Ep. 340 Conspiracy Theories Are Not About the Truth with Jesselyn Cook

Written By Megan Caballero

Journalist and author Jesselyn Cook joins The Stacks this week to discuss her new book, The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family. In this episode, we dive into the origins of QAnon, how the conspiracy theory has evolved since its inception in 2017, and why certain individuals are more vulnerable to these beliefs. Jesselyn also breaks down how to approach conversations with loved ones who have fallen into the QAnon rabbit hole, offering insight into the far-reaching effects conspiracy theories have on our relationships and communities.

The Stacks Book Club pick for October is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. We will discuss the book on October 30th with Franklin Leonard returning as our guest.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

 

Traci Thomas 0:08

Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Traci Thomas, and today I am so excited to welcome Jessalyn cook to the show. Jessalyn is an award winning investigative journalist whose work often covers the intersection of politics, technology and extremism. Her new book is called The quiet damage qanon and the destruction of the American family. It offers a vivid and harrowing exploration of five American families whose lives have been torn apart by conspiracy theories today. Jessalyn and I talk about what exactly is qanon. How can we help our family members who are inside of it and why she wanted to focus on telling the stories of these five families. Don't forget, our book club pick for October is the nickel boys by Colson Whitehead. We will be discussing the book with Franklin Leonard on Wednesday, October 30. Everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love this podcast and you want inside access to it, you can head to patreon.com/the, stacks and join the stacks pack, that is our bookish community, which is just $5 a month and gives you access to our Discord, our monthly virtual book club meetups, our bonus episodes and a lot more. Plus, you get to know that by joining the stacks pack, you are making it possible for me to make the stacks every single week. A fun perk of the stacks pack is that you get a shout out on this very podcast. So here's a huge thank you to Judy Larrabee, NWC, Laurene Westcott, UK Leonie, elle Newby and Kara Wagner. Thank you all so much for joining the stacks pack. And for those of you who love books, want to support the show, but maybe don't want to be part of a virtual book club or whatever, you can still get my hot takes, bookish opinions, find out events that I've got coming up, and support this podcast by going to Traci thomas.substack.com and subscribing to my newsletter. Again, that's Traci thomas.substack.com Okay, thank you all so much for your support, and now it's time for my conversation with Jessalyn cook.

All right, everybody, we are joined today by the author of a book that I picked up, sort of because I'm nosy, and then about, I don't know, 50 pages in was like, Well, gotta see if we can get jessely cook on the show to talk about this book, The quiet damage qanon and the destruction of the American family. It worked out. Jesslyn is here. So JESSELYN, welcome to the stacks.

Jesselyn Cook 2:33

I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Traci Thomas 2:35

I'm so excited, I have to tell you, so you're sort of like our first kind of topical guest of the month of October, and I'm sort of focusing on, like, election related things, but, like, I'm not a political person. I mean, I am political, but I'm not, like, I'm a book person. So I'm like, I don't really want to do politics, but I really want to talk about things that are, like, on top of mind. And as I was reading your book, I was like, this is the perfect place to start. So I'm really thrilled you're here for folks who don't know. Will you just tell them a little bit like 30 seconds or so about the book?

Jesselyn Cook 3:06

Sure. So the book tells the stories of five American families from very different walks of life. It's nonfiction. It's very deeply reported. I spent years writing about these people, and each family has at least one member who has gone deep down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole all the way to qanon. And what I wanted to do in this book was document what this does on a social, human level, try to understand how even ordinary, very educated people can come to Believe the unbelievable, and show how it impacts everyone around them, their families. And I think there's been so much good reporting on the harm that mis and disinformation has done to our democracy and our public health, but less what it's done to families and everyday people. So that's what I set out to do in this book.

Traci Thomas 3:52

It's so captivating. You just mentioned something, and I'm really curious, do all conspiracy theories eventually lead to qanon, like, if you're susceptible to one, does that mean that, like, you could be susceptible to like the qanon?

Jesselyn Cook 4:06

You know, qanon is so interesting because it did turn into this catch all conspiracy theory where you're totally right, like all different threads of conspiracy theories can land you there because it is the ultimate super conspiracy theory that kind of opens its arms and it welcomes everyone who wants to question the powers that be. So, in a way, yes, I think so.

Traci Thomas 4:26

It's like it's a safe space for conspiracy theorists, for people who don't know, and even for people who think they know. Can you sort of define qanon? Because I feel like it also gets used as a catch all for anything from like a conservative to like a person who's like gone off the deep end in politics, but it actually means something specific. I

Jesselyn Cook 4:49

think if you were to talk to a qanon believer, they might give you a version that's a little more vanilla and digestible and just say like qanon represents a movement that stands against corruption and stands against. Evil and stands for the safety of children, which, you know, we can all get on board with all of those things. I hope

Traci Thomas 5:04

we love Safe Kids, right?

Jesselyn Cook 5:07

But in reality, qanon goes much deeper and much darker. The core tenet of the conspiracy theory is basically Donald Trump and this anonymous government insider known only as Q online have been waging secret war against the so called Deep State, which is all these liberal elites working from the shadows, very famous, powerful people, from billionaires to the royal family to government leaders to celebrities in Hollywood, all working together to bring about the downfall of humanity and control us all. And in the more grim parts of this conspiracy theory, we've got, you know, Democrats murdering babies and harvesting their blood and using blood as an immortality elixir. So it goes into some really weird, strange places. And you know, a lot, there's a lot of pedophilia, a lot of cannibalism, Satan worshiping, and it spirals into everything from, like, really wild anti vaccine conspiracy theories to chemtrails to, you know, a little bit of everything, depending on your interests. It's got it

Traci Thomas 6:16

all. Who's in charge here.

