Chaos Comes Calling: Two Small Counties and the Epic Battle for America’s Soul

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.

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.