Chaos Comes Calling – Sasha Abramsky – 2024 –
This is a highly informative and disturbing look of investigative journalism that can readily occur in any American community. In this book Abramsky covers Sequim, Washington, a small rural community located near the Olympic Peninsula. Also, Shasta County, located in Redding, California. In these communities we learn that during the Covid-19 pandemic political extremists from White and Christian Nationalists, Second Amendment abolitionist’s, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti-social distancers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters who spread baseless facts, falsehoods and misinformation that led to serious political unrest and hysteria, threats, and violence within these two communities.

Before she accepted her public health position in Sequim, Dr. Allsion Berry had spent years serving the poor and homeless including her service in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and completed her residency serving at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, the largest trauma hospital in the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Karen Ramstrom, a dedicated public servant in Shasta County, CA. grew increasingly worried about the terror and hysteria of misinformation and hate speech against the Departments of Health during the Covid-19 pandemic. The vitriol was spread on the internet by political extremists who gained a platform online and their views spread like wildfire. Both esteemed public servants Dr. Berry and Dr. Ramstrom (despite police security protection) were forced from their jobs after harassment and threatening hate speech, also being doxed, and serious death threats. Over one year after Dr. Ramstrom was fired without cause, her position remained unfilled.

Sasha Abramsky shows how quickly extremists gained control of the political culture and narrative in both communities. California Governor Gavin Newsom was labeled a communist and should be charged with treason, other politicians were also targeted. Elon Musk urged his 34 million (Twitter) followers to “take the Red pill…” Many extremists believed Covid was linked to 5G cell phone towers, and Covid vaccines were infused with microchips. It was not surprising that too many people in Shasta County did not survive Covid-19. This higher death rate was preventable.
Sasha Abramsky is the author of numerous books that focus on political reform, and social and economic justice. He was raised and educated in the U.K., and currently lives in the United States. With thanks to NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

Interesting look at these two towns on a granular level, although I'm not sure I understood their juxtaposition or contrast. It's a good study of what these days and this atmosphere was like, it feels important and significant as a historical record.

Chaos Comes Calling offers a powerful exploration of the fight against extremism (QAnon and anti-vaccine conspiracies) in Shasta County, California and Sequim, Washington. Sasha Abramsky’s focus on the post-COVID era and the rise of extremism is both timely and crucial. I think that this is a very easy book for general readers to get into but it did take a couple of chapters to get into narratively.

This book covers a lot of the same issues as Mike Wendling’s book Day of Reckoning. The difference is this book focuses specifically on small towns in Washington and California and how the antivaxers and alt right conspiracy theorists affected local politics. It’s an interesting book especially if you are familiar with towns mentioned like Sequim Washington.

Thank you, PublicAffairs, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against The Far-Right Takeover Of Small-Town America, by Sasha Abramsky.

This book is about how two counties, Sequim, Washington and Shasta County, California reacted to COVID and the aftermath, as well as other political issues. This book is a very good look at the bullying that comes from the right-wing. There are plenty of examples of that throughout the entirety of the book. My one negative about the book is it seemed to take a few chapters before the narrative really developed.

I give this book a B+. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B+ equates to 4 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I originally finished reading this on July 16, 2024.

Chaos Comes Calling is a fantastic look at the post COVID United States and the rise of extremism as well as the people who stood up to face it. Sasha Abramsky allows readers to see the effect that the radicals had on doctors, families and small towns in the US and shows just how important books like this are in showing the importance of journalism and the effects of extremism.

This book makes a strong case for how we need to take a serious look at how poorly equipped the democratic machinery is to deal with bullies and how easily they can be usurped by the loudest people in the room especially when they have elevated cruelty to form of virtue.

I really appreciate that we are moving away from simply making fun of the delusions of the alt-right and into acknowledging where they are coming from and the lack of accountability that made the current climate possible by my is it a depressing state of affairs.

The portrait of people organizing to fight back is sort of bleak, especially as the author makes clear on how many fronts the battles have to be fought and how few people have the bandwidth and conditions to effectively fight them, but it definitely rings true
.
It was a generally easy to read book and the writing style was compelling.

This is the story of two communities, Shasta County, California and Sequim, Washington where, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as President many residents became immersed in Q-Anon and anti-vax conspiracies. One area managed to gradually work its way back to a middle ground while the other has only become more deeply enmeshed in intolerance, bigotry and divisiveness.

The author calls the love of Donald Trump a “cult” and says he makes “rational governance seem almost a quaint throwback to a calmer, saner past. The author also makes the excellent point that small towns suffer when their newspapers vanish and are replaced with social media and rumor.

Sequim has a mayor who is a Q-Anon proponent and who fashions himself after Trump. Both Sequim and Shasta County see their communities become incredibly right wing with the advent of the COVID 19 virus. I won’t spoil anything by revealing what happens but there are some very interesting (and some very despicable) characters in both places. And both are likely representative of many small town and communities nationwide.

The book also covers other types of right wing battles in small towns, such as transgender advocacy, book bans and BLM protests. Trump’s legal woes and his threats against those who oppose him are also a part of the book, as are his repeated instances of Q-Anon coded messages.

It was interesting to follow these two areas for an extensive period to see what occurred. However, I did not feel that the towns where necessarily comparable….it seemed to me that there was a more liberal populace in one, and they had simply started ignoring local politics, allowing the crazies to take over, something that was quickly able to be fixed. Just my opinion, though. I enjoyed the book.