The ‘Q Shaman’ on Why He Stormed the Capitol Dressed as a Viking

Editor’s Note: Chansley was arrested Saturday morning and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to a press release issued by The Department of Justice.

Jacob Angeli Chansley says he traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to oppose tyranny.

He went, he said, to protest governments that have shuttered businesses during the pandemic, told citizens to avoid their own family members, and mandated that people wear masks.

He went to oppose the recent coronavirus stimulus package and omnibus spending bill that sent billions of dollars to foreign nations, but only $600 to American citizens.

And most importantly, he went because, “Donald Trump asked everybody to go to D.C., didn’t he?” said Chansley, who views himself as a truth-teller and an activist willing to stand up to the most powerful figures in government.

“I am a true patriot that believes in the founding documents, that believes in our founding principles,” Chansley said Friday in an interview with National Review. “I have no concern, whatsoever, what happens to me, because I will not live on my knees, and I will not allow my country to be ruled by lesser men.”

Chansley, 33, is well versed in the language of the populist right. Many of the concerns he raises wouldn’t be out of place at an anywhere-America Republican club meeting. But Chansley also is a leading peddler of the wide-ranging QAnon conspiracy theory. He’s appeared regularly at right-wing rallies  — in his home state of Arizona, and across the country — bare-chested and tattooed, wearing fur and a horned helmet, like some kind of eighth-century Viking. He’s gained internet fame as the “QAnon Shaman.”

He was among the QAnon conspiracists, militants, and other right-wing rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, spurred on by Trump. Chansley made it all the way to the Senate dais, where he posed for photos, flexed his muscles, and held a spear with an American flag, shouting, “Where’s Pence? Show yourself!”

Political leaders and pundits across the nation have deemed Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol a dark day and a disgrace. QAnon conspiracists led the storming of the Capitol. One, 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by Capitol Police as she attempted to enter a House chamber. Another woman who was a Trump supporter was trampled to death in the mayhem. In total, five people died, one of them a Capitol Police officer who was reportedly smashed over the head with a fire extinguisher. In Chansley’s mind, Wednesday was a total victory for his cause.

“We won by sending a message to the senators and the congressman, we won by sending a message to [Vice President Mike] Pence, OK, that if they don’t do as they’re oath to do, if they don’t uphold the Constitution, then we will remove them from office one way or another,” Chansley said in an interview after he left the Capitol, at Trump’s urging.

By mixing their mainstream right-wing politics with a large helping of paranoia and conspiratorial thinking, people like Chansley have become a force on the American right, while also undermining the conservative movement.

Chansley has become a leading voice in a fantasy world where international bankers, communists, globalists, Satanists, and pedophiles are attempting to monopolize and control all of the world’s resources. COVID-19, he said, is a Trojan horse into every economy in the world. In his mind, shadowy forces have for decades been using the media to condition Americans’ minds using neuro-linguistic programming and psychological warfare techniques. Oh, and as for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, they’re “communist pedophiles.”

It’s all being exposed by Q — the anonymous titular figure at the head of the QAnon movement, allegedly in the highest levels of the military and intelligence communities.

“Q is helping the American people take the country back,” said Chansley, who creates videos explaining it all on his social media accounts. “There’s a reason why I made these videos, and it’s because people need to know this information. Then we will essentially take our country back without firing a shot.”

Chansley, who was born and raised in Arizona, said he had a “very unconventional childhood,” but declined to get into the details. He grew up Roman Catholic, “but I was smart enough even as a kid to realize it was a bunch of bull.” Even as a child, he said, he wanted to understand why “the world was so messed up.”

As a young man, he served for two years in the U.S. Navy, which the Navy confirmed Friday. He said he was discharged when he refused to take the anthrax vaccine. He worked for about five years in a group home for abused children, but he quit after one of the kids chased him out of the house with a knife, he said. After that, he wanted to do something fun. He tried to get into acting and set up a profile at backstage.com, but he never got any work. He thought that, “hopefully things will fall in my lap, and that’s not quite how the acting thing works.”

Now, he said, he’s an ordained shamanic practitioner and a political activist. He set up a website, and makes his living selling books, courses, and ideas, he said. His website is currently under construction, and his YouTube videos have been removed “because of the events that happened a day or two ago” and “because I was speaking way too much truth.”

Chansley said he dresses in his Viking outfit at rallies because it catches people’s attention, disrupts their programming, and gives him the opportunity to tell them about Q. But he also dresses that way “to chase off evil spirits, chase off evil sorcerers, and evil witches, Satanic warlocks and stuff like that who might attempt to infiltrate our movement.”

He said he’s not worried about being arrested for his actions in the Capitol on Wednesday.

“No, no, I’ve already spoken with the FBI. When I heard they were looking for me, I called them,” he said. “That’s the kind of guy I am.”

“Technically I didn’t do anything illegally,” he said. “I didn’t vandalize any property. I never harmed a police officer. I never looted. I never caused any destruction of property or anything like that. All I did was walk through open doors. I never forced my way through anything.”

As for Trump, he expects he will continue to be president. Trump never officially conceded, he pointed out. Yes, he acknowledged, Trump said there will be a peaceful transition of power.

“He never said anything about the Biden administration,” Chansley said. “I don’t see Biden ever getting in office. One way or another, Biden will not be the president.”

He said he doesn’t know how that will happen, he’s just confident it won’t.

“I have an idea of what I think will happen,” he said, “but I don’t want to say, because I don’t want to give away a possible chess move that may be played on that day.”