Depends What You Mean by Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables
John Safran
Depends What You Mean by Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables
John Safran
Expecting skinheads, John Safran rocked up to a far-right rally in Melbourne. What he found led him into the mad world of misfits who helped propel the second coming of Pauline Hanson and foreshadowed the era of Trump.
No one turns up where they’re not wanted quite like John Safran. In this hilarious and disorienting adventure he gets among our diverse community of white nationalists, ISIS supporters, anarchists and more, digging away at the contradictions that many would prefer be left unexamined. Who is this black puppet-master among the white nationalists? And this Muslim fundamentalist who geeks out on Monty Python? Is there a secret radicalisation network operating in John’s own Jewish suburb? And ultimately - is hanging with all these radicals washing off on John himself?
Populated by an extraordinary cast of ‘ordinary’ Australians, Depends What You Mean by Extremist is a startling, confronting portrait of contemporary Australia. We all think we know what’s going on in our own country, but this larger-than-life, timely, and alarmingly insightful true story will make you think again …
Drinking shots with nationalists and gobbling falafel with radicals, John Safran was there the year the extreme became the mainstream.
‘Totes recommend John Safran’s latest. Deplorable in the best sense.’ Louis Theroux
‘An original, insightful, frequently deadpan-funny read … John Safran confirms that he’s a major writing talent with his second book … Like his professional doppelgangers, Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, Safran has a gift for eliciting information from his subjects by way of his unthreatening yet relentlessly unquestioning persona.’ Jo Case, Readings Monthly
‘Safran has always had an unusually receptive antenna for the fraught collision of racial, cultural and religious difference … This is an Australia where as soon as you draw a cultural, racial or religious battle line somebody strolls up to smudge it.’ James Robert Douglas, The Guardian (Australia)
Review
Jo Case
Self-described ‘television prankster’ John Safran confirms that he’s a major writing talent with his second book. Here, he embeds himself with Australian political extremists and attempts to tease out the many contradictions between what they do and what they publicly stand for. Like his professional doppelgangers, Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, Safran has a gift for eliciting information from his subjects, by way of his unthreatening, yet relentlessly questioning persona. Most of the time, this works even when his subjects know who he is. A central thread of the book concerns the circular way he and his subjects use each other to craft their own messages. For example, an Italian-Aboriginal anti-Islam activist (Safran discovers the movement to be surprisingly ‘multi-ethnic’) entices Safran into smoking a joint with him, then posts photos on social media, implying he’s on their team.
Safran has a rare gift for deadpan, often observational, humour (‘I’ve been into racists since high school’), which he blends with serious dissections and open questioning of the political landscape. While his sympathies are small ‘l’ liberal, he doesn’t let this pre-empt his opinion, or distort his observations. His perspective as a Jewish Australian adds a fascinating dimension, including comparisons between the Qu’ran and the Torah (with the help of a rabbi) and reflections on the resurgence of anti-Semitism alongside anti-Islam.
He identifies some eerie similarities between left, right and religious extremists, all of whom want to remake the current system. Both an anarchist ‘CEO’ and a white nationalist leader tell Safran that the presence of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in mainstream US politics is a sign that people are open to fringe ideas. ‘Western liberalism is crumbling, the three points of the triangle sense,’ reflects Safran. ‘Now it’s time to prepare for the takeover.’
Jo Case is the editor of Readings Monthly and a bookseller at Readings Doncaster.
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