Conspiracy theories are as old as witch hunts 

To millions of people across America, Hillary Clinton sits atop a global network of satanic child-traffickers and is battling an underground resistance led by Donald Trump to maintain her malign influence. That is the core tenet of the QAnon movement, a conspiracy theory that originated in obscure corners of the internet before being seized upon by members of the Republican elite for their political advantage.

QAnon is at the heart of Gabriel Gatehouse’s The Coming Storm. But the book begins with a conspiracy theory from centuries earlier, about witches in medieval Europe. The scrawls of the German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer became the book Malleus Maleficarum because its author happened to live near the inventors of the earliest printing presses. The text would form the basis of  the persecution of women for centuries. The technology of printing, Gatehouse writes, disrupted the power structures of feudalism and brought about its end.