The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging

by Noelle Cook

How do ordinary women become extremists?

Leafing through photos from the January 6 insurrection, extremist researcher Noelle Cook was struck by how many women looked like her: middle-aged white women in puffy coats. Women were not on the fringes of the extreme right, she realized. They were radicalizing each other, and the pandemic was changing them. So who were the women of J6? And why did some of them believe in shape-shifting reptilians and the health benefits of colloidal silver?

This is the world scholars call conspirituality, in which New Age religion, online wellness culture, and extremism blend and become laced with antisemitic and racist theories. With acute attention to the emotional lives of women and research on conspiracism, Cook introduces us to Tammy, who believed storming the Capitol would help take down a global cabal of pedophiles. We also meet Yvonne, convinced she is a starseed destined to lead others into the fifth dimension. We visit a trade show where vendors hawk everything from quantum healing devices to government cover-ups, and trace the movement's roots to a nineteenth-century mystical philosophy.

With arresting detail, The Conspiracists draws us into the lives of conspiratorial women to explore how and why women are becoming radicalized. Women are crafting entire worlds, Cook argues, and we ignore these worlds at our own peril. As misinformation spreads and extremism intensifies, The Conspiracists does not seek to excuse women's conspiracism but rather to understand it. Otherwise, we have no hope of countering its force.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook, Cults, Sociology, History

185 pages, Hardcover

Published January 6, 2026

About the author

Noelle Cook is an ethnographer and storyteller who studies how extremism, conspiracy theories, and disinformation shape everyday life. She is the author of The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging (Broadleaf Books, 2026) and Associate Producer of The Conspiracists, a feature documentary based on five years of immersive research. Her work examines the cultural, emotional, and generational forces that draw ordinary Americans—especially middle-aged white women—into conspiratorial worlds, using empathy without endorsement to understand how identity and belonging take root in places where conspiracy and extremism intersect.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

***NO SPOILERS***

This book is entitled The Conspiracists, but it’s specifically about something called “conspirituality,” which is, “a blend of New Age religion, anti-vaccination advocacy, and anti-government extremism, all mixed with various right-wing conspiracy theories and heaping spoonfuls of antisemitism and white supremacy.” Conspiritualists and conspiracists, however, have more in common than not, so the book’s content can apply to both groups. Like so much else, the internet is helping conspirituality spread quickly. It’s particularly attractive to middle-aged white women, especially those who sacrificed career advancement outside the home to become an at-home parent. Both society as a whole and the working world undervalue this demographic. Ethnographer Noelle Cook was curious about the connection between middle-aged women and conspiritualism, and that curiosity resulted in The Conspiracists, a well-written investigative nonfiction with emotion. It is not, however, objective. Cook’s emotional investment in the profiled women biased her favorably toward them so that she couldn’t achieve the necessary balance of fact, analysis, and feeling.

With the goal of putting a human face on conspiritualists, Cook’s book introduces readers to two conspiritualist January 6 insurrectionists named Yvonne and Tammy, whom she learned all about over the course of years. The effort is commendable, and of course, humanizing plays an important role in bringing about compassionate understanding. Nevertheless, in her humanizing, Cook tips into too sympathetic a portrayal while also failing to convince that Yvonne and Tammy are merely victims with good intentions.

Traumatized people are susceptible to conspiratorial thinking:

Conspiracy theories are coping mechanisms for trauma, powerlessness, and dislocation in times of great stress or change. They provide answers for those anxious about life’s uncertainties and who need a belief system to anchor their craving for faith. Conspiracies offer a more hopeful alternate reality where all the world’s complex problems have simple causes and can be solved in an instant.

Cook argues that early and regular traumatic events primed Yvonne and Tammy to become conspiritualists. In emotionally rich depictions, she shows that to start, they were the victims of circumstance, such as a sick, alcoholic, or angry parent. Their home lives were volatile and punctuated by abuse and disruption, disruption that extended to their schooling. Wounded and lonely as children, they remain so today. Both women were fully honest with Cook, allowing the author to write long heartrending accounts, but profiling only two conspiritualists greatly limited her study and made her book seem unserious. The narrow focus also implies that conspiritualists don’t vary.

It must be noted that Yvonne and Tammy weren’t just willing to talk with Cook but were conveniently nice. Far from the loud, furious, intimidating conspiracists that get attention in the news, these two were friendly and cooperative enough that Cook could reasonably expect readers to like and feel sorry for them. And she’s determined to make readers do that, with these two and with any other conspiracists readers may meet. She genuinely befriended Yvonne and Tammy and offers a friendship blueprint by weaving in anecdotes of all she’s done for them over the years.

Cook is caring and emotionally mature, and going by how she treated Yvonne and Tammy, she’s also a model friend, but The Conspiracists is scandalously easy on these women. The author highlights the mystical, spiritual aspects of their conspiritualism and plays down the sinister aspects. This is seemingly to convince readers that, while these women are indeed odd, it’s a New Age-y odd, so they’re merely misguided eccentrics, not any kind of threat. Helping this along are depictions where they seem child-like in their excitement over an obscure conspiritualist belief or conspiritualist zealot. She shows how they both have queer family members that matter to them. Additionally, she emphasizes how Tammy is a caring and involved grandmother, with biracial grandchildren she has a loving relationship with.

Although Cook doesn’t spare detail when discussing Yvonne and Tammy’s actions on January 6, the heartbreak in their backstories and devotion to their children and grandchildren works to neutralize the ugliness. That neutralizing is further helped by how Cook arranged the book: The January 6 horror comes in the first chapters; the humanizing, more favorable material follows for most of the rest of the book.

The positives about Yvonne and Tammy deserve praise, and yes, conspiracists are people, and people can be perplexing and contradictory, but with its favorable focus on these women, The Conspiracists ends up being a reward for, not a rebuke of, Cook’s new friends. Life may have been, and still is, cruel to Yvonne and Tammy, but they are perpetrators undeniably. In addition to their aggressive and illegal January 6 behavior, their prolific online activity as described by Cook shows that they promote hatred, conspiracy theories, and disinformation with the energy of fully committed proselytizers. Many people carry serious trauma, and no one is immune to disappointment and struggle, so it’s hard to support a book about the heartbreaking, empty lives of (admitted) unrepentant criminals when the heartbreaking biographies of good-hearted and law-abiding regular people will never get books. Although she cites research, Cook returns so often to the victimhood, favorable qualities, and seeming harmlessness of these women that she isn’t really committed to a fair investigative nonfiction, to prioritizing objective psychology-centered, data-driven information.

