Chaos Comes Calling – Reading and Conversation with Sasha Abramsky

Wed 25 September 2024

online

Free Online Event: Author Sasha Abramsky in conversation with Professor Gina Neff

Chaos Comes Calling is the harrowing and timely tale of how polarisation threatened to break apart two American communities and how one found a way back while the other splintered.

During this free event Sasha Abramsky will give a reading from the book, followed by conversation and audience Q&A.

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sasha Abramsky is a long-time political journalist and author who has spent the last thirty years exploring the American political and social justice landscape. Currently the Western Correspondent for the Nation Magazine, and a lecturer in writing at the University of California at Davis, he has written extensively over the past thirty years on poverty, criminal justice, immigration and the rise of the hard-right and alt-right political movements. Chaos Comes Calling is his tenth book.

ABOUT PROFESSOR GINA NEFF: Professor Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the effects of the rapid expansion of our digital information environment on workers and workplaces and in our everyday lives. Professor Neff holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University and advises international organisations including UNESCO and the OECD. She is Deputy CEO of UKRI Responsible AI UK (RAi UK), and Associate Director of the ESRC Digital Good Network. She also leads the Humanitarian Action Programme at the University of Cambridge and is a member of the Horizon Europe international AI4Trust team to tackle online misinformation.

Cost: Free