Again @jonronson proves why he's one of my favorite writers. THEM is a fascinating journey in conspiracies--what is real and what is fantasy--and the people who believe them. Of all his books this is most draining. The dogma that the people featured in the book is depressing. It is mentality taxing to wrap your head around belief systems that more complex than the simple truth in most cases.

I listened to the amazing audio short "the butterfly effect #1" by Jon Ronson and I didn't want the magic to end so I went to audible to see what else they had by him. This was the best on offer, since I've already read/listened to The Psychopath Test.

The magic of Ronson's work is that he is so polite and nebbishy, competely at odds with the rather intense figures he interviews. In this work, he interviews an Islamic fundamentalist, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, the editor of a radical right-wing conspiracy theory newsletter, Randy Weaver, and some die-hards obsessed with infiltrating a secret cabal of owl-worshippers.

I started out totally feeling at one with Ronson's approach. He interviews these people with total earnestness, seemingly most concerned with making sure that the subject likes him. That Ronson should feel so upset that an Islamic fundamentalist dedicated to overthrowing his own country should decide he's not Ronson's friend anymore seemed ludicrous. For a guy who is so easily upset, who wants so desperately to be liked, Ronson sure puts himself out there with some really unlikeable and unfriendly people.

One of the techniques that Ronson does is to transcribe the conversations, and (in the audiobook version) read them out with what I assume is not the original inflection. So if his subject says something like "One day the lizards who rule the world will let their mask slip and we'll be there to get it on film. That will really be something, ha ha!" And Ronson will read out the "ha ha" when it was probably originally just a burst of nervous laughter. It works to make them seem ridiculous without actually mis-quoting them, but it's a technique he uses too often.

I think maybe I've reached the saturation point for Ronson's particular type of humor. Or maybe this book just wasn't as strong as the others. Some of the people he interviewed were a combination of dangerous+pathetic, such as the Islamic fundamentalist and the Grand Wizard of the KKK. Other people were just pathetic and sad, such as David Ike who thinks that lizard people are controlling the world. But putting Randy Weaver in there wasn't quite fair. Maybe the Bilderburg group exists (or maybe it doesn't) and I think it's quite a stretch to think that a secret cabal of lizard people (or Jews) are controlling the world in clandestine meetings at five star resorts, but Randy Weaver's wife and son definitely were killed by U.S. agents. Vicky Weaver really was shot in the head by agents from the federal government in her own kitchen with her baby in her arms. Her young son really was shot in the back after they killed his dog. Whether it was because the family posed a danger to others because of their off-the-grid gun-toting anti-government beliefs, or if it's because Randy refused to be a mole for the FBI into white supremacist organizations is up to debate, but I don't think including him in this book set the right tone. It's all paranoid delusions until the government murders your family.

I guess that's my main problem with this book. Ronson doesn't seem to be sure what kind of tone he wants to set. Is this supposed to be like Serial, where you're halfway between belief and disbelief and vacillate between thinking these people are insane and wondering if they know something we don't? The intro trailer set that tone. For the first half of the book, I thought that was the aim, and it seemed to be doing it pretty well. But then it went on too long. It felt like being in a stalled subway car with a crazy homeless person. At first their ranting shouts are frightening. Then they are amusing. Then they are annoying and you just want them to be quiet. I started out feeling titillation at the extremists Ronson was interviewing and their horrible agendas, but as time went on, they were just pathetic losers who only really have power when people listen to them, and I no longer wanted to listen to them.

Before he hung out with the men who stare at goats, Jon Ronson spent a year in the company of various extremists who had one thing in common: the belief that the world is secretly controlled by a Zionist conspiracy helmed by the Bilderberg Group. Incredibly – and bravely – Ronson (who is Jewish) decided to suspend disbelief and take them at their word in order to find out if this was actually true. He covers a lot of bases, from Islamic fundamentalists, Aryan Nations and the KKK to Randy Weaver (of Ruby Ridge fame), radio host Alex Jones and the actual Bilderberg Group itself. Context helps here – the book was written just before 9/11, when extremism of all stripes was still relegated to the fringe and hardly anyone outside of that fringe took the Bilderberg conspiracy seriously enough to bother writing about it. Consequently, Ronson takes a lighter approach than he may have done post-9/11. The result is a surprisingly funny book that portrays extremists as actual people (albeit absurd, delusional, buffoonish and not always very nice people) rather than caricatures, yet without endorsing any of their toxic views. What’s really striking is the sheer nerve it must have taken to hang out with extremists in the first place. It’s hard to imagine anyone being brave enough to write a book like this in today’s political environment. It may be dated, but it’s still a fascinating ethnographic addition to the conspiracy-theory-history section.

“Them: Adventures with Extremists” e deja a treia carte de Jon Ronson citită și pentru nimeni nu e secret că e unul din scriitorii mei preferați. Probabil pentru că mentionez de fiecare dată când am ocazia că îmi place la nebunie felul lui de a scrie și umorul fin cu care abordează orice subiect.
De data asta, jurnalistul se aventurează alături de antisemiți, neonaziști, membri ai Ku Klux Klan și radicali islamici. Astfel el încearcă să afle dacă cu adevărat există o societate secretă, numită Grupul Bilderberg, care conduce lumea sau aceste teorii ale conspirației sunt curată nebunie. Cam riscant pentru un evreu, nu?

