NYT review of: “Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America”

Daily Beast journalist Will Sommer spent years researching the disturbing QAnon religious movement, which started on 8chan and has spread insidiously across the world, infecting even members of congress, most notably the unpleasant wacko Marjorie Taylor Greene. His new book, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America, is reviewed by Dwight Garner in The New York Times:

These leaders are taking dangerous advantage, and they know it, of marginalized and disrespected people, many with debts or serious health issues, and promising them redemption in a coming “storm,” led by the messianic figure of Donald Trump, that will wipe away institutions and thus their problems. It’s a violent fantasy that’s goading people into violent real-world actions. A ridiculous sticky bomb has been attached to the underside of the American experiment, and it could still go off.

A surprise about Sommer’s book is how moving it frequently is. “Trust the Plan” ripens into tragedy. It describes those moments when family members realize that Dad has leaped the hedge of rationality — that he isn’t kidding when he talks about Trump and conspiracies and experimental vaccines and the impending storm, and he wants you to believe his ideas too.