An associate of Omar Bakri Mohammed, the subject of the first chapter, called them the Bilderberg Group. Bakri is an Islamic fundamentalist described as “Osama bin Laden’s man in England.” The associate, Yacob Zaki, is a white, Scottish convert to Islam. Ronson writes:
Yacob and I spent the day together. It was that afternoon I first heard about the Bilderberg Group, the secret rulers of the world, a tiny group of pernicious men and one or two pernicious women who meet in a secret room and determine the course of world events. It is they who start the wars, Yacob said, own the media, and destroy—by covert violence or propaganda—anyone who gets too close to the truth.
“One mysterious case,” said Yacob, “is that of the peanut farmer who attended a Bilderberg meeting and overnight became the most powerful man in the world. Yes. I’m speaking of Jimmy Carter. So you can see that they are extremely secretive and powerful.”
I didn’t really take it in. I stared blankly at Yacob. I didn’t realize that the people Yacob spoke of would come to occupy—in the most unpleasant ways—a tremendous part of the next five years of my life.
That’s most of the talk about secret rooms and meetings in the first chapter. The rest is dedicated to following Bakri’s exploits. When Ronson first meets Bakri, he and his daughter are watching the Lion King together. I was surprised when Ronson didn’t make a huge point of the hypocrisy in this scene — the Islamic Jihadist indulging in Western imperialist entertainment, from Disney of all companies.
“We always watch The Lion King,” he said. “It’s the only way I can relax. You know, they call me the Lion. That’s right. They call me the Lion. They call me the great warrior. The great fighter.”
That passage made me think of the Saturday Night Live sketch where Harry Carey (played by Will Ferrell) offers two different explanations of why his friends call him Whiskers. When Bakri says anything, he seems to be putting on an act. Or to be a little off in the head. Or both.
There were many more scenes rife with hypocrisy to come, so there was no need to rush criticism. Bakri is all-too-happy to befriend the Jewish journalist — who should be his sworn enemy — and to be chauffeured around in his car. Bakri collects donation money for Hezbollah and another anti-Israel group in gigantic containers with Coca Cola logos printed on them. He shops around for the best price when creating anti-homosexual fliers to hand out to people on the street. And he laughs when talking about the irony of British freedom of spech laws allowing him to disseminate his anti-West propaganda. Principles be damned, he’s going to use the tools available to him to get his message out.
What’s most surprising about Bakri is his often-sharp sense of humor. They joke around with each other chummily, and Ronson rarely indicates he feels threatened in any way.
“The Koran rules every aspect of my life. It tells me how I eat, how I sleep, how I fight, and even how I will die.” Omar paused. “You know,” he said, “the Koran even tells me which which direction I must break wind in.”
There was a short silence.
“And which direction do you break wind in?” I asked.
“In the direction of the nonbeliever!” Omar said. “Ha ha ha! The direction of the nonbeliever!” Omar laughed heartily for some time and slapped me on the back.
Most of his schemes and rallies were half-cocked, and he at one point he even refers to himself as a clown. He does finally demonstrate some political aptitude and media savvy in the last major scheme of the chapter, exploiting the British government’s attempt to renegotiate a fee to cover up his failure to sell 11,000 tickets to a political rally.
There are obvious hints in the preface that Ronson will eventually at least partially believe the conspiracy theories presented by the various figures he encounters. While he takes Bakri with a grain of salt, he doesn’t dismiss what he says automatically either. All of this, of course, takes place in a pre-9/11 climate when being a practicing Muslim didn’t automatically lead to a prison sentence. Not that Bakri is just a practicing Muslim, but throughout his interactions with Ronson he seems to be making himself out to be a more important figure than he really is.
What will be most interesting to me is to see how much space is dedicated in later chapters to the loonies he follows versus his quest to butt his way into the “secret room” alluded to early on.
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