On the top level of the Brisbane Square library, John Safran is sitting in a conference room awaiting to give his first Q&A in front of an audience eager to hear about his recent rogue adventures among some of Australia’s deplorables.

No doubt the vast majority of those in the audience first became enamored with Safran’s self-described shtick through his television and documentary work. From placing a voodoo curse on an ex-girlfriend in Race Around the World (1997), to the creation of Jewtown, the first all Jewish boy band in John Safran Music Jamboree (2002). He was the recipient of a rather brutal exorcism in John Safran vs God (2004) and, with the unknown help of sperm banks across Israel and Palestine, created the first ever Jellystinian (half Jewish-half Palestinian) in Race Relations (2009).

However, in recent years Safran has turned to penning books to dance in the grey areas of race, culture and religion. Depends What You Mean By Extremist is Safran’s second book, a follow up from his award winning true crime endeavor Murder In Mississippi, and is Safran’s up close foray into Australia’s most extreme racial, religious and cultural groups.

It is important to note that Safran isn’t jumping onto the extremism bandwagon. As a frequent racial and cultural trainspotter, Safran became absorbed with racial rallies happening within his own suburb of multi-cultural Melbourne back in 2015, and before long he found himself amidst an extraordinary cast of ‘ordinary’ Australians.

Depends What You Mean By Extremism paints a picture of contemporary Australia free from the binary narratives perpetuated by mainstream media. There is Blair Cottrell, a member of the UPF (United Patriots Front) who is not openly Islamophobic, but has been advocating for a picture of Hitler to be displayed in Australian school classrooms. Jim Saleam, from the Australia First Party who is an anti-Lebanese spokesperson from the Cronulla riots, despite being Lebanese himself. Nicholas Folkes from the Party For Freedom, who spends his time picketing auctions with Chinese buyers in Sydney, and is against Asian immigration despite being married to an Asian immigrant.

Clearly the issue of extremism in Australia is not black and white.

I am intrigued as to when Safran found himself on the crest of a wave of extremism which would unpredictably wash through suburban Melbourne and eventually find itself in Washington, pushing open the doors of the White House.

“I thought it was book worthy from the very start because I kind of like getting into lounge rooms and seeing odd things in the shadows. But there was a point when I realized things were bigger than this…I guess my assumption on the Alt Right was like it’s a bygone era type thing, from the olden days and everything is a bit out of date. But this incarnation is fresh, it’s not only the white house, it’s also at the rallies where there were young men turning up, you know? People in their late teens and early to mid-twenties. I guess that was another thing that was sort of saying that it was going to be bigger than just looking at oddities in the shadows.”

It is fair to say that Safran isn’t passively observing the scenes around him, he is firmly placed in the center of the radical tangle, poking and prodding for information. At one point in the book he describes himself as a Jewish octopus with his tentacles placed within all parties involved. I consider if this was one of the benefits of writing books as opposed to documentaries, if the print medium allowed a degree of freedom denied by invasive cameras and restrictive media release forms.

“After the Bendigo rally where I ended up getting smashed with some UPF people … I did think after that, that was when I was really happy that I was writing a book, I remember thinking how would I have captured that…the logistics of it all and the economics of it all, whilst if you are there with your own little dictaphone, you get just to be really fluid and you get to end up in their houses and at their after party.”

It is worth noting that Safran does indeed end up at a UPF after party post Global anti-Islam day, where his subjects and rally members seem to let their guard down as they drink beer, smoke cigarettes and roll joints. I wonder if this kind of access-all-areas approach separates Safran from the tried and true documentary method.

“I guess there is a bit of when they zig, you zag. Everyone has got a smart phone these days and everyone is in Syria filming a Vice doco, and I did find a different medium brings a bit of freshness, and I feel like it’s getting places and to depths that you can’t quite otherwise.”

Nonetheless, despite Safran’s attempts to conspicuously place himself in the shadows, more often than not his own celebrity draws him into the chaos. In various points in the book he is threatened, trolled, and occasionally even seemingly solicited for support from some of Australia’s most controversial figures. I am unsure whether this recognition is a gift or curse to Safran, and whether he was reluctant to be drawn in as a character within the book.

“I guess I did think it might be hard, because people might kind of shut you down or whatever. But whatever, the disadvantages were, there were just such advantages, people either didn’t want to talk to you or they were curious as to why you were there … and I couldn’t even figure out why it was interesting, but there was something interesting about the way people were reacting to me as the dude from the tele.”

At one stage in the book, Safran is leafing through a copy of the Qu’ran that Hamza, an ISIS supporter, has given him, and he stumbles upon a quote that reads “Do not treat the revelations of Allah as matters for jesting”.

This is all too interesting. Famously, Safran has used satire to great comedic effect throughout his career, and this book is no exception. With tragic incidents of satire gone wrong such as Charlie Hebdo, I am interested as to whether there was ever a moment where Safran, amidst an intense tangle of hate filled contradictions frenetically pushing towards boiling point, was ever concerned for his own safety.

“This is where I am possibly deluded … I have been trying to feel out who people think I am going to be in trouble with… I was thinking I would get in trouble with lefty’s concerned with identity politics, because they rule the roost on social media, with everyone being offended and everything, and I kind of poke at that a bit on the book, but everyone who has read the book says it doesn’t come across like that at all, it comes across as if you are going to get throttled by skinheads for being a smartass.”

It’s important to note that this conversation is happening the morning Depends What You Mean By Extremist is released and it appears it has not taken long for Safran to find out who he is in trouble with, and yes, Safran confirms his own suspicion of self-delusion.

He opens his messages and reads a message he recently received from a member from the UPF who features in the book. The message alludes to misrepresentation and mentions that at one point certain members of the UPF were considering ‘doing a number on him’ when he was getting smashed with them after the rally in Bendigo. It is to be said though, that Safran doesn’t appear rattled by this, rather he takes it in his stride as a cultural commentator who has certainly rattled cages before.

There are incidents of other near delusional moments in the book. Safran, in mantra like reassurance reminds himself several times throughout the book ‘Australia doesn’t do radical.’ With the election of Trump and Brexit being decided by such minutiae percentages, this sort of sentiment frightens me a bit. I feel the need to press Safran, as I contemplate if there is a complacency in such a statement and whether it is even at all true that Australia doesn’t do radical.

“I think Australia does do radical, but it has to be disguised as something else. In the case of Pauline Hanson, people aren’t going to be comfortable saying you know what? The Jews control the banks … they have to frame it as if it’s like really normal.”

It seems this normalisation of the extreme is not something uniquely Australian. Though with Geert Wilders, who features in the book, being stopped at the polls by the voters in the Netherlands, and Marine Le Pen not polling as highly as expected in the French election’s first round of voting last week. I have been toying with the idea that maybe the terrifying reality of President Trump being elected has forced populist and extremist politics to take a much-needed reprieve, to stand back and assess the danger of divisional politics. Is it possible the Alt Right is dead?

“I think what we can learn from first Barack Obama being elected, when that happened it was so surprising. But then that became really normal, like of course it could be a black person…then with Trump getting elected, things just turn on a dime. It’s like the world is a version of Twitter, where one day something is really huge and then the next day … so I’d be really apprehensive about saying something like the Alt Right is going to die out, I think things just spin so quickly these days.”

Ah, and here I was with a glimmer of hope. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens tomorrow.

Scott Luderman