***I hope everyone reads this book. It has become such a crucial thing
for all of us to understand. **--*****Erin Burnett, CNN
An ideal tour guide for your journey into the depths of the rabbit
hole that is QAnon. It even shows you a glimmer of light at the exit.
--Cullen Hoback, director of HBO's Q: Into the Storm
*** Its messaging can seem cryptic, even nonsensical, yet for tens of
thousands of people, it explains everything: What is QAnon, where did it
come from, and is the Capitol insurgency a sign of where it's going
next?
**
** On October 5th, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the
State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt
like "the calm before the storm"--then refused to elaborate as puzzled
journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of
4chan, a mysterious poster going by "Q Clearance Patriot," who claimed
to be in "military intelligence," began the elaboration on their own.
In the days that followed, Q's wild yarn explaining Trump's remarks
began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while
satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q
predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every
word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider
and wider? No.
Why not? Who were these rapt listeners? How do they reconcile their
worldview with the America they see around them? Why do their numbers
keep growing? Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy
theories, has been collecting their stories for years, and through
interviews with QAnon converts, apostates, and victims, as well as
psychologists, sociologists, and academics, he is uniquely equipped to
explain the movement and its followers.
In The Storm Is Upon Us, he takes readers from the background
conspiracies and cults that fed the Q phenomenon, to its embrace by
right-wing media and Donald Trump, through the rending of families as
loved ones became addicted to Q's increasingly violent rhetoric, to the
storming of the Capitol, and on.
And as the phenomenon shows no sign of calming despite Trump's loss of
the presidency--with everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennial moms
proving susceptible to its messaging--and politicians starting to openly
espouse its ideology, Rothschild makes a compelling case that mocking
the seeming madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Rather, his
impassioned reportage makes clear it's time to figure out what QAnon
really is -- because QAnon and its relentlessly dark theory of
everything isn't done yet.