Fascinating, and weird. I loved it. I had never heard of most of the 'new world order' conspiracy stuff (or of any of these people, except Randy Weaver), and I really appreciated how the author avoided making any of his own judgments about the people he was writing about/interviewing - there's a lot of 'then this happened, and then this person said this' and I found that much more effective in highlighting the craziness than sensationalizing it and putting his own spin on it would have been (and sometimes leaves the people who are supposedly 'mainstream' look just as nutty as the conspiracy theorists). He just lays out what happened and leaves you to think about it.
The phrase that sums up the book for me was 'I believed I was right, but who knows? Perhaps Alex and Mike's interpretation was equally correct.' I think that pinpoints the divide that defines the subjects as extremists - the inability to accept that others might believe differently than you and you need to live with that.

In Them, Jon Ronson’s second book, the author dives deep into the world of conspiracy theories and extremists. His subjects include Islamic fundamentalists, racist groups like the KKK and Aryan Nations, Bilderberg crusaders like Jim Tucker, paranoid talk radio personalities, and even a man convinced that the rulers of the world are truly giant lizards in disguise.


THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

I thought Them was frequently clever and often ironic, but never laugh-out-loud funny. The book gets off to a rocky start with a profile of Omar Muhammad, a loathsome Islamic fundamentalist living in England. Omar’s only source of income appears to be government welfare, yet he spends his days preaching a message of hate and gathering money to build bombs with which to kill Israelis. After the 2005 London bombings he fled the country and he has been linked to Al-Queda. Suffice to say I did not find him to be “infuriatingly likeable” as the book’s blurb advertised, and if Them had spent the whole time attempting to humanize nutcases like Omar this would have been a long 300 pages.

Thankfully, things pick up when Ronson moves on to different subjects. He is careful to show both sides of the war between the “extremists” and the “mainstream,” which keeps the book interesting. Randy Weaver had ties to Aryan Nations, but the heavy-handed government response was out of all proportion to any of his crimes. Jim Tucker, labeled as a conspiracy theorist, was actually on to something with his Bilderberg crusade – but the extreme, even anti-Semitic viewpoints of the paper he published in undermined his credibility. David Icke, the man who believes the world is run by giant lizards, is unfairly branded as an anti-Semite – he really does believe in exactly what he preaches. And the KKK...well, it’s hard to put a positive spin on the KKK.

Virtually all of Ronson’s subject’s believe in some sort of small, ultra-powerful group that really runs the world, like the Bilderberg Group. This group is a real thing (the question is not whether it exists, rather what precisely it exists to do), and towards the end of the book Ronson actually infiltrates its operations to a degree. Overall, Them provides an entertaining (and occasionally humanizing) look at the people who live on the fringes of polite society. Some of them are crazy, while some of them are much more rational than you’d think, but all are treated fairly by the author. If this subject interests you, this book is a good, not-too-heavy read. 3 stars, recommended.

As someone who was ten when this book was published, this book put to me the dismal proposition that history really is cyclical and people are really really dumb. The book is hilarious in its absurdity, and oddly sobering when familiar names and conspiracies pop up.

I think I would have enjoyed this more had I read it instead of listening to the audiobook. There are a lot of people to keep up with and sometimes Jon's wit is so dry I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. It's not a bad collection of stories and I did enjoy his reading sometimes, but think I would have had a better experience with a physical book.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I heard about it from Coast to Coast AM when Mr. Ronson was interviewed by George Noory. He described the incident from the book where he ended up at an extremist camp surrounded by Islamic extremists working toward the Islamification of Britain. When they discover he is Jewish the response is intriguing. The whole book is well worth a read. I still pick it up to read random chapters even now!

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!

Ronson's own thought process, as he describes it about half way through the book, is how I felt at my most "sucked in" moments which were, admittedly, few and far between.

I really like Jon Ronson and/but his propensity for sensationalism is both what attracts me to his books (Calling a book The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is some pretty genius marketing), and has me take him with a grain of salt.

This book was published in 2002, which means that there was minimal integration of 9/11 conspiracy theory elements and, if you're trying to keep up with the Islamic fundamentalist or KKK movements of today, this isn't your best source.

Also, I found myself having to make liberal use of Wikipedia while I read this which was probably a result of my being insufficiently well-educated tween with respect to world politics when a lot of the research for this book was done circa 1998 (Nicolae Ceaușescu, James Wolfensohn and David Icke were among the many characters I had to look up...I know, I'm ashamed).

In the end, I can no more prove that there's a global elite controlling our world than I can that there's a Flying Spaghetti Monster- as Ronson himself points out, the nefarious Satanic rituals at Bohemian Grove bear strong resemblance to fraternity hazing (actually, the whole place reminded me of my summer camp), but ya never know...

Who knew that a book about extremists could be funny? Ronson somehow talks his way into an Islamic extremist training camp, a KKK cross burning, meets the Weavers of Ruby Ridge and learns that the rulers of the world are really shape shifting 12 foot reptiles. Just about all of the fringe groups he meets believe that a small group of men (Jewish) meet in secret rooms and control the world. But wait, the climax is great. Ronson actually sneaks into a bizarre owl ritual attended by presidents, CEOs and magnates of all varieties, oh and Dick Cheney. And his companion is (not yet famous) Alex Jones, of all people. Jon sees the meeting as absurd blowing off of steam. Alex sees all his Illuminati Satanist theories proven true. I like that Ronson gets to know the people he interviews and doesn't (directly) make fun of them. And in the case of the Weaver family. he even takes their side over the Anti-Defamation League. The book is kind of old now but is probably more relevant than it was when written since the conspiracy business is booming.

Boring. Ronson can write but the content was dull and uninteresting. I'd recommend watching Louis Theroux docos rather than reading this book.