Written in 2001 but with epilogue written in 2014. I think I'm glad his investigations into terrorists and Alex Jones were pre-9/11 and pre-Trump, Ronson finds the lightness and silliness in their behaviour that may easily be forgotten if they were written about now. They seemed less "dangerous" when this was written than they would be portrayed now. Typically his writing makes me laugh, and this was no exception.

My only gripe is I'm not sure the chapter on Ian Paisley really fits into the book - though I'm glad he was because I love to see Ronson write about someone who hates him ahaha.
I think I only have one more Ronson book to read and I have completed his canon!

'Some people think this is a Jewish conspiracy, some think it's a Catholic conspiracy, some people think it's a Masonic conspiracy But I know what it really is.'
'What is it?' I asked.
'It is a satanic globalist conspiracy,' said Jack.

When I got to use the upper-school library when I was ten years old I started a cycle that I kept up until I left for high school. Every week I would check out one of two books: Ghosts: Fact or Fiction and UFOs: Fact or Fiction. The gimmick to these books was great, each one was divided into two sections, one based on fact and the other on fiction. Each side of the book was the front cover for one of the two halves, so if you picked up the book and started reading from one side it would be "fact", and if you flipped it over and started reading from the other it would be "fiction." The two sides met up in the middle, and if you tried to look at one side after you had started from the other the text would be upside down.
I checked out one of these two books every week (sometimes both), reading the same bits over and over, always in the fact sections. Men In Black, poltergeists, the four categories of UFO encounters (at level four they take you away forever), every week. I rarely looked at the fiction sections. When I tried to read the ghost fiction it started off cool with the story of a haunting in Amityville, New York, but at the end of the chapter they revealed the family had made it all up for money so I stopped reading. In the UFO book the first chapter told me to imagine aliens from Planet X, but they didn't tell me where Planet X was or what these aliens looked like or if they'd ever even been seen before so I quit out of frustration. I didn't read these books to get jerked around. I came in for facts.
The high school library didn't have many books on paranormal theories, which was probably for the best. My interest waned, I got really into puberty, the most I got into now was watching "True Life: Alien Abduction" documentaries on A&E. I miss those books about ghosts and aliens, but now I'm a little glad, to be honest, because every time I look those things up now I find more and more stories like the ones Jon Ronson reports on in his book.
Them is a weary but not dismissive look into the world of conspiracy theorists and extremists. Ronson embedded himself for years with islamic extremists in London, American militiamen, Ku Klux Klan members, and anti-reptillian prophets, among others. Ghosts and aliens aren't the focus here, but I felt drawn to this book in the same way I felt drawn to the fact or fiction series: I wanted to learn secrets. More specifically, I wanted to learn about these guys who wanted to learn secrets. I wanted to know what I would be like if I had never given up.
A lot of reviews on here focus on Ronson's relationship to his own jewishness (for extreme lack of a better word), but in writing this book he had to be careful. Almost everyone he interviews in the book is a believer in the jewish new world order to one degree or another. At the end of the first chapter his islamic radical contact, Omar Bakri, gives Ronson a dressing-down and exposes him as a Jew in front of a group of islamic militants. "I am not offended that you are a Jew... but what offends me is that you hide it. You assimilate... That is the worst thing of all. Be a Jew!"
I really wish I could think of something besides anti-semitism in this book but it comes up so often. My favorite chapter focused on David Icke, the British sports broadcaster who left his old career behind to give lectures on the thirteen kinds of reptoid aliens from outer space that secretly rule the world. Ronson doesn't give his theories a second thought, and focuses instead on the backlash to Icke's speaking tour in London by a group of local anti-racism activists. Their problem is that they can't tell if Icke's speaking in code, substituting "reptoid" for "Jew". There's a lot of arguing, TV interviews. No one can tell if he's anti-semitic, crazy, or both. By the end they're almost all convinced that this man is not an anti-semite--he only hates literal reptile people.
If Ronson is dismissive of the reptile people, he's accepting of the ideas of the Bilderberg group and the Bohemian Grove, two separate (but intermingled) groups of super-powerful men who meet once a year and determine the world's events. Conspiracy theorists blame everything on these groups, and as Ronson reports on the theorists, he starts to believe the theory as well. Something always swerves him at the last second, though. While investigating the Bilderberg group, he learns that the man he's investigating with, Jim Tucker, is also the publisher of The Spotlight, one of America's largest anti-semitic newspapers. While investigating the Bohemian Grove, Ronson is unimpressed with his findings, while his co-investigator, Alex Jones, finds evidence of satanism and human sacrifice in the same set of facts. Meanwhile, Ronson is consistently unimpressed by Alex Jones.
Them is more than a Sedaris-style piece of character assassination, though (with all due love to David Sedaris). To his credit, Ronson doesn't set out to discredit all of his interview subjects simply because they decided to show up. Aside from the interviews, Them is also useful as an introductory guide to the general conspiracies of the day. It's hard to research David Icke or the New World Order, because anything interesting is always buried down under a million pounds of crazy. David Icke in particular likes to give speeches that go on for something like ten hours, and in that time he's good at spreading his information very thin. I'm grateful to Jon Ronson for writing this. Through much of the book he comes off as weary, just tired of the whole thing, and I can't blame him. Dude wrote a book while standing six feet deep in a pile of shit, you know?

