Was it just that he got invited to parties and he got to stay at rich people's fancy mansions? It may have been that. Right? Yeah. And he was a charming guy by all accounts, and multi talented. He was good at music and stuff, so he was fun. You didn't have TV back then, so a lot of prominent people, if you were just interesting, you could get invited to rich people parties and make an okay life for yourself. Cause there was nothing going on. And all of the other rich people are pretty boring. He published a bunch of sheet music in his time, and he wrote two books of magic. One was shaped like a triangle and detailed a ritual that would provide the practitioner with a natural wealth and long life, just as the Count was said to possess.
Prop
Okay.
Robert
And his books became influential among the occult. And as a result, when the Theosophists came around in the late 1800s, Helena Blavatsky declared St. Germain to have been the most powerful wizard of his kind in several centuries, and that his astral form had visited her and bestowed secret wisdom on her. Right.
Prop
This is amazing.
Robert
So it's kind of when we get in the end of the 1800s, early 1900s, that big occult wave that kind of does in a lot of ways lead into, like, the Nazis and stuff. Yeah. St. Germain is just from a previous era, a couple hundred years earlier. He's one of the most famous guys who was, like, into magic, and everyone just wrote about him. So she says, oh, he visited me and he taught me his secret powers, you know, so he visited this exactly like 40 years after he visits Blavatsky. And so I bring all this up because Guy Ballard didn't just invent oh, Saint Germain. That's an interesting figure from the past who said, taught me something. He's ripping off Blavatsky. Right? Got it. Like she was the first one doing this. And so Guy is like, well, I'm looking to make a name for myself. I want people to see me as a cultic leader. I guess I gotta have St. Germain back me up too. Right?
Prop
Okay.
Robert
And so Guy Ballard takes this. This, you know, and he says, basically, St. Germain told me his secrets to long life and, you know, mental powers, and I'm going to teach him to you. That's the. That's the basis of the I Am activity. Right? Which is this mystic educational movement based on Saint Germain's supposed teachings. I am active right up on the website. The I Am activity always all caps and in quotation marks with I am. Don't you ever say it differently.
Prop
Listen, like a Tribe Called Quest got to say the whole thing.
Robert
Exactly, Exactly. Yes. So per write up on the Website new religious movements.org the core teachings of the I Am activity center around the presence of the I Am or God presence within each individual, a divine spark that connects everyone to the Creator. Through specific practices such as decree spoken invocations and affirmations, followers aim to realize their divine nature, achieve self purification, and ultimately ascend to higher spiritual realms. Emulating the ascended masters, the Ballard's teachings also incorporated elements of American patriotism and nationalism, claiming the United States had a unique role in the world's spiritual destiny.
Prop
Bro, this is so it. There's so many like, like seasonings of, like, Pentecostal Christian.
Robert
Yes.
Prop
In that, like, you're declaring the I am. That I am. And. And you get to speak. Speak. The power of existence.
Robert
Bro.
Prop
Like, let me tell you something, right? Like, I could already. I already see where that. How this got. How this became Christian. You know what I'm saying?
Robert
And that's. It's worth noting. As you pointed out, the I am and I am activity is a reference to the Bible, to the God. Yes, I am. That what God said to Moses. Yeah, what God said to Moses. Right. And. And that's what it's possible. We don't know. Romana is going to say a lot of stuff that references aspects of the I am activity. I don't know if she's aware of the original cult or if it's just because the I am activity kind of becomes part of foundational American cult lore. And as is always the case with this stuff, pieces of it wind up picked up by generations of later cult leaders. And thrown. And not just cults, but thrown into different aspects of like, New Age thinking. So think pieces of Ballard's work kind of wind up in self help books and stuff for decades to come, which may just be the extent of, like, where how she picks up on little elements of this right now, the IAM activities. You may have guessed from the fact that most of you probably hadn't heard of this, this before. It was not a huge hit. It was like middling. I'll say that it's great. Claim to Fame was a Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Ballard, over whether or not it was fraud for leaders of a supposedly religious movement to collect donations based on religious claims they did not themselves believe. And the case was launched after Ballard's death. People sued and argued that, like, his wife and son who'd helped with the cult, didn't really believe in anything and thus were committing fraud when they took in more than $3 million worth of donations. The Supreme Court ultimately decided the question itself is inappropriate for a court to ask. Right. We can't even rule on this because us, the idea that a court would have anything to say about whether or not someone legitimately believes in a religion they espouse is inappropriate. Basically, like, we shouldn't even be here, you know, which is, I'm so mixed about it because both, if they had ruled, yeah, that's fraud, maybe a lot would be better. But also, it really isn't a court's place to say, I think that guy doesn't believe what he says he believes. Yeah, that's not really like religion, you know, a crime.
Prop
Like, that's interesting. And, and like, how could a court call that, like, to be like, it's tough, it's tough. Yeah, that was super interesting. It's like, I don't know about your faith, buddy, you know what I'm saying? You said you believe, but I don't think you believe it, like, because it's.
Robert
It'S one of those things. I can imagine a million problems we could have avoided if they'd ruled differently, but also a million new problems that we would have had if we were like, no, the court gets to decide if you really believe in whatever you say. You believe it.
Prop
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like, yeah, which one problem, which one of these cans of worms do we want to open? Yeah, I'm saying, like, yeah, because because even, like, you know, even fast forward to, you know, again, American Pentecostalism, like, how many of it would have been like, hey, bro, you, you really don't believe you could heal that person, do you?
Robert
Yeah. You out here making money, what you pulled out of them, that's chicken gizzard. You don't think that's really.
Prop
That is not real, sir.
Robert
Yes.
Prop
He's like, I'm happy, Gabby. Could you imagine?
Robert
I feel like there is a line where it's like, yeah, if you're, like, pulling chicken gizzard out of people, pretending it's cancer, you're probably committing fraud. That's probably crossing a line. But if you're just asking, do you really believe that people can chant themselves into immortality doing this or whatever, like, yeah, I guess I can kind of respect the Supreme Court being like, this isn't even our place. Like, this isn't even an appropriate thing for there to be a court case about.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
Like, whoa. I know it's really mixed, but I can see the logic, you know? So the movement limped along. The I Am Movement. They won this case, and they limp along until Ballard's wife dies in the early 1970s, at which point leadership passed to a board of directors. The group is still kind of existent today, the im. But they've got, like, a newsletter they publish or some shit. But it's not like a thing anymore. Not really.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
As I said, it's relevant to. Because pieces of it have been passed down in New Age and cultic and occult lore ever since in the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada. And the I Am Movement is relevant primarily to us today because Ramona di Diulo would later ape a lot of its core language, knowingly or unknowingly. And so let's turn to her now.
Prop
Okay.
