-Caveat Lector- Stranger than fiction Are 12ft lizards running the world? Louis Theroux investigates Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson Saturday April 7, 2001 The Guardian Them: Adventures with Extremists Jon Ronson 352pp, Picador, £16.99 There is a version of history that holds that the world is secretly run by a shadowy cabal of predominantly Jewish international financiers and politicians who meet several times a year to decide which wars to start, which countries to bankrupt, which gun-owners to oppress, and so on. This view, which has been around at least since the late 19th century, when it was popularised in a hugely influential piece of anti-semitic propaganda, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , exists in various versions - with "Jews" occasionally being replaced by "Bilderbergers", "New World Order", "Illuminati" or "12ft lizard creatures". Though undoubtedly nutty, its paranoid and exciting "top secret" flavour has meant it continues to appeal to a motley crew of self-styled "researchers" and evangelists on the fringes of society, including Ku Klux Klansmen, militias, certain fundamentalist Muslims and an ex-Coventry goalkeeper called David Icke. For Them: Adventures with Extremists, reporter and documentary film-maker Jon Ronson spent several years in the company of a few of these fringe-dwellers, in an attempt to understand their mindset and to see to what - if any - extent their fears were founded in fact. The resulting book is a funny and compulsively readable picaresque adventure through a paranoid shadow world, with Ronson playing Sancho Panza to a cast of obsessives. Ronson has a deft, ironic touch and a brilliant way with scene-setting and direct speech - much of the action is so neat and pacy it reads almost like a novel - and it is one of the book's great merits that it never takes itself too seriously. Conspiracy investigators tend to be incompetent and petty in direct proportion to the delusional grandeur of their ambitions, something Ronson is not slow to pick up on. "I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE UP TO!" one investigator screams at his colleague. "Make a big show of shouting down the phone! Steal the limelight! And then Jon will write about you !" In one of the book's funniest chapters, Ronson accompanies an ultra-right-wing conspiracy investigator named Big Jim Tucker as he attempts to infiltrate a meeting of the Bilderberg Group (a semi-secret council of international industrialists and statesmen, and a favourite bugbear of the paranoid fringe). They end up being chased by scary-looking security personnel in dark glasses and Ronson panics, trying to get the British Embassy to rescue him. "I am essentially a humorous journalist," he pleads down the phone. "I am a humorous journalist out of my depth." But Ronson also has a point to make about the way beliefs in general tend to demonise "them", where "them" might be diabolical Jews, 12ft lizards, or indeed the weirdos who believe in diabolical Jews and 12ft lizards. Exhibit A in the fringe-dwellers' case for the existence of a shadowy all-powerful cabal is the true-life story of the Weavers, a family with admittedly far-out religious views who, yes, consorted with neo-Nazis and who moved to the remotest corner of northern Idaho to be as far as possible from the "Zionist Occupational Government". Vicki Weaver and her son Sammy were shot in cold blood by federal marshals in a paramilitary-style raid. Conspiracy theorists have ever since argued that this is proof that the world is indeed run by a secret oligarchy; Ronson's compelling case is that what happened was made possible because the Weavers were repeatedly described in the media as "white supremacists" and therefore in some way worthy of extermination. Another chapter examines the strange history of David Icke, the footballer turned BBC commentator turned Green Party spokesman turned self-proclaimed son of God. Ronson finds Icke on a lecture tour of Canada, pursuing his new calling as an investigator of the secret elite of lizard shape-shifters (the Queen and Ted Heath are among those under suspicion) who run the world. Icke's "theory" is basically The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with a new cast and a few script changes. Not surprisingly, Icke has come under suspicion of anti-semitism; as his tour progresses he finds his readings heavily picketed and his radio interviews cancelled. Icke vehemently repudiates the accusations, and reading Ronson's account it is difficult not to conclude that, while we are right to be on our guard against paranoid anti-semitism, we should also be on our guard against the paranoid excesses of anti-anti-semitism. Not only might it be unfair to Icke, but by implying that he is so dangerous that he has to be censored, the watchdogs are giving a patina of seriousness to ideas that are - let's face it - very, very silly. As the book progresses, what emerges is the degree to which the real-life Bilderberg Group and the researchers who campaign against it are negatives of each other. Intentionally or not, the alleged bodies of world domination do create suspicion and resentment with their cloak-and-dagger mentality, their self-importance and their alarmism. It is no surprise to learn that some Bilderbergers quite like the idea that they are secretly running the world: it flatters their vanity. Towards the end of his investigation, Ronson finds himself referred to approvingly on the internet and in underground newspapers by fringe researchers and New World Order believers. He suggests he has passed through the looking glass and is now "one of them". I think this is going a little far. If pressed, and for all its flaws, I'd say I'm on the side of the existing international liberal-democratic system and against the notion that lizards might be running the world, and I suspect Ronson feels the same way. Still, it is to his great credit that he's given "them" such a fair-minded - and entertaining - evaluation. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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