Like a lot of people, my wife the rest of our family are struggling with a very close family member who has gone down this rabbit hole. For the sake of our blood pressure, we've all stopped following him on FaceBook, but we're still friends, so sometime we see something outrageous.
Luckily, so far he can (mostly) separate his incredibly toxic online world from his direct interactions with the family, but I worry that may not be the case forever, and sometimes his posts go too far, like recently when he ridiculed Tim Walz' autistic son and we had to remind him that he has both an autistic nephew and an autistic brother in law. He still refused to take the post down.
Also like a lot of people, I struggle to understand this. I'm an academic and a scientist, so my world is grounded in critical thinking and objective reality. Also, I know that watching a bunch of unsupported YouTube videos does no constitute "research". And of course, we all wonder what we can do to bring him back to sanity. This book has helped a bit on both of those fronts.
The author has interviewed hundreds of people on this topic, but in the book she focuses on five cases, and she has clearly intentionally chosen "the last people you would expect" to succumb to this. None of them really fit the QAnon stereotype, and of the five, only one even starts out as a conservative Christian. The rest run the spectrum from politically neutral to a woman who starts out as a far left, Trump-loathing, environmentalist Bernie-bro!
She loops over the five cases, covering the beginning, middle, and end of the journey. You quickly notice that in some cases she shares the point of view of the QAnon believer themselves, while other cases she relies only on the statements of other people. No spoilers, but this is a clue that not all the stories have happy endings.
I admit that I'm normally an easily distracted reader, and this was one of the rare books that I "couldn't put down" once I started it. Her writing style is very compelling, and her stories of the effect this has had on the believers themselves and their families are truly heartbreaking.
Throughout, she is empathetic but not credulous. She emphasizes that there are good reasons for people - particularly Black people! - to be suspicious of the government and big pharma, but is also meticulous about pointing out the absurdity of the core QAnon beliefs and explaining how they are ultimately based on racism and profiteering.
There are no magic bullets and not all stories have happy endings. The stories that end well end well for different reasons. The book does point out the futility of refuting their claims directly and the dangers of doing so. One character comes close to ruining his own life trying to argue his mother back to reality. As someone who hates to lose arguments, this is something I can relate to.
In the end, there is some useful advice that might help save some families and pull their loved ones back from the brink.
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- Sabrina GledhillReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2024
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