Robert
The purported Queen of Canada was born in the Philippines, and given her age, would have had to have been born probably sometime in the 1970s. We get very little detail from her early life that can be confirmed to any degree. And she doesn't seem to have made a ton of claims about her childhood and life before coming to Canada. Most of the stories we do have concern her grandmother, who is a sort of figure within the cult that she's created. And Romana says that her grandmother, a first grade teacher, raised her to speak five languages fluidly. Researcher Christine Sarteshi of Chatham University is almost certainly Didilo's number one biographical expert, and she writes of the Queen's further claims that same grandmother mounted a strategic defense and offense and successfully blocked the Chinese from invading their regional stronghold during World War II. This claim could not possibly be true since during World War II, Japan, not China, occupied the Philippines because they Weren't there. She's going to say a lot about fighting the Chinese. This is a family business to her. But again, they got other shit going on in World War II. They're not in the Philippines.
Prop
Yeah. I'm a bit, like, almost equal parts saddened and excited that this is a Pinay, that this is, like, a Filipino woman.
Robert
Oh, yeah.
Prop
I was like, oh, she's from the Philippines. Okay. So that adds a layer of, like, awesome. And again.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
New for newcomers. As y' all can see my face, my stepmother's Filipino, so, like, I'm part of the culture. So there are things that I could participate in that I can only participate in because one of my moms were Filipino.
Robert
Yeah. And she is Didilo. She doesn't emphasize that part of her heritage very much. She'll talk a little bit about her grandmother, but she's not. She's not massively, like. She's more Canadian, I think, than anything else, because she leaves when she's very young. Right. And I. Doesn't seem like she has a ton of contact with her. Her family over there, although that's kind of unclear to me. Yeah.
Prop
Does she go to Toronto?
Robert
No, no. Vancouver.
Prop
Okay.
Robert
So her.
Prop
If she goes to Vancouver. Yeah. I was like. Cause those are two very pretty, big, like, Filipino populations.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
I don't.
Robert
Anyway, she may have been closer to her family there. We get very little about her life before she comes on the scene as a cult leader. But she doesn't talk much about anything to do with her background, really, because she's very. She has a vested interest in not having you think about her before she was the queen. Right. Like that. That's kind of why. So I just. There's not a lot to say on that account. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Her father was a lawyer and an engineer, but he dies when she's 10. Her mom dies a year later, and so she's raised by her grandmother for a couple of years, but not long after her parents die when she's 15, she moves to Vancouver, and she's raised by other relatives there. It's kind of unclear, you know, how much of this is her grandparents. Do they move with her? I actually just don't have that information. And that's really about all we've got as refers to her early life. We don't have any sort of real documentation about her outside of this. Sarteshi and a journalist from Vice, Max Lamoreaux, are kind of the two people who have really delved into her background a lot. So I am. I haven't. There's a couple of other things I found just from like shit she's written online. But most of what you're gonna find about her is from those two. And there's just not a lot that's known yet about what was she doing the first like 40 years of her life. Right. You know who doesn't have a public life because they live only to serve you and to bring you joy.
Sophie
It is known.
Robert
Yeah. The products and services that support this podcast. That's right.
Prop
Glorious.
Robert
Yeah. Yeah.
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Robert
And we're back. So when Romana next appears on the public record. She's a Canadian citizen and an entrepreneur. She seems to have run a couple of different companies. And I know MacLamro of Vice is someone. He's reported heavily on her and he seems to think these businesses that she had were some kind of con. But the specifics of maybe how she was trying to con people are unclear. That's at least how I interpret something that he said on the QAnon Anonymous podcast. Mac, if I got your meaning wrong, I apologize. That seems credible to me. Although, again, we don't really know what she was doing with these businesses. We have very little on them. Yeah. Sarteshi writes.
Prop
Side note, dude. Yeah, wait, hold on. Side note. Like, QAnon feels like a fever dream right now.
Robert
It's still there, but. Yeah, I mean, half past it too.
Prop
Yeah. I was like, wait, that happened? And then because of our nature of work. Yeah, because our nature of work, we know it's still kind of there. But I was just like, bro, them fools went to the. They stormed the Capitol.
Robert
They stormed the Capitol. They. They won. A lot of them got into positions of power and they seem almost to, like. I think a lot of the folks who don't have gotten into power who started out being Q pilled, a decent chunk of them have had to even pull back somewhat because once you're in office, you can't. Like, there's not a lot that you can carry further from a lot of the QAnon shit. Right?
Prop
Yeah, it's a real job. Once you get to it, it's like, this is actually a real job.
Robert
I got like, stuff. I mean, I'm grifting too, but like, I can't. I can't keep talking about how all of my colleagues that I work with every day have secretly been executed. Like, that doesn't make much sense. I share a desk with this guy.
Prop
I do love, I do love the idea of a conspiracy theorist, you know, as pilled as that. And then you get to finally, like the deputy director of the, I don't know, Interior for Agriculture, and you're like, oh, it's just spreadsheets. Yeah, Everybody here is just doing spreadsheets, and now I'm one of them.
Robert
And I know.
Prop
What do I. What do I do?
Robert
It's the sad thing of when you really come to, like, growing up, I was a conspiracy theorist. Not like, in a. In a literal believer way, but as, like, a fandom. I enjoyed the Conspiracy Phantom, right? It's. It's fun.
Prop
One of my OGs. This is a diversion, but it's very funny. One of my OGs told me a joke recently, and, like, he called me. My man Jonathan. He called me. He said, hey, I got a joke for you. He goes, okay, this conspiracy theorist dies, and he goes to heaven, and he's sitting down, and he's talking to Jesus, and Jesus says, hey, you know what? Ask me anything. And the guy goes, all right, jfk. What happened? And then Jesus goes, dude, it was Lee Harvey Oswald, third story, single shooter, right out the window. He got him three shots, all from him. And the conspiracy theorist goes, man, so this thing goes higher than I even thought.
Ad Voice 3
You get it?
Prop
Because he thinks Jesus is in on the conspiracy also. Anyway, yeah, yeah, I was looking at Sophie.
Robert
I mean, I'm saying that for years, because who else would have had the power to. To drop someone like jfk, you know, of course. But I. So, like, I mean, obviously Bernie Sanders.
Prop
But of course.
Robert
Of course, you get to, like. You get to this point where you study the world enough to realize that, like, there are conspiracies, but they're all, as you said, they're mostly guys with spreadsheets. Even conspiracies are, like. They're not usually fun. They're like some guys hiding a bunch of financial crimes on a spreadsheet. Or, like, hiding the fact that they're bribing people to put in place a law that increases their bottom line by five, and maybe that also kills a few hundred thousand people. But they're doing it because it makes them, like, 8% wealthier, right? Yeah.
Prop
And it's only usually, like, four of them.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
Like. And nobody doesn't really know the whole story except for maybe two of them dudes. But the idea that, like, yeah, 70 countries have agreed that we're gonna lie about this. The shape of the earth. Like, 70. Like, you know what I'm saying? For. For 60 years.
Robert
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They couldn't. Again, like, they couldn't keep. Like, we're seeing the actual conspiracy now with, like, Alex Preddy's murder, right? Where. Yeah, we all see the video of this man who is completely unarmed and was never violent. Just getting executed by an ICE agent. And then the government's like, no, he nearly killed him. He nearly killed that.
