Book Review: THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS
When we went to see the Bilderberg Group
Book Review: THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS (2001) by Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson is a funny guy. He can find the humor even in quite scary settings. Such as that time when he infiltrated a militant Islamist group in Britain, and they found out he was Jewish. (He got out of it unscathed.)
That’s just one case in Ronson’s collection of meetings with real fanatics and paranoids, featured in this book.
What strikes me now is that since the book came out in 2001, such fringe characters — conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, religious fanatics, right-wing militias and others — have entered the mainstream. (Some such personalities now have the ear of President Trump — or are in his cabinet!)
You might think that the most unsympathetic characters in this book would be the most threatening ones. Though in my opinion, Reverend Ian Paisley (who Ronson hangs around with in one chapter) comes off as a particularly unpleasant person. He’s not the most menacing — but the most unfriendly.
The most fascinating chapter is Ronson’s account of when he and Alex Jones (yes, that Alex Jones!) party-crashed a meeting of the Bilderberg Group in a Californian forest. You are free to interpret how Ronson tells the story… but that event seems to have been a pivot in Alex Jones’ career, when he went “all in” on conspiracy theories and paranoia. A minor historic moment.
I found this book both worrying and amusing — and a foretaste of the decades that would follow. THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS reads like standing on the threshold of a worldwide mania. Highly recommended!