The stage was set for over-sympathizing when she decided to dramatically differentiate The Conspiracists from other books and articles like it, and she viewed her assignment in a constrictive either-or way. She started off with a wider-ranging and sophisticated approach (the “gendered pathways to radicalization”) but changed tack after getting stymied by spreadsheets with numerous data points and her fruitless search for patterns in the data. Cook also disliked that the approach felt superficial, because as she saw it, putting the human in it is impossible. Heading in the other direction led to her first major misstep: being so determined to make her book unsuperficial that she whittled down her pool of study subjects too liberally. She got to deeply understand the person behind the online personality this way and write a book that has feeling; however, it’s as if she’s never heard of all the investigative-nonfiction authors who’ve studied large subject pools while adding emotional depth to their works—and without making their subjects their buddies. Barbara Demick and Ronan Farrow are two such adept authors out of many. Unfortunately, The Conspiracists can’t join the ranks of books like theirs. When The Conspiracists’s style resembles their sophistication a bit by looking beyond Yvonne and Tammy to the larger picture, it gets lost. There, Cook unwisely details specific conspiracist YouTube videos and discusses the strange things she learned about and saw for sale at the “Conscious Life Expo” in Los Angeles. This information is only filler, not helpful development. Worse is that her brochure-like way of describing conspiracist YouTube influencers, conspiritualist doctrine, and conspiritualist products turns her book into troubling promotional material.

To be clear, the women’s stories are objectively sad so should sadden Cook and readers. The problem is the author’s compassion renders her unable to fully confront the ugliness of the topic. The unfortunate overall effect is that instead of offering a reason for Yvonne and Tammy’s behavior now, she comes off like she’s offering an excuse for it. Presenting this particular subject with equal parts sympathy and censure could simply be unachievable, especially at this time in history when tension between conspiracists and nonconspiracists is high. Conspiritualists and conspiracists are some impressive fantasists, but they aren’t harmless, traumatized little nutjobs who just need a hug and a shoulder to cry on. The author is naïve to expect nonconspiracists to follow her example and sympathize with those who’ve happily contributed to a bitter societal division that’s now at true crisis level.

Cook does a good job tackling only a few things. How New Age beliefs mesh with conspiracism to create conspiritualism is clear and well-detailed, but most importantly, Cook gets readers to care that this movement has influence and is hijacking people’s brains. Some of its tenets hurt no one, but plenty, such as those related to health and wellness, do, with societal repercussions. Conspiritualism as a kind of religion is its own animal, distinct from traditional religions in several strange and ever-evolving ways, but the bottom line is it’s converting more and more middle-aged women, and it’s dangerous. As a moving profile of two deluded women in psychological anguish the book may succeed even more. Cook writes well and is a talented biographer; she should make biographing or memoir ghost-writing her authorial focus.

By this point, though, it’s well-known in social-science circles and the larger culture that trauma creates vulnerability and negatively affects all kinds of later outcomes, so her book isn’t as fresh as it could be. Cook, and others, also can’t explain a puzzling thing: why lots of traumatized people don’t wind up with a conspiratorial mindset. This includes siblings raised together who experienced the same traumas. Certain brain differences may also make one vulnerable.

Additionally, loneliness probably plays a much larger role than researchers give it credit for, with social media hardly helping. Social media exacerbates conspiratorial thinking not only because it connects conspiracists with each other but also because, ironically, it deepens loneliness*. Yvonne and Tammy live in isolated rural areas, experience middle-age as disappointing, and are profoundly lonely. Human beings are social creatures. If opportunities (whether professionally or casually) to see people face to face are few, something that’s more likely in less populated (read: rural) areas, people will relieve loneliness by turning to anything-goes, everyone’s-an-expert social media. As they form friendships online, they lose motivation to form friendships in real life, the very kinds of friendships that truly relieve loneliness. Cook knows this too:

Sometimes all you can do is try to get the conspiracist to focus on the real world and spend less time online. Researchers have shown that activities and goals that give conspiracists a real-world focus can help to break the spell. When conspiracists are focused on real-life objectives, outside their online circles, those groups and conspiracies begin to matter less to them. Most people prefer relationships in the 3D world, rather than virtual or interdimensional ones. Giving conspiracists a reason to stay engaged with reality—with neighbors, and family, and the community in which they live—gives them fewer reasons to jump online.

One can maybe draw a direct line from the trauma of these women to their brainwashed thinking today, but a direct line could also be drawn from their ongoing loneliness, fueled by internet use, to their brainwashed thinking. Cook noticed both women spend too much time without human contact and expresses worry over it, but her focus on trauma as a contributing factor didn’t leave space to ponder loneliness as a factor.

At the time of publishing The Conspiracists, Cook hadn’t convinced Yvonne and Tammy that their thinking is wrong, but her friendship with them makes that a possibility. The author doesn’t have much to share on how to break the conspiratorial spell because breaking it is extraordinarily hard to do, but one thing that helps is the very thing most nonconspiracists won’t do: being friends with conspiracists. The tactics nonconspiracists tend to employ—presenting ironclad evidence and research, shunning, and ridiculing—not only don’t work but can aggravate the problem. Conspiracists need to maintain positive connections with real-life people who firmly believe in and promote evidence-based reality. Healthy real-life relationships not only relieve loneliness genuinely and ground one’s perspective, but they also afford the conspiracist a way out should they begin having doubts. That’s vital because, as Cook’s interview of one former conspiracist reveals, conspiracists scorn doubting and try to reel doubters back in. The Conspiracists doesn’t solve the mystery of conspiracism’s appeal, but without actually saying so Cook is clear that social media cooperates beautifully with trauma so conspirituality can hold people spellbound. It was unprofessional, but the author says outright that she hopes her friendship with Yvonne and Tammy will eventually break the spell.

But when it comes down to it, this book doesn’t know what it’s trying to do. Cook should have asked herself what she wanted to give the reader, because The Conspiracists is wearying. It’s yet another nonfiction that informs about a distressing problem that’s difficult or impossible to solve, leaving readers feeling demoralized. If the take-away is that readers should befriend, or remain friends with, conspiracists, it doesn’t make a strong case for that since Cook’s friendship with the women hasn’t brought them to their senses, and neither did she interview lots of conspiracists who were saved by friendship. If the take-away is to have compassion for conspiracists, it doesn’t make a strong case for that either because it doesn’t first confront the harm they have and continue to cause and then convince readers why they should excuse that. If the take-away is that trauma permanently damages people, this is already known, and without a solution, Cook adds nothing new to the conversation. If the take-away is simple education on conspiritualism, it does that, but to what end when readers can’t do anything to stop this runaway train? If the education is meant to be a warning to readers so they don’t fall victim to conspirituality, it’s ineffective because Cook only highlights the peculiarity of this movement, not its danger.

As the dust-jacket copy asks, Is it possible to reach across the conspiratorial divide? The Conspiracists promotes sympathetic friendship, but what if that’s hard or impossible? Countless conspiracists can’t be pitied regardless of how much trauma they’ve endured. That reality is this book’s elephant in the room. What about the conspiracist who tried to murder Nancy and Paul Pelosi or those January 6 insurrectionists who wanted to hang Mike Pence or the one who set fire to Josh Shapiro’s house, nearly killing him and his family? What about the ones who relentlessly send death threats to the parents of the kids killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting? It’s hard to imagine Cook could befriend, patiently listen to, and help such conspiracists. Ignoring those kinds, and waving off the criminality of Yvonne and Tammy, made the book a noncommittal and ungenuine effort that undermines Cook’s call for sympathy.

