As America heads towards the presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse returns to BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 for a second series of his podcast, The Coming Storm.
The first series explored how the January 6th attacks were sparked by the QAnon conspiracy theory, and in the second series Gabriel and team return to the darker side of American politics to explore mainstream conspiracy theories.
The book examines how some fear that Donald Trump's reelection poses a threat to American democracy, while others believe their country's democracy has already been hijacked by an evil deep state, and that Trump is the man to save them from it.
Over the course of eight episodes, Gabriel and producer Lucy Proctor look back at the history of how this extraordinary situation came about.
His search for its origins led him to forgotten coup plots of the 1930s and paranoid political groups during the Cold War who tried to create their own deep state, now back in vogue in the conservative fringe of the Western Highlands.
Gabriel has met with yoga teachers who took part in the January 6 riot, believes the attack on the US Capitol was orchestrated by the deep state, and sees his detention as a political imprisonment.
In this series, we hear from militias who are convinced the CIA and FBI themselves are working against the American people.
And behind it all are techno-utopian thinkers who use their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy content and work to create sovereign nations free from any government control.
As fringe ideas go mainstream, conspiracy theories become a central platform for the Trump campaign, and Democrats campaign on dark warnings about the demise of democracy, it raises questions about whether the American political system has any chance of survival.
Gabriel Gatehouse said: “Series one explored QAnon, the widespread conspiracy theory which believes America is secretly ruled by a cabal of satanic paedophiles.
“This bizarre belief helped lead rioters into the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, but when producer Lucy Proctor and I returned to the US ahead of the 2024 presidential election, things were about to get even stranger.
“Millions of Americans seem to believe that their vaunted democracy is a sham, and that our nation's institutions are merely a charade.
“Series two will take a detailed look at how US politics has become obsessed with conspiracy theories and explore what this means for democracy not just in the US but around the world.”
Daniel Clarke, Factual Commissioning Editor, BBC Radio 4, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Gabriel and Lucy again following the hugely successful first series.
“Each episode is both a joy to listen to and truly intellectually ambitious, as the team tackles the central question that drives the series: What has led so many Americans to believe that their government has been hijacked by a clandestine cabal?”
'The Coming Storm' will be broadcast every Wednesday from 11 September at 9.30am on BBC Radio 4 and will also be available on BBC Sounds.