Jesselyn Cook 6:18

So that's what's really interesting about qanon, a lot of people have likened it to a cult, and it certainly has some cult like tendencies, because qanon is not a hobby for people. It is a full blown obsession. You don't dip your toe on it. But unlike a cult, there isn't really a leader, at least not anymore. Q the person or people at the center of this, this online shadowy figure, has gone dark for a while, and Q used to put out these little nuggets of Intel, so called intel on message boards, where Anons, the people who consider themselves to be Q non believers, would visit and try to decode Q's messages and think that they were getting some little bits of information about the coming Great Awakening, which is qanon lingo for the fall of the deep state, when prosperity is brought to all of course, right? But for a while now qanon, you don't hear as much about it anymore. The ideas have really been normalized and diluted and kind of blended into our mainstream politics. But there has not been a central leader, the ideas have just persisted on their own. Okay,

Traci Thomas 7:25

I It's funny watching you talk about this, because you're like, sort of, like, rolling your eyes a little bit, and I'm like, You must be so fucking tired of having to explain this, like nonsense to people, because you did decide to write this book, and then you write it, and then you have to, like, go on a press tour about it and like, report about it, and keep saying, like, sucking the blood of children and cannibalism. And I just, I feel for you. You know,

Jesselyn Cook 7:48

it's interesting. I definitely am happy to be taking a break from qanon stuff right now, and not, like, deep in the reporting trenches of it. But yeah, it's, um, it's pretty gruesome, and, like, on a surface level, kind of funny, but it absolutely does destroy lives. So it's like, I don't know, sometimes I roll my eyes at it. Sometimes I just feel like deeply depressed by all of it. And, you know, sometimes you just have to laugh at it,

Traci Thomas 8:07

right? I mean, I feel deeply depressed. I felt not deeply depressed, but I did feel very sad for the people in your book. For sure, you follow these five families, and like you said, it's a range, like you have one, one woman who, like, goes qanon is like, a Bernie Sanders supporter, and then you have these, like, two sisters who are black. And I was like, didn't know black people could be in qanon, which we're gonna get to, but I wanted to know sort of, why you wanted to tell this story in this way. Why not just, like, talk to a bunch of people, as opposed to focus on five people? Or, like, how were you thinking about crafting this narrative for readers?

Jesselyn Cook 8:44

I felt that this would be the most effective way to explain in the greatest depth that I could. I, you know, my editor and I initially talked about focusing on one to three families, which felt a little limited in scope. Because one thing I really wanted to make clear in which you alluded to, is there is no one type of qanon believer, despite the stereotypes, like people from all across the political spectrum, people from different races, generations, classes, can be vulnerable to conspiracy theories and kind of falling into an alternate reality. And so I wanted to be able to capture that with multiple narratives. But I didn't want to just make it a book of a bunch of little anecdotes from people, like hundreds of people, because I, you know, I think powerful storytelling can really immerse you in a narrative and make you care about the characters. And part of this was, I didn't set out to demonize conspiracy theorists or judge them. I wanted to understand them. And I think you kind of have to stick along for the ride and understand who these people are before something like qanon, and how they come to qanon and what it does to them and those around them, to really get that full picture. So five families was maybe a little ambitious, but I think we pulled it off and we, you know, we get to see that broad spectrum of types of people who. To be drawn to these ideas.

Traci Thomas 10:01

How did you decide on the five families, and at what point in their qanon journey did you get to them? Because there is, of course, an arc in the book where we sort of hear the beginnings of how people found qanon and their families and like those relationships. But in a lot of cases, like towards the end, there are some sorts of resolutions, whether that's like getting out of qanon, or like not talking to your family anymore, or whatever. So I'm wondering at what point you entered into these stories, and how you knew these were the right stories to tell.

Jesselyn Cook 10:33

In all five storylines, I started chronicling the stories once the qanon obsession had already taken hold. I start the actual book before that happens. You go back in time, and we meet people free Q anon and come to understand who they were. But I met these characters. I guess there's kind of a variety of stages. I you know, some of the people who I speak to very deeply in the book were qanon believers themselves, or were still were when I was telling the story, some come out, and some were their loved ones kind of looking into the rabbit hole, trying to pull their loved one back to reality. And so I think the common thread through all five storylines of where I met these characters was it was a very painful chapter for all of them. I didn't really meet any of them at a part where they had come to a happy place or come to an okay place. Every single person in this book who I talked to, we I met them when they were going through probably one of the darkest times of their lives. And so it was a challenge in putting this book together to kind of be able to get all those pieces. Because I think when you have someone you love so deeply, go become a stranger, effectively, a stranger to someone you can't recognize anymore. It can almost your memory gets warped a little bit, and it's hard to necessarily be able to share who this person was before they changed. And so it was, you know, had to. It took a lot of patience and careful reporting to make sure I'm getting an accurate portrayal of everyone.

Traci Thomas 12:02

What do you think most sort of left leaning, liberal type people get wrong about qanon, and what do you think most conservatives or right leaning people are getting wrong about qanon?

Jesselyn Cook 12:14

Good question. Well, on the left, I think there is a tendency to assume that conspiracy theories in general, that's a right wing problem, where, above that, we're not. You know, a lot of people on the left have pointed at Q and on and laughed and called them stupid and awful and worse. And that is just not true. You know, from writing this book, I can tell you, like, if two people encounter a conspiracy theory and one falls for it, and one doesn't it is absolutely, not necessarily the person with the lower IQ who is going to be drawn in that's really just it's not a factor, as much as you might think it's what I've come to learn through the reporting, is that it's probably the person who is less fulfilled in their life and who has a hole and is lacking some kind of deep human need that conspiracy theory fills for them. So that's one kind of assumption I think the left gets wrong, is that it's just stupid, crazy people. That is not true. And even, you know, with the assassination attempts on Donald Trump's life, we saw that it certainly was not just the right who indulges in conspiracy theories. We saw a lot of left wing ones as well. And on the right, I think it's interesting to see how the right has dealt with qanon, because at first, for a while, as qanon was really gaining popularity over the pandemic, there was a lot of the right that kind of embraced qanon, and even Donald Trump kind of tacitly welcomed them and certainly did not disavow them. And, you know, it almost seemed like the narrative was, we're all proud to be conspiracy theorists, because the left is wrong and we're, you know, we'll be proven right eventually. But now there's kind of been this shift where the right will say, like, qanon, the left is just overhyping that it wasn't a big deal. Like, this is a tiny minority pool. That's not true either. Qanon, well, again, it's not as big of a name anymore. The ideas have blended in because they have been normalized and kind of even adopted by some of our elected leaders, and so it adds a lot of legitimacy to these claims, and not maybe the most extreme ones. We're not hearing as much about baby blood anymore, which is nice, but we are seeing words like pedophile being thrown around completely baselessly, which is like a very Q anon esque thing, just being adopted as kind of like an almost normal political rhetoric these days. That's really disgusting. What happened