A committed, genuine effort would have featured professional detachment and an ambitious scope of numerous and varied study subjects. Because Cook’s weak spot is emotional detachment, she should have explored generally. That could have made for a better book anyway: A more thought-provoking direction would start with her asking why fear, trauma, and feelings of powerlessness and insecurity disable as they do. Then she should try to answer why some afflicted people turn to functional ways to comfort those feelings, while others turn to dysfunctional things like conspiracy theories and political strongmen. A book on these things has much higher potential to be a useful contributor to the conversation than The Conspiracists.

*As discussed in the August 18, 2024 article in Psychology Today entitled “Is Social Media Making Us Lonely?”

and

The January 20, 2026 article in The Guardian entitled “Tech bros have made us lonely. I’m fighting back by getting off social media and talking to strangers”

Complementary reads:
Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism

NOTE: I received this as an Advance Reader Copy from LibraryThing in January 2026.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: How do ordinary women become extremists?

Leafing through photos from the January 6 insurrection, extremist researcher Noelle Cook was struck by how many women looked like her: middle-aged white women in puffy coats. Women were not on the fringes of the extreme right, she realized. They were radicalizing each other, and the pandemic was changing them. So who were the women of J6? And why did some of them believe in shape-shifting reptilians and the health benefits of colloidal silver?

This is the world scholars call conspirituality, in which New Age religion, online wellness culture, and extremism blend and become laced with antisemitic and racist theories. With acute attention to the emotional lives of women and research on conspiracism, Cook introduces us to Tammy, who believed storming the Capitol would help take down a global cabal of pedophiles. We also meet Yvonne, convinced she is a starseed destined to lead others into the fifth dimension. We visit a trade show where vendors hawk everything from quantum healing devices to government cover-ups, and trace the movement's roots to a nineteenth-century mystical philosophy.

With arresting detail, The Conspiracists draws us into the lives of conspiratorial women to explore how and why women are becoming radicalized. Women are crafting entire worlds, Cook argues, and we ignore these worlds at our own peril. As misinformation spreads and extremism intensifies, The Conspiracists does not seek to excuse women's conspiracism but rather to understand it. Otherwise, we have no hope of countering its force.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am quite openly an atheist. In a world where how you pray and to whom can get you murdered, that is not the safe option.

One of the most powerful repulsive forces in my eyes against all religions, everywhere and of every stripe, is that this book's subjects are not unique to any one tradition...apart from the socially acceptable psychotic break that is labeled religion.

That statement will offend many. I've had a psychotic break recently, a reaction known to occur to people who take Levaquin (albeit very, very few of them, lucky me) as I did for pneumonia, so I speak from my own experience: If inanimate/invisible things are speaking to you, are counseling you about Reality, are imbued with consciousness or intelligence or both, you are experiencing a psychotic break...not a divine visitation or revelatory vision.

I'd treat the women profiled in these pages with the care and concern I received during my own psychotic break, gently attempting to lead them back to consensus reality. It's not always effective but it's worth trying. In profiling these women, Author Cook is not demeaning them, not saying (as I have) they are experiencing a mental-health crisis, not presenting value judgments outright...again, like I have done. She traces the women's sense of being abandoned, unconsidered, as they travel further and further into what most of us see as conspiracy-theory aberrations. It is a truth we as a society do not want to face head-on that huge swaths of our population are in the grips of this factually supported idea of themselves as abandoned, hard done by. In the face of that existential crisis what else is there to do but reach for some explanation, some reason? They already know there is no justification or excuse for their situation. There must be a "why," because there always is.

It's facing up to the vile, selfish cause of the nightmarish cruelty enacted on them that makes conspiracy theories so appealing and so successful. As these ordinary women's descent (as I see it) into aberrant thinking and acceptance of "alternative facts" demonstrates, the need to have a "why" is the most powerful inducement of conspiracies and delusions...of all sorts, in all times.

The absence of trust in what I see as trustworthy authority structures, eg science, has been carefully cultivated for more than a generation. (You can look up the research on your own.) It's led many people into a more general mistrust of what was once mainstream information economies that we relied on to build our consensus about the polity we live in. That vacuum, as the women profiled demonstrate in their adherence to beliefs not demonstrably truthful, is filled by the Othered communities they've chosen to fill the void. In those Othered communities there is stability, there is fellowship, there is belonging and validation the unempathetic outsiders do not offer.

I certainly don't offer empathy and understanding to people who believe they're messiahs, or that there are lizard people secretly controlling the world. Scorn and contumely by the dumpsterload, yes; understanding and empathy, not a smidgin. Hence my need to engage with this book: being Right is being part of the problem that's led to these fractures developing during the time of immense societal stress we're experiencing. In a quest not to unknowingly respond to others' delusional thinking, as I see it, with behaviors that will only worsen the problem I've identified, I seek my usual trusted source of advice: Experts who share my vision of the world more than they don't.

January 6th looms. It is a midterm election year, and there is widespread opposition to the current regime. A foreign war has been launched.

The omens do not portend a smooth course ahead. Conspiracists, you aunties, cousins, and grandmas, are likely going to support a radical alteration of the country's governance...despite the signs pointing to that course leading to repression and violence and immiseration. Beliefs that "They" are the ones who will suffer and be punished for "Their" misdeeds, that this horror will lead into a glorious Golden Age of Truth and Rewards for those who believed, are going to be dashed...are being dashed by the entire Epstein files debacle. Marjorie Taylor Greene, with whom I share nothing except the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to trial by a jury of my peers, has admitted she was wrong to hold her conspiracist beliefs.

It's a process we cannot hasten and widen in scope without understanding its roots. That was the point of Author Cook writing this book. Stand ready to escort the conspiracists back into consensus reality by learning how and why they left it.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published January 6, 2026.

5 stars

This is a really interesting look at why middle aged white women ended up storming the Capitol on January 6 and why so many more are caught up in “conspirituality,” a mix of new age spirituality and far-right conspiracy theories. As an aside, wonder what the percentage was of POC in the crowd on January 6.

The book focuses on two women, Tammy and Yvonne, and my one quarrel with the book is that, to me, at least, these women appear to be on the extreme side of the spectrum in a number of ways, especially as to the trauma suffered as children and young adults. It is fairly easy to be angry at many of those extremists on the right, but, honestly, after reading about all that Tammy and Yvonne have suffered through it is difficult to feel anything other than pity, and maybe a thought of, “if I had gone through all that, who knows how I would have turned out? Maybe serial killer..”. Then you just wish them well.