Prop
And my friend, is a conspiracy.
Robert
Conspiracy. But it's not like inner. It's not fun. It's just like, oh, yeah. It's just brute force of evil. Just lying. And that's like, what conspiracy? It's never. Seven different kinds of alien have gotten together to, like, hide the fact that the world leaders are drinking the blood of children in order to get high.
Prop
Yeah.
Sophie
No, you can quite literally say the exact same thing with Renee.
Prop
Good.
Sophie
She was gonna. She was gonna run this man over. Literally. No fucking.
Robert
Or fucking Epstein. Right? Where it's like, yeah, there was a conspiracy. A bunch of guys looked the other way at this dude. Shady financial dealings because he provided them with 15 year old girls. Right. Like, that's pretty simple. There's no aliens.
Prop
Yeah. Pretty simple. It's not. It's not blood sacrifices.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
It's young women. It's just.
Robert
Yeah, exactly.
Prop
The basic debauchery that we all know.
Sophie
Yep.
Robert
And that's. That's not very fun. Which is why people like Romana Dullo have juice. Right. It's why all these conspiracy theory figures, why there's an appeal to them, is that, like, anything's better than realizing how fucked up the world is in such a banal way and how small your power is to actually do anything as an individual. So you might as well believe that, like, this guy who you met living in a fucking squat is actually secretly in touch with the alien masters of the universe and is the secret king of America or whatever. And if you just follow him in an rv, you know, that's way more fun.
Prop
So much more fun.
Robert
Getting back to Romana here. Right. Christine Sarteshi has charted her earliest online presence, which seems to be an October 2006 article in a business publication that describes her as the president and CEO of Global Solutions Canada. The company description makes it seem like a rinky dink budget version of Salesforce. You know, it's a company you have that provides you with HR resources for your startup, and their specific specialty was recruiting engineers and geologists for the oil and gas industry. And again, maybe she tried to make a real business and it just failed. I am assuming there was an angle here. There was some way in which this was fraudulent because of who she is. Right. Yeah.
Prop
Me and my buddies try to come up with a sentence to describe, like, what? Some sort of company like that. Oh, Global Solutions llc. Well, what do we do? Well, we.
Robert
Global Solutions llc. That sounds real.
Prop
Yeah. Well, what we do is we try to integrate and synergize between two different operating systems to make sure that we can streamline the processes for the. We just. We center, like, just putting together a bunch of words.
Robert
I'm glad you brought up synergy, because during our first meetings with Netflix, they told us how important synergy was to them. I said, guys, I love sinning. I'm sinning right now. I got so much synergy, I've got endless energy to sin for what I'm.
Sophie
Saying, this never happens.
Prop
I got sin out of me, you know what I'm saying?
Robert
Yeah.
Sophie
For legal reasons, left and right. Never happened.
Robert
It happened. So. So maybe in your mind, fucking Global Solutions, Geology, Salesforce Business, whatever that really was. Her subsequent ventures. She has a series of real estate corporations that are described by Sartoshi as shell corporations. And I have to assume that's definitely some sort of course, right?
Prop
Yeah, of course.
Robert
Sartoshi concludes. Did you know also has two additional open businesses in London and Wales? No substantial activity with these corporations is known. Success in the business world seems to have eluded her. Right. She's. She's not. She's not successful. She's not making money. Yeah.
Prop
So what does your real estate company do? Oh, well, we, we. We make stuff. Mostly the integration of, you know, our, our HR systems and our. In our.
Robert
You know, send me 1500 bucks and.
Prop
You'Ll find out things and I help you out, man. We could set you guys up, you know.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
Are you guys getting a gang of emails that are clearly written by AI about how you can synergize your companies?
Robert
I get a lot of. I get a lot of them from PR people being like, here's an article for your website that we think your readers would love. You can post it. And it's just like talking about how cool the CEO of this company that's gonna fail in five months is.
Prop
Absolutely.
Robert
I love PR emails.
Prop
Oh, man, they're so great. And then I'll get a follow up. Hey, just making sure you saw our last email. And I'm like, I saw it go into my spam folder.
Sophie
Yeah, I saw it.
Robert
So I can't judge you. I have in my secondary email 49,000 unread emails, so.
Prop
Oh, yes. My other one has more, you know, for the listeners and observers. Like, the bit about Robert is he's actually a very good businessman and it's pretty funny to see you click into.
Robert
Sophie's a good businessman.
Prop
Yeah. Wait, let me finish, let me finish. Is when I see like the. And the switch is so quick because Sophie is like, cutthroat. This what we here for, this what we finna do, right? Like this, what I need this the bag where my money. Talk to me when my money ready. Right? That's Sophie. And then. But you don't realize because, you know, Robert's being goofy and all of a sudden he clicks in and he says, well, actually I think that really if we set up and you're just like, whoa. Like, you know, so I just want to like put that on there. Like, Robert got a switch. He got a professional switch.
Robert
He's. Did I get my MBA from Harvard? No, no, no, they wouldn't let me into Harvard. No, they wouldn't. I had like a 2.8 GPA. What do you think they let me in.
Sophie
Did you get. Did you see my face when you started that sentence? I was like, wait a second. But Robert's a fantastic business partner because he listens to me.
Robert
Yes, I'm a fantastic business partner because I let Sophie run things while I write about the Queen of Canada. Yeah, much, much like Bill Gates. So from other interviews conducted with people who saw her in her. From other interviews conducted with people who saw the Queen in her home prior to announcing that she was the Queen, we can say that Didulo did not live well. People have described her as living in squalor and maybe having been something of a hoarder. She was, I don't know if she was like poor poor, but she's like, not. She's like lower middle class at best in terms of like income level. She seems to be struggling financially. Right. We don't have a lot of context here, but this is. People who saw her house were like, she was not living well. She had a room, it was crowded and not very clean or nice. Like, she's, she's, she's like. This is someone who's doing about as well as you'd expect. Someone who's orphaned at 11 and then has to immigrate to a new country to be doing. Right. Like, she's not someone who's living in a rarefied air. She's struggling. Yeah, yeah. And she does not seem to have a particular position of respect or to be very well known by her neighbors. Right. In part because very few of them have come forward as she's gotten more famous, to even say negative things about her, which to me kind of suggests maybe she just. Maybe in this previous areas of her life, she was, if not like a shut in, then just not someone who was very much a part of the social life in her community. Right. Maybe someone who was very isolated. Given her proclivities, we can say probably someone who spent way too much time on the Internet watching YouTube videos and reading articles about conspiracy theories. Right?
Prop
Yeah. I feel like she was in her own head for most of her life.
Robert
That's the vibe I kind of get. Right. That's the vibe I kind of get. Vice's Mac Lamoro has noted that in one livestream, she's claimed to have been homeless at one point and to have slept on the floor of a friend's nail salon. I don't see any real reason to doubt this. It seems pretty. Yeah, she lies about a lot, but that's. I've known friends who've been in the same situation.
