n  "One thing you quickly learn about the extremists is that they really don't like being called extremists. In fact they often tell me that we are the real extremists. They say that the Western liberal cosmopolitan establishment is itself a fanatical, depraved belief system. I like it when they say this because it makes me feel as if I have a belief system."n

Džon Ronson je podjednako lud koliko je i hrabar. Napisano sa strašnim smislom za humor, Ronson ovde „izveštava“ kako je pričao sa neo-nacistima, islamskim ekstremistima, ljudima koji veruju u guštere vanzemaljce itd itd, i uočio da svi oni veruju u jednu malu kliku ljudi koji odredjuju planetarne sudbe iz jedne male zamračene prostorije u sred ničeg. Posmatranja su mu neretko inteligentna, uvek smešna, a umeju i da ostave bez teksta. Sve u svemu, jako dobra knjižica za usputno čitanje.

4+

I found out about Jon Ronson’s book, Them. Adventures with Extremists, on the Facebook page of a Romanian writer, and I thought it would be an interesting reading for it was said it had many ingredients: humor, a glimpse into the extremists’ world, a review of some conspiracy theories and so on.

Indeed, it was all of this, and I mostly agree with the description Louis Theroux makes inThe Guardian , that the book is “a funny and compulsively readable picaresque adventure through a paranoid shadow world, with Ronson playing Sancho Panza to a cast of obsessives”, but it also seemed to me a little superficial and excessively caricatural, finally losing its point, despite (or maybe because of) the brilliant gonzo journalism.

In the Preface, the author confesses that initially he wanted to create a profile of the extremist leader, but joining some of them he discovered they had a common belief: that the world is ruled by “a tiny elite” who meets secretly every summer in some secret room to start the wars, decide the heads of states, control the markets, and “transform themselves into twelve-foot lizards when nobody is looking, and destroy the credibility of any investigator who gets too close to the truth”. The extremists and/ or conspiracy theory adepts call this elite either the Bilderberg Group (if you are interested, Wikipedia has an article about it here) or ZOG (Wiki info here ) - the Zionist Occupied Government that is, even though, someone explains, it is not necessarily entirely formed by Jews, but its members believe that they are the ‘Chosen People’, explanation that leads to the natural conclusion that “Jews are metaphors now. You no longer need to be Jewish to be a Jew.”

After speaking with various extremists (neo-Nazis, Ku-Klux-Klan members, etc.), Jon Ronson is happy to find out he is somehow protected because he does not take conspiracy theories too seriously:

My worryingly paradoxical thought process could be summarized thus: Thank God I don’t believe in the secret rulers of the world. Imagine what the secret rulers of the world might do to me if I did.

At one point, he finds himself at the auction of some items that belonged to Ceausescu and his wife, auction organized by the Romanian government in Sinaia (1999). Although he could not prove that “the auction of Ceausescu’s belongings was a fitting microcosm of what (…) went on inside Bilderberg meetings” he met an interesting figure, a Mr Ru Ru, who came to buy and put on Ceausescu’s shoes. He shows the author a wooden statue of a shepherd, a gift to Ceausescu from Yasser Arafat, joking that he should buy it and offer him as a gift, since this is the “democratization of tyranny. (…) Turning dictatorship into capitalism.”


Overall, a light, enjoyable reading, should you not expect much information.

Good reading at a time we are surrounded by Hillary, Trump and the like.

Written in the classic Jon Ronson style, this is a great book looking at a varied range of extremists. At points it was a slightly uncomfortable read, unsurprisingly, but really quite gripping. It does include a fair amount of offensive slurs and should probably come with a trigger warning. Overall 4 stars.

I've read similar books to this one - Evan Wright's Hella Nation, Louis Theroux's The Call of the Weird. I notice Theroux's blurb is prominent on the cover, perhaps to pre-empt the obvious comparison. Theroux credits Ronson as an inspiration, which is a mixed blessing: he copied Ronson's schtick, yet ended up better known for it.

Their subjects are the same: survivalists, conspiracy wonks, Neo-Nazis. Ronson goes a step further, spending over a year in the company of Islamic Extremist Omar Bakri, following him to the photocopier at Office World to failed summits in Birmingham.