However, if Tammy and Yvonne aren’t necessarily representative of every woman present on January 6 as far as background, their present day beliefs are so interesting. They seem to buy it all: fake moon landing, flat earth, reptilian celebrities drinking the blood of babies (this is a REAL thing)…it’s crazy. But it’s enlightening. I think we keep thinking that society is going to come back into its right mind when Trump dies…but what if this IS the majority now? What has happened to us? Well worth a read.

[Carter Kalchik]

An important addition to the literature on conspiracism and how different groups end up getting pilled. A 22 year old Groyper's pathway is not at all the same as Tammy and Yvonne, the middle aged white mothers who are the subjects of this book. And equally important for both researchers and activists to understand the empathy that's likely required to build offramps for conspiracy theory adherents.

The stray thought that I had reading this is that while there are wildly different paths to getting pilled, there does seem to be one unifying theme: loneliness.

[Stacey ˗ ღ ˎˊ˗ · Rating 5 out of 5]

RELEASE DAY 1/6

“When women get involved, a movement becomes a serious threat.”

This well-researched, thoughtful, and empathetic work not only answered many of my own questions about how so many women in my circles turned—seemingly overnight—into rabid conspiracists, but also provided me with ideas for how we might move forward as a nation so divided in the era of Trump 2.0. In this new landscape, those of us who live outside the world of conspiracy theories often only get glimpses of the ideology while being overwhelmed and confounded by the behavior. This results in the disintegration of our relationships, the isolation of the one following the conspiracies, and further hostility and suspicion toward “the other side.”

The book originated as a graduate thesis that was influenced by photographs the author took of J6. She wondered, as many of us have, how so many middle-aged women ended up supporting this movement to the point of violence. What draws them to conspiracy theories, and how were they convinced? It did not take me long to see similarities between research on conspiracism (which, as a field, is still quite new) and that on high-control faith communities. Indeed, Ms. Cook draws not only parallels to organized fundamentalist religion but finds concrete evidence demonstrating the influence of specific faiths on large numbers of women who today participate in what we learn is called conspirituality. This term describes a synthesis of varied, individualized New Age spiritual beliefs and conspiracy theories, mainly spread through online influencers. Patriarchal religions, which, as the author notes, “leave little room for older women,” appear to prime them in a post-COVID world to find both hope and new, valued roles in belief systems centered in largely online groups based on common interests in protecting children, health, and education.

Readers will meet two women, Tammy and Yvonne, to learn their stories. As Ms. Cook describes Tammy’s journey, her “paths to conspiracism [were] blasted out by a constant firehose of trauma that began in childhood and kept blasting open new pathways deep into adulthood.” The author uses the grief, heartbreak, and hope shared by Tammy and Yvonne to illustrate how they each found in conspirituality a solution to overcome their despair and sense of powerlessness. As we get to know them better, Ms. Cook adds her research findings to the picture emerging of who is drawn to conspiracism, and why.

I found this powerful work to be valuable on both a personal and professional level. I would recommend it to anyone struggling with family or friends they may have given up as lost to conspiracism, and especially to those in the fields of mental health therapy, substance use disorder treatment, primary care medicine, community nursing, and social work. Intervention opportunities abound for teachers and school-based mental health staff. A solid 5/5.

Deep thanks to Broadleaf Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

This book is a nonfiction political piece that looks at a number of factors that are elements in why women specifically, become conspiracists. This author's focus of the book was mainly of the experiences of two women who were at the capitol on Jan 6 and what led them to this point, as well as the personal interactions of the author, with these women and others, during her research.
I found the topics and there correlations to extremism in this book were fascinating. The personal experience of these individuals was not only scientifically interesting but emotionally impactful. I felt everything from empathy, frustration and just shock at trying to understand the cognitive and emotional process of these individuals. I did find this book to be an informative and important topic to study. There were some lulls and slow points, also please check trigger warnings. I highly recommend it.
I received an advanced ebook, via Netgalley. This review is my own honest opinion.

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why would a middle-aged mother storm the U.S. Capitol? What makes someone who could be your neighbour earnestly believe that they are a “starseed” or that McDonald’s is serving human meat? These are the kinds of questions this book delves into, exploring what it is that draws women in particular to conspiracy theories, and what kinds of women are most susceptible.

This book is a personal story about a writer who really connected with the women she’s profiling. While it is well-researched, it’s not strictly objective reporting. But in gaining her sources’ trust, the author was able to get them to really open up to her in a way that deeply humanizes them. We learn that both of the women this book highlights experienced unimaginable trauma and have few close friends. Believing in conspiracies helps them feel like they are part of something.

When I began reading this book, you could not have convinced me that I would deeply care for the conspiracy theorists it profiles by the end. The fact that it managed to do so is a testament to the author’s skill. I think that this book could be really useful in helping readers recognize the people in their lives who may be at risk of falling for conspiracies, so they can intervene before they get in too deep. It’s also a call for those of us not embedded in conspiracism to recognize that this might be more a result of the privileges we’ve had than our own sheer intelligence. For me, it was a reminder to be compassionate, even toward people who sound completely unhinged. You never know what someone’s been through.

[Amy Maddess · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Conspiracists, Noelle Cook offers an intimate, sociologically grounded exploration of how conspiracy thinking takes root and why it proves so resilient in an era defined by political polarization and social fracture. Through close case studies—particularly of two women, Tammy and Yvonne—Cook situates conspiratorial belief not as an intellectual failure, but as a coping mechanism shaped by trauma, uncertainty, and a profound need for meaning and belonging. The book’s central thesis is persuasive: conspiracism thrives where trust erodes, and any meaningful response will require something currently in short supply—genuine curiosity about, and empathy for, people on “the other side.”

One of the book’s strengths lies in how effectively it connects personal narratives to broader sociological research. Reading The Conspiracists reinforced for me the importance of staying engaged with current social science scholarship in order to better understand the world as it unfolds in real time. Cook demonstrates how conspiracy beliefs offer coherence in moments of upheaval, providing simple explanations for complex problems and fostering communities that feel stabilizing, even as they reinforce misinformation. At the same time, the book argues convincingly that confronting conspiracism through ridicule or fact-checking alone is ineffective; rebuilding trust and human connection must be central to any solution.

That said, the book occasionally stumbles in tone and framing. While trauma clearly underpins many of the narratives Cook explores, there are moments where this feels overly explicit and somewhat condescending, as though the reader needs to be guided toward conclusions that are already evident in the stories themselves. Additionally, the discussion of racial differences in conspiratorial belief initially relies too heavily on sweeping generalizations. The later clarification—that Black people and other marginalized groups often hold conspiracy beliefs grounded in documented historical injustices, while white conspiratorial thinking is more frequently rooted in perceived loss of social status—adds necessary nuance, but arrives later than it should. This distinction deserved earlier and more careful unpacking to avoid reinforcing simplistic comparisons.

I was also struck by how closely The Conspiracists parallels themes from Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read. Both books examine similar groups of women searching for purpose, belonging, and identity, often finding it through parallel ecosystems—whether MLMs or “conspirituality.” The overlap felt uncanny, down to the coincidence that both books feature central case studies named Yvonne. Together, these works suggest a broader pattern: when traditional sources of meaning, security, and community erode, people will inevitably seek alternatives that promise clarity and belonging, even at great personal and social cost.