Prop
I'll tell you what. You know what I'm saying?
Robert
I had to sleep on a few floors, you know? For her, as for millions of other people in similar situations, the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic offered a lifeline. That year, she took the lockdown and the attendant explosion in conspiracy culture and fringe political organizing as an impetus to start her own political party, the Canada First Party of Canada.
Ad Voice 4
I love that name.
Robert
The Canada First Party of Canada. Cause what else it could be? The Canada First Party of America. I'm gonna start the Canada First Party of America. I think U.S. politics should be entirely geared towards what's best for Canada. First off, give them our nukes. You know, they're better suited to them. And you know what? You guys can have Maine.
Sophie
It reminds me, we went to the RNC and they had all those signs everywhere that said, make America great once again.
Robert
You're like, didn't we already do it?
Prop
You just added once.
Robert
Yeah. No. The Canada First Party of Canada. And she's Canada First. She's seeing Party of Canada.
Sophie
The Canada First Party of Canada. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Prop
Glorious.
Robert
She's seeing all these number one. She's stuck inside.
Prop
Yes.
Robert
But everyone's stuck inside. And she's seeing traffic explode just because of the things that she knows and brings up. She is familiar with a bunch of weird little. Particularly a lot of alien focused conspiracy worlds. She talks a lot about the hidden secret bases that the army's supposed to run, which we talked about in our UFO episodes. This starts out in, like, New Mexico because people are trying to hide the results of some, like, nuclear tests. But it's turned into today there's people believe, like, the Getty in Los Angeles has, like, a deep underground military base. Where they're like taking adrenochrome out of children. She's big into all that. She believes in med beds, which is this. These extraterrestrial aliens have these beds that'll heal any sickness, and they're trying to give them to us, but some group of evil elite is keeping them away from us. Does. Right? She believes in all of that stuff. Yes.
Prop
Was I on this? Was I on the show for the. For the. For the alien conspiracy ones.
Robert
I don't remember who our guest was.
Prop
Yeah, I remember us doing it and then. And how, like the CIA or the. The. Yeah, the. The government was like.
Robert
Yeah. Because it was mostly like the. The. The DIA or the military intelligence even that was around more than the CIA with this.
Prop
And they kept feeding secrets to homeboy.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
To be like.
Robert
They was like, yes.
Prop
Yeah, yeah.
Robert
You tapped into the conspiracy, brother.
Prop
You might be on it, bro. You might be on to something. So great.
Robert
Yeah, there's a few.
Prop
Sometimes it's like, you know, like. Like the reality is if he wasn't such like a flaming piece of vomit, like, Trump is hilarious.
Sophie
So funny.
Robert
Yeah, he funny.
Sophie
If he wasn't so evil, he'd be.
Prop
The one so evil. So for the government to be like you. Wait, you think Area 51 is alien?
Robert
Yeah, sure, man.
Prop
Come here. Let me tell you some more. That's funny.
Robert
There's even more going on. Yeah, bro.
Prop
You don't even know the half, homie.
Robert
So that's the chunk of the conspiracy culture that she seems to be most inundated in. And during 2020, she's watching traffic to all of the different people that she watched, all these videos. It's all going up and she's seeing, you know, she's watching the news, she's seeing the protests and stuff all over the. In the U.S. but she's also seeing like the anti lockdown protests in general. It's hard. Not if you have. And I think most people who have cult leader juice have a kind of sixth sense for timing, for the lick.
Prop
Yep.
Robert
And I think for her it's like this is the time to try something. People are uniquely vulnerable and I could maybe get and maybe change my shitty life if I can rally a following around me. So she starts the Canada First Party of Canada Know youw Meme describes the party platform as generally opposed to progressive, socialist and liberal ideologies, as well as what it describes as the UN's and globalist plans to turn Canada into a third world country. The website for the party seems to have been created Sometime during the early summer. And by August, its telegram page had about 17,000 members, which probably didn't translate to more than a few hundred Canadians who would call themselves members of the party. But first off, for someone who's living alone in like, and hoarding in, like, a tiny room, suddenly you got 17,000 people on your telegram page saying they believe it. That, that's gotta be addicting, right?
Prop
That's like, that's got feel amazing.
Robert
That's like giving someone with a congenital predisposition towards addictive behavior their first hit of heroin, where they're like, oh, no.
Prop
Oh, it's.
Robert
Oh, no. My whole life just changed.
Prop
Yeah. This is what I've been waiting for.
Robert
Yeah. Yeah. I've been looking for a drug to destroy my life. Thank God.
Prop
Oh, my Lord. You know, it's also interesting, too. Like, and it's like, this is the part about, like, con artists and hustlers that, that I still, like, I still kind of trip out on because I'm like, okay, so when I think about, like, there are some. I can think of three dudes that I grew up with that I'm like, I have known for over 20 years, and I realize I know nothing about you. Like, there's a way that they. And, and they're, they're a lot of them are like, like hustlers. You know what I'm saying?
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
But there was. There's a way for them to. You, like, really the knowledge of knowing how much to tell you and how much not to tell you and. But you. But it feel like. It feels like we're friends, you know what I'm saying? And I do believe, like, you know, I'm saying this person, like, thinks highly of my. One of the homies I remember was like, I looked up like, this dude was in Cuba. I was like, what do you, like, he's visiting Cuba? Like, he just went to, like, you.
Robert
Know what I'm saying?
Prop
I'm like, like, you went to go visit. Like, I'm like, I, I have known you for 20 years. You know me. Like, I've been to your house. And I realize I don't really know you, you know, So I, I, I, I think that there's. But there's this sense of, like, you said, this, like, sense, sense to know. Like, time to talk, time to shut up, time to go, time to get out. Like, this the moment.
Robert
Yeah. It's all. It's. It's always interesting when you run into people who have that, like, for leaving some stuff on the table. I Had an older friend when I was in my 20s, I was a lot older, and we did a biking club and stuff together and would hang out. And I'd known him for two years and I don't even remember how it came up, but he was just like, yeah, I did three tours in Vietnam. I was like, what?
Prop
Like what?
Robert
Like what? You never mentioned anything. Like, three's a lot. Most people didn't do that. That. So that says something. What?
Prop
Yeah, but. Yeah, that's so even us knowing, like, what we know about her and then how much we don't know about her is like, yeah, you know, But. But I. I feel like the people that are able to stay in the hustle are the ones that don't get addicted to the attention. Like, the attention, that's going to be the downfall.
Robert
Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I think. Because I think most cult leaders are addicted to the attention. But you're right. There's something. There's a degree. There's a degree of separation you have to have from the bullshit in order to be like L. Ron Hubbard, I think, always knew exactly what the bullshit was. Right. And that's why he had the staying power and the success he did. It's not that he wasn't deluded about certain things, but I think he was generally pretty aware of what reality was and was just conscious. And he loved the attention. He loved being worshipped. But it never. I mean, it did. Near the end of his life, it eventually did kind of overwhelm him, but for a very long time, he was able to keep enough of an understanding of reality, enough of a distance.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
To stay ahead of the authorities. Right. It's not even about. I don't want to say, like, Elrond Hubbard was perfectly sane and rational. No, no, no, of course not. But he kept enough. He had enough of an understanding of what reality was that he didn't fall victim to his own bullshit. He lived a long life and died free, you know?
