Mike Rothschild

I have a sick fascination with the phenomenon, though one level removed: I don't engage with the toxic source material but I do enjoy its trainspotters in the Q Anon Anonymous and the Conspiratuality podcasts.

This is one of the few attempts at a history of Q-Anon that acknowledges the origins of Q-Anon properly and puts the phenomenon into the context of other right wing conspiracy theories, including Nesara pyramid schemes and thousand year-old blood libel antisemitism. It also does a great show more job of tracking its evolution from NEET internet nazis to hardened conspiracy weirdos to facebook boomers and then instagram wellness gurus.

The gripe I have, and it is major, is the author's repeated use of "anarchy" or "anarchic" to describe 4Chan, 8Chan, its frequenters, etc. It's just incredibly sloppy use of language. Where these folks politically self-identify, they self-describe as fascists, "libertarian" capitalists, national socialists, patriots, nationalists. They crave and preen for order at all cost of human life and dignity, not anarchy. Aside from self-descriptions, these are people who share child pornography which only exists because of a society based on ageist heteropatriarchy, trade in vigorously white supremacist memes, and engage in hero worship about heads of state. They explicitly call for military dictatorships, for the police to gun down people in the streets, for the military to take control of civilian life. This is not a state of anarchy, this is a very specific and highly curated order of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy: the disgusting underbelly of our current society, as far from anarchic as you could imagine. To call this anarchy or anarchic is a complete misnomer. show less

****.5

Despite their high profile (mainly in antisemitic conspiracy theories) I knew next to nothing about the Rothschilds prior to reading this book. The author does a very good job of presenting the historical context in which they rose to fame/infamy, and how they became the stand-in for "The Jews" when the latter was no longer acceptable in polite company.

After devoting a lot of time and attention to discerning between fact and fiction in Europe over the past 200 years, we get to modern show more times. Sadly, rather than fizzle out in the face of instant access to actual facts on the Internet, the medium has been used to double down on dangerous nonsense, culminating in the titular vilification, Covid-19, Qanon, and the January 6 insurrection, all with insinuations or outright accusation of Rothschild involvement. Along the way, we take detours to China or Japan, where antisemitic tropes have been widely disseminated, despite hardly any Jews living there. And in recent years, now that the Rothschilds are not nearly as powerful as they were in their heyday, the conspiracy theories have seamlessly shifted to George Soros as their target.

The subject matter is serious and downright scary, but the tone is sufficiently sardonic to make it palatable and almost irresistible. Ultimately, I'm not sure whether to be reassured or even more alarmed that the current surge in antisemitism is mostly just regurgitating tired memes from centuries past. Either way, it's sobering and definitely worth reading. show less

This book was, overall, as neat and concise a description of the “Qanon” conspiracy theory / movement as one could hope to find on such a sprawling, contradictory, and dense subject. In its best moments the author manages to write empathetically about people caught up in Qanon while also highlighting how Q is destructive and harmful to its adherents and everyone else. Unfortunately, some stilted writing and repetitive elements and phrases, hold this book back. However, as an introduction show more to this most complex and impactful of conspiracy theories it’s a great resource. This book would be particularly useful to a reader with a loved one who’s fallen down the Qanon rabbit hole. show less

An incredibly informative and readable primer on the QAnon conspiracy theory. The book is divided into three parts: Origins (from when Q started posting to 2019), Escalation (the boom of QAnon due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election), and Fallout (analysis of the group). Rothschild connects QAnon to several other conspiracy theories and really brings out the human aspects of this movement both the believers and those affected by them.