Overall, The Conspiracists is a thoughtful, challenging read that resists easy answers and instead insists on empathy, sociological literacy, and sustained curiosity as tools for understanding one of the defining phenomena of our time. While imperfect in places, it succeeds in asking the most important question: not how to defeat conspiratorial thinking, but how to understand the human needs that give rise to it in the first place.

[Krystelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I think the first word that springs to mind to describe this book is ‘bleak’, but please understand this term is used in the best possible way. This is a treatise on where society has gone so wrong, particularly in America, and how our insular society has left people behind to the point that they fall prey to dangerous ideology.

I don’t think that this book is sympathetic, necessarily, but it is the best kind of critique of ideas that are deeply worrying. It studies the lives of two women, who were once reasonably ordinary, and their descent into Trumpism and, eventually, full conspiracy.

These women are people who feel like they’ve been left behind. The ideology they have been captured by, as laid out in this book, is designed to snare them and make them easy fodder for insurrection (like, say, the storming of the Capitol). I think the study of both of the subjects, and the wider scope as a whole, was just fascinating.

I do think that this book could have leaned more into the concept of a solution, and some more of the roots of the ideas that are floated, but I appreciate it was an academic piece in and of itself in just being a study. I was left disappointed by how, as a society, we have let the internet and weak social connections destroy people’s lives, but I would like to hope we can find hope in the years ahead.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This multilayered book covers the stories of two women in the right-wing conspiracy space, as well as a larger picture of that movement. Cook identifies how a toxic mix of conspiracism and spirituality, or conspirituality, attracts downtrodden, overlooked, often impoverished women into the fold of the likes of QAnon and its ilk.

This was so much more than a stiff portrait of two women. The ways that the author became embedded in the story, exemplifying the need for empathy (though not agreement or approval) with research participants is worth learning from. There were some detours within the overall narrative, but it is a necessary addition to the genre of conspiracy research.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great take on what is becoming a common topic. I became interested in Cook’s book after hearing her on the QAA podcast. None of my libraries had it, which is a shame, but I’m glad I was able to purchase a copy. Cook tackles the issue of women in QANON by working from the thesis that the experience of middle aged women will be different as they have become an ignored, invisible demographic. I’m at the lower end of the age range Cook describes but man, I felt this book. It is clear that this was intended to be a graduate thesis modified into a popular press book, so there are some spots that could have benefited from more smoothing out. Otherwise, great, moving work. Highly recommend!

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are in this together, whether we like it or not.

One of my top reads of 2025. A deceptively tender combination of the strange, senseless lore of Qanon and other modern American conspiracies, plus the humanity of the people who get sucked into them. Less forgiving and infantalizing than other books I've read with the same approach; Cook has sympathy and tells us a lot about these women's lives, but it feels more like an explanation than a way to make us forgive them. Also having a focus on the women in the movement is vital.

(Could have used a prose edit, though; it drove me a little insane with how it would re-explain things that were obvious in dialogue, like trying to transform people's interviews into a hand-holding script for a bad play. " 'And man, was I shocked,' she says, trying to capture her sense of disbelief." Oh was she? Was she trying to convey she was shocked with how she said "I was shocked"? Do you think? Could I have picked that up on my own?)

Will be revisiting again sometime.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This deep dive into female conspiracists on the MAGA fringes focuses on a couple of adherents. I learned so much about the worldview, including such neologisms as conspirituality and new beliefs such as "Disclosure" movement and such seminal figures as "Love has won" Amy Carlson. The blend of New Age mysticism and impending world transformation leads to concepts like "starseed":

I am most definitely a starseed!" Yvonne proclaimed in response. "I see and understand things differently."

There are a variety of starseed checklists because there are numerous kinds of starseeds. Each one has its own set of characteristics. The checklist for "Indigo Children" includes: "headstrong, creative, prone to addictions, an 'old soul,' intuitive or psychic, tendency to isolate, independent and proud, possesses a deep desire to help the world in a big way, wavers between low self-esteem and grandiosity, easily bored, diagnosed with ADD, prone to insomnia or nightmares, history of depression, looks for real friendships only, and easily bonds with other non-human living things." If you check fourteen or more items from the list, then you are "in fact an indigo." The comments section for the meme was filled with people identifying themselves as Indigo Children based on their responses.

My favorite list is a meme Yvonne reposted on Facebook that describes common "Ascension Symptoms." In Yvonne's theology, "Ascension" or "Dis-closure" is what happens when the world starts transitioning to 5D, a process that seems a lot like the biblical apocalypse from the book of Revelation.

This post-theosophy new age syncretism is fascinating. Is this how a religion is born?

Typically, that training isn't free. Nor are the different sacred items needed to activate your full starseed powers and ready yourself for Ascension. It's all quite involved and requires a series of classes, healing and channeling sessions, and the purchase of an assortment of items, elixirs, and ointments, each of which has a unique spiritual purpose.

You can see how all this works together with Love Has Won, the online spiritual group that Yvonne started following during the pandemic. Love Has Won is a descendant of theosophy, the I AM movement, alien religions, and several other New Age traditions. Its leader, Amy Carlson, picked and chose elements of all those versions of New Age faith and then added her own...

It is interesting how so many figures one would not have once associated with the far-right fringe apparently catalyzed by COVID-19 went into this rabbit hole. A key exemplar is the Plandemic guy.

The changes reflect how the pandemic has remade the health and wellness and New Age spiritual communities. Now the Expo features some of the big-gest names in anti-government, anti-mask, and anti-vaccination activism. People shell out fifty dollars a ticket to hear television and film producer Del Bigtree talk about his movie Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. His session sold out quickly. Bigtree would go on to become Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign spokesperson.

Audiences pay the same amount to hear British conspiracy guru Sacha Stone. Prior to the pandemic, Stone was a relatively benign wellness advocate. During the pandemic, Stone went hard into conspirituality when his anti-vaccination advocacy catapulted him to right-wing fame. Now Stone talks about how the Illuminati rule the earth and are trying to control humanity through vaccines that implant a soul-controlling nanochip with each injection. Like Del Bigtree, Sacha Stone is closely connected with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The closing event of the entire 2023 Expo is the world premiere of the film Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening, produced by anti-vaccination activist and conspiracy theory peddler Mikki Willis. The original plan-demic film-Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19-went viral on social media after its release in May 2020, especially after being pro-moted by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Despite being banned by mainstream social media platforms, it continued to spread online, becoming one of the most damaging sources of medical misinformation during the pandemic.

Prior to producing these films, Willis worked as a videographer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and did the same for Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 presidential run. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote the foreword for the book version of Plandemic, which was published in October 2021. Here's what Kennedy had to say: "Mikki Willis is the Paul Revere of the rebellion against the burgeoning totalitarianism of the Biosecurity State. Willis' incendiary film, Plandemic, sparked the seeds of revolution in a billion open minds and ignited the dangerous global conflagration of critical thinking." In 2024, Willis worked for Kennedy's presidential campaign and produced the video introducing him to voters.

