QAnon Is an Even Greater, Graver Danger than We Realized

Will Sommer's new book is a timely and urgent look at the danger posed by QAnon and its far too numerous adherents.

Like a great many other people I know, I’ve been flummoxed by the seemingly inexorable rise of QAnon, the nebulous movement that argues that some of the world’s most powerful people–politicians, Hollywood stars, financiers–are part of a nefarious cabal of pedophiles who torture children and drink their blood. It beggars belief that people would actually believe this and yet, time and time again, we’ve seen, through polls and through events like the January 6 riot on the Capitol, that there are a lot of people in this country who are more than willing to believe in a myth, no matter how far-fetched and deranged it might be. 

Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America is a timely book, for while some might be tempted to dismiss QAnon and its adherents as a bunch of quacks and cranks, Will Sommer demonstrates the extent to which this movement threatens to unravel the very foundations of our democracy. Moving from the far-right corners of the internet–most notably 4chan and 8chan (and, later 8kun), it has quickly become mainstreamed until its proponents now occupy various government positions, from the local to the national (looking at you, Marjorie Taylor Green). To any sane person this all seems quite distressing, and it is. 

Sommer’s book is a disturbing, and at times deeply tragic, tour of QAnon, focusing not just on how it came to be but also how it manifested in the real world. For, as Sommer reminds us time and again, this conspiracy theory–due in no small part to its totalizing nature–has now come to have very real influence in the real world that the rest of us live in. Obviously, the riot on January 6 is the most visible and terrifying iteration of this, but Sommer also draws our attention to a number of other moments when QAnon’s influence spilled out into reality, whether it’s one of its leaders repeatedly harassing a woman in Florida or a troubled mother kidnapping her daughter. 

There was, Sommer contends, a brief window of time when it seemed as if QAnon would be consigned to the dustbin of history, when it seemed at last to be running out of steam. And then the pandemic happened, and it was suddenly given a new breath of life. Trapped in their homes, far too many people turned to QAnon to give their lives meaning and to make sense of the chaos and darkness seemingly overtaking the rest of the world. These are, I think, some of the saddest parts of the book. 

And where is Trump in all of this? If you have even a passing knowledge of QAnon, you no doubt know that, in the “movement’s” view of the world, Trump is the one who was supposed to bring about “the Storm,” the great reckoning that would see the perpetrators of this travesty finally overthrown. The fact that this moment never actually happened should, in theory, have forced QAnon believers to reevaluate their priorities but, if anything, it seems to have merely pushed them even deeper down the rabbit hole. For his part, Trump has done almost nothing to disabuse QAnon believers and, if anything, has continued to feed the flames, giving the followers of the conspiracy theory the imprimatur of presidential legitimacy. 

It would have been easy for Sommer to adopt a cynical or condescending attitude toward those who are benighted by their belief in QAnon and, to be sure, it’s very clear that he hasn’t been “red-pilled.” At the same time, it’s to his credit that he makes a good faith effort to understand them on their own terms, to find out what it is that has led them to this particular juncture in their lives. Some of the most affecting parts of Trust the Plan are when he outlines the struggles and heartache of those who have lost family members to QAnon’s sinister and sirenic allure. 

Of course, Sommer doesn’t neglect the deeper context, and he is skilled at showing both the deep history of conspiratorial thinking in American culture as well as the role of social media. The latter has always been key to QAnon’s ability to spread, particularly since giants like Facebook proved almost entirely unwilling to do anything about it and, in fact, saw it as a means of boosting their own numbers. If we’re to have any hope of combating QAnon’s continuing dominance in American politics and culture, it’s going to have to involve the social media companies taking a more stringent effort (now that Elon Musk owns Twitter that’s unlikely to happen).

The question that lingers over the entire book is: wait, really? Even as we’re reading through Sommer's erudite and precise journalism, it’s still hard for me to really believe that there are so many people out there in America (and abroad) who truly believe in the nuttiest and most bizarre elements of this particular conspiracy theory. In that sense, the subtitle of Sommers’ book is truly apposite: we are living in unhinged times, and it doesn’t seem like they are going to get much better anytime in the near future. 

But therein, I think, lies the book’s great value. It does take QAnon seriously, and it reminds us that it is a very bad idea indeed to dismiss it or, if one is unfortunate enough to have a member of one’s family who has been seduced, to cut them off. The enduring power of QAnon lies in its ability to draw disillusioned and disconnected people into its orbit, promising them meaning and fulfilment that they lack in their everyday lives. As tempting as it can be to write them off or to cut them out of our lives–or our social fabric altogether–doing so will only make the problem worse. As we learn time and again in Trust the Plan, there is no easy answer but what is certain is that we must all do our part to build a better and more just society, one in which the madness of QAnon will struggle to take root and to flourish.