Along the way Bakri tries to 'shake the world' by filling a major London venue and proclaiming the inevitable triumph of Islam (cancelled: couldn't raise the deposit) and charity collecting using novelty coke bottles. You may, rightly, laugh, but it's the comic details that tell.

What links these portraits is a common belief that a shadowy, all-powerful group is secretly controlling everything (hotels are a popular venue for summits). It never seems odd to anyone that an all-powerful cabal lets them go on blowing their secrets to anybody who’ll listen.

For David Icke, the cabal is a secret race of humanoid lizards. Unlike Bakri, there is no element of playing a part - Icke sincerely believes it to the point of screaming at receptionists (destroyers of freedom). That Icke thinks this is normal behaviour is as nauseating as his self-pity. ('Oh no, there's no conspiracy, no cover-up, no suppression, ladies and gentlemen of the world.') Note the similarity between Icke's thinking and the garden-variety religious fanatic’s: everything from a leaking tap to a power cut is a sign the believers are in the right. The less said about Alex Jones the better, though I wish that Ronson, writing in 2001, had troubled to piss in his coffee.

It might help the tabloid newspapers if they covered Bakri and co. as clowns and bunglers, not evil supervillains. You can't help wondering, reading this book, that evil is more self-deluding and pathetic than diabolical.

This was a good book to read at the end of 2016, a year in which previously outlandish and extreme views became mainstream (Brexit) and the role of facts in political discourse became hazy.

Published back in 2001, it’s Ronson’s first book, and some of the chapters - particularly those researched and written before 9/11 - seem to come from a halcyon and innocent time. Imagine a time when Omar Bakri and Anjem Choudhary could be considered by anyone as nothing more than mischievous buffoons. Or a time when someone could poke fun at Thomas Robb, hapless leader of the KKK, as he tries to ‘rebrand’ the organisation for the 21st Century. It’s strange and sobering to think how much the world has changed in seventeen short years.

Ronson follows several unusual characters, including Thomas Robb, David Icke, and  the late Ian Paisley, ostensibly aiming to establish whether they really are as crazy as some people make out.

Much of the book centres around his hunt for the truth about the Bilderberg Group. Nowadays the existence of this elite group seems to be a given, but apparently back in the late 1990s this wasn’t the case. Jon goes around with the late Jim Tucker, who at the time was dismissed by many as a crackpot because of his obssession with outing the shady group of hyper-powerful individuals who met each year in a secret location and pulled all kinds of internationl strings. Well in retrospect… it turns out he was right. In fact, what really struck me when reading this was the fact that the Bilderbergers have pulled off an incredible trick. Now the group seems to be pretty much out in the open, but (and this would have Jim Tucker turning in his grave) apparently no-one gives a damn. Perhaps we are all too distracted by Buzzfeed listicles and Netflix…. Or perhaps the mainstream media are being suspiciously quiet...God, I’m starting to sound like one of Them.

Unlike some of Ronson’s later books (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, So You've Been Publicly Shamed), this read less like a single piece of investigative journalism and more like several highly entertaining newspaper articles that had been stitched together. Ronson’s self-deprecating charm and hilarious insights are still out in force, but the general effect is slightly unpolished.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this, the same as with all Ronson’s other books. It provides some very hearty food for thought.

EDIT: I’ve just discovered that there’s an accompanying documentary to the book and that you can watch it here (for the time being anyway): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0p-e...

I went straight onto 'Them' having torn through Ronson's brilliant 'The Psychopath Test' and I wish, in a way, I'd read them in the opposite order. This is without doubt a really interesting, and funny book - but it doesn't have the same gut impact of the other title.

Don't get me wrong, Ronson manages once again to portray remarkable people with the same kind of slightly suspect innocence that Louis Theroux uses on TV - so we meet everyone from an Islamic extremist to Ian Paisley, via David Icke - but the writing simply isn't knit together quite as beautifully.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the central theme here is slightly more flaky. What links all these people (and others) is the belief that a 'World Order' of important people meet up and shape all our destinies. The central focus of these beliefs seem to be primarily the Bilderberg Group and a strange American gathering involving giant owls that is more reminiscent of an extended Fraternity party than anything sinister.