[Off Service Book Recs · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one is born an extremists - and the path to extremism is often paved with good intentions, as extremist researcher Noelle Cook came to realize after spending time among women who looked so much like her but whose views on everything from shape-shifting reptilians to the benefits of colloidal silver bordered the bizarre. As Cook began to research extremists - women who radicalized each other online in the wake of the pandemic, committed acts of terrorism on January 6, 2021, and even attended trade shows hawking everything from quantum healing devices to government cover-ups, she turned her eye towards the emotional lives of these women and their fall into a movement with roots in nineteenth-century mystical philosophy.

Conspirituality, a term used to describe a world where New Age religion, online wellness culture, and extremism blend and become laced with antisemitic and racist theories, was key in understanding how women are being drawn into and crafting their own worlds, intensifying misinformation and intensifying extremism. In her research Cook follows the lives of two conspiritualists, Tammy and Yvonne, drawing attention to the emotional lives of these women in an attempt to understand, rather than excuse their behavior, and to discover if there is hope in countering the deeply entrenched beliefs of conspiritualism before it's too late.

This was a difficult one to read, which surprised me as someone who vehemently opposes the work of J6ers and conspiracy theorists generally - and I think that's what Cook was trying to achieve. Part character study, part historical deep dive, "The Conspiracists" offers both an intimate look into the lives of people who have fallen victim (willingly or unwillingly) to the dangers of the internet in a way that feels bitterly ironic as a millennial who grew up getting an earful about internet safety from parents and society. Watching men and women in my parents' generation fall victim to the same kinds of forces they insisted would ruin my generation - with significantly more dire consequences is uncomfortable and even heart-wrenching as well as anger-inducing, and I think Cook's decision to base this book around Tammy and Yvonne really hammers that point home - they're people you could see knowing if you don't explicitly know them yourself - a neighbor, a friend, a parent, a teacher.

I think the thing this book does really well - and what makes the idea that there is no real answer to "how to fix this" at this present moment (but despair not, there is some hope) alarming, is that by documenting Tammy and Yvonne's respective slippery slopes into full-blown conspiracism really highlights how benign their start was. We generally scoff and say we can't believe how stupid someone must be to believe some of the things they preach (adenochrome, lizard people, vibrational frequencies, and the like, though unfortunately they were "broken clock is right twice a day" about the billionaires/current president trafficking children part), but it's so easy to see how someone already suffering finds these spaces and beliefs online when looking for something, anything to hold onto. It's very human to seek connection in any way you can get it and that's really highlighted amongst the other beliefs of these women and others discussed in the book.

Overall, I think this is a really important read for anyone trying to understand the "how we got here" of it all - how your beloved high school history teacher turned into someone screaming about "demonrats" online; how your friendly grandmotherly neighbor somehow so far unto crystals that they ended up being an antisemite; and how the alarming things you see your mother post on Facebook could be signs of something worse stewing in the background. There is no answer to "how do we stop this" at this time, but knowing how we got to the problem is part of solving the problem, and - as someone probably showed you on an old-school TV in grade school - knowledge is power, and I can see what I learned being in this book being incredibly relevant in the fight to come. Congratulations to Noelle on her book, and I would absolutely read more from her in the future!

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as part of an Early Reviewer process through Augsburg Fortress Publishers.

I gave it 4 stars because I wanted more - I wished the book was longer and went indepth into the lives of more than just these two women.

I have struggled to review this book because it was so mind blowing to read. As noted, the text focuses on the lives of two J6 women and their extreme beliefs which led them to the Capitol steps and into an insurrection.

Both felt they were doing the right thing: helping the country, protecting children. Both live otherwise normal, albeit lonely, lives. Both these women and their children have been brutalized by our society; even our own government. When they needed protection, no one was there. The in-between spaces of their traumatized minds went searching for a community and found it on the internet.

I learned a lot from this book.

I learned we, as a society, need to do better. By letting predators have access to some children, we fail all children. This book taught me not all predators are obvious; the judge who takes kickbacks to put your loved one in a private prison is an apex predator. When your loved one is a child, it is worse.

I learned New Age is back – in a significant way. I am familiar with New Age practices; the concept of the Starchild is not original. But I did not realize so many people subscribed to the Starseed concept. A quick internet search as I write this tells me there are over 1 billion mentions on one social media platform alone. I appreciated the author’s detailed explanation of this belief system and how it fed into our subjects’ delusions. The soul contract is as depressing as it is strategically impossible. Per the soul contract, a spirit chooses not just its parents, but everyone else in its life-to-be on Earth along with every experience (particularly if negative) it will experience. Thus, when bad things happen to us, we have no one to blame because we chose these things in order to learn from them, enabling our spirits to move to a higher celestial plane (to be prepared for the inevitable reckoning). One lifetime you are the victim, the next, the abuser. The only way this would work is if one soul at a time was ‘down here’. The concept takes all freewill from everyone except the choosing soul. It is not logical, even as a belief system. But then, most of what these women have believed much of their lives has not been logical.

I hoped for guidance to help people out of this darkness and indeed, the author offers some hope, but it is scant. About the only thing we could do is turn off the internet.

Since the dawn of time, humans have accepted magical beliefs to explain things they did not understand. It appears, from The Conspiracists, that the Age of Enlightenment is over. We are entering a new Dark Age.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spellbinding. A deep, careful, enthralling, and chilling dive into the conspirituality of American women.

Conspirituality is a new term for an old idea: conspiracy thinking and spirituality go hand-in-hand. People simply fall prey to typical cognitive biases, made worse by a lack of education, inculcation, mental health issues and disorders, and poor circumstances throughout the life span.

Cook introduces us to two women a lot of people will struggle to like, let alone empathize with. One went to jail for participating in the Capitol Hill riots. Both are all the things: anti-vaxxers, Covid denialists, even algorithmic conspiracists (the AI is speaking to you ...). And they are also deeply traumatized people ... and in some ways good people. One was a Marine drill sergeant. Cook helps us understand where it all went wrong. The women are approached critically but treated with humanity.

"Conspiracies continue to be a method of hope to get through it all."

This is the key takeaway. Reality sucks for most people, most of the time. We have an innate desire to feel good, feel supported, to belong … to have access to basic resources, including a stable social network … to have our intrinsic needs met ... but when this doesn’t happen, especially over an extended period of time and when trauma is added to the mix, plus access to certain content and the attention of certain people, the seeds for conspiratorial thinking and religious fervour are sewn.

"Treating conspiracists with kindness, patience, and understanding appears to be a precondition for a successful exit."

