I Believe She is the Real Person.. Romana Didulo

The woman whom thousands of Canadians believe is their secret ruler isn't afraid to tell her followers she's calling for the executions of the health-care workers and politicians behind the vaccination rollout. An image created from videos posted by Romana Didulo and her followers. QAnons Are Harassing People at the Whim of a Woman They Say Is Canada’s Queen A woman who claims she is the secret ruler of Canada has, thanks to QAnon influencers, thousands of followers, some of which are extremely active offline and harassing Canadians. Mack Lamoureux by Mack Lamoureux Toronto, CA 17.6.21 The woman whom thousands of Canadians believe is their secret ruler isn’t afraid to tell her followers she’s calling for the executions of health care workers and politicians behind the vaccination rollout. “At the firing squad, the military firing squad, you will receive not one, but two bullets on your forehead for each child that you have harmed as a result of injecting this experimental vaccine,” said Romana Didulo to those involved in vaccination efforts in a recent video on Telegram. “So when you go home tonight, think about how many bullets.” Advertisement Didulo, a B.C.-based woman in her 50s, has recently built up a following of thousands of people who listen to her claims of having been put in control of the Great White North by the same forces that QAnon believers think are fighting the deep state in America. QAnon, for the uninitiated, is a wide-ranging, wildly unfactual conspiracy centred upon Donald Trump’s secret fight against an international cabal of elitist pedophiles. Didulo was recently thrust into her position by several well-known QAnon figures who helped anoint her as a leader and in turns sent a swarm of followers her way. But despite her following being only weeks old, Didulo has rallied her Canadian followers to real-life action. They’re in the midst of filing hundreds of “cease and desist” notices demanding businesses, governments, and police forces stop all activities related to combating the pandemic. They have organized themselves into localized groups to email their demands out en masse, send them via registered letter, or simply make their way to stores or police stations in order to physically hand them out. One particularly riled-up group of conspiracy theorists in Cochrane, Alberta, went to over 30 businesses last week to hand out the notices. On June 10 they decided to go to a K-8 school—while children were present—and hand the notices and anti-vax flyers out. They eventually were kicked out and Cochrane RCMP confirmed to VICE World News that two people received trespassing tickets for their actions. The group complained about its mistreatment by police inside its Telegram chat and mulled over “bombarding” the school’s principal with letters. Didulo has said that if the people who received the cease and desist orders from her followers break them, they will be executed. Advertisement “Peace, prosperity, or perish,” is one of her slogans, after all. The Queen It’s not Didulo who is necessarily important, but her growing and active audience. QAnon, which may, according to a recent poll, have as many as 30 million followers in the U.S. as well as more outside of it, has contributed to real-world violence, including the Capitol Hill uprising. Only a few short years ago, Didulo could have been simply ignored as someone with a grift or a tenuous grip of reality posting videos, but now, thanks to the new QAnon ecosystem, she’s a figure of consequence. In this modern environment, someone claiming to be the secret ruler of Canada and to be holding military tribunals and executions can rapidly gain thousands of followers, some willing to follow her off the deepest creases of the internet and into the real world. To know the volatility of her followers, however, you must first know who they’re following. Didulo is the “leader” of an online political party called the Canada1st Party of Canada—which does not appear to have been officially registered anywhere but has been turned into a corporation by Didulo. She began posting about the party and making videos about her policy in late 2020, during the second wave of the pandemic. However, the party never took off, and she languished in obscurity for some time. Advertisement That all changed in May when she changed tactics and switched her rhetoric to fit several popular QAnon narratives. After getting noticed by a couple of well-known QAnon figures, her profile has been growing rapidly. She now has almost 20,000 followers on Telegram, her primary channel, and a growing and engaged audience. The audience consists of an intersection of QAnon believers, anti-lockdown zealots, and “sovereign citizens” (people who think government laws do not apply to them, especially ones related to taxes). And her audience is not a passive one. “Hello, Canada, I’m Ramona Didulo, I'm the founder and leader of Canada1st. As of February this year, 2021, I am the head of state and commander