Them: Adventures with Extremists

by Jon Ronson

They say that the Western liberal cosmopolitan establishment is itself a fanatical, depraved belief system. I like it when they say this because it makes me feel as if I have a belief system.

9 A.M. the next morning I sat in Omar’s living room while Omar played with his baby daughter. “What’s your daughter’s name?” I asked him. “It is a difficult name for you to understand,” said Omar. “Does it have an English translation?” I asked. “Yes,” said Omar, “it translates into English as ‘the Black Flag of Islam.’ ” “Really?” I said. “Your daughter’s name is the Black Flag of Islam?” “Yes,” said Omar. “Really?” I said.

In total, it was estimated, Rupert lost fourteen votes as a result of his inappropriately demanding behavior at the Thatched Tavern and his refusal to leave a tip. Two weeks later, Rupert lost his seat in Parliament to the Liberal Democrats. He lost by the smallest margin of the election: twelve votes.

I ARRIVED at Kensington High Street for Omar’s Israeli Embassy demonstration, I was surprised to see only ten or so of his followers sporadically yelling, “Down, Down, Israel!” and “Israel, You Will Pay!” at the passing traffic. I asked Omar why the turnout was so disappointing. He explained that when he telephoned Directory Assistance to get the address of the Israeli Embassy, they deliberately gave him a false address in Knightsbridge. By the time Omar discovered the correct address it was too late. Many of his followers were already on their way and they didn’t have cell phones. They were now presumably lost, wandering the streets of Knightsbridge. This, Omar said, was proof that Scotland Yard’s Muslim monitoring unit was in league with British Telecom’s Directory Inquiries service.

“It is freedom of speech,” chuckled Omar. “What can they do? We are breaking none of your laws.” He chuckled. “If I lived in Saudi Arabia, I could never get away with what I do here!”

I think that in David Icke, Michael was seeing an omen of the blackest kind. He was seeing the future of thought itself: a time when irrational thought would sweep the land, much as racism had done the previous century, when Washington, D.C., was a blaze of white, the white of a million Ku Klux Klansmen marching past a Klan-friendly White House and a Klan-friendly Capitol Hill.

It has been estimated that 25 percent of all Klansmen are undercover federal officers.

I took my glasses off. I slipped the hood over my head. Through the eye-slits, I could see Pat and Joe smiling and giving me the thumbs up. And how did it feel for me, a Jew, to be wearing a Klan hood? I found myself feeling a little sad, imagining the time in the future when Pat would inevitably discover my Jewishness and feel just awful about letting me try on his hood.

I had asked Thom about these frightening events that occurred on lawns. He said, “You know, I’ve heard it goes on. But we’ve never done it. Stupid people do it. The people who do that, I don’t call them Ku Klux Klan. I call them Ku Klux Clowns.” The new Knights stepped forward and swore an oath to the leadership of the Klan. These new Knights, twenty in total, had taken a written test some days earlier to qualify them for their Knighthoods. There were sixty questions in the test, which included: Do we hate Negroes? (No. We just love white people.) Do we say the word “nigger” in public? (No.) So the Knights test turned out to be a public-relations examination.

We are notoriously prickly when it comes to identifying with our own. Imagine Harry Cohn, who founded Columbia Pictures in 1924, meeting in a darkened room—Harry Cohn, who was once asked to donate money to a Jewish relief fund, and roared: “Relief for the Jews? How about relief from the Jews? All the trouble in this world has been caused by Jews and Irishmen!”

Unfortunately, in our sunshiny attempts at mingling with the gentiles we have unintentionally helped to create the myth of a shadowy cabal: we Jews who camouflage ourselves. The camouflage is mistaken for scheming, as if we’re concealing something sinister, when in fact we are just hopelessly in love with the camouflage.

“Bloody Hollywood,” he muttered. “Bloody America. I flew to the Caribbean last week to speak with a very wise man, a Nobel Prize winner, and he said that America was so bloody . . . so stupid . . . could you hold on a minute?” “OK,” I said. I heard Tony place the telephone receiver down onto the table. “I don’t mean it,” he said to someone, softly. “I love America.” “That’s fine,” I heard an American voice reply. “Don’t worry about it.” Tony returned to the phone. “America,” said Tony, “is a fucking amoral disgrace.”

(When I arrived home, some days later, I decided to order another book—a vicious book that had influenced anti-Semites for eighty years. It was Henry Ford’s The International Jew. I gave Amazon my credit card details. A few weeks later, I logged on to Amazon again, and I was surprised to find a welcoming message. “Hello, Jon Ronson,” it said “If you enjoyed The International Jew, perhaps you might like to try some other recommendations—Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler . . .

At times I become nostalgic for when I knew nothing. There are so few mysteries left, and here I am, I presume, relegating Bilderberg to the dingy world of the known.