A lot of people lambaste or otherwise make fun of conspiracy thinkers. A lot of people attack them/their ideas (the lines are often blurred), and rightly so on the idea front. But what is the end goal? Yeah, they’re wrong and sometimes even dangerous. But how will attacking them help? What does it feel to be on the receiving end? How would you react? You'd double-down and radicalize further. And you certainly wouldn't want to be friends with you. It's not just the conspiracy theorists who need to change their ways. They need somewhere to go ... someone to go to.

The one thing that grated my nerves about this text was Cook's constant hand-waving to "research" that she never cites. This was supposed to be a thesis. Yet, nary a source is to be had. Citations aren't just for academics. In fact, a book on this kind of topic almost requires the "opposite" behaviour it's criticizing. Any yahoo might call this material a "conspiracy" without the proper receipts!

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Broadleaf Books | Augsburg Fortress Publishers for the advance copy.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply put, this book was an absolute whiplash experience. Cook interviews and eventually becomes close with two women (Tammy and Yvonne) who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. She recounts their experiences in life before the event and since, presenting a picture of two women now deep in the throes of conspiracy theories. If other readers are anything like me, they'll oscillate wildly between finding these women bonkers-wild-bananas and absolutely depressing. I found it so hard NOT to judge them and their actions, but then felt immense empathy because Cook does a great job of setting up how they fell down these rabbit holes and totally lost touch. At the end of the day, many people like Tammy and Yvonne are simply isolated, lonely, lost, and confused, and these theories give them a new reality anchored to a different sense of hope. They'd say something that seemed genuinely compassionate and well-meaning, then in the next breath say something so blatantly offensive, untrue, or both. We all know that you can never paint an entire group of people with the same brush but this deep-dive really shows you how complex people can be, even while living in the depths of conspiracy. How can a person have Black grandchildren that they adore and protect while simultaneously spouting horrible racist/anti-semitic tropes? How can someone want to 'save the children' while believing a sexual predator like Trump is an almighty savior? How can someone with a trans daughter seemingly accept their child while aligning themselves with far-right, transphobic people? The contradictions are both fascinating and exhausting.

The book mostly focuses on the concept of recently coined 'conspirituality' and the ways in which specific aspects of New Age spiritualism have merged with 'classic' conspiratorial ideas to create a darker, more insidious cycle of thought. Amplified by social media, these conspiracy theorists now have algorithms that feel like divinity and communities that feel like families, even as the rifts between themselves and their actual families seem to widen.

While wouldn't say the information in The Conspiracists is particularly revelatory, it's written in a deeply compelling and accessible way -- especially because Cook has spent so much time with these two women. Her empathy shines through. The question of 'how do we solve this?' can't be fully answered by Cook and she knows this, but she leaves us with a thread of hope that we can bring these people back into our shared reality.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

The Conspiracists follows two women who were at the January 6 insurrection. Tammy stormed the Capitol because she believed it would help take down a global cabal of pedophiles. On the other hand, Yvonne believes she is a starseed destined to lead others into the fifth dimension. The two women follow conspirituality which blends New Age religion, online wellness culture and extremism. This book investigates why women are turning to conspirituality and why they believe in things that most people would consider crazy.

This book is very good and extremely compelling. I think this book is important and people need to read this. As this book states it’s important to understand why people turn to conspirituality and follow conspiracy theories that have been proven untrue. I felt very emotional after reading about Tammy’s background and it is clear to see how ACE’s and negative life experiences impact people’s beliefs in later life. This book starts off discussing the Capitol insurrection but then discusses things like the pandemic and delves into some key beliefs in conspirituality such as QAnon and starseeds. I will be recommending this book, I had such a good time reading this and I found it to be very impactful.

Favourite quote - “Black conspiracism grows out of lived experiences and genuine horrors inflicted by governments and the medical establishment, which, for example, used to get most of its research cadavers by robbing Black graveyards. White conspiracism seems more rooted in the perception of loss in social status, in part driven by the advances by non-white Americans as a result of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s.”

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Broadleaf Books and Netgalley for the ARC

Not gonna lie, I kind of love that this is coming out on January 6

Incredibly interesting book. A lot has been published about January 6, about the conspirituality movement, about how some people can get radicalized and start to believe in very fringe ideologies, but I feel that it's the first time we're actually focusing on a very specific demographic : middle aged white women. The author decided to tell us the story of two women who are very similar and explain why they are so representative of that movement. Just like with cults (and one could argue this is kind of a cult), anyone could join but not actually everyone ; usually those groups are more appealing to very specific people with pasts and personality traits that they all have in common. Being a victim of trauma throughout your childhood, the lack of social network, the desire to believe in something bigger than yourself, a distrust of the government... All those things mixed with covid, a time when suddenly everyone was isolated and trying to find answers online : a very dangerous combination.

One thing that the author does really well is talking about these women with compassion, I think that's key when talking about those movements, sure I want to point and laugh and judge sometimes, but those women are also victims. Understanding what brought them there is the best way to prevent others from joining. One thing I really agree with, is that there is very little community for menopausal women, once they're past a certain age they become mostly invisible everywhere ; I feel like we don't talk enough about that.

Highly recommend this book, interesting and empathic at the same time

[Lee Barry]

A review/comment in the form of an excerpt from another book The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us

"Cult leaders themselves are overwhelmingly individualist mattering competitors who must convince themselves that they matter more than all others do, and that is what they set about convincing their followers is true. They may employ spirituality or politics to do so, or sometimes a powerful amalgam of the two. Such people can present a disruptive force in society. Even within democracies, they play havoc with the assumption that people vote according to their self-interest—most especially their economic self-interest. But the mattering instinct overpowers self-interest narrowly defined. In a society in which there is a sharp divide between the mattering haves and the mattering have-nots, a charismatic person can provide a sense of trickledown mattering to the mattering have-nots.

L. Ron Hubbard...made his followers feel infused with his own mattering, The second of his wives, Sara Northrup, remarked on this aspect of Hubbard’s power: “He would hold hands with them try to talk them into these phony memories. He would concentrate on them, and they loved it. They were so excited about someone who would just pay this much attention to them.” Not just any someone, of course, but a uniquely special someone, inhabiting, in the eyes of his followers, an exalted plane of mattering, haloed round with the grace of charisma. To receive attention—even contrived attention—from such a special one is validating."

[Six Degrees · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noelle Cook entered my life shortly after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. At the time, she was studying the women who took part in the attack, while I was still trying to understand how my loved one had fallen down the rabbit hole of Pizzagate and then QAnon. Her work and compassion in making sense of conspirituality opened up a greater understanding not only for me but for many others, ultimately leading to her first book, The Conspiracists.​

In The Conspiracists, Cook takes a compassionate, in-depth look at two women, Yvonne and Tammy. Through their stories she examines how trauma, life experiences, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a “choose-your-own-adventure” style of New Age spirituality created the perfect breeding ground for self-radicalization, especially online.​

The result is a moving and thought-provoking journey. Though Yvonne and Tammy share much in common, their differences make for an even more compelling portrait of what their lives are like and how varied the path into conspirituality can be.​

Cook never seeks to excuse the behaviors or actions of Yvonne or Tammy. In a world lacking compassion and understanding, where so many have either fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiracies or lost someone to them, The Conspiracists offers a fresh, nuanced look at these women, how they developed their belief systems, and what it might mean to truly try to understand them just a little more.​

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synopsis: Cook meets and profiles two middle-aged women convicted for involvement in the 6 January 2021 Capitol attack, telling their stories and grappling with how they came to buy into a mix of QAnon conspiracy theories and New Age spirituality.

