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?
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?
In series one of this podcast we spent months investigating QAnon, a crazy conspiracy theory involving an elite cabal of paedophiles and child sex traffickers. And we never really grappled with… this actual convicted paedophile and sex trafficker, who was at the centre of a network of global financial cultural and political elites.
But the story of Jeffrey Epstein is more than a kernel of truth at the heart of Qanon. It connects the idea of a cabal of elite paedophiles to the wider conspiracy theory we’re looking into for series two, one that millions of Americans believe: that democracy is a facade, and that the institutions of America, from politics to finance, from Hollywood to the secret intelligence agencies, are controlled by hidden hands.
Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete Cunningham
CREDITS: Stephen Hawking clip from goal.cast, TikTok
Jeffrey Epstein reporting in Florida, 2008-2011 from WPBF, Palm Beach Post, WBTV, Miami Herald
G Edward Griffin clip from The Subversion Factor, Knowledge 2020 Media, 1983
Gamestop archive from CNBC
Ian Carrol's videos: Cancelthisclothingco on TikTok
Peter Thiel on The Joe Rogan Experience