Them: Adventures
With Extremists
by Jon Ronson (Simon & Schuster)
Globalization, for all its contemporary buzzworthy cache,
is nothing new. From the Roman Empire to the Middle Eastern
spice routes to the frenzied European colonial land-grab,
advanced societies have always tried to spread their economic
and cultural influence the world over.
Whereas the internationalism of the past was scattershot
and decentralized, today we have a host of supranational
governing bodies such as the UN, the WTO, the EU, the IMF,
NAFTA, etc., which seek to regulate the pace and reach of
another relatively new phenomenon - the multinational corporation.
These corporate behemoths work through a complex web of
affiliates, subsidiaries, partnerships and locations, sometimes
managing to buy their way into the highest levels of sovereign
state power in the form of contracts, subsidies and tax
loopholes - giving the appearance that there is little difference
between the corporate world and our governing bodies. One
need look no further than the Enron scandal (or any aspect
of the Bush administration) for proof of this.
When the powerless are shown time and again that they have
no say in the processes that control their lives, they might
just fall victim to a reactionary form of tribalism (often
labeled extremism) to try and preserve that which they hold
dear. The KKK, Al Quada and various militia movements all
share a common link: They are non-corporate entities who
see this vast network of corporate bodies, governmental
organizations and international governing agencies working
together to make decisions in which they have no say, but
which control their lives and lifestyle choices. They see
it, and, perhaps with good reason, as a fight for survival.
And then there are the mutated 12-foot lizards that really
rule the world.
Jon Ronson, award-winning documentarian and columnist for
the Guardian, plunges deep into the underworld of conspiracy
theorists, racial supremacists, and religious fundamentalists
while investigating "Them" - a shadowy and supposedly
all-powerful group of industrialists, rising politicians
and policy-makers who purportedly control the world. In
tracking the group down, Ronson encounters a wide range
of characters, all of whom wholeheartedly believe that this
group meets once a year in secret locations throughout the
world (a prerequisite of their meeting places is supposedly
an 18-hole golf course), ostensibly to plan wars, decide
the fate of the world economy and choose the world's next
leaders.
The surprising thing is that this group, target of wild
rumors of Satan-worship and, yes, claims that they are the
offspring of an extraterrestrial race of lizards, actually
exists. They're called the "Bilderberg Group,"
and are probably pretty harmless. In fact, Ronson manages
to sneak into a July, 2000, meeting of the group in northern
California, at which George Bush Sr., John Major, Henry
Kissinger and soon-to-be VP Dick Cheney were all guests.
Ronson off-handedly mentions that news accounts will later
testify that Bush, Sr., first "learned" that his
son picked Cheney as his running mate "while on a camping
trip in northern California." It's a bit disappointing
that Ronson finds this a mere side note to the zany antics
of the talk radio ideologues he is traveling with. Most
disturbing, and not treated with enough depth, is the woman-hating,
frat-boy behavior of our world leaders. According to his
account, there were pictures of the previous night's party
posted to a bulletin board in which "elderly preppy-looking
gentlemen stood around, drinking and laughing. Some were
dressed in full drag, with fishnet stockings and hideously
applied makeup, humorously oversized fake breasts protruding
from their nylon blouses, their legs wide apart, fingering
their buttocks, tongues out, etc." WHAT!?!
It's good to know that our fate rests in the hands of enlightened
men like this.
The book begins in London, where Ronson spends a year with
Omar Bakri Mohammed, a clownish, yet manipulative man who
often referred to himself as bin Laden's man in England
(and is now being investigated by the British government,
who may deport him). Omar gets Ronson to chauffer him around
to various meetings and events, trying to raise money for
terrorist groups as well as foster a jihad with which to
overthrow the English government. Being Jewish, Ronson never
seems to have much of a problem with this, but does have
one moment of moral clarity when he is left alone with bags
of money Omar has earmarked to be sent to a terrorist group
in Israel. "And what the hell was I
doing, guarding money that would be used to kill the Jews?
I had to reach into the car and make a run for it. This
was my responsibility. My duty. How many lives might it
save? But I didn't do it, of course, and then Anjem and
Omar returned, thanked me for my help, and took the money
to the bank."
And what would a book on extremism be without a couple
of chapters devoted to our own American brand of paranoia?
Ronson spends some time in the States with Rachel and Randy
Weaver, of Ruby Ridge fame. Some real, disturbing questions
are raised about the aggressive tactics of the U.S. government
both at Ruby Ridge and Waco, which occurred just weeks later
- but, as Ronson finds out, things are not always what they
seem.
While speaking to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith,
Ronson discovers that the Weavers weren't perhaps as innocent
as they had led him to believe, just as he learns that others
he has been dealing with haven't exactly been forthcoming
about their real agendas. When trying to infiltrate his
first Bilderberg meeting in Portugal with the publisher
of The Spotlight newspaper, Ronson considers him just another
off-kilter conspiricist. The ADL later provides him with
documentation of The Spotlight's history of Holocaust denial
and support for the neo-nazi movement.
Of course, the ADL practices its own form of extremism,
advertising the propagandistic and question-begging slogan:
"One out of eight Americans has hard-core anti-Semitic
feelings." The ADL also provides him with a list of
"code words", such as "New Yorker" and
"International Banker" which supposedly double
for "Jew" in the radical circles Ronson has been
spending time in.
Skeptical of everything he encounters, including official
government reports and groups like the ADL, Ronson nevertheless
falls headlong into the conspiracy subculture and comes
dangerously close to falling over the edge himself. In trying
to understand what makes one group of people set themselves
in opposition to the socio-political apparatus of contemporary
society, Ronson discovers that the world we live in defies
any set of rigid definitions and avoids our often-simplistic
attempts at categorization. Reducing life to a struggle
of "us" vs. "them" is a cop-out that
naively assumes we are all merely the sum of our most obvious
parts. His entertaining yet thought-provoking journey offers
a very human look into the lives and motivations of those
we often dismiss as "extremists". Funny thing
is, they think of themselves as the sane ones. "They
say that the Western liberal cosmopolitan establishment
is itself a fanatical, depraved belief system," says
Ronson. "I like it when they say this because it makes
me feel as if I have a belief system."
- Paul McLeary
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