Traci Thomas 14:33

to make Q anon sort of not be as big of a thing because, like, you're talking about some of the politicians doing it. But another thing that I feel like I've seen, and maybe this is because I'm just extremely online, is like, influencery people, sort of like mommy bloggers, sort of adopting some of the qanon talking points. And I'm wondering, like, if that is also part part of it, but it. And if so, what else has made it like? Is it that people were making too much fun of them? So it was like, you don't want to be part of this, like, because something's clearly changed. It used to be like going on, and we were talking about that fucking pizza parlor all the time and like, all and now it's sort of like a joke. Talked about more in a joking way.

Jesselyn Cook 15:19

You're totally right. The mommy blogger thing was just so mind boggling to watch unfold over the pandemic. Is fucking crazy. Yeah, all these very, very mainstream influencers would kind of pivot from talking about like fashion and smoothie recipes to suddenly talking about like the deep state and all these evil forces. But what that did was really sanitize qanon and bring it to new audiences and spread it in ways that felt less insidious, and it kind of shed the branding. They weren't saying qanon. They were just again, bringing these ideas and making them seem a little less out there. And so that's part of it. It's just been spread by like over the pandemic, qanon really broke up from the online fringes and into other communities, and especially like wellness and natural natural wellness communities and like communities that are kind of skeptical of the medical establishment and outside of these online fringes. And so they kind of spread in their own right without this branding. But then also, before Q went dark, I think Q himself. We could talk, if you want, about who Q might have been, but posted that the best way to spread these ideas is to stop saying Q anon. So he actually instructed followers like, you know, let's not use this word anymore. Let's just carry the theories out. And so that is what a lot of his so called Digital soldiers did. And so here we are today. Who

Traci Thomas 16:46

is qanon? Who do you think I know you mentioned? I know there's one person who's named in the book.

Jesselyn Cook 16:52

So there is some pretty compelling evidence laid out in the HBO series, q into the storm, which suggests that Q. So I think the Q anon account, which is not quite the right word, but we'll call it that the Q anon account online, I think, changed hands a bit throughout its tenure, but it ended up with a father and son, Ron and Jim Watkins, who ran a chan and then Akin. And so Ron Watkins even had a congressional run here in the States. He was overseas for most of qanon years in which it was active. The Q account was active. But I think it doesn't necessarily matter who Q was, because even, you know, even when Ron Watkins name was brought forth, qanon believers did not, you know, accept that. They rarely accept evidence. They don't take anything that's up at their narrative,

Traci Thomas 17:44

right? Okay, let's talk about that. There's this great word I'd never heard before, apophenia. Is that how you say it? Yeah, yeah. Talk about what the fuck that is, how it works. It is like, when I read that in the book, I was like, Oh my gosh, my life has changed.

Jesselyn Cook 18:02

Yeah, it's really interesting, and it kind of underscores how qanon operates and how it became so successful in spreading its ideas. But apophenia is basically the human brain is hardwired to search for patterns. It's what we all do, and so sometimes we connect dots that have no business being connected, and we try to prove correlations when there are none. It's just randomness. And so what qanon does, and why it was so effective, is that instead of um laying out evidence and allowing people to come to conclusions based on evidence, it instead lays out conclusions and then impresses upon its followers that they have to go out and find evidence themselves to support that evidence. So they're like connecting all these dots to try to support conclusions that Q has laid out. And so, you know, I think some examples I give in the book is we've got all these accusations by q that Hollywood is full of pedophiles. So qanon believers would go and look at Disney movies, and they would try to find, like, phallic shaped objects and Disney movies. And there's one that's so ridiculous, it's like a side view of Minnie Mouse and her puff sleeve dress. And I guess maybe sort of looks like a penis as a silhouette. And so qanon believers will look at that and be like, see, there's a penis in this Disney movie. Obviously, Disney is trying to indoctrinate our children and, like, groom them and show them genitals. And so that's one example of many, many, many, where qanon believers will just pull together whatever little bits of so called proof they can to support a bigger narrative.

Traci Thomas 19:40

Okay, I'm not in qanon, but I am old enough to remember when us kids did this Disney thing too. There is a penis in the marriage scene at the end of Little Mermaid. And when I read that in your book, I was like, did I invent qanon? Because I remembered. Doing this, like in the 90s as a kid, where you would, like, there's, like, a line in Aladdin, like, there's all these little things. But I just think it's so interesting that, like, this thing that teenagers did, or like middle schoolers did, is now, like, oh, Deep State. I don't know, it just really hit

Jesselyn Cook 20:18

me. No, yeah, a lot of it is really childish and basic and elemental, but it's, you know, these people become so obsessive over bringing about the storm and the Great Awakening, and you know, all of qanon promises for a better world. And qanon is not just about observing conspiracy theories unfold. It's very participatory, which is what makes it almost fun and addictive like a video game, because you get to be a hero. You get to be part of this collective online movement bringing about justice as they think. And so when you're scouring the web for clues and trying to support these narratives, you get to be part of the solution, and that's exciting. And

Traci Thomas 20:58

the participatory part is just finding the clues. Is just saying, I found a penis on Minnie Mouse like and sharing it with sharing it with the boards, or whatever the message boards. Is that what you mean by participatory or there? Or is it about like recruiting other people? Or is it, is there other participatory elements?