in chief of Canada, the Republic,” she said in her announcement video. “The people who appointed me are the white hats and the U.S. military, together with the global allied troops and their governments—the same group of people who have helped President Trump.” She speaks to her audience either through Telegram posts or via poorly produced videos in which she sits on a couch in front of an empty beige wall. In a follow-up video to her initial decree, Didulo declares herself not only the “the head of state,” “commander in chief,” and “head of government,” but also the “Queen of Canada, replacing Queen Elizabeth II of England who has now been executed for crimes against humanity.” Advertisement Many of Didulo’s followers seem to believe she’s holding tribunals behind the scenes, which are resulting in the executions they’re thirsting for. These followers use extremely tenuous scraps of evidence to prove Didulo is actually in power—including the fact that Romana Didulo is an anagram for “I Am Our Donald.” The violent rhetoric she spouts in her posts and videos seems to be one of the main things driving her popularity. “Let’s keep this simple,” Didulo wrote recently, “death is the penalty for crimes against humanity.” This was met with much jubilation from hundreds of followers: “YASSS!!! 🙏,” wrote one; “I’m so happy we have you.😘❤️,” wrote another; “she is the only one that is saying anything hopeful or anything that makes sense…. It felt completely hopeless before Romana came along,” wrote a third. “As much as I hate to see people being put to death, it has become necessary because the jerks just won't stop what they are doing,” wrote yet another. Pete Smith, a journalist with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, has been researching Didulo and her rapid rise. Smith said Didulo immigrated to Canada from the Philippines at a young age (something Didulo claims on her own website as well) and that prior to Didulo starting Canada1st in late 2020, she started and quickly shut down several companies and ventures—which weren’t conspiracy-oriented—and that nothing she’s attempted has really taken off before now. Even her initial posts declaring Canada’s new secret rulers were met with relatively little fanfare until she was signalled out by QAnon figures such as Charlie Ward and Whiplash347, who legitimized her to their audiences. "It’s their endorsement that seems to have been the cause of all of this,” said Smith. “Without them, I don’t believe that there is a Canada1st party like we’re seeing right now." Advertisement Drew, an anti-fascist researcher who follows the anti-lockdown group closely (and didn’t want to be named because of fear of reprisal), said he came across Didulo in early 2021 but that she “was a nobody” until she got big-upped by Q-influencers. Marc-André Argentino, a research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence who has written several papers on the QAnon movement, told VICE World News influencers in the QAnon ecosystem “have shown an uncanny capacity to raise unknown individuals to positions of influence in a very short period of time. “In the absence of ‘Q,’ influencers in QAnon ecosystems have taken on the mantel of determining what is canon (or authoritative) in these spaces,” said Argentino. “Though they may not always agree, they are able to bestow authority on random individuals. This makes for a volatile ecosystem, which expands radicalization pipelines in unpredictable ways.” Didulo in recent videos she posted on her Telegram channel. Photo via screenshot. Didulo in recent videos she posted on her Telegram channel. Photo via screenshot. In a video speaking about her, one popular QAnon theorist who gets thousands of views on off-brand sites like Rumble and Bitchute states unequivocally she’s a “temporary holding until they get Trump in.” Others have “confirmed” her by sharing her videos or outright saying she’s legitimate, as she fits into their conspiracy. “She is sending out all these cease and desist orders to stop these mass mask mandate and vaccine mandate crimes and she’s making it very clear that if you violate the crimes you’ll be executed,” said one popular online QAnon influencer in a video on Didulo that received over 30,000 views. “God bless her; Canada needs somebody like that.” Advertisement A follower of Didulo told VICE World News that seeing Didulo being spoken about by these figures confirmed to her she was legit and “not a bullshitter.” The woman, who is active in helping hand out cease and desist notices in Alberta, said she’s attempting to talk to Didulo to confirm some of her claims, but was not able to contact her. Numerous attempts by VICE World News to contact Didulo and people whom she previously worked with before declaring herself Queen went unanswered. “Everywhere I look and the people that I listen to and even people down the States and the UK say she’s here to sidetrack the cabal,” the follower told VICE over the phone. “She’s a true and sincere person; that’s without a doubt.”