Prop
Yeah. That's the thing. If you can hold on to something that's like this. I know, is this is who I really am. Like, you know what I'm saying? This is who I really am. This is work.
Robert
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Exactly. So on November 20, 2020, Romana uploaded the first YouTube video to the Canada First Party of Canada's YouTube account, featuring a song that made it sound like every movie trailer from a decade earlier. The video otherwise had minimum featured minimally competent editing and fairly clear audio, which sets her apart from a lot of People trying to, like, make fake, vanity political parties in this time. Sophie's gonna play you a little bit of the Canada first party for Canada's ad here, so you can. This is her first. Her first documented grift. So we gotta see this.
Prop
Yes, but before you play this, like, I'm gonna laugh every time you say that. Canada First Party of Canada.
Robert
Party of Canada.
Prop
I' laugh every time.
Robert
Okay.
Sophie
Hello, Canada. I'm Romana Didolo. I'm the founder and the leader of Canada First. It's time for us to clean up the swamp in Ottawa to put an end to corruption, criminality, incompetence, and lies in the government.
Robert
See, you know, she is not pretty.
Prop
All what I thought she would be.
Robert
No, no. And that's the thing. She's not very charismatic. She's not a great speaker. It's 0riz again, there's effort because that's a. Competently. It's not like, unclear. The audio, it's not, like, good. But you're not. I've listened to a lot of these. Usually the audio's worse and stuff like this. Usually the editing's worse. Like, it was like she hit a minimum bar of competence, which is how I generally describe her as a cult leader. She's not a good one. She's a minimally competent cult leader.
Prop
She's mid.
Robert
And what's interesting is that she's managed to get a lot more attention than you'd expect, given her generally low level of competence, which I find compelling.
Prop
It's also bizarre to me that this isn't like she's using the exact same. Like, it's like, this is a bite. This is currently what we're saying. Like. Like there's already currently this. Do you copy my whole flow bar for bar? Like, it's already. Currently we're already doing the Drain the swamp, like.
Robert
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just a ripoff of Trumpist populism. Right? Mixed with, you know, Trump is objectively charismatic. You may not like him, most of us don't. But he's objective to the people. He's able. A lot of people do. A lot of people pick up what he's putting down. He can give us. He knows, you know, he used to be better when he was younger, but he can give a speech. She's not good at that. Right. She has no stage presence. It's one of the least energetic examples of VO I've heard in the right wing populist politics game. And this is kind of the big mystery about her. Right. She doesn't have any money, she doesn't have any power, and she's boring as hell. Why is anyone talking about the Queen of Canada? Right? Cause she's had a lot more of an impact than you'd guess, given all this. And I think the answer I have to give is sheer persistence. She seems to have committed to launching a career for herself out of the right wing fever swamps in the early days of the pandemic, and she stuck to it tenaciously. I can imagine that watching the first four years of Trump's presidency, first three years had given her a lot of ideas as to content and made it clear that there was no bottom floor of credibility as long as you hated vaccines in the U.N. right? That's all she needed to say. And it didn't matter how much bullshit she was otherwise. Right? That's what works with these people. This first video only gets about 24,000 views in 18 months, and the Canada First Party of Canada sputters out. And there's not really anything memorable anecdote wise about it. They don't have any fun moments, they don't have any big conventions. It's a failed grift. It's mainly interesting because of what comes next. She pivots immediately from the failure of this political party to announcing herself as the Queen of Canada. Love it. And from the outside, that seems like a desperation move, right? That probably shouldn't work. It's like if Trump if, like the campaign hadn't worked and then he just started telling everyone he was secretly the King of America, you know, like that wouldn't seem like a well considered pivot, right? Yeah, but it's going to work, right? And that's kind of what's most interesting to me about her. On May 30, 2021, Dejillo uploaded the first video on her personal channel announcing that she was Commander in Chief of Canada. That's before she's queen. She says that she's the commander and chief. The language in the video deliberately apes QAnon. She describes herself as opposed by a deep state cabal tied to a global pedophile conspiracy that she was battling alongside white hats, which is a term that comes out of the hacking world, Right? You've got black hat hackers and white hat hackers. Right? And the black hats are people who are trying to fuck up systems for their own benefit, generally. The white hats are the people who are generally defending against. Against malicious hacking. Right. Like that's kind of the basic idea. I don't actually have A great handling on why white hat got taken up by the QAnon people, but it does. This is way pre dejulo. This is the early years of Trump that they're starting to use the term white hats to talk about. Like, and these are. When they use it, it means the members of the government and the intelligence services in the military who aren't part of the deep state cabal. Right. They're the good guys who are fighting this secret war, you know? Now, I can't find her first video, but if you've seen one of her pronouncements, you've seen most of them. So here's an example from less than a year after May 30, when she first makes her video. This is just to give you an idea of what it looks like when she addresses her subjects. This is filmed in an rv.
Prop
Wait, what? You said this is filmed in an rv.
Robert
It sure is.
Prop
What the hell? He just threw that in at the end.
Robert
Okay, those are RV grade curtains, man. Yeah. All right, let's go.
Sophie
My fellow Canadians, I address you today as your queen and commander in Chief. We are on the eve of World War three. I ask that everyone come as one people and one nation and to work with the United States and all of our allies around the world. God help us. And Godspeed.
Prop
Oh, my Lord.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
What is she? Who are you?
Robert
Yeah, she's interesting because again, no charisma, no juice, seemingly. I will say she's putting some effort into dressing up. You know, the white jacket thing is a good call because it does kind of look vaguely regal. You know, don't give her that.
Prop
She got flags.
Robert
Again, she puts in some effort. Like, it's not the zero effort version like she's got. She makes sure everything's white behind her. It looks vaguely. It looks almost like kind of like an Air Force One type video. It's just her rv.
Sophie
Yeah, but it's like production. But the production value is like West Wing 1997.
Prop
It's very much a teacher. Yeah. In the 90s, about.
Sophie
Yeah, 90s West Coast.
Robert
She's trying, but she doesn't have a lot of resources to try with. Right. She's doing as much as she can with what she has.
Prop
I think I'm starting to realize how she even made it to your radar and into this podcast. Cause it's like this is a very much of a against all odds, because there is no reason we should know anything about this person based on the two things that you just showed me.
Robert
No, she should never have hit Our. But here's the thing. Part of why I'm doing this prop, this is she's in our top four or five most requested subjects. That is like anytime you go online to where people talk about like, hey, what, who should we do next? She's always prominent.
Prop
I love that.
Robert
Which is why I do win her. Yeah.
Prop
I think now I get like, I'm telling you, man, like the vision is becoming very clear to me, like where you, that you was like, okay, she's definitely like a C minus thing. But the, but the tenacity of like, like how you manage to poke through and get a number one record is just, that's crazy.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
With no bars.