Ronson ran into a bit of bad timing with this one, as he researched it for several years and then it was published in......2001, just before American views of "extremists" changed radically. The book, especially the portions involving the Muslim radical, suffers. However, even the other sections (KKK members, investigations into the Bilderberg group) aren't as engaging as the subject matter led me to believe. The sections involving Rachel Weaver (of the Ruby Ridge Weavers) ring the most true.

Good, but not great.

Jon Ronson is an entertaining tour guide on any trip, but I was especially excited to hear this collection of stories about extremists. I say "hear" because Ronson is one of those authors whose voice and delivery are so distinctive (David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Barack Obama and Carl Sagan come to mind) that you end up simulating their voices in your head, so you might as well have them do it for you. As ever, Ronson insinuates himself with strange people in strange situations, and relates his sharp observations and the answers to his probing, seemingly straightforward questions. He has a way of noticing the little human foibles that simultaneously make his subjects relatable and deflate their self-importance. Ronson is able to do this because he is a journalist, and a thread amongst extremists is that, while they may be leery of journalists, they also want very, very much to be heard and understood, and trust that their good intention will be borne out with exposure.

Not only is Ronson a journalist, he's Jewish. Practicing or not (he's not), this comes to be a liability: extremism and Antisemitism are highly comorbid. He never offers his heritage up front, but it's often asked of him or suspected. The Islamic militant Omar Bakri Mohammed lets Ronson follow him around, makes occasional laughing references to having him flogged, and even presses him into taxi service and running errands. It isn't until they are in the middle of a Jihadist training camp that Bakri reveals to all assembled that he knows Ronson is Jewish. A group of Ku Klux Klan members carefully examine the profile of his nose, and he tries to shift the conversation to his Britishness and Anglican influence. Gun-toting survivors of the Ruby Ridge siege tell him, straight-faced, that "the Hebrews are not Jews". Dr. Ian Paisley, an Irish Protestant minister, can barely contain his racist taunts after grilling Ronson about just how Jewish he is. One chapter debates whether, when David Icke talks about the reptilians who rule the world, he is referring to Jews or actual space lizards. When chasing the Bilderberg Group (a chapter that truly surprised me), there's some understandable confusion about who is really running the world. A similar dilemma arises when Ronson meets with Hollywood director Tony Kaye in his limousine with the license plate "JEW1SH". It's not the organizing principle of the book, but it's hilarious just how often it comes up.

My favorite moment is when Ronson, being chased in Portugal by the Bilderbergs, calls for backup in a panic: "I'm a humorous journalist out of my depth!" The real centerpiece is Ronson's infiltration, along with his invited "guest" Alex Jones, of the elite Bohemian Grove gathering in the Northern Californian woods. It's an evening of assumed identities, secret maps, burning owl effigies, peeing in the forest, and... Dick Cheney. That alone is worth the price of admission for a book that is entertaining and educational good fun.

The author, an intrepid reporter, details his interviews and meeting with several extremists of the world, including a London-based Muslim whose goal is the overthrow of all secular Western governments; Randy Weaver (who seems to be a fairly normal guy, actually — the feds really, tragically fucked up on that one); a KKK Grand Wizard who’s trying to polish the KKK's image, some very humorless Aryan Nations skinheads; radio personality Alex Jones — who's made out in the book to be a paranoid lunatic — and David Icke, who believes that the New World Order is run by aliens who can transform into giant lizards. (Many people believe that this is Icke’s code for "Jews," but Ronson’s dealings with the man seem to indicate that he really thinks they’re alien lizards).

