The Other Pandemic review: Can smart reframing fight conspiracies?


WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: A pro-Trump mob confronts U.S. Capitol police outside the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican senators said they would reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appointed a commission to audit the election results. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Different Pandemic: How QAnon contaminated the world
James Ball (Bloomsbury)

Practically six years in the past, a world conspiracy motion was born in actual time. A put up on the web site 4chan’s /pol/ board ignited a collection of conspiracies, which, when layered on prime of one another, will be plausibly linked to every thing from the assault on the US Capitol constructing on 6 January 2021 to the continuing protests in opposition to so-called 15-minute cities within the UK.

That conspiracy motion is QAnon. It’s an outlandish and nonsensical conspiracy principle, alleging that there’s a world cabal of Devil-worshipping paedophiles who’re …