Robert
Yeah. And I, I, yeah, that, that's kind of the big mystery of her. So her first and second video she, she puts out trying to claim that she's now in charge of Canada get roughly like 14,000 views in their first year each. So there's no sign yet that this Queen Grift is going to take her any further than the Canada first party of Canada. It's a little less successful, it looks like, initially. But trying your hat at becoming a figure in the right wing fever swamps is a little like playing the slots. Right. Each time you pull that lever, actually it's generally just a button. The levers don't really use this anymore. On most levers are the machines. Yeah, whatever. Every time you say go right, you have a random chance of winning. And in this case, when it comes to being a right wing kind of conspiracy cult figure, winning means someone bigger in the movement catches onto your content and decides to either direct their followers your way or to play in with your bit.
Prop
Play along.
Robert
This is a big thing. This has been an aspect of UFO culture of like the psychic, you know, the whole new age movement that believes that we have psychic powers where people will be like, I'll play along. Yeah, I saw those aliens too. Or that alien she's in psychic contact with, I'm also in psychic contact with. You can trust her. Right? And it's. Yeah.
Prop
Are they just like, are people like, like, you know, posting and sharing it because they think it's funny or like you said, like, that's what I was thinking. I was like, I feel like people are doing this ironically, but then I.
Robert
Think that's a good chunk of it. Yeah, yeah.
Prop
Even within the right wing. Because it's like, even the, even the, the, the, the brain cooked folks still got some sense to be like, well, this is just funny.
Robert
This seems nonsense.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
And I think I Think most, even most people on the right who are aware of her are like, well, this lady's a kook, right? Even most of the kooky people on the right are aware that this lady's. But in part, being made fun of and being ridiculous enough that you get elevated by people talking about what a bad con artist you are is part of how you get success in this field because it just raises your general visibility, you know, like when people are talking about you and laughing about how silly you are. That also, that's another. It's a free play of the slots, right? Because maybe somebody who can burnish your reputation, somebody else will come across your shit that way and will decide to play in, right? Or to share your stuff. So it's not necessarily bad for you to be initially just seen as a figure of, like, mockery, you know, which I think is kind of what happens to her. But as Mac Lamoro writes for Vice, quote, the outlandish self promotion went nowhere until a well known QAnon figure confirmed her in early 2021. At the time, the titular Q, who drops clues for the community on AET Kun had disappeared and Deji Low stepped into the power vacuum. In a matter of months, her popularity exploded. And this is important. We're in early 2021. Joe Biden has taken office. Trump is, at least temporarily, seems like he might be out of the game, right? He was not wildly popular for the first couple of months after January 6th, and Q's not doing drops anymore. So there's still just as much as we're all aware of, just as much interest in this stuff. Just as many people who are on board for these nonsense right wing conspiracy theories. But the most prominent people have kind of dropped out temporarily. And so part of why she gets success is she just starts trying to make a name for herself at a point in which there's nothing on tv. You know, it's kind of like one of those shows that wouldn't have been a hit if there'd been anything better on, because there's not. People like, okay, you know, so this prominent QAnon figure who is the first guy who really gives you credibility seems to have been a fellow who went by the username Whiplash347. He runs a Telegram channel with about 300,000 followers, which makes him a fairly large fixture in the QAnon community. And like many influential Q heads, he claims to have close personal ties to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and JFK Jr. Who is deceased. Wait, but they believe is secretly alive.
Prop
Oh yeah, I forgot. He's alive. My bad. I gotta keep up.
Robert
Yeah, yeah. And you know what never dies? Prop. Oh man.
Prop
Goonies.
Robert
Well, they had that. That's true. Actually. One of the Goonies must have died, right?
Sophie
Goonies never say die.
Prop
They never say die.
Robert
Figure out if one of the Goonies has died. And if they're all alive, hunt one of them down. Until then, Jesus, we're off to ads.
Sophie
Jesus Christ.
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Prop
Lenovo.
Robert
We're back. Sophie's telling me that we are not allowed to tell people to hunt down on the cast of the classic film Goonies.
Prop
They're wonderful people.
Robert
They're wonderful people. Probably don't hunt them down unless you have like a really good shot at it.
Sophie
You're gonna get kicked out of Oregon for that tick. Because that was shot in the Oregon.
Prop
It's very much Oregon.
Robert
I think it mostly annoys people from Oregon though. Cause that house, you know, that whole neighborhood probably property values are swollen as a result.
Prop
Dude, imagine. Yeah, like every morning. Well, I kind of live next to a kind of like a cult classic location. I won't say exactly.
Robert
I don't say which it is.
Prop
Yeah, I won't say it.
Robert
Don't say which it is. Let's move on from this.
Prop
Yeah, you got too many. Too many listeners. I ain't telling you.
Robert
But yeah. So in the space of a year, from like early 2021 to early 2022, Diddulo goes from someone who couldn't crack 15,000 views on a YouTube video to someone who in May of 2021 had close to 20,000 followers on her personal Telegram channel.
Prop
Amazing.
Robert
And at least hundred claim to embrace her as their rightful sovereign and leader. She's eventually gonna get close to like, it's gonna be like 80,000 or something like that on her Telegram channel. So again, you know, the guy who kind of vouches for her has like 300,000 followers on telegram. So she's never up to his level, but that's enough. When you've got like 80,000 people following your telegram, you can pull out a couple of dozen folks who are gonna be willing to change their lives to follow you in the real world.
Prop
Oh, no.
Robert
That's real. Yeah, like that. That's enough. You know, it's not enough to be a big deal, but it's enough to change your. Your shitty life into something more fun. Oh, yeah. So during this first year, she's not out in public yet. No one's seen her. She's not traveling immediately. Right. She's mostly for the first kind of few months that she's the queen of Canada. She's just making videos and she's expanding the lore about herself. She's doing a lot of live streams. She's talking a lot in her telegram. And she's thought this through to some extent. She knows that royalty doesn't just conjure itself up out of thin air. It's appointed by other royalty. Right. You can't just say, I'm the queen. Some other king or something has to say, I'm the queen.
Prop
There has to be some sort of lineage.
Robert
That's kind of how it works generally. I mean, initially, there's always some guy who's like, I'm the king. Here's what a king is, Right? Yeah, totally. By this point, we've got a fairly robust system of royalty in the world. Someone needs to vouch we kind of.
Prop
Know all our royal. I think we kind of know him now.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
Now here's how researcher Christine Sarteshi summarizes Digilo's description of her own rise to power, as recounted over a series of live streams and YouTube videos. DiGillo had been living with a roommate in Victoria, British Columbia, working a regular 9 to 5 job. The two were living in a basement at night. And after working her day job, Romana was secretly interacting with a man she would later reveal as His Highness, David J. Carlson, married to her highness Sarah M.G. carlson, who is acting in the role of Commander in Chief of the United States Air Force Academy's Civilian Command of Military Operations. Which. What? Who? Who? What? That's not Commander in Chief of the Air Force Academy Civilian command. What? What?