Jesselyn Cook 21:17

There are a lot, I mean, absolutely, looking for clues and decoding. So all of the Q drops were very coded. They were never straightforward that he would put in random numbers and would put in like, little I don't know, random phrases that Q and unbelievers would sit and think like, Well, this must mean something like, let me dig around online until I find meaning in Q's words. But also, it could mean harassing journalists, trying to, like, I don't know, shut down a mainstream narrative, a mainstream media narrative, by trying to dox a journalist, you know, Q would kind of send followers out to do a lot of really engaging they would call it work, research and work. So whether it's like spreading ideas, recruiting newcomers, attacking journalists or politicians or anyone who's considered to be part of the deep state, or, Yes, doing this so called decoding.

Traci Thomas 22:11

I want to talk a little bit about the black qanon people, because, again, I had no clue I was like, for example, you have the Bernie Sanders supporter who goes into qanon. And for me, I was like, Okay, this is hard to believe. But like, I can follow this line of, like, being sort of like an outsider to the political establishment and moving in that direction. But to me as a black person, I was like, I can't, does not compute. But you talk about how in 2016 Q anon actually focused, or, like, the misinformation campaigns were focused towards black voters. Why were black voters so important in 2016 and and, like, what was because it's, I mean, we're not that big of a portion of the population. And like we overwhelmingly vote democratic. And my sense is that within qanon, regardless of what your political affiliation is, the hope is that you will vote for Donald Trump, because he is like the savior of the thing. So I'm just wondering, why black voters? Why not Asian voters or Latina voters, or what was the blackness of it all.

Jesselyn Cook 23:20

I think it felt for a while that black voters were out of the reach of the GOP and that, you know, the Russian disinformation week campaign we saw, which really, as you noted, like aggressively targeted black voters, was not meant, I think, to flip them into Democrats, or, sorry, rather, into Republicans. I think it was just to try to try to suppress that vote and keep them from showing up for Hillary Clinton. Of course, Russian disinformation campaign was trying to get Donald Trump elected. And so what I wanted to convey in that reporting was, I think there it's a really, really interesting storyline, the one you mentioned with the black pair of sisters, where one goes into qanon. And I wanted to acknowledge several factors going on there. And so it is not just black people who have ended up in qanon That's been really confounding, but also like lot of marginalized communities, which is bizarre on its surface level, because so many of these communities are also villainized by conspiracy theories. So how could they write them? And so one thing I wanted to point out is that marginalized communities so often are almost looked at as like political pawns, like a bunch of different disinformation campaigns target these communities specifically because they're either trying to suppress or activate their vote. And so these communities are dealing with an outsized level of Disinformation and Propaganda theories, and that absolutely does not mean that they believe all the stuff they're getting targeted with. I think that's probably not true. But when you're getting so much bullshit like said to you on these social platforms, it becomes harder and harder to know what to believe and who to trust at all, and so. It is probably very effective in keeping people from voting, and a lot of data would suggest that as well. And then the other reason so many marginalized folks, like kind of a surprising number of marginalized folks, will end up in movements like qanon, is because conspiracy theories really demand a sense of powerlessness. You know, people can be conditioned to feel powerless. We have some characters in the book who are very privileged, wealthy, white and even though they have no reason to feel powerless, they'll watch Fox News and they'll be fed this rhetoric over and over and over again that all these evil forces are up to get them, and they'll feel bad for themselves. But marginalized communities already, in so many cases, have very legitimate reasons to feel powerless. They may have been oppressed for decades or generations or centuries. And so this distrust that conspiracy theories thrive on is already built in because these communities have good reasons not to trust people in power. And so it really preys on that those feelings, and you know, even in qanon propaganda and some of the anti vaccine conspiracy theories we saw blow up over the pandemic were really pulling on the strings of historical trauma, and we received and are referencing some of the really horrific medical experiments that the government had waged against black communities in the past, kind of using those historical pains to spread new fears, unfounded fears, and with these sisters. So the story tells there these two black sisters, of course, one, they grew up in extreme poverty and hardship, faced so much racism. And what's fascinating is one goes on to become a Black Lives Matter activist, racial justice activist, the other goes into qanon, and it's totally confusing to the other one. There it's they're completely different paths. And, you know, I think what one sister finds in racial justice activism is a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. And she finds her voice, and she wants to make change. And in a weird way, qanon does give that to the other sister. She grows up feeling like she's never going to have a place in the world, like the system has failed her, which it has, and this kind of like disenfranchised anger she holds onto. Qanon gives her a home for that. And in a very weird way, I think qanon almost gave her a level of hope, because when she would look at all the horrible things that had happened in her life, you know, the one kind of big factor there, of course, is systemic racism. And I don't know that she felt that could ever be conquered, it felt like huge, unbeatable problem. But qanon is really good at kind of this binary of good versus evil. The evil is the deep state. They gave you, like people to point to an enemy to hate, and they say, Yes, it can be conquered. We are going to bring down the Deep State. We are going to bring about the Great Awakening, and then your life will be better. And I think that was like a more appealing narrative to her than, let's like, solve the problem of systemic racism, you know,

Traci Thomas 28:06

right? Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think, like, the power and the purpose of it, and I think, well, actually, I'm gonna, we're gonna go to break and I'm gonna

ask you this next question,

yeah? All right, we are back, I guess where I'm going with this like power and purpose through line is sort of to the community part of it, because I think one of the things I noticed in all of the families is that each person, or people who joined qanon sort of found community there, but it was in direct like conflict with their in real life communities. And I'm wondering, like, if you have any sense of how an online community can sort of Trump, for lack of a better word, a in real life community. I mean, we have one, we have one story of an elderly couple, and they're like, living in like, a group home area, like a neighborhood, right, with like, other people. And like, they will invite them around, and it's like, I get it, but I my sense is that also, like, in not being invited around, it allowed the wife to, like, go deeper. But I'm wondering, at what point we see that people turn their backs on the people they know in person for this, like online conspiracy community, and

