午夜剧场

The major catalyst for deciding to translate this book was the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.

It was an unbelievable incident in which armed Trump supporters, convinced that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, attacked the heart of American politics. One of the translators (Masayuki Karasudani) researches the relationship between politics and the media. For that reason, I felt a strong sense of urgency to clarify how the preposterous "stolen election" conspiracy theory was born and how it spread.

After the incident, a chance encounter gave me the opportunity to speak with a young Japanese man who supported QAnon's claims. He was a clean-cut, "ordinary" young man in his 30s living in Tokyo. Meeting him shattered the vague image I had previously held of "Trump supporters" and "conspiracy theorists." Through this meeting, I became even more deeply interested in conspiracy theory research.

While shocked by the Capitol attack, I had almost no prior knowledge of the issue of conspiracy theories, so I first relied on information from social media. Compared to typical social science issues, the situation regarding conspiracy theories is far more fluid. Furthermore, social media was the primary battlefield where the QAnon movement originating in the U.S. spread to Japan and began to exert a certain level of influence. In this process of gathering information, the information shared by watchers and journalists monitoring conspiracy theories and cult groups on Twitter (now X) was extremely useful. I learned about the existence of this book because it was a major topic of conversation within the conspiracy theory circles on Twitter.

Amiko Nobori, an international political scientist and graduate of the Graduate School of Law at 午夜剧场, joined as a co-translator midway through. One major factor shaking the liberal international order led by the United States since World War II is the rise of nationalism and populism in developed countries, including the U.S. In that sense, from the perspective of international politics, the conspiracy theories behind the weakening of American democracy are a theme that cannot be ignored. This is a book that I hope will be read not only by those interested in media studies but also by those interested in international politics.

Masayuki Karasudani (Co-translator), Amiko Nobori (Co-translator)

午夜剧场 Press

378 pages, 2,970 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.