Very insightful

This is a great book. The author spent time with people on the right, at the limits and beyond of acceptable opinion, to find out what they believe and why. He helped humanise them and to see them as people and to show how some are scared, some worry and lost, others just plain vile, filled with anger and hate towards people who have probably never affected their lives (Jews come in for a lot of the hate) negatively but who are the focus of that hate. The use of social media is clearly how these groups form and communicate, spread lies and anxieties and conspiracy theories as truth.

I didn't always agree with the author's opinions but I admire the face he was clear about what he believes and that he was courageous enough to openly engage with white nationalists, white supremacists, nazis, and various others, often anti-semitic and racist, and pro-Trump.

To me this is one of a growing number of books which shows how much of the world and particularly America have become highly polarised and how social media is a large part of the problem. Depsite the subject matter I couldn't get enough of this book and listened to at every opportunity. It is very well read too.

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Gripping stuff

This book should be compulsory listening for anyone wanting to understand the mess we find ourselves in. Well read by the author himself. Highly engaging and fascinating all round.

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1 person found this helpful

Too long, too descriptive, too lacking in analysis

I was very disappointed. The book is basically a series of very long-winded descriptions of alt-right and crypto fascist figures, and very detail-obsessed accounts of what Marantz witnesses traipsing around after them.

It's as if knowing what they ate for lunch, knowing what shoes they are wearing, and having every off the cuffish twattish utterance related verbatim is somehow going to build up to an incisive understanding of these people. It doesn't. It just gets boring.

He narrates in a sneering tone. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the people he writes about as much as him. But it gets very tedious. The people he follows are very tedious. Successful, sadly. Dangerous, certainly. But oh so tedious!

This book could easily have been half the length. And a decent editor could have persuaded the author to avoid ridiculous words like 'facticity'.

If observational documentary in book form is your thing and you have the patience for it, fine. But I am hungry for intelligent analysis.

If you want a book that really gives you an understanding of how and why post-fact, neo-fascist politics is on the rise, with intelligent analysis, then read Peter Pomerantsev's book 'This is not propaganda: adventures in the war against reality'.

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