Jesselyn Cook 29:29

that's something that's so heartbreaking and hard to understand about conspiracy theory obsession, because yes, people throw out beautiful relationships, they disown their kids. They, you know, do a lot worse to their own lives as well, but they do push away and isolate themselves from their own communities, and it does vary based on circumstances, but in the example you gave with this elderly woman, so just some quick backstory on her, like she she's retired and. She's nearing her 80s, and her life has changed. I think with age, our lives change a lot, and there's this assumption that boomers are more prone to spreading fake news because they are so called digital immigrants. They didn't grow up with social media, so they don't understand it. And yes, that's absolutely a factor, and we get into that in the book. But a bigger part of this puzzle that I think has been left out of these conversations is that you some of these, like basic human needs, we have start to fade with age. And so in the case of Doris, this elderly woman, she was a career woman. She found a lot of pride in her career. She was very beautiful. And you know, as she got older, naturally, her looks began to fade. She left behind her job to settle down her mobility lesson so she wasn't able to get out of the house as much, and she was just finding herself spending a lot of time sitting at home alone. And she did have a community around her. She was in a community of older folks as well, but the things that kind of like draw people from bed every day for her that was starting to fade away. And so in qanon, which you know, her entry point, she had a traumatic medical misdiagnosis, which, like, fueled her distrust of doctors, and that was kind of preyed on online, and she gets pulled into the qanon territory. But qanon, for her, was not really about the information itself. It was a place where she got to feel like she mattered. Again. She showed up every day. She would rant and rave about Bill Gates trying to kill us all with so called clutch shots, seen as she like to call it, and it wasn't, you know, she felt like she was doing good. She felt like she was accepted, and these people online really rallied around her and valued her and embraced her, and it felt again, almost like she was an activist. This was a job with no barrier to entry. She just had to log on to Facebook every day. And so it fueled that purpose that had faded away with age and time. And so she does isolate herself from her real life community as going deeper into this rabbit hole. But I think for a lot of people who go down these paths, there's already an existing problem, and they don't have a super fulfilled, happy life, where they have a strong sense of belonging and an excellent community. And you know, those are the people, no matter their intelligence or IQ or whatever, those are the people who, I think are more, who are closer to being immune to these kinds of ideas.

Traci Thomas 32:20

You talk about a study in the book where folks who like watch Fox News and like, start to go down the like Fox News rabbit hole. Maybe it's not full Q Anon, but like, start to move in that conservative thinking direction, and like, open to some of those conspiracies that they share on that on that channel, that if they switch to CNN, can, like, be rescued from their from their thinking. I just want to know more about that, because I think a lot of people listening, and you do get to this towards the end of the book, like, I think a lot of people listening are like, What do I do about my mom or my uncle or my neighbor who's like, down the Fox News rabbit hole. And, you know, there's one example of, like, how people handle it in the book, which I don't know, it's not really a spoiler. We can talk about it, but, um, but like, is it simple enough of just, like, putting them on a parental lock and blocking God's news and, like, get your news somewhere else. Cousin John,

Jesselyn Cook 33:19

that study was really interesting. And yeah, like you said, some Fox News watchers were paid to switch to CNN for a while, and their views started to change, which was really fascinating. And I think does offer some hope that, you know, we're our minds are malleable, and we can change our opinions. And I think part of that speaks to this echo chamber effect, where people, you know, if they hear something repeated enough, they will start to believe that it's true, whether it is or not. And so we see that on social media, where we get algorithmically drawn into these echo chambers. But also, if you're watching Fox News like 10 hours today, as some people do, they're just these narratives are going to start to become more and more compelling to you, and vice versa, CNN and so another factor, I think that plays a role, maybe a bigger role, than has been acknowledged generally, is these parasocial dynamics, like when you are engaging with an influencer online or watching Fox News, you do start to become attached to these people on the other side of the screen, and you trust them and you Like them, and whatever they say, because it's coming from them, you're more receptive to it. And so I think it's good to consume information from a diversity of voices and not get too narrowly focused on a handful of people spouting the same ideas, no matter where on the political spectrum you fall, because again, this trust that you place in people, whether you realize that's happening or not, can become so powerful that when someone you maybe even idolize online, says conspiracy theory, it just doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory to you. It sounds like fact, right?

Traci Thomas 34:53

And what do we do with the conspiracists in our lives? Like. Like, what is the what is effective? What works besides changing the channel, like, how can we communicate? Because, I mean, that's a huge part of the book, is that the people who have joined qanon and have gone down that path are almost incapable of communicating with the people in their lives who have not, and it's very tense. It is very like we've talked about isolating. It often drives them deeper, both sides, deeper into onto their side. So I'm wondering, like, what have you found that is effective and and does saying, like, I'm not going to talk to you anymore, mom, work, or if what we're talking about about feeling like there's things missing from your life is what makes you susceptible, that feels like, maybe not the best way to do it, but also like I don't want to have dinner with my mom and talk about baby blood all night. So what? What is? What do you think you're the expert? Help us?