Review: This ethnography was written in a narrative format, canvassing the lives of the women profiled. It emphasised how women who are marginalised, isolated and vulnerable (whether that be due to adverse childhood experiences, poverty, domestic violence, or all three as in the case of each woman profiled) are more likely to be drawn into conspiracy theories. It explained the rationale for the women’s views, and how they fell into an algorithmic feedback loop that fed their conspiracy beliefs. That said, Cook mentioned that she started the book as an academic research project, and commenced compiling data regarding the women arrested before shifting focus. It would have been nice if some of this approach had been left in, to determine how representative the two women profiled are, of women involved in right-wing conspirituality. 

Cook humanises the women, but doesn’t excuse their actions. It would be an interesting read for anyone who wonders how QAnon conspiracy theories have taken hold among women in the US, or anyone who's a fan of Arlie Russell Hochschild's Strangers In Their Own Land.

[Trisha S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists is a masterful, so-human look at something we often overlook: how ordinary women get pulled into extremist beliefs. While at the January 6 insurrection, photographing and observing the crowd firsthand, Cook noticed women who could be any of us—middle-aged, everyday Americans—and it sparked a powerful investigation into how and why they radicalize.

Cook mixes sharp reporting with real empathy, introducing women whose beliefs pull them into extreme worlds. She shows how conspiratorial thinking and “conspirituality”—New Age practices, wellness trends, and extremist ideologies—come together in ways that are both fascinating and alarming.

This book doesn’t excuse extremism, but it helps you understand it—its emotional pull, its allure, and the social forces that drive it. Cook’s reporting is thoughtful, detailed, and often unsettling, reminding us that the worlds women craft in these movements are powerful and can’t be ignored.

If you want to understand how misinformation spreads, how radicalization happens, and why paying attention to women’s roles matters, this is a must-read. Cook’s work is timely, essential, and unforgettable.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Conspiracists is a chilling, deeply human examination of how extremism takes root, not on the margins of society, but in familiar, everyday lives. Noelle Cook approaches a volatile subject with rigor, empathy, and unflinching clarity, revealing how loneliness, identity-seeking, wellness culture, and digital communities can quietly merge into radical belief systems.

What makes this book so powerful is its focus on women, not as anomalies within extremist movements, but as active participants who shape, sustain, and spread conspiratorial worlds. Cook’s portraits are unsettling precisely because they feel real: women searching for meaning, belonging, and moral clarity in moments of fear and uncertainty. By refusing both sensationalism and excuse-making, The Conspiracists offers one of the most important contributions yet to our understanding of misinformation, radicalization, and the emotional economies that fuel them. This is essential reading for anyone concerned with democracy, media literacy, and the hidden social forces reshaping our political landscape.

[Elsie Birnbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book is like "wait what do you mean this woman's QAnon journey involved being being a follower of the 'Love Has Won' cult', I mean it makes a surprising amount of sense now that I think about it but what?? huh??". Cook does a wonderful job explaining the particular factors and the New-Age conspiracy ecosystem that led two women to participate in January 6th. The only reason this is four stars and not five for me, is this choice to focus the book on two very similar women. It's a weird number of subjects to follow, I wish Cook has chosen to follow one subject or broaden her focus to the movement as a whole, or at the very least chosen two subjects who contrasted with each other. I refuse to believe that every female QAnon follower lives in poverty and had a horrific childhood. Some of them are suburban housewives. The book's conclusion also read a little too much like "they go low, we go high" which uh didn't exactly stop QAnon in the first place, now did it?

Thanks for NetGalley for an eARC for review.

[Jordan Gauss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling and empathetic look at two specific women who “fell down the rabbit hole”. It’s clear that the author really spent a lot of time getting to know these women, and grew to care for them deeply. This definitely humanized a couple of “January 6ers”, and made a case for how easily it can be to turn to conspiracies as a form of religion as a result of trauma, uncertainty, and vicious cycles. Having said that, I don’t know that I’m convinced by some of the assertions. The author certainly makes a good case for the role a lifetime of trauma can have on one’s propensity to believe in conspiracy. I’m not necessarily convinced that the ideas about the women discussed in this book can necessarily be extrapolated, and applied to all, or even most, conspiracy theorist women. Overall, a very interesting, and moving, look at two women who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

[September Withers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is a sharp and unsettling examination of how radicalization takes root in unexpected places. Noelle Cook approaches a complex and often misunderstood subject with clarity, empathy, and rigorous research, offering readers a deeper understanding of how conspiracy culture and extremism intersect with identity and belonging.

What stands out is the book’s focus on emotional and social dynamics rather than spectacle. By centering real women and tracing the blend of wellness culture, spirituality, and misinformation, Cook delivers a nuanced analysis that feels both timely and essential. This is a vital contribution to conversations around misinformation and modern extremism

[keaty · Rating 4 out of 5]

An emotional and brutal look into what brings people to conspiracy, hate, and community. Yvonne and Tammy's stories force you to sympathize with their backgrounds even as you detest their politics and ideologies. Cook's ability to do this is special and stands out among a lot of other character-driven narratives. I would have liked a more overview of J6 women and far-right women in general, but Cook's honesty about being driven by Tammy and Yvonne's lives makes for a special read. I learned a lot about conspiracy and the depth of New Age wellness (which I thought I had a good grasp on, but no) and how it's infected people. The lure of belonging and need for community has to be addressed nationally, as vague as that sounds, or more people will be joining these hateful spaces.

[Linda Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noelle Cook has written an incredible deep dive into the conspirituality movement, showing exactly how yoga mats, essential oils, and organic living can intersect with full-blown conspiracy theories. What makes this book stand out is Cook’s empathy—she doesn’t excuse what’s happening, but she nails the psychological “why” behind it. It would be easy to mock these movements, but Cook goes further, really unpacking the pull of community and belonging that draws women in. Her analysis of the wellness industry’s role in this shift is eye-opening and essential for understanding our modern world. A brilliant, humanizing look at a complex and uncomfortable issue.

[Erin Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was a fascinating read. I could not put it down. The author details how and why white, middle-age women are falling for conspiracy theories. She follows two women as they seem to live normal lives and then become very online and fall into conspiracy theories. Both women have significant trauma in their past, and the author does believe this place into the reasons they are prone to believing in conspiracy theories. I was surprised about how lingo I have heard used is actually from new age spiritualism such as 5 D. I found the book and enlightening, disturbing and hopeful.