(RNS) — Noelle Cook arrived in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to photograph the Stop the Steal rally, expecting to gather some images for a graduate thesis project in women’s and gender studies. She ended up chronicling an insurrection — and, more unexpectedly, growing close to some of the women who breached the U.S. Capitol that day.
In her new book, “The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging,” Cook, 58, writes about two middle-aged white women from Idaho and Pennsylvania, Yvonne and Tammy, whose lives Cook became intimately familiar with and, eventually, a part of. She traces how they left Christianity for New Age conspiracy theories, believing that shape-shifting reptilians kill children to take their blood and that humans are enslaved within a computer simulation, not unlike in the 1999 film “The Matrix.”
Over more than three years, she came to understand how the trauma and isolation they suffered as a result of abuse, loss and family turmoil made these women susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, and explores the violent implications of these beliefs with curiosity and empathy. Cook spoke to RNS about the radicalization of American women in the five years since the insurrection. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You profile two women in your book, Yvonne and Tammy. What were these women …