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

by Will Sommer, Joe Knezevich (Read by)

Overview

"A story so bizarre, only Will Sommer could report it.” —Molly Jong-Fast

The definitive book on QAnon from the reporter knows them best; Will Sommer 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.

The Storm is Coming. Trust the Plan. WWG1WGA. You’ve seen the letter Q on TV and in the news – it’s been everywhere from Trump rallies to the January 6th insurrection. “QAnon” used to sound vaguely familiar, somewhat ominous, but not quite mainstream. But what was once a fringe conspiracy theory has now become a household name and its symbols recognizable around the world. How did this happen, who is actually involved, what do they believe, and what do they want?

Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer has been on the ground with Q’s followers since day one, and in Trust the Plan Sommer has written the definitive book on the movement—who started it and who grew it, what they really believe is going on, and what they want to see “the Storm” accomplish on the day of its reckoning. At once a character study and a journalistic exposé, Sommer lets his cast of characters do the talking as he visits them around the world, from their makeshift compounds to the rallies they are still holding.

The great tragedy of this story is ultimately the legitimization of this ideology by mainstream politicians eager to gain access to a large and growing cohort of voters. Though 2020 brought the end of Trump’s presidency, his following within the QAnon community has simply pivoted and grown stronger. Trust the Plan shows us in granular detail who we’ll be up against for years to come, in the US and abroad. Understanding why and how something like Q happens is an indispensable exercise, and in showing us how we got here we can chart a path out.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798200854653
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/21/2023
Product dimensions:	5.28(w) x 7.17(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Will Sommer is a politics reporter for the Daily Beast and the cohost of the podcast Fever Dreams. He previously worked as a campaign editor at The Hill and as a political columnist for Washington City Paper. His work covering QAnon and other conspiracy theories has been featured in multiple documentaries, including HBO’s Q: Into the Storm.

Originally from Miami, Florida, Joe Knezevich earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from Florida State University and studied in London with members of the world-renowned Complicite. Joe was an associate artist at Georgia Shakespeare for sixteen seasons, where he appeared in over forty plays. He is also a frequent guest on the Alliance Stage and has appeared in regional theater all over the country. In addition to his work on the stage, Joe has appeared in dozens of film and TV projects, but his most important role continues to be as husband and father. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, running, pool days, cooking, and cards.

Editorial Reviews

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

“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

“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

"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

"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)

“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

From the Publisher

10/01/2021

With We Should All Be Feminists, award-winning, multi-million-copy best-selling MacArthur author Adichie offers an illustrated journal that guides readers on their own feminist journeys. Arce, who worked hard to suppress her accent after immigrating to the United States from Mexico only to be told You Sound Like a White Girl, now rejects assimilation as an illusory and ultimately racist goal meant to keep her from belonging and instead argues for honoring one's culture; currently, she's collaborating with America Ferrera to develop Ferrera's My (Underground) American Dream for television (75,000-copy first printing). Following up 1999's No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Freedom Writers Diary, which inspired a film starring Hilary Swank and an Emmy award-winning documentary, Dear Freedom Writer is a compilation by contemporary Freedom Writers and teacher Gruwell of 50 more stories representing a new generation of high school students. As musician/activist Henry looks back on All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep—they thought he wasn't sufficiently polite when discussing racism or doubted it even existed—he argues that social justice will be achieved not through civil conversation or diversity hires but more direct ways of disrupting racial inequality and violence. With The Antiracist Deck, No. 1 New York Times best-selling antiracism champion Kendi presents not a book but a pack of 100 cards, each with a conversation starter—When did you first become aware of racism? When did you first become aware of your race? What does "resistance" mean to you? —meant to get people talking. In On the Line, Pitkin recalls working as a newly hired organizer for UNITE, an international garment workers union, to unionize Arizona's industrial laundry factories with the help of a second-shift immigrant factory worker pseudonymously named Alma Gomez-Garcia. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing). Chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Timiraos argues in Trillion Dollar Triage that the pandemic did not result in economic collapse owing to the efforts of Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (60,000-copy first printing). New York Times reporter Williamson's Sandy Hook reveals the ongoing tragedy of the killing of 26 people—including 20 children—at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, with the parents of young victims harassed online, stalked, and even shot at and the very truth of the massacre denied by a group of conspiracy theorists whom she sees as profit motivated.

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