QAnon Fights Imaginary Cabals

Explained in Will Sommer’s ‘Trust the Plan’

Detail from the book cover of Trust the Plan (Bookshop)

Back when Obama took office in 2008, internet users were posting conspiracy theories about all sorts of things, but, as investigative reporter Will Sommer observes, QAnon has become the only U.S. conspiracy theory that currently galvanizes believers to take to the streets.

His book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America came out in February 2023. He traces the history of the movement.

Trust the Plan (Bookshop)

QAnon’s Core Beliefs

According to QAnon, this has long been the situation, since at least 2016:

Movie stars, Democratic politicians, and international bankers torture children with Satanic rituals in underground tunnels, chasing a hit of adrenochrome.

Allegedly, pain causes the children’s blood to produce adrenochrome (yes, as in Doctor Sleep), which the kidnappers drink to maintain eternal youth (yes, as in The Dark Crystal). Yes, this is the antisemitic blood libel.

(Sommer notes that anyone, in reality, can make adrenochrome, which is oxidized adrenaline, by opening an…