Join the Conspiracy

Reviews / Votes

"Never heard of George Demmerle - aka, Prince Crazie? Well, so much the better. Here was a man at the center of a crazy place (the East Village) in a crazy time (the late Sixties), plotting a revolution - while secretly working as an FBI informant. Jonathan Butler recreates it all in vivid, cinematic detail, while adding a whole new chapter to the history of the American Left. Clear your calendar and buckle up for a wild ride." - Jonathan Mahler, Author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning and a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine

"A story so wild it had to be true. Butler has unearthed an important slice of history and presented it with smarts and style. Like all the best history books, this one will help you understand the present as well as the past, and probably the future." - Jonathan Eig, King: A Life

"Delving deep into a hidden history, Jonathan Butler relates an extraordinary drama with betrayal at its heart. Deeply researched and beautifully written, this previously unknown story set in the passionate, violent politics of the 1960s, stands with Conrad's The Secret Agent." - Andrew Cockburn, Washington Editor, Harper's Magazine

"During the late 1960s, opposition to a half-million troops being in Vietnam, and to virulent racism and cultural conformity at home, morphed from a mass movement into a frenzied effort by some to tear down and rebuild society - violently if needed. Jonathan Butler's Join the Conspiracy ably sifts through that increasingly chaotic time by centering on an FBI-enabled infiltrator and the all-in radicals he both befriended and betrayed. The result is a new perspective about a country at war with itself, and about those who were willing to consume themselves in struggle." - Abe Peck, author of Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press

"An entertaining study of a right-winger who spied on the New Left. Through focusing on the story of George Demmerle, Butler uncovers just how far the surveillance state went to stop the social movements of the 1960s." - Michael Koncewicz, author of They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President's Abuses of Power

"Join the Conspiracy is a wild romp through one of the most-studied but least-understood moments in American political history, when peace-loving and often absurdist white kids of the '60s turned toward violent tactics in their quest to change the world. At least that is the traditional narrative. Butler's fascinating book, however, shows us a more complex and troublesome history, which puts an FBI informant, George Demmerle, at the center of the action. Through Demmerle's biography, the traditional narrative begins to look itself like a conspiracy that we have all joined." - Stuart Schrader, author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing

". . . [Includes] well-constructed protest scenes, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago . . .Vivid, suspense-filled." - Publishers Weekly

"People, times, and dates are meticulously recorded here, sourced to a combination of media reports, public records, and firsthand accounts. In his rigor and exactitude, Butler proves himself a worthy successor to the late sociologist and activist Todd Gitlin, whom he cites frequently." - The Washington Independent Review of Books

"A fascinating and surprisingly timely political biography...a seminal work of meticulous scholarship, Join the Conspiracy is extraordinarily well written, organized and presented." - Midwest Book Review