Them: Adventures with Extremists is a book by British journalist Jon Ronson published in 2001.

The book accompanied Ronson’s documentary series The Secret Rulers of the World, which covered similar topics and depicted many of the same episodes. Both the series and book detail Ronson’s encounters following theorists and activists residing on the fringes of the political, religious, and sociological spectrum.

Ronson chronicles his travels and interviews with “extremists” and attempts to uncover the mystery behind the “tiny elite that rules the world from inside a secret room”. The book is written on the premise that perhaps extremists are not all that crazy, and as different as they may seem to be, they have a lot in common with each other (specifically the belief that a small group of very prominent people controls the fate of the entire world). From Omar Bakri Muhammad (“Osama bin Laden’s man in Great Britain”) to Thomas Robb (Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), Ronson exposes the hilarity and absurdity of their missions, but also, at times, their startling sanity.

His adventures lead him from Britain to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, to Waco, Texas, to Portugal.

Alongside subjects covered in The Secret Rulers of the World, Ronson also describes encounters with radical Islamic activist Omar Bakri Muhammad, Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Robb, Northern Irish politician Ian Paisley and film director Tony Kaye. Omar Bakri Muhammad, Thom Robb, and Ian Paisley were the subjects of the earlier Ronson documentaries, Tottenham Ayatollah, New Klan, and Dr. Paisley, I Presume.

Much of this book is dedicated to the meeting places of the Bilderberg Group.

Jon Ronson (born 10 May 1967) is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker whose works include Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001), The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), and The Psychopath Test (2011). He has been described as a gonzo journalist, becoming a faux-naïf character in his stories. He produces informal but sceptical investigations of controversial fringe politics and science. He has published nine books and his work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, City Life and Time Out. He has made several BBC Television documentary films and two documentary series for Channel 4.

Ronson’s first book, Clubbed Class (1994), is a travelogue in which he bluffs his way into a jet set lifestyle, in search of the world’s finest holiday.

His second book, Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001), chronicles his experiences with people labelled as extremists. Subjects in the book include David Icke, Randy Weaver, Omar Bakri Muhammad, Ian Paisley, Alex Jones, and Thom Robb. Ronson also follows independent investigators of secretive groups such as the Bilderberg Group. The narrative tells of Ronson’s attempts to infiltrate the “shadowy cabal” fabled, by these conspiracy theorists, to rule the world. The book was described by Louis Theroux as a “funny and compulsively readable picaresque adventure through a paranoid shadow world.” Variety magazine announced in September 2005 that Them was purchased by Universal Pictures for a feature film.

Ronson contributed the memoir A Fantastic Life to the Picador anthology Truth or Dare, in 2004.

Ronson’s third book, The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), deals with the secret New Age unit within the United States Army called the First Earth Battalion. Ronson investigates people such as Major General Albert Stubblebine III, former head of intelligence, who believe that people can walk through walls with the right mental preparation, and that goats can be killed simply by staring at them. Much was based on the ideas of Lt. Col. Jim Channon, ret., who wrote the First Earth Battalion Operations Manual in 1979, inspired by the emerging Human Potential Movement of California. The book suggests that these New Age military ideas mutated over the decades to influence interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay. An eponymous film of the book was released in 2009, in which Ronson’s investigations were fictionalised and structured around a journey to Iraq. Ronson is played by the actor Ewan McGregor in the film.

Ronson’s fourth book, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness (2006; Picador and Guardian Books) is a collection of his Guardian articles, mostly those concerning his domestic life. A companion volume was What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness (2007).

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011) is Ronson’s fifth book. In it, he explores the nature of psychopathic behaviour, learning how to apply the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and investigating its reliability. He interviews people in facilities for the criminally insane as well as potential psychopaths in corporate boardrooms. .

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