Jesselyn Cook 35:58

So one thing I'll say is that facts can't fix this. And I know that sounds very backwards, because the impulse, I see, a very understandable impulse for family members who watch a loved one get sucked into these really delusional belief systems, they want to, like, rescue them, and they they hear them spouting falsehood, so they want to bring them facts and just debunk and fact check and, like, shake them out of these beliefs, and that doesn't work. So so so often it doesn't work. It can actually make things worse, as we see in the book. And so I think you need to recognize, again, that conspiracy theories, for these hardcore conspiracy theorists, it's not really about finding the truth. They may call themselves truth seekers, but at the end of the day, they're not actually interested in finding the truth, they just want to feel better. And so I think trying to debunk is tackling the symptom, not the cause, and trying to get someone out of this, you need to understand how and why they got in, which is not easy. But you know, once you can recognize that they're not actually just trying to get to the bottom of all this, like so called Deep State corruption, they're just trying to heal some part of them. Once you can see, like just Q Anon, do conspiracy theories give my loved one a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of agency, a sense of hope, whatever that is, and however hard it is to identify that that's where the progress can begin, because that's where you need to focus your love and your healing. And I also just want to acknowledge, for anyone who's listening to this thinking like, that's nice, but you know, my mom went full blown qanon, and she's horrible to me now. She calls me horrible names. She says horrible racist, anti semitic things. I hear that and I see you and I get that, because qanon can twist people and bring out a really ugly side of them. And of course, we see it in the book. And for some people, the answer is stepping away and saying, This person can't be saved. It's not worth the pain it's going to cause me to try to bring them back. But for those of you who have a love on going through this and you really are committed to trying to get them out, try to, instead of address the falsehoods they're spewing, try to address whatever need they're trying to satisfy. And so if it is, say, a sense of belonging, try to help them find community offline, away from qanon, if it's a sense of purpose, maybe get them involved in volunteering or a more fulfilling job. And I know these are, you know, easier said than done, but that is what's going to make a difference. And we do see some happier endings in the book, where once those underlying needs are fulfilled, the conspiracy theories start to fall away, because there's not needed anymore. You know, they don't need to fill that hole anymore.

Traci Thomas 38:35

Do you feel like qanon is having as big of an impact on the 2024 election, as it did in 2016 and 2020

Jesselyn Cook 38:44

not with the same name recognition, no, but certainly in terms of just the ideas and their impact. Yes, I think it has been shaping this election cycle from the very beginning and kind of pausing us to have these moral panics over issues that are being blown away out of proportion, and, you know, even all the breath and air that's been wasted by our political figures talking about like the so called Radical trans agenda, or, you know, this hysteria over pedophilia, as if there are pedophiles lurking around every corner ready to snatch your kids off the street like this is the impact of qanon being felt without the label of qanon. And you know, we've seen iterations of this throughout history, but, yeah, it's it's really almost worse to see it thriving in this insidious way without being labeled as an extreme fringe thing. It's just normalized and diluted and very effective.

Traci Thomas 39:45

How, okay? How did it start? Because I recognize that, like Trump is named as like a figurehead in this thing, but I'm just really shocked by how quickly it all took off. If it was like. Contingent on him. So were there like, seeds being planted in 2012 2014 whatever that led to the moment of his announcement that, like, made it all come together. I just, like, doesn't quite make sense to me. Like the big origins?

Jesselyn Cook 40:18

Yeah. I mean, I think there were seeds growing for even well beyond that, like this, we kind of saw how effective Trump's populist rhetoric was when he came to office, and I think that's the same kind of sentiment that really allowed qanon to flourish, but where we really started to see these high impact conspiracy theories more recently, I think it was with Pizzagate, which actually was just pre Q anon in 20 Oh,

Traci Thomas 40:41

that's not actually qanon. No, that's actually, so that was 2016 and it really, you know, it may as well blend together. But I thought that was the

Jesselyn Cook 40:49

first hue drop. Was actually october 2017 So technically, post qanon Just occurs feeding off that same kind of energy and hysteria around saving children and stuff, and so I think part of this, part of the reason qanon really took off was, again, the pandemic created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories, because we had these information voids. We were people were terrified, and qanon swept in with its own narratives and twisted facts, and really took advantage of this ideal breeding ground for fear and conspiracy theories. And then part of it is also, like, probably just Trump's ego. He in addition to, like, recognizing that qanon represented a good portion of his base, and so he wanted to pander to them a bit. You can hear in the way he's spoken about qanon, like, oh I he said, I know they like me very much. Like, you know, oh yeah, things about the man, what kind of crazy shit you're promoting. And so he really did legitimize these ideas. He breathed new life into them. And then his whole kind of ecosystem of far right and right wing influencers and the media circus just ran with it. And you know, we're still feeling the effects, and I think we will be feeling the effects for a long time.

Traci Thomas 42:06

Okay, this just came into my head. Hear me out. Qanon is fan fiction. Sci Fi fan fiction. It's like, choose your own adventure. Sci Fi fanfic. It's like, Donald Trump is the leader, and he's gonna save the world. But it's like, do you want to go with kids? Do you want to go with pedophiles like, find the clues, figure out the ending. People love that shit. Okay, this is a question about you, which is in the book, one of the sons of one of the women who goes into qanon, who was she was a lawyer. He's trying to be a lawyer. He tries to help by, like, going in after her, to like, get, like, be in the thick of it, and it's not great for him. Mental health wise, I'm wondering the same about you. You are in the fucking qanon Shit. You're researching. You're talking to people. I have to imagine, you're probably like on some of these boards, like reading what's happening, seeing what's up, how did you protect yourself? What were you doing to take care of JESSELYN as you're reporting and hearing all this? Because if all the things are true that the more that you hear a thing, the more susceptible you are. What How did you protect honestly, I

Jesselyn Cook 43:18

haven't talked about this a ton, just because I feel like the stories in this book are so devastating. I, like, didn't want to bring myself into it, because it's like, my shit is not that bad compared to what these people have gone through. But I will just say, like my mental health throughout this process was horrible, and there were, like, probably a lot of factors for that. I mean, these, these were deeply traumatized people. Some of the tragedies in the book unfolded in the period I was reporting like, you know, slight spoiler. But one of the characters I was set to interview, he died the day I was supposed to talk to him. And so I never met that man. And so, you know, it, it was very hard. And I also happened in the middle of all this, I had an extremely premature baby and ended up in the hospital for months out of the country because he was country because he was born when I was traveling. And so we got stuck there. And then we had to, like, to get him citizenship to bring him back home, and we had to get, like, our Congress person involved. It was horrible. So it was like a little bit of personal life craziness too. That was bad postpartum depression, which also just made it harder to deal with. But I think I don't have good advice for other writers recording on dark stories, because I did it horribly and did not take good care of myself. And like I also got laid off. I was at NBC when I was doing a lot of this, and then my whole team got laid off, and I got back from my extended maternity leave, so I just Oh my gosh. It was like, not a bright chapter of my life. But, you know, I am proud of how the stories came together, and I did find a lot of fulfillment and doing that. And like it was, it was kind of like a North Star, knowing that what I was doing would ultimately, hopefully be helpful to a lot of people, but I would recommend to other people, you know, get therapy, have a good support system around you. And you know. Exercise, get out of bed. I did a lot of writing. Well, a lot of it was written from the NICU where my son was in the hospital because I was just stuck in a chair all day. But yeah, I find exercise helps a lot. So hopefully you can learn from all the backwards stuff I did

