This is a troubling piece of investigative journalism. Van Badham shows us the antecedents of QAnon, its influence and its impact. Much of it is about what are, to these Australian ears, poorly recalled (if recalled at all) details of events like pizzagate and people prominent amongst Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) and the internet subnetworks through which they communicate. And what they actually say there. It’s horrible stuff. Misogynist. Anti-Semitic. Anti-establishment. Anti-liberal. And I felt dirty reading it. I can only imagine how much worse it was for Van, who traverses from the general to the specific when a phase of development is concluded, to then reenter the general for new developments such as the commencement of participation by Steve Bannon, who appears to have tapped into a host of disgruntled niche groupings and activated them. Quite the achievement! What a shame about the purpose he put this power to. Though he would disagree.

Finally Q, the prophet of Delphic ambiguity uttering predictive statements providing apparent certainty, arrives on the scene and things get pushed more firmly towards a modern millenarianism.

We get to the storming of the Capitol and another move from general to specific, as a couple of Q adherents who were killed that day, are examined for how they came to be engaged in that attempted putsch.

And through it all recurrently is Trump, who is viewed by QAnonomists as a supreme 4-dimensional chess player. Enough said.

From there, to a survey of the spread of this American phenomenon to Britain, Germany, Japan and, yes, here in Australia.

Also, some discussion of QAnon as a cult and how individuals become ensnared, and how they get out. And what you might do if a loved one is so ensnared. I think a valuable contribution, QAnon And On, by Van Badham. Thank you for getting really dirty, so I didn’t have to. ( )

A tour de force by Badham, covering the history of QAnon and the people who have come to believe, for whatever reason, that Hillary Clinton eats children in the cellar of a Washington pizza restaurant and that Donald Trump is the only person stopping the seven foot tall lizard people taking over the world.

It's only when the facts are laid down, like Badham has done here, that it becomes clear just how truly whack the whole QAnon farragio is. Yet, people believe it. My only disappointment with QAnon and On is that Badham is unable to tell me why people believe it, but as no one else has been able to explain this either, it is perhaps too much to ask of an author without psychiatric qualifications.

Australia's former Prime Minister Scott Morrison also gets namechecked, thanks to one of his friends becoming a QAnon adherent. The man's wife worked at the PM's Sydney residence and questions could be asked at just how influential Morrison's friends were in certain decisions Morrison made. ( )

Van Badham has provided detailed information about the dark underworld of Internet communities and how they can jump from the virtual to real life.

Most telling is the psychology of those who have enough of an underlying fear due to lack of control, some time in their real lives, that creates an openness to follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Most disturbing is the way that so many people can be so utterly foul, safe in their online anonymity.

Most alarming is how disinformation goes viral so quickly and how it leaches out into mainstream media.

Most frightening is how the right, foreign influence and other malicious or self serving entities can manipulate the algorithms to suit their own agendas.

It’s a powerful read, but I recommend, if you are not internet jargon savvy, and in the absence of a glossary and index, to make a note of all the weird terms and acronyms so that you don’t get lost in it. The middle section of the book is perhaps too detailed in the descriptions of how these internet boards grew up, but it is a necessary part of the whole story.

It has left me afraid of what can be manipulated in the political sphere and of the way that the internet can galvanise conspiracy thinking to community cult. Even this week there was an attack on old Parliament House where “a group of anti-vaccine campaigners broadcast their protest and parts of the fire on social media” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/30/fire-at-old-parliament-ho... ( )