The town hall over the QAnon cult that had taken over the a local school was going mighty fine until people started telling each other to “go fuck themselves.”
Sitting in the front row, Rick Manz, the man who invited the cult to town and gifted them a school where they lived for over a month, sat with a wide grin showing off his missing front teeth. He clapped along as an older woman took the mic and accused some in the town of “threatening their own neighbors.”
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“She’s a cult sympathizer,” one man shouted from the side.
“Fuck off, no I am not” was the woman’s reply. “I’m sick and tired of listening to you. I want Richmound to be the nice community it was when I moved in.”
“It’s people like you supporting that idiot there that is causing issues,” responded the man while pointing at Manz.
It’s been two months since Romana Didulo, better known as the QAnon Queen, came to the tiny town of Richmound, Saskatchewan. Didulo is a QAnon influencer who has built a following by telling people she’s the true queen of Canada and is essentially a spiritual being here to bring humanity to a “new timeline.” Prior to her time in Richmound, Didulo was essentially on a never-ending tour of Canada where she would set up in parking lots of cities where her followers would come to listen to her speak and give her money and gifts.
Didulo, and a small group of dedicated followers who have given up their lives to serve her every whim, have been living on the property gifted to her by Manz, a local who bought the school in the hopes of turning it into a cannabis grow-op. Didulo has declared that her followers now need to call Manz “His Excellency” and treat him like a diplomat for her service. Didulo embraced the school and even used it to host a meetup of her followers where they piled into the school gym and did a weird little ritual based around the fraudulent currency she made up.
Didulo promptly left the property last week after fire officials showed up for an inspection. Richmond Mayor Brad Miller told CBC News that he called the inspectors after spotting a heater propped upon a propane tank—a clear fire hazard. Mill told VICE News inspectors were turned away and by the end of the day the cult fled.
Now the cult is taking shelter at a farmhouse just an hour outside of town. Their motorhomes, trailers, and vehicles can be easily seen from the highway, giving the locals passing by a reminder they’re still around. Christine Sarteschi, a criminology professor at Chatham University who follows Didulo closely, told VICE News that “based on their livestream comments, and some sources in town, it appears as though they are planning to return to the Richmound school building.”
“‘Queen’ Romana and her followers are quite secretive about their activities and intentions but reports from Richmound sources indicate that they have left but intend to return,” Sarteschi told VICE. “Romana continues to disparage certain town individuals in its nightly livestream and remains a menace to the town and its people.”
The town has offered stiff pushback on the cult, holding multiple protests to get them out. The cult is increasingly paranoid of the town and has said they were worried about their school being burnt down or dogs being paranoid. Numerous times they’ve taken to their livestream—which is the cult’s primary form of communication to their follower—to attack Miller, and locals in the town by name. On the flip side, the town is paranoid of the cult after some of Didulo’s followers sent out faux “cease and desist orders” that promised the execution of the recipients.
Even though the cult is an hour out of town, incidents with the townsfolks are still occurring. The cult posted a video on Thursday of an interaction they had with locals and an independent journalist they’ve been sparring with. In it Didulo yells in the grocery store they’re in that she’s “being harassed” and marches towards the journalist who was filming them. In another video she gets into an argument with a local who asks her why she wants him “executed.” In the post accompanying the video, she demanded “this man and woman be charged with aggravated harassment, hate crime stalking, stalking causing fear.”
This in turn led to Didulo and her crew making paranoid livestream about the incident where multiple members of the Didulo’s inner circle gave lengthy statements about what happened. The group was particularly irate because one of the men who spoke to Didulo had his fly down when doing so.
“Where does this end?” an exasperated Manz yells. “You ambush the Queen with your fly down! There are no words to describe you.”
