From the creator of the smash hit podcast, a riveting deep dive into the roots of Q Anon, the rise of the extreme right in the US, a democracy in mortal peril – and the strange fascination conspiracy theories continue to hold for all of us. Is this how democracy dies? Based on his smash hit podcast, The Coming Storm is Gabriel Gatehouse’s brilliant exploration of the roots of Q Anon and the rise of the extreme right in the US. It’s a story that reaches back decades, showing how a dark fantasy embedded itself in the American consciousness, threatening to derail its democracy – and it continues to unfold today. Gatehouse’s riveting book takes you down a rabbit hole – one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through – to unpack an epochal shift in political culture that starts in the earliest years of the Clinton administration and reaches a crescendo on 6 January 2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. But that event wasn’t the wild finale of a chaotic Trump presidency many hoped for – it was only the beginning. A compelling mix of reportage and personal experience, The Coming Storm gets under the skin of these conspiracy theories to show us a radical new kind of politics emerging, a movement that has coalesced around a loose alliance of white supremacists, men’s rights activists, tech bros, and radically disenchanted leftists. As we approach the 2024 US presidential election, and perhaps the most perilous moment in the history of American democracy, Gatehouse’s book tells us some dark truths about our present, and provides clues about our future. It marks the debut of a major new voice in political journalism.
