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BBC Radio 4

America through the looking glass - enter a world where nothing is as it seems.

As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse dives back into the labyrinthine rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture. Whilst liberals across the world worry about a possible return of Donald Trump, millions of Americans are convinced that their democracy has already been highjacked - by a sinister Deep State cabal. How did this happen? And who is behind it? That's the story that Gabriel Gatehouse is investigating in this series of The Coming Storm.

The search for the origins of this story takes Gabriel inside a paranoid political group that tried to build its own Deep State during the Cold War, now back in fashion in the conservative backwaters of western mountain states. Gabriel meets the January 6 rioters running for office who see their detention as political imprisonment in gulags, and the militia men convinced the CIA and FBI are working against the American people. In the background lurk the tech utopian ideologues, using their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy flavoured content as they work to create sovereign states free of all government control. And online, amateur finance bros foment distrust of government, central banks and giant financial institutions to millions of followers.

What were once fringe ideas have burst into the mainstream. Conspiracy theories have become central planks of Trump's Republican Party, while Democrats run on dark warnings about the end of democracy. With both sides convinced the other is an existential threat, what are the prospects for the survival of the American political system?

The Coming Storm

Over two series this podcast has followed a cast of characters who propelled Trump into the White House – twice. Many of them are now likely to take power and inject their reality-bending world views into America’s health, security and intelligence infrastructure. Who are they and what do they believe?

There's Kash Patel, Trump's pick for FBI director. He was deeply embedded in the Russiagate saga. Several bit-part players in our episodes who've now been promised influence. Elon Musk of course.

And then there's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Son of a murdered Senator, nephew of a murdered president, he believes many of America's three-letter agencies represent a threat to national health and security. 

Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse
Producer: Lucy Proctor

S2: Inauguration - Bonus Episode

Gabriel Gatehouse is joined by the BBC’s US Digital reporter Mike Wendling to answer listener questions.

Has the storm finally come?

What do listeners want to know about the incoming Trump administration?

Gabriel Gatehouse is joined by US-based BBC journalist Mike Wendling to answer listener questions about Donald Trump's picks for influential positions and about how to report on conspiracy culture. This live recording happened on the Live News stream on BBC Sounds the day before President Trump was inaugurated.

Producers: Lucy Proctor and Charlotte McDonald

S2: Inauguration - Live Q&A

QAnon and the plot to break reality.

A year on from the Capitol Insurrection in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Gabriel Gatehouse journeys into the dark undergrowth of modern America. He's looking for the origins of the story that drove the crowds to storm the heart of US democracy. From conspiracy-soaked barrooms in 1990s Arkansas, via spies in hotel rooms in the shadow of the Kremlin, to anarchic chatrooms on the early internet, this is a search for the answer to one big question: did this just happen, or is somebody trying to break reality?

S1: Welcome to The Coming Storm

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

When a mob storms the Capitol in Washington DC, reporter and presenter Gabriel Gatehouse sees someone he recognises: a man draped in furs with horns on his head. He is known as the Q Shaman. 

Gabriel had met him at a Trump rally in Arizona, ranting about a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and a cabal of satanic paedophiles plotting to steal the 2020 presidential election. 

The search for the origins of this strange and twisted tale begins in 1993, when the suicide of a White House aide during Bill Clinton’s presidency reveals the first signs of a new information ecosystem that is starting to spill over into the mainstream. Myths about his murder proliferate on the early internet. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In Arkansas a parallel reality is forming, in which the Clintons are a corrupt and murderous couple who will stop at nothing in their quest for power. 

Producer: Lucy Proctor

S1: 1. The Dead Body

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

Gabriel Gatehouse discovers a real conspiracy called The Arkansas Project. The aim is to inject lurid tales about the Clintons into the mainstream American press in the 1990s. These stories spin off in different directions. Down one road lie sex scandals and eventually impeachment proceedings. But thanks to an Evangelical coalition the story goes off in another direction, involving Satan and a looming battle between good and evil. A dark fantasy has taken hold which bubbles away under the surface, ignored by the establishment. 

Producer: Lucy Proctor

S1: 2. Sex, Lies, and… a Videotape

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

A severely disabled boy from upstate New York is shocked when his online community of video game fans is flooded with porn. He gets sucked into a toxic world of mostly young men stuck in their parents’ basements, making memes out of snippets of popular culture and Nazi symbols. He becomes a major figure in a dark new counterculture germinating on a niche website called 4chan. 

As the 2016 Presidential election approaches, a story grows on 4chan about Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, paedophilia, and references to pizza. The story bursts out into the real world when a man walks into a pizza restaurant with a gun. 

Producer: Lucy Proctor
Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

S1: 3. The Basement

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

In Oct 2017 Donald Trump says something weird in a room full of military figures: “Maybe this is the calm before the storm.” 

A few weeks later a poster on 4chan who calls himself Q starts to tell a crazy story about a coming storm, in which Trump is engaged in an epic battle against a cabal of satanic paedophiles who have hijacked the American Republic. 

A group of bloggers mainstream the theory and it starts having a life of its own with real world consequences. Qanon is born. But who is directing it? 

Producer: Lucy Proctor
Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

S1: 4. Q Drops

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

A British spy is hired to dig dirt on Donald Trump’s Russia connections. His sources tell him Trump is a Russian agent, a puppet of the Kremlin. 

America is gripped by this story. Half are convinced the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in order to defeat Hillary Clinton. But the other half believes the investigations into Russian collusion are a hoax, a conspiracy by the establishment to unseat a democratically elected president. 

The QAnon community takes up this second narrative, in which a renegade General becomes a martyr and a figurehead. 

Producer: Lucy Proctor
Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

S1: 5. Blowback

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

Donald Trump’s fantasy about a vast conspiracy to steal the 2020 election merges with the fantasy of QAnon, about a looming showdown against the deep state cabal of satanic paedophiles. 

After the storming of the Capitol in Washington DC, major figures from the QAnon movement gather in Dallas, Texas. Gabriel Gatehouse gets inside their conference to try to figure out who is now controlling this parallel reality. And he confronts General Flynn who is calling for his ‘digital soldiers’ to take over the country from the bottom up. 

Producer: Lucy Proctor

S1: 6. The Usual Suspects

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

The Q Shaman, the man with the furs and horns who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is in jail. The movement he came to symbolise appears defeated. But in a small South Carolina seaside town, ‘establishment’ Republicans are fighting a losing battle for the soul of their party, after one of the bloggers who mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory has been elected to a powerful local position. 

Across America, people who believe Donald Trump’s parallel narrative about a stolen election are trying to take over the levers of democracy. Was this the plan all along? 

Producer: Lucy Proctor
Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

S1: 4. Q Drops

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