Rise: Introduction

Radicalisation is often described as a slide from ordinary life into extremism. Here, we begin from the opposite view and instead propose that radicalisation is not caused but constituted. The title of this section, or what we have termed ‘movements’, reflects the Rise from ordinary ties of politics, media, and emotion that make Qbelief feel like truth. We explore how SNCs first noticed Qbelief taking hold, asking: How do SNCs perceive, interpret, and narrate the processes through which loved ones are drawn into QAnon? Rise traces the conditions that allowed QAnon to flourish, showing that radicalisation is not a sudden break or private conversion, but a collective process sustained through everyday relations. It follows how families themselves tried to make sense of that process, and so it unfolds through their eyes, tracing the interpretive labour of parents, partners, siblings, and children who asked why QAnon had appeared, what had changed in the world around them, and how ordinary life had become charged with moral intensity. What emerges is not a detached analysis of QAnon’s ascent but a collective effort to understand it as it happened.