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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The author of "Them: Adventures With Extremists" discusses his time with Osama's London cohort, close calls with neo-Nazis and the undeniable humanity of the world's would-be monsters.
Mar 14, 2002 | A few years ago, when British journalist Jon Ronson -- who is Jewish -- decided to spend a year trailing Islamic fundamentalist Omar Bakri (aka "Osama bin Laden's man in London"), he had no idea how tragically relevant his work would be. Ronson's profile of Bakri, originally published in the Guardian, spawned a book -- "Them: Adventures With Extremists" -- which hit U.S. bookstores last month amid a flurry of public outrage and controversy as well as a crop of rave reviews. Some readers and interviewers have questioned the ethics of the book, wondering how Ronson could present Bakri -- who has been accused of radicalizing shoe-bomber Richard Reid and who publicly expressed "delight" at the attacks of Sept. 11 -- as a lovable goof.
But Bakri is only the start. Ronson introduces us to Thom Robb, a KKK Grand Wizard engaged in an absurd attempt to make the Klan more mainstream (he wants his members to stop wearing their scary white robes and using the N-word); David Icke, the BBC sports commentator (and former football star), who wrecked his career after declaring himself the son of God on prime-time television and publicly insisting that the rulers of the world are actually giant lizards; Rachel Weaver, gun-toting daughter of Randy Weaver; and Big Jim Tucker, senior reporter for the Spotlight, our nation's largest white supremacist newspaper. These wackos -- whom Ronson doesn't view in as dangerous a light as one might expect -- are linked in their obsession with the Bilderberg Group, a semisecret organization that includes most of the world's financial and political leaders.
A nebbishy, Woody Allen-like fellow, Ronson could not be further from the stereotype of the hard-boiled investigative journalist. On a recent trip to New York, he met with Salon in the lobby of the Tribeca Grand hotel to discuss how and why he tried to see the world through the eyes of Klansmen, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and suspected terrorists.
"Them" was released in Britain a year ago and was an immediate bestseller. Nine months after the British release -- and six months before the U.S. release -- a bunch of guys who are quite possibly friends with one of your subjects, Omar Bakri, flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Was there any talk of not releasing the book, after Sept. 11?
Simon & Schuster never said, "Let's not publish it." But I expected them to. I was really surprised. I just left it in their hands. I said to them, "Whatever you want to do is fine by me."
How is the book being received here in America? I know some reviewers have questioned the ethics of the book -- have wondered how you could have spent all this time with Bakri and not, I don't know, done something to sabotage his plans.
Well, it's funny. I'm getting reviews in Canadian papers and they're not mentioning Sept. 11 at all. Some of the reviews here in America have been a little ... well ... funny. It definitely hits closer to home for Americans. Especially here in New York.
This morning I was on this Fox television show and the audience was shouting things like, "Why didn't you just get a gun and shoot the guy? Why didn't you just do that? Why were you such a coward? How are you going to help us destroy the axis of evil?"
And yesterday, I was on "Fresh Air" and Terry Gross said, basically, "You portrayed these people as ludicrous, harmless buffoons but you were wrong, weren't you?"
Is she right?
My view is that the book is accurate. The way I portrayed the people is accurate. Because they're human beings and we have a kind of wonderful capacity to be absurd and ridiculous. It would be easy to portray them as one-dimensional demons, but I wanted to do the opposite. Just because they're buffoons it doesn't mean they can't fly planes into the World Trade Center. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
