QAnon Will Not Be Leaving Us Anytime Soon
Will Sommer, author of the new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America, explains where QAnon came from, why it isn’t going away anytime soon, and how material deprivation helps drive conspiracy theories.
A supporter of former US president Donald Trump holds a sign associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory while celebrating the former president’s third White House run announcement outside of his Mar-A-Lago residence in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 15, 2022. (Giorgio Viera / AFP via Getty Images)
QAnon is one of the strangest developments in the Trump era: a pastiche conspiracy theory involving Satanic rituals, child abuse, the US military, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the former host of The Apprentice. In many ways, QAnon should have died in 2021 when, contrary to the eponymous “Q”’s various prophecies, Donald Trump departed the White House and Joe Biden was sworn in as president. Instead, it was supercharged by the global pandemic and exported to countries as far afield as Germany, France, and Japan.
Investigative journalist Will Sommer has been following QAnon since it first emerged in 2017. His new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America is an extended interrogation of the theory’s genesis and roots. Sommer joined Jacobin’s Luke Savage to discuss the book, the state of QAnon, and what has enabled the movement to endure and grow despite its many failed prophecies.
Luke Savage
Reading your book, I was particularly struck by the extent to which QAnon is an expansive pastiche of existing conspiracy theories and grievances that are common on the Republican right. What are the various sources and antecedents to QAnon as you see them? What’s the raw material that it’s drawing on?
Will Sommer
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