Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Reshaped America

About the Book

A journalist who has followed the rise of QAnon explains what it is, how it has gained a mainstream following among Republican lawmakers and ordinary citizens, the threat it poses to democracy, and how we can reach those who have embraced the conspiracy and are disseminating its lies.

Over the last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread worldwide, so too did the pro-Trump cabal known as QAnon. What began as a fringe online conspiracy in the mid 2000s is now embraced by millions of Americans across the country—and the globe—including new members of Congress and the thousands of Trump followers, armed with guns and a variety of makeshift weapons, who attacked the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, searching for lawmakers including the Vice President, shouting “hang Mike Pence.”

Following internet clues from a mysterious figure named “Q”—who has claimed to be a high-level government insider with a Q-level clearance—QAnon adherents, fueled by paranoia and hatred of the left, believe that Donald Trump has been anointed by God to stop evil Democrats who sexually abuse, kill, and eat children; that Trump won the 2020 election that was stolen from him and will soon order mass executions of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, George Soros, and many others. QAnon believers continue to spout lies and disinformation about politics and the pandemic; their beliefs have ruptured friendships and family bonds and caused untold damage.

While in office, Trump praised QAnon believers as “people who love our country,” invited them to the White House, and retweeted their crazed messages on a near-daily basis. Though he is gone, the threat of widespread violence from his acolytes—“the Storm is coming”—remains high. What can we do about Q's growing platform Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer has been reporting on the QAnon conspiracy for years and has been targeted by the group. In this timely and essential book, he explains the genesis of QAnon, his experience covering its members online and in the real world, Q’s lies and how they are spread, how Q has overshadowed politics, and what the nation must do to address this growing danger—including how to help friends and family who have fallen under Q’s pernicious sway.

About the Author :
Will Sommer is a media reporter for the Washington Post. He previously worked as a politics reporter for the Daily Beast and as a host of the podcast Fever Dreams. His work covering QAnon and other conspiracy theories has been featured in multiple documentaries, including HBO's Q: Into the Storm.

Review :
"Sommer emerges to offer a close examination of the rise and continued presence of QAnon on the US political landscape. Detailed and impeccably researched, Trust the Plan is essentially a crash course on a volatile and vocal segment of the US population." - The Guardian
"Investigative journalist Will Sommer has been following QAnon since it first emerged in 2017. Trust the Plan is an extended interrogation of the theory's genesis and roots." - Jacobin
"[Sommer has] turned this bizarre new world of the far right into his full-time beat. Now he's one of its most knowledgeable chroniclers--as evidenced by Sommer's new book....[Trust the Plan] surveys the unintentional comedy and wrenching tragedy that has accompanied QAnon's infiltration into so many American brains." - The Washingtonian
"Will Sommer all but invented serious cultural reporting on the far right, inhabiting the worst corners of the internet so that the rest of us could understand them, and his new book on QAnon serves as a vital road map to one of the strangest and most disturbing movements of modern politics. Writing with insight, empathy, and historical expertise, Will masterfully documents how a random anonymous internet post on Reddit in 2017 rose up and swallowed the Republican Party." - Garrett Graff, author of Watergate: A New History
"Will Sommer has established himself as the expert on America's right-wing fringe. Now he's exploring the damage that Donald Trump and the QAnon theorists who adore him have wreaked on the country. With kidnappings, murders, and Satanic rituals, this is a story so bizarre, only Will Sommer could report it." - Molly Jong-Fast, contributing writer, the Atlantic
"To understand this unique--and uniquely scary--moment in American politics, you need to understand QAnon. And to understand QAnon, you need to read this book."
- Chris Cillizza, host of CNN's The Point
"Punchy and well-reported....Sommer is the perfect person to tell this story. He traces the rise of lawless message boards like 8chan, he profiles the key players, he chronicles QAnon's influence on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he sneaks into QAnon rallies, he analyzes Republican reactions to the blight in their fields, and he breathes deep of the madness, while staying blissfully sane himself." - New York Times
"This is an absolutely fascinating and deeply troubling book. Rage-inducing and heartbreaking, it's a rigorously researched, energetically written examination of a phenomenon laughed off for too long as fringe silliness." - Booklist (starred review)