Ronson’s a very funny writer, and as he transforms his subjects into hypocrites and buffoons, he makes the bizarre seem mundane. The book’s climax shows Ronson, who has already interviewed a member of the mysterious Bilderberg Group, infiltrating the completely stupid Bohemian Grove owl-burning ceremony, a quasi-druidical ritual at a retreat for the wealthy that’s half Iron John and half frat boy drinking club. Excellent reading, and Ronson’s got the right mix of level head and humorous suspicion to alternate the reader into bouts of panic — do the Bilderbergs really control the world? — and bouts of laughter, as he makes another extremist out to be a ignorant, short-sighted fool. Good stuff, though it’s pretty sad how many people — my people, in a sense, Americans — are so stupid and deluded about the "Jewish menace." I mean, as horrible as Islamo-fascism is, their beef with Israel is understandable. The USA’s policy with Israel really is biased; Israel really does behave abominably to Palestinians. But some stupid bigot in Idaho whining about Jews running the New World Order and UN helicopters, that’s just sad and stupid.

It’s surprisingly easy to see oneself slip down the slop of paranoia and conspiracy following along with the events of this book. The fervour some truly awful people speak of their knowledge that the world is being run by a secret organisation is infectious, and alongside Jon, you find yourself bouncing between judging the views of these often despicable people as outlandish to then recognise there were some odd consistencies. The ending summarising that in fact there is no secret organisation, and that the scarier notion was no one was in control, was not surprising, but satisfying. I enjoyed the read, and love Ronsons style of writing.

This was a fun read. Ronson hangs out with religious, political, and racist kooks and writes about it... how could that not be fun?

But I do have a couple gripes:

1. The dialogue is so well-timed and witty that I feel like Ronson took a lot of liberties with what was actually said.
2. I didn't understand the point of some chapters. Why write a chapter about an eccentric rich man buying Nicolae Ceausescu's stuff?
3. I couldn't help but compare Them to The Unpersuadables by Will Storr, which I enjoyed more (it felt like it had a more coherent thread running throughout, and didn't succumb to Gripes 1 & 2).

This was a surprisingly gripping and entertaining page turner, which offered a funny and insightful view into one of the world's biggest conspiracy theories.

Is the New World Order working nefariously behind the scenes to stack the deck against working people across the world? Probably.
Are we really being ruled by a race of 12ft tall blood thirsty lizards? Probably not! But the truth is always stranger than fiction and Ronson seems to have had a great time trying to find it.

An effortless and thoroughly entertaining read!

This is a fabulous romp through various extremist groups. Ronson writes with flair about his encounters with various Islamic, right-wing, and left-wing whackos. The most humorous are his encounter with David Icke, the UFO conspiracist. David Icke thinks that the world has been taken over by shape-shifting reptilian aliens. The Anti-defamation League thought that it was code for Jews. Icke gets detained by Canadian border officials, when he tried to enter the country to attend a UFO conference. The officials interrogate him to determine if he is an Anti-semite or not. They conclude that when he says shape-shifting aliens, shape-shifting aliens is what he meant and let him go.

A few bits here and there that grabbed my interest but otherwise I think the synopsis doesn't fit the expectation that you think you'll get from it.

Ideally, this book is about a journalist's journey with extremists. Getting to spend time and have conversations with them, knowing more about their beliefs and why they think the way they do. He listens to the fanatics among them to try to understand their point of view, what they've got to say about how the media portrays them and what they're doing to further their cause.

All of this sounds incredibly interesting.. but, I don't think this book really did/covered that for me. Certain parts however did and they're the ones that made me try to push through the book. Those parts made me learn something new that I didn't before and to look at things from a perspective I haven't considered.

That aside, I found this book to contain a lot of unnecessary conversations and side talk and somewhere in the middle that began to annoy me. For someone who has spent a lot of time with them there wasn't enough background or cultural information about each of the extremist groups and I think having spent that time with and around them that maybe there were new insights that could've been shared, maybe(?) And right when they you think the information is getting interesting it gets cut off to another chapter and it's suddenly something different or a different train of thought. Maybe if this book was more focused on certain groups then maybe more time/words would have been given to each of them.

If you are someone who reads other books or articles or watches documentaries relating to the matter then this book doesn't really add that much. You will without a doubt learn something new because there's always new things to learn, but I don't think I came out with much.

I liked "So You've Been Publically Shamed" more, probably coz it felt more topical to me. Some of the dialogue + interactions in this book felt cartoony to me, but I guess it's because the people he was meeting were hyperbolically cartoony. My favourite scene was the last chapter in the Northern Californian woods, during the pagan owl-burning ceremony. This sure would make a zany HBO comedy.

3.5. This is an interesting glimpse into the lives of extremists. I like the way he genuinely delves into the absurd questions that extremists are raising. And I admire the courage it takes for Ronson—who is Jewish—to be around people who subscribe to extremely, sometimes dangerously antisemitic beliefs.

I'm sure he's sick of the comparison, but it read like a Louis Theroux documentary...which, considering they've both had similar careers at the BBC, is probably not a coincidence. (I looked it up to see if the two knew each other, and apparently, they had a bit of a rivalry once.)