Sophie
You're saying words.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
Again, like the commanderizing.
Prop
Making sure that there's a connection between the two.
Robert
Yeah, yeah. She'll just call David Carlson the Commander in Chief of the United States and King. There's a lot that's wrong about this. It's what you'd expect. She's. She understands America as well as you'd expect from a woman from the Philippines who's lived in Canada most of her life, which is not at all. First off, the commander in chief is a role that the president has where they're in charge of the military. Because we're supposed to have a civilian who's in charge of the military. Right? Yeah. It doesn't make you king. It shouldn't. Right. And it's also. There's not a commander in chief just of the United States because that's also. That's not what the job is. The commander in chief is like oversight of the military. You're not commanding in chief of the. The country. That means.
Prop
It's so funny, dude.
Robert
There's A lot that's wrong about this.
Prop
That. That's why I'm like. That's why I'm like, y' all have to be laughing at her because that is Etch. Funny.
Robert
She does this too with Canada, where she will kind of sometimes, especially earlier on, she would sort of. She would refer to herself as the Commander in Chief and the Queen as if they were the same job. And they're not. No, they never have been. It's just kind of, I think a misunderstanding or she just likes the way the terms sound.
Prop
Also, Canadians. Canadians from my experience are actually pretty well versed in, like, American history and politics. So, like, for her to even say that.
Robert
Not Romana. Not Romana.
Prop
Yeah.
Robert
For a while, I think the overwhelming suspicion was that David Carlson was not a real dude. But after she mentioned him, he pops up being a very real guy in Arizona who does in fact, claim to be the king of the Kingdom of America.
Sophie
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Every time.
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Yes.
Robert
What?
Prop
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Sophie
Angels of Anaheim every time, yes.
Robert
Okay, I don't. Robert does not get larping behind the scenes. Right. Like, was he pretending to be the king to her and she found him on, like, his weird king website and they started talking and he appointed her. I don't know. Or did she start claiming this about him and then he. Like, it's a little unclear to me what came first, like what the chicken or the egg is in this situation. But she claims David appointed her Queen of Canada in 20. Now, this can't be true, right? Because there's no evidence of her. She wasn't a figure back then. Right. She wasn't saying shit.
Prop
It wasn't the playmate.
Robert
Right. We have no evidence she thought of this until 2021. But the story needs to date back to 2017 to make room for another crucial piece of Romana's hastily contrived and poorly conceived backstory. According to this tale, King David Carlson became aware of Romana and made her the Queen of Canada after she saved Canada from an underground invasion by the Chinese communist milit. Oh. Single handedly.
Prop
Oh, man, that is wonderful.
Robert
Now, Prop, you have a reaction. I think a lot of Canadians are going to have a similar reaction because. And it's sad. You know, in America we have. The Korean War is our forgotten war.
Prop
Right.
Robert
Americans just don't know a lot about the Korean War. Yes.
Prop
Don't know.
Robert
And I think Canada, we can all agree Canada's forgotten war is that time China invaded through a series of underground tunnels from underground and got turned Back, Back. By a woman in her 50s.
Prop
Oh my Lord.
Robert
From underground.
Prop
From underground.
Robert
That is from underground. I love it. Everything's got to take place underground. She's from that chunk of the UFO community where everything's happening underground.
Prop
Yeah, everything's in the whole world under there.
Robert
If you're like, China invaded Canada, Canadians are going to be like, I live in Canada and I didn't see anything happen. But if you're like, no, no, no, they came up underground. They were in the tunnels. Well, maybe I haven't been to the tunnels.
Prop
I might have missed out that one. Was it up in the Yukon? Because if it was underground, it's pretty cold up there. I don't think you could burrow through that, I don't think.
Robert
Cold place for tunnels.
Prop
Why would they do that?
Robert
I'm imagining like an US sort of situation here, which is what they're imagining. Right. That's part of what that movie was inspired by. As the story goes, there were Chinese soldiers that were like being stationed in tunnels that ran from Canada through the U.S. down to Mexico. And the Chinese army was going to invade and they were going to invade like Canada and the US and I guess Mexico simultaneously. And as they were preparing and getting their army in place, they were using the tunnels. Cause if you've got these tunnels before they're filled with soldiers, that's a lot of a real estate outlay to buy these tunnels. So you're gonna use them for something. And the Chinese army used them to harvest adrenochrome from children, you know, so.
Prop
A multinational tunnel, like you said, through three countries.
Robert
Three countries. A tunnel system presumably underneath, like all of the major habitation areas of those cities. Right. I would assume.
Prop
This is incredible. This is absolutely incredible.
Robert
Yeah, yeah. Now again, she's cribbing from some old and well established conspiracy theories which all have underground bases in cities and stuff about the, you know, children being abducted to provide organs and narcotics for the elite. This is. None of this is new. She's just wrapping old stuff. In her conspiracy theory theory, Christine Sarteshi continues. Didulo claims that the Chinese Communist military is a front for the new world order. Satanists and individuals who want to engage in eugenics. Diddulo asserts that she single handedly removed the Chinese Communist military from Canada and additionally the remainder of the world. It's got to be news to China. Did you? Low maintains that if the Chinese Communist military attacked the United States as was planned, that it would have sparked a world war. She contends that her subterranean military achievements thus prevented World War iii. For that, she was awarded her title as queen. The entire world explains. Should be thankful for her monumental efforts. And you know what, Prop, let's end this episode right now by just saying, thank you, Romana, for stopping the Chinese Communists from destroying Canada and I guess, also America.
Prop
I'm curious as to why your commander in chief in Arizona, like, why. Why he ain't do nothing about it before he even got to Canada? Like, why was he not? And why would you. Like, I feel like, why is the.
Robert
King of America not king.
Prop
King. He's king of America. I feel like I would have an.
Robert
Maybe he's down in Arizona. They haven't made it there yet.
Prop
Way down south. You could have gave me a heads up that they was coming. You know what I'm saying?
Robert
I feel like they were gonna invade.
Prop
You know what I'm saying?
Robert
Yeah. One thing I love about this is that it is very clearly the kind of grift that, like, someone who doesn't know much about Canada or the United States really would make. There's this almost, like, childlike vantage point where, like, obviously, if there's a queen in Canada, she must have been appointed by the King of America. Right, Obviously. Because that just makes sense, of course, which is, I think, kind of offensive to most Canadians, even most crazy Canadians. But it makes a lot of sense when you think about Romana's backstory, that she does have this kind of outsider look where she's like, okay, I gotta find someone who could make me Queen of Canada. King of America.
Prop
How about the King of America, right? Oh, that's so great. This is wonderful. Wonderful. I'm still curious, which we'll probably get in with the next episode is like, okay, but where's the bat? Where's the money at? Where's the bag at? Like, what are. Wendy. When does she get to the money? Like, what is the.
Robert
Yeah.
Prop
What is the thing? Yeah. What's the grip?
