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A harrowing tale of how polarization threatened to break apart two American communities and how one found a way back while the other splintered.

Donald Trump’s November 2016 electoral victory was the beginning of four years of demagogy, presidential name-calling, and—ten months into a pandemic—an incitement to violence that led a mob of thousands to descend on the Capitol in Washington, DC. Fueled by suspicion, conspiracy, and bigotry, a faction of Americans had decided to seize control. But the biggest effect of this right-wing wave may not have been on our national politics, but on the local governments of communities around the country.

In Chaos Comes Calling, Sasha Abramsky investigates the empowerment of the far-right over the past few years, stoked by the Trump presidency and the Covid-19 pandemic. He tells the parallel stories of two communities, Shasta County, California and Sequim, Washington, where toxic alliances of QAnoners, anti-vaxxers, Christian nationalists, militia supporters and other denizens of the far-right have worked to take control of the levers of power.

The trajectories of both communities expose the stark divisions and extremism that have come to define our political landscape over the past decade, and offer revealing glimpses of what the future may hold. While Sequim ultimately recalibrated in 2021, returning to rationality, Shasta County has descended further into a climate of intolerance and toxic divisiveness.

Chaos Comes Calling vividly captures both the regressive forces gaining momentum all over the country and the tireless efforts of citizens determined to organize against them.

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“There are real people in this intimately reported book, real consequences—and also real hope. The great achievement of Chaos Comes Calling is what it reveals about how communities become captive to the little fascisms of would-be tyrants, and how some, at least, free themselves. This story about small places has big implications.”

Jeff Sharlet, New York Times–bestselling author of The Undertow
“Abramsky takes us out of the Washington, DC, media echosphere and its myopic coverage of national horseraces and puts us on the ground in real communities where Trump, Bannon, and their cacophony of lies and falsehoods have already curdled the local governments, perverting the laboratories of democracy into wellsprings of authoritarianism. The fight against these people starts at home."

Elie Mystal, New York Times–bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort
“In this chilling report from the American West, Abramsky shows how the extreme right has mobilized to upend local democratic institutions and warns of a fascist threat that’s alarmingly close and widespread. A disturbing, necessary book.”

Eric Klinenberg, author of 2020
“Abramsky listens to people we might dismiss as villains, hearing the fear, whether justified or ginned up, behind their increasingly extremist worldview. Chaos Comes Calling helps us reckon with the trauma that reverberates.”

Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent, the Nation
"[an] enthralling account...an eye-opening close-up view of American politics."
Publishers Weekly, starred review
"an important and disturbing book...[a] fine-grained account of political and social turmoil."
Shelf Awareness
"An excellent, fearless work of political reportage in the face of America's violent discontents."
Kirkus
"An unflinching, sobering, and essential read, filled with first-person narratives and reflections that offer an urgent warning about the fragility of democratic institutions in the face of rising extremism in the United States and around the world."
Library Journal
"a sobering story but also one that offers hope."
Salon
"Chaos Comes Calling is a tightly written and well-reported account of the rise of extremism in small-town America...Chaos Comes Calling provides a road map to bring back reason and levelheadedness to our communities—and hopefully in time, our country as well."
Los Angeles Review of Books

On Sale: Sep 3, 2024
Page Count: 288 pages
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN-13: 9781645030454

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Sasha Abramsky

About the Author

Sasha Abramsky is a long-time political journalist and book author who has spent the last thirty years exploring the American political and social justice landscape. He has written extensively on poverty, on criminal justice, on immigration, and on the rise of hard-right and alt-right political movements.

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Sasha Abramsky

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