Time Travel, Brain Scans, and FBI Drop-Ins: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a QAnon Commune

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Time Travel, Brain Scans, and FBI Drop-Ins: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a QAnon Commune

Good morning from the Hive newsroom! Is QAnon a cult? You might find the answer in our latest excerpt from Will Sommer’s forthcoming book, Trust the Plan, which chronicles the checkered past of Austin Steinbart, a then 29-year-old who built a commune on the notion that he was the movement’s next messiah. The group was “a cult in the classic 1970s sense,” Sommer writes, “complete with a compound, guns, bitter internal feuds, and showdowns with federal law enforcement.”

Elsewhere, as Ron DeSantis fires up his campaign engine for what appears to be a presidential bid, Molly Jong-Fast discourages reporters from normalizing the governor’s despotic approach to politics. “To call DeSantis a culture warrior dangerously understates what the man is capable of,” she writes. “He is the Genghis Khan of social issues, using every opportunity to target and demonize groups that have already been targeted and demonized throughout history.”

Meanwhile, Joe Pompeo muses on all the media chatter around UFOs as US intelligence officials report more inexplicable aerial shenanigans. Eric Lutz has the latest on the disastrous train derailment in Ohio, which has backed Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg in a corner. Plus, with Dianne Feinstein retiring by the end of next year, Abigail Tracy catches the senator’s potential successors challenging each other’s progressive bona fides. Thanks for reading!

Time Travel, Brain Scans, and FBI Drop-Ins: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a QAnon Commune

Austin Steinbart lured in roughly a dozen dedicated disciples with a messianic story of his past, living a life “complete with a compound, guns, bitter internal feuds, and showdowns with federal law enforcement,” Will Sommer writes in his forthcoming book, Trust the Plan, a stranger-than-fiction account of a fame-driven QAnon leader.

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