Robert
I mean, the grift is she's going to raise money to support her quest to save Canada. You know, like that. That's what it's going to be. You get followers and you take their money. Right. Okay, now, again, when I first read about her exploits tunnel fighting the Chinese army, I had the same question you're all asking. How did she do that? And unfortunately, she never gives us details. She just says that she was unable to eat or sleep or think while fighting off China's invasion. And when she finally achieved victory, she wept and was allowed to eat and sleep again. I think based on My general knowledge of these kinds of movements that she's claiming this was a psychic battle. She wasn't fighting them in hand to hand combat. She was sitting in her house and became aware psychically that Chinese psychers were in tunnels underneath Canada. And she fought off China's psychic warriors using her own psychic powers. Right.
Prop
Physically came to our tunnels.
Robert
That's a little unclear to me. Prop. I think so, but I don't think she fought them physically.
Prop
That's what I'm saying. But why would they phys. Oh, why am I asking about logic?
Robert
Why are you asking?
Prop
Why am I asking about logic? But that means that. That. See, but see, we learn it here, we learn it by omission. See, that means that like your psychic fighting abilities has a range. It's more like radio rather than satellite. So you got to be a little closer to Canada. So that's the best way. Psychic war. You got to actually physically be on the western hemisphere under our ground or the radio signals.
Robert
That's why, again, Arizona was just too far. The king of America's psychic powers didn't reach into Canada.
Prop
You know what? It might be, he might have tried. It's just his signal wasn't strong.
Robert
Maybe the caves were made out of dolomite, which we all know blocks psychic residents, you know, no way to know. So the Queen claims that after she finished defeating the Chinese, her roommate. It sounds like she's saying her roommate walked it on her. She doesn't exactly say this, but I'm guessing she was astral projecting. And then afterwards, her roommate sees her and is like, hey, what happened? And she's like, I am the Queen and commander in chief of Canada. I defeated the Chinese copy communists, and if you tell anyone, I'm going to have to kill you. And that's not a joke, right?
Sophie
Oh, man, the queen having a roommate is really funny.
Robert
It's very funny. It's really funny.
Prop
Yeah, I'll just call Uber eats, bro. Like, seeing if you want to be.
Sophie
Like, I'm the Queen, I'm gonna need your half of the utilities bill.
Robert
Yeah, and here's the thing, what's funny to me is this is part of her story to her followers about how she came to power is like. And then I told my roomma and my roommate started calling me your majesty from then on.
Prop
Of course she did.
Robert
She's like, he immediately recognized that I was the queen. I think this guy might have been both joking and also like, well, she just threatened to kill me, so I probably don't want to push her too far. This is clearly an unwell person that I live with.
Prop
All right, your majesty.
Robert
I'm just gonna say, you, Majesty, and get on Craigslist to look for another room.
Prop
Absolutely. Okay, your majesty. Well, it's your turn to do the bathroom, so I don't know if you got any of your royal subjects to come do this, but it's your turn.
Sophie
Turn.
Robert
Yeah. You still gotta clean the bathroom.
Prop
Yeah. I was also interested in your. Your. Your acknowledgment of the tunnels being made a dolomite.
Robert
And, well, I assume it. It blocks psychic powers. Maybe not her psychic powers, but maybe the king of America.
Prop
I'm just saying, my only reference to dolomite was a pimp from the 70s.
Robert
Great.
Prop
Yeah. Oh, okay.
Robert
He was also a pimp. Okay. Maybe the tunnels in Canada were made from a pimp from the 70s.
Prop
Okay, cool.
Sophie
Okay.
Robert
I was like, wow.
Prop
No, dolomite was real.
Robert
Okay, well, everybody, thank you.
Sophie
Killing me.
Robert
That's this episode of behind the Bastards. Until next time. You know what you should do?
Sophie
Listen to hood politics.
Robert
That's what you could. Yeah, sure. Listen to hood politics, listen to hood politics and declare yourself the king or queen of whatever country you happen to be in. You know, all you have to do is defeat the Chinese military underground using your psychic with your brain.
Prop
Yep.
Sophie
I'm gonna work really hard on that. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.
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Robert
This is an iHeart podcast.
Prop
Guaranteed Human.
Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media/iHeartPodcasts)
Host: Robert Evans, with Sophie and guest Jason "Prop" Petty
Date: February 3, 2026
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the life, claims, and bizarre rise of Romana Didulo—a Filipino-born Canadian conspiracy theorist and self-declared "Queen of Canada"—exploring her influences, supposed biography, the cultic atmosphere that enabled her ascent, and the sheer weirdness (and persistence) that brought her renown among right-wing online communities.
This episode, the first in a two-part series, investigates Romana Didulo: her origins, her transformation from failed entrepreneur to conspiracy cult figure, and the broader context of North American cultic movements that paved the way for figures like her. Host Robert Evans, joined by Sophie and recurring guest Prop, brings characteristic irreverence, skepticism, and humor to an increasingly surreal tale of online radicalization and the hunger for weird, empowering alternative realities.
On cult leader success:
"If all you can do is really completely destroy the mental freedom and sovereignty of like 10 people... that's enough... You're valid as a cult leader." — Prop (05:43)
On Didulo’s minimal charisma:
"She's not good at that. She has no stage presence. It's one of the least energetic examples of VO I've heard in the right-wing populist politics game. And this is kind of the big mystery about her... She doesn't have any money, she doesn't have any power, and she's boring as hell. Why is anyone talking about the Queen of Canada?" — Robert (51:45–51:57)
On absurd Canadian conspiracy lore:
"She single handedly removed the Chinese Communist military from Canada and additionally the remainder of the world." — Robert, paraphrasing Didulo dogma (73:38)
On cult leader psychology:
"You have to have enough of an understanding of reality, enough of a distance to stay ahead of the authorities." — Robert (49:07)
On psychic warfare logistics:
"See, we learn it here, we learn it by omission. That means that your psychic fighting abilities has a range... It's more like radio rather than satellite." — Prop (76:21)
The hosts' tone is wry, irreverent, and incredulous, frequently breaking into laughter at the absurdity of Didulo’s claims or the cosmic irony of her (minor) success despite her lack of budget, charisma, or logic. Prop’s input frequently underscores the ridiculousness and signals (for both the show and audience) that you don’t need to take Didulo’s claims seriously—though the phenomenon itself has dark, real-world implications.
This episode offers not just the story of Romana Didulo, but a meditation on how conspiracy-mongers, hustlers, and fringe cultists persist—why people want to believe in psychic wars, secret royalty, and grand missions, and how sometimes, persistence and luck (more than actual skill or malevolence) can birth bizarre moments of online fame.
Upcoming in part two, Robert promises a deeper dive into Didulo’s specific grifts (especially her methods for extracting money from followers), the tangible fallout of her cult, and her impact on both her immediate circle and the broader disinformation ecosystem.
Next Episode Preview:
"Where's the bag at? What's the grift?"—Prop
Tune in to part two for the mechanics of Romana Didulo’s queenly con and the toll it takes on her subjects’ lives.