Them

Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001) is one of Jon Ronson's earliest books. Like his other books, it is a first-person account that explores the fringes of society. In this case, it is the people called political “extremists” by the mainstream. I’m a little unsettled by this book, but undoubtedly that is the feeling that Ronson wants me to have. Let me explain.

Most of the extremists that Ronson encounters come across as nut jobs that couldn’t wire a bomb together if they wanted to. Pre-9/11, which is when Ronson wrote these chapters, we would have simply laughed at these paranoid weirdoes spouting off about Jews secretly running the world. Post-9/11, however, we certainly know that some of these paranoid weirdoes are dangerous.

For example, the book's first chapter, "A Semi-Detached Ayatollah," is a profile of Omar Bakri Mohammad, who, even though he lives on welfare in a London suburb, is described in the media as "the most dangerous man in Britain." In Ronson's descriptions of him, based on months of interviews, Mohammad comes across as a complete buffoon. I'm not sure where the truth lies. There's no question that Mohammad, a native of Syria who wants legal residency in Britain, calls for jihad against his adopted land and argues for the imposition of Sharia law, but is he a true threat to security when he can’t even figure out how to launch small helium balloons with anti-British messages?

In the years after 9/11, however, Mohammad’s sermons certainly did raise money for al-Qaeda and certainly did inspire some of his followers to become suicide bombers against American or Israeli targets overseas. In the eyes of the American and British governments, he was unquestionably a dangerous man, and after the July 2005 bombings in London, he was expelled from British soil. In short, he strikes me as anything but a buffoon.

What, then, are we to make of Ronson’s reporting, which suggests that Mohammad is a harmless fool? I don’t know.

Ronson's second chapter is similarly troubling as it turns a sympathetic eye towards an American extremist, Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge fame. (To refresh your memory, after Weaver ignored a summons to appear on a charge of illegal gun sales, federal agents surrounded his house and, in the mayhem, an exchange of gunfire killed an FBI agent, as well as Weaver’s wife and 14-year-old son. It does seem that the feds were guilty of excessive force, but the Weavers are clearly dangerous customers.) Ronson interviews Weaver, his now-adult daughter, and some of his sympathizers, and he essentially accepts at face value that Weaver, while he might have some outlandish political views, is basically harmless.

But Weaver, as is well documented, associated with the Aryan Nations and had an arsenal of guns, including illegal sawed-off shotguns and automatic weapons. In fact, he received the summons for offering to sell illegal weapons to a man he thought was in the Aryan Nations (he was really an undercover AFT agent). In short, like Omar Bakri Mohammad, Randy Weaver strikes me as a dangerous man. While I think the situation should have been handled differently, I don’t think that Weaver is a sort of buffoon who should be left to live with his family in a cabin in the Idaho wilderness to sell illegal guns.

A few extremists in the book, however, are more clearly wacky but harmless. David Icke, for example. This former professional soccer player and BBC commentator thinks that a cabal of giant lizards from outer space have assumed human form and are actually ruling the world. Ronson interviews him at length, and then spends just as much time interviewing critics determined to debunk his beliefs. (Really? How long can it take to convince people that someone who believes in giant lizards from space is nuts?)  Other extremists—including members of the KKK—fall somewhere between the genuinely dangerous and the clearly wacky. Ronson also spends some time with anti-extremists, although they often come across as intolerant themselves.

Although the book is interesting, I can’t say that I found Them to be compelling as The Psychopath Test. I can say, however, that I intend to read many more books by Jon Ronson.