Yes, these groups do bring together very important people for networking, but hardly for setting the whole world's agenda - apart from anything else, these groups only meet once a year, hardly enough to run things from day to day. Even so, Ronson's attempts to penetrate these gatherings is itself both funny in its mild incompetence and rather scary.

A good book then, very readable, and a real incite into the way that so many of these fringe people are inspired by the same conspiracy paranoia - but not quite Ronson's best.

There is a popular school of thought that says a secret cabal of furtive persons rule the world.
Well, I say popular. It's only a small number of people, it's just they're really loud.
The fact people think this baffles me – I mean, if it's true, they doing a really shit job.
What actually does shock me is that this book, which has never been more relevant, was written in 2001.
Starting out talking to a Muslim extremist (Omar seems quite delighted to be so known), Jon Ronson happens upon the secret cabal theory, and before you know it he's on a quest to find out where they meet.
On his way, he spends time with David Icke, the aforementioned Omar, a little-known radio show host called Alex Jones (wonder what happened to him....) and – for reasons that are not immediately clear – the Rev Ian Paisley.
Oh, and some lovely racists who run various Klan factions.
What we learn through Jon's journey is that some of these people, while bonkers, are essentially harmless. Others are scary as all hell.
The one thing they have in common is they are certain they are right.
Them asks a lot of questions, not least what the hell was Ronson thinking hanging out with the Klan, but answers are harder to come by because what you learn is perspective is key.
Those fighting antisemitism are certain David Icke is a racist. Now, I'm not here to call that either way because I have deliberately stayed clear of his mad blitherings, but reading this book you soon realise that while his words can be interpreted one way there's also a very real chance that he does believe lizards rule the world.
Jon reaches conclusions as he goes, but he also lets the reader form their own – and what could be a hard slog of a book is kept light and engaging thanks to Ronson's writing style.
What could have been a dark, heavy book is light, gripping and thoroughly entertaining but will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew.
But then, that's what they want to happen.....

A very funny book. I can't get enough of Ronson's dry wit. But I'm never sure exactly how seriously to take him as a journalist. It's a collection of essays, so I'm inclined to think that some stick closer to the facts than others.

My dad makes a cameo appearance, debating David "Lizard People" Icke on Vancouver Television, though Ronson spells his name wrong.

One of my favorite chapters is Ronson's stint among the various factions of the white supremacist movement. One KKK leader pedantically insists that the liberal media prove their bias because they insist on calling it a cross LIGHTING, when everyone knows that it's really a CROSS BURNING. For me, this exchange summed up so many bad faith semantic disputes--like when the private army formerly known s "Blackwater" gets all pissy about journalists calling its employees "mercenaries" instead of "security contractors."

Absolutely hilarious and revealing. Jon Ronson hangs out with a politically correct version of the Ku Klux Klan in America ("We don't use the N-word. That's just plain stupid"), visits a Muslim training camp in his native Britain ("Yes, I'm a Jew, but isn't that better than being an atheist?" he tells them), and travels through West Africa with the late Irish Protestant extremist Reverend Ian Paisley, or R.I.P., who insists on barking at our hero, "Hello, this is Germany calling!". Conspiratorialists, fascists, and just plain weirdos get their 15 minutes of fame thanks to Johnson, who empathetically notes they, like him, have plenty of reasons to distrust those with power. After this mind-blower, I read everything I could by Ronson, though I've yet to venture into THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

Fried out and funny af, as all Ronson books are! He is a brilliant journalist and I would recommend his books to everyone, but nobody who knows me would ever need to read one because they get in depth descriptions of every chapter from me as and when I read them.

Like all of Jon Ronson's books, I really enjoyed this. I definitely learned about some new (& crazy) people and situations, and it was also interesting hearing how he described other events I was more familiar with (like contrasting his interviews from people that were at Ruby Ridge with the way it was interpreted by the dad from Educated). I love his sense of humor and the way he finds himself in such a bizarre series of situations, told in a hilarious and sometimes self deprecating way.