Paperback, 336 pages
English language
Published Dec. 31, 2002 by Simon & Schuster.
This book was nuts and absolutely brilliant. Just like all of Ronson's other books I've read I can't recommend him enough. I especially enjoyed the part where him and Alex Jones went to a pagan Owl Burning ceremony with the secret rulers of the free world. Amazing.
Entertaining and thoughtprovoking. Also reminds you of the fact that most enigmatic and mystical things are just as boring, shallow and potentially dangerous, as you never hoped they are. People just seem to search a meaning for their tedious unconsequential lives, spice it up with conspirancies, to give reasons to the seemingly random things that happen to them. And the easiest way is to have tangible culprits. Other people. Them!
What I love about Jon Ronson is his ability to see the insanity and sanity of both sides. Yes, believing lizard people are ruling the world is insane, yet the idea that there are elites with little accountability and an outsized role in world politics is quite reasonable. Sure, the government may not be a grand conspiracy of Jews trying to destroy civilization, but that doesn't mean it won't fall into a deadly disaster through gross incompetence.
In Ronson's world, there are people on all sides who are trying to use logic yet not always coming reasonable conclusions. Among the right-wing loonies he includes a left-wing group whose insistence that every government-conspiracy group is anti-semitic means they can't accept that yes, there is a group that isn't being euphemistic when they talk about those evil alien lizards. Ronson shows all easily pretty much anyone can fall into paranoia and conspiracy …
What I love about Jon Ronson is his ability to see the insanity and sanity of both sides. Yes, believing lizard people are ruling the world is insane, yet the idea that there are elites with little accountability and an outsized role in world politics is quite reasonable. Sure, the government may not be a grand conspiracy of Jews trying to destroy civilization, but that doesn't mean it won't fall into a deadly disaster through gross incompetence.
In Ronson's world, there are people on all sides who are trying to use logic yet not always coming reasonable conclusions. Among the right-wing loonies he includes a left-wing group whose insistence that every government-conspiracy group is anti-semitic means they can't accept that yes, there is a group that isn't being euphemistic when they talk about those evil alien lizards. Ronson shows all easily pretty much anyone can fall into paranoia and conspiracy thinking.
Ronson has the clear vision of someone who is more interested in observing than judging. It allows him to calmly portray a KKK leader trying to clad the organization in a cloak of positivity, but to also show the moments the mask falls and the monster peaks out.
Consistently entertaining, amusing, and thought-provoking, like everything from Ronson.
