The Coming Storm podcast returns for series two with Gabriel Gatehouse
As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse returns for a second series of The Coming Storm podcast on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4.
The first series explored how the January 6 attacks were fuelled by the QAnon conspiracy theory. Gabriel and team step back into the American political undergrowth for the second series looking at mainstream conspiracy thinking.
It explores how some fear the re-election of Donald Trump would be a threat to America’s democracy, while others believe their democracy has already been highjacked by a sinister deep state, and that Trump is the man to rescue them from it.
Across eight episodes, Gabriel and producer Lucy Proctor look at the history of how this extraordinary state of affairs has come about.
The search for the origins takes him back to a long-forgotten coup-plot in the 1930s, and a paranoid political group that tried to build its own deep state during the Cold War, which is now back in fashion in the conservative backwaters of Western Mountain states.
Gabriel meets the yoga teacher who was a January 6 rioter and believes that the storming of the US Capitol was staged by the deep state. He also sees his detention as political imprisonment.
The series hears from militia men convinced the CIA and FBI themselves are working against the American people.
Then, in the background, there are the tech utopian ideologists, using their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy flavoured content as they work to create sovereign states free of all government control.
Fringe ideas have burst into the mainstream, conspiracy theories have become central planks in the Trump campaign, while the Democrats run on dark warnings about the end of democracy. This all begs the question what are the prospects for the survival of the American political system?
Gabriel Gatehouse says: “In series one we examined this sprawling conspiracy theory, QAnon, whose adherents’ believed America was secretly ruled by a cabal of satanic paedophiles.
“This strange belief helped drive the mob into the Capitol on January 6 2021, but when producer Lucy Proctor and I went back to America in the run up to the 2024 presidential election, things had got even weirder.
“Millions of Americans seemed to believe their vaunted democracy was a sham, the institutions of the state a mere facade.
“Series two is another deeply reported examination of the ways that US politics has been captured by conspiracy theories, and explores what this will mean for democracy, not just in America, but everywhere.”
Daniel Clarke, BBC Radio 4 Factual Commissioning Editor, says: “We’re delighted to be working with Gabriel and Lucy again following the hugely successful first series.
“Each episode is a gripping listen, as well as being truly intellectually ambitious, as the team tackle the central question driving the series: what is spurring so many Americans to believe that their government has been captured by a cabal of people controlling it from behind the scenes?”
The coming Storm will be broadcast every Wednesday at 9.30am on BBC Radio 4 from 11 September and will also be available on BBC Sounds.