Traci Thomas 45:16

that is wild. I'm so sorry that that is all tied up in this book for you. Speaking of where you wrote the book, this is a question I always ask, which is, how do you write? We found out that you wrote a lot of this in the NICU. But also, how often do you listen to music or not? Do you have snacks or beverages? I guess, in addition to where you actually wrote this book, where do you normally like to write if you're not going through a major life event.

Jesselyn Cook 45:41

So this book, I think, fortunately, I got to do a lot of the reporting, pretty intensively for like, the first year of writing this, I was just traveling over the country talking to these families, you know, and so by the time I ended up trapped in the NICU for months, I already had a lot of material to work with. So it was maybe even helpful for my productivity to be stuck in a chair force, right? So normally, though, yeah, I think I wish I was one of those people who got up really early and just sat down with a T and started writing, but like my husband will tell you, I'm a night owl. I do a lot of my writing at like, three in the morning, and I now, so I'm doing a fellowship at Harvard right now, and I'm trying to just continue writing for my own like keeping sharpened stuff, and it's such a beautiful campus. So with the weather still being nice, I'll just bring my laptop, find a spot outside the yard and do writing there. I snack a lot.

Traci Thomas 46:36

I talk about it.

Jesselyn Cook 46:39

My weakness is probably chocolate covered almonds, so I eat many of those. And, you know, i running really helps to clear my head, so that kind of balances that out, thankfully. But

Traci Thomas 46:50

do you run like distance outside? Is that your thing or your treadmill? Person outside

Jesselyn Cook 46:55

when I can? I grew up in Canada, so half the year is basically just lost to snow. So I you know, but when I can run outside, I love to do that. And I got advice from another writer, which made a lot of sense to me. He said he will sit down and write 500 to 1000 words, or the first half the day, and then the second half he will just edit that chunk. And at first that seemed like a really slow way to work, but then I look back at my own progress, and I was like, you know, there were some days I got hung up on two sentences and could not move past that. So if I forced myself to write 1000 words a day, or 500 words a day, and then gave myself the second half of the day to just agonize over those 500 words, probably still would have progressed at a good speed, right?

Traci Thomas 47:39

How do you or what's a word you can never spell correctly on the first try?

Jesselyn Cook 47:43

God, I wrote the word Adrenochrome too many times in this book, which is the baby blood thing. Hydroxychloroquine is in the book a bunch of times. Definitely screwed that one up every single time. Those are probably a couple.

Traci Thomas 48:02

They're so specific to this book. What? Where did the title come from? My

Jesselyn Cook 48:07

husband and I have a disagreement about this, because he takes credit for it, and I say, I don't think so.

Traci Thomas 48:13

We love we love a husband. Thank you, husband. I know you did it like, I'm

Jesselyn Cook 48:17

pretty sure I came up with that idea. And I'm like, I don't know, although writing the book proposal, I think we, I think I came up with the title toward the end of it, and it was a bit of a blur, but I just the quiet damage is I wanted to look at there's, there was so much noise surrounding qanon At the time, and it was like on all the late night talk shows, and like being talked about by all of our political leaders and conspiracy theories more generally, there was a lot of panic about them, and a lot of it is very do panic. But I wanted to look at the quiet damage, not what's going on to our democracy, but what's going on behind closed doors in the home.

Traci Thomas 48:51

And then what about the cover itself? Were you involved in that process? And if so, can you explain sort of what the vision is?

Jesselyn Cook 48:58

I wasn't and the way it always worked when I was, like, reporting stories at NBC or at HuffPost, is I would always get, like, some input on what the future art for the story would be. And I would always know it was coming for this. I didn't even know they were working on it. And I went by, my editor emailed me the cover, and I was like, God, I'm nervous to open this, because I don't, I don't know what it'll be. And I think they did a beautiful job. I mean, it's just, I think so, yeah, portrait of a father and son that's kind of torn and yeah, it just, it reminded me is that anybody from the book, it's not meant to be. I don't think the illustrator knew even the characters in the book, necessarily, but I it reminds me when I look at it, I think of Adam, the young aspiring lawyer, and then his father was lost to suicide. And yeah, it's really devastating. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 49:45

I just have a few more questions for you. One is that, is there anything that is not in the book that you wish could have been? Oh,

Jesselyn Cook 49:54

man, there were so many. I chose, literally from hundreds of stories, which five to future. Because I had so many people reach out to me with their stories, I've heard another reporting on this, and there were some, really, like, a lot of stuff get got left on the cutting room floor that I would have loved to have kept in but I think what this book left me with, have a lot of questions remaining from the story of the seven year old in this book who kind of follows his mother down the rabbit hole. And that's right, you know, I what I'm doing at Harvard right now. I'm working on a research project as part of my fellowship, and it's kind of picking up the baton, I think, and carrying it on about young people online like obviously, kids are getting online younger than they ever have before. The average age the Americans get a smartphone now is 11, and they're spending more time online than ever before, just hours and hours a day, and they're also traversing the most fucked up information landscape in our history, with like deep fakes and reality distorting algorithms and these very malicious influencers out to lie and profit. And if you're 11 on Facebook or Tiktok or wherever you are, probably not Facebook, so that's confusing. And even as a digital native, you aren't just born with the skills to navigate that. And so I what I want to study here is, you know what this is doing to kids, to their trust in their parents, their trust in their teachers, who are probably saying very different things from what they might be seeing on their phones, consuming and you know, as we saw with Jonah in the book, it's had a really devastating impact on his young life.

