Ahead of his appearance in Aotearoa, the acclaimed British journalist, podcaster and documentarian talks to Stewart Sowman-Lund about why people are still fascinated by the fringes.
The last place I would expect to find Jon Ronson is relaxing in the countryside. The iconic British journalist and writer is best known for immersing himself with fascinating but often deeply troubled people and yet, when we Zoom back in September, he looks truly peaceful sitting on the deck of his brand new home, a pilsner in hand. “I didn’t know if you wanted to see the inside of my spare room,” Ronson jokes, spinning his phone camera around. “Do you want the 360 degree? Can you see the pond? This morning, I was looking out the window and a deer ambled by. I’m really in the countryside.”
Ronson’s 30-year career has largely focused on people on the fringes of society, from conspiracy theorists, to neo-Nazis and extremists. It’s always pulled together by Ronson’s soft, almost sing-songy, narration and a genuine empathy and interest for the people he’s speaking to or about. He’s often ahead of the curve, too. Now, everyone has at least some knowledge of conspiracy theorists, but when Ronson was writing about them, they were in the shadows. Even his 2017 Audible series The Butterfly Effect, which is about the dark world of internet pornography and probably the best thing I’ve ever listened to, went in-depth on an issue that has since had overdue scrutiny.
Soon, Ronson will be pulled out of his cosy new home, where he has been holed up writing a new book, and brought back into the world of the dark and the depraved. Later this month, he’s bringing one his best known works, 2011’s The Psychopath Test, to life on stage in Wellington. Psychopath Night will see Ronson seek to answer, alongside special guests, whether psychopaths do indeed rule the world – and whether you could be one too.
New Zealand has been on the bucket list for Ronson (along with Iceland), and he’s excited to finally tick us off. But as someone who spends a lot of time engaging with and dissecting so-called “culture wars”, I wonder if he’s aware of the issues bubbling away in our nation’s capital? Like, for instance, cycleways. “What are the battle lines,” inquires Ronson. “The literal meaning of a culture war is a conflict about conflicting values that don’t necessarily involve economics, but it does feel like seemingly everything is becoming a culture war. And, you know, we’re all being forced into these polarised positions. This is why I think all of this stuff is still important.”
He adds: “The tyranny of certainty – when did that become a weakness? When did not wanting to come down incredibly hard on one side of a debate become a weakness? That is the world we are living in.”
Culture wars are as common as conspiracies these days, but once again Ronson was early. “I feel a little bit like a Nirvana fan before Nevermind came out, I’m slightly irritated that everyone’s in on it now,” he laughs. “But also, it’s kind of saddening and shocking.” One of his best known works, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, examined so-called “cancel culture” and the role of social media through the eyes of people like Justine Sacco, the woman who infamously sent an offensive joke to her 170 Twitter followers before getting on a flight and landing to learn she had lost her job and was hated around the world. These types of battles are starting to become more commonplace. He cites Jordan Peterson, the meat-eating professor who blew up after becoming a culture warrior. “Only a few years ago [he] was giving young men good advice about cleaning up their rooms and sitting up straight and having self respect. Now [he’s] spreading 15-minute city conspiracy theories and he’s really symptomatic of an awful lot of people.
“It sounds like it’s becoming part of the media over there in New Zealand as well.”
The (first) Trump presidency also brought shadowy figures and beliefs into the mainstream. Ronson recalls with astonishment a moment during the 2016 US presidential campaign when a news broadcast cut from a speech being given by Hillary Clinton to an empty room with a podium where Donald Trump would soon be. “That’s how obsessed everyone was,” he says. But it was on another occasion, while watching the news at the gym, that really made Ronson shudder. “[A journalist] said, ‘Mr. Trump, are you going to go back on the Alex Jones Show?’ And he went, ‘Alex Jones, nice guy’. I nearly fell off the elliptical thinking of all the people in my past who you know might have the ear of the president one day, I wouldn’t have chosen Alex.”
It was in 2001 that Ronson first spent time with Alex Jones, the Infowars broadcaster and prominent conspiracy theorist now best known for spreading false and harmful rumours at the Sandy Hook School massacre. The pair’s initial meeting seems low stakes by today’s standard, infiltrating a gathering of high profile leaders at the Bohemian Grove that Jones claimed was evidence of a “satanic shadowy elite”. Ronson praises Jones as a “talented broadcaster” and possibly the most “charismatic orator” he’s ever met – but also as someone who “just makes shit up”. He has a knack for observing the duality of people. It’s possibly why his work is frequently compared to fellow journalists like Louis Theroux. He would never, for example, go into an interview with the intention of “cornering” or grilling them.
And while Ronson is willing to condemn and criticise the people he has interviewed for the harms they may have caused, he cautions those who would go into an interview with that express purpose. “What we need to avoid is going into situations for hierarchical reasons… That’s the pitfall. Don’t go into a situation because you think you’re better than them, and that you’re being a representative of righteous society mocking the irrational people,” he explains.
“Don’t go into something with ideology, go into something with curiosity.”
Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night is November 26, The Opera House Wellington. Tickets available from Ticketmaster.