Traci Thomas 51:25

Do we have any sense of, like, what is happening to these kids who are the children of qanon? People like, I know we talk about Jonah in the book, and that's probably some of the most compelling stuff. But are you, have you seen? Are you hearing that? It's like all the kids of people who are qanon end up, like, sort of going down that path, because in the story, Jonah has a brother who seems less susceptible. So like, do we have any sense of how this like, what makes a kid susceptible? Like,

Jesselyn Cook 52:00

I don't know, we really don't. There's not, like I was almost surprised when I was doing this reporting how little data there was. And you know, Jonah is an extreme example. I don't imagine there are a ton of seven year old qanon believers out there. But right? You know, even on the less extreme version of that, like, I was looking at his Tiktok, and just like looking at his for you page, and it is crazy, like the curated bullshit being fed to this kid. And you know, it does. It's not that hard. I'm sure some people listening have gone down conspiracy theory rabbit holes on Tiktok out of entertainment. But when you don't have the critical thinking skills to discern real from false, because you're a little kid that is confusing and scary, and so many of these conspiracy theories center children as victims in really gruesome ways, and so there's not a lot that's known about what this is doing to young people. There's been research into media literacy, but I'm really interested in like, the social harms here. So I don't have the answers, but I do have a lot of questions.

Traci Thomas 52:53

I have almost five year old twins, and I have been able to indoctrinate them into supporting Kamala Harris, but it was very easy, and so I think about how like easy it is to to abuse your trust, your kids trust in you. I actually stopped doing it because it was so easy that I was like, I should explain more about who these two people are, instead of just being like, we like Kamala, you know? But I do. I did really think about that a lot of like, if I had different beliefs, how easy it would be. And I think, like, I think we know this, like, we see this with religion, how easy it is for kids to believe the stories, like, of whatever religion, because it's a well crafted narrative, right? And like, if your parents believe it, and everyone in your life, you go to temple, whatever. But I do think it's interesting when it comes like a conspiracy theory, because it is such like a fringe sort of ideology that it really is like in the home. I don't know. I was very fascinated. I hope that you will, as you do your research, continue to let us know what you're finding for people who love this book, what are some other books you might recommend that are in conversation with the quiet damage?

Jesselyn Cook 54:08

So there are a couple other great reporters who have done excellent books about qanon, if that is your specific interest, there's a book by the Washington Post reporter will summer called trust the plan, and another by Mike Rothschild, the storm is upon us. Those are two really excellent books that will help you understand where qanon came from, how it became so popular, the way it has shaped our political systems. Whereas my book is more of the human side of it and the human outcome, they really explain, like, how the fuck this all happened. So great book. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 54:43

were there any books that do sort of what you do that, like, inspired you, not necessarily about qanon, but just like, sort of the style?

Jesselyn Cook 54:51

Yes, I really enjoyed the writing in Lisa today as book three women. The end, like, oh yeah, super intimate detail and narrative. And I tried to emulate some of that by, I think my book reads almost like fiction. It's not it does, neither is Lisa's. But again, like, just really trying to, like, bring you into the scenes, and, you know, takes, like, an annoying level of deep reporting to get that so I thought she'd cut it off really well.

Traci Thomas 55:21

I actually was thinking about three women when I was reading your book. So good. Good job. Okay, last question, if you could have one person dead or alive read this book? Who would you want it to be?

Jesselyn Cook 55:30

Oh my gosh. So I have an aunt. I have not talked about this before, but I have an aunt who, she's in Canada, and she has gone into, I guess, a qanon adjacent kind of space. Qanon is absolutely present in Canada, but she has, she wouldn't call herself a qanon believer, and I don't know that she ever followed Q drops, but she's definitely started spouting a lot of really wild, baseless claims, and it has more recently and disturbingly, started to tilt toward the like anti semitic, kind of anti immigrant, really upsetting to read stuff and for her kids, they've talked to me about it. It's been really painful for them. I know she would never read my book in a million years, and I'm sure that our we don't have a ton of a relationship to begin with, but I imagine that, you know, if I were to call her now, it would be worse than it was last time, but I would love for her to read it, because I think that even people who totally disagree with me on all of these things, this book isn't really about debunking or dissuading or demonizing. It's kind of just trying to understand from multiple perspectives, and I think it would help her even understand how her kids feel about some of this stuff. So it would be interesting to have her read it and then sit down and talk with her about it.

Traci Thomas 56:53

That's a fantastic answer. All right, everybody at home, you can get the quiet damage wherever you get your books. It is out now. I listened to some of it on the audiobook, so I can recommend that to you as well. It is super engaging, like you said. It does sort of read like, I wouldn't say fiction, but like, because I like nonfiction, so I don't want to be like, Oh, it's fiction, but it's like narrative nonfiction. So you're really like, in these stories, you get to know these people. I definitely there were moments where I was like, Oh, my little heart is breaking for these people. Plus, I think I learned a lot so for folks who are who want more information on qanon and sort of what happens and how it works, and how it how it sort of infiltrates families and all of that, go check out the quiet damage. JESSELYN, thank you so much for being here.

Jesselyn Cook 57:36

Thank you so much for having me. This

Traci Thomas 57:38

was great, and everyone else, we will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much to jeslyn cook for joining the show, and thank you to Stacey Stein and Anahita padmanaban for helping to make this conversation possible. Don't forget the stacks book club pick for October is the nickel boys by Colson Whitehead, and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday, October 30 with Franklin Leonard. If you love the stacks and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks to join the stacks. Pack and you can check out my newsletter at Traci Thomas substack.com make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media, at the stacks pod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok and at the stacks pod underscore on Twitter, and you can check out my website at the stackspodcast.com this episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin mccright and our the music is from tegiris. The stats is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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Ep. 339 A Hype Man for the Writing Community with Franklin Leonard