Saturday, May 7, 2011

197: Alex Jones

Alex Jones is the guy who has yet to meet a conspiracy theory he doesn’t endorse, no matter how batshit insane it is (and, interestingly, no matter how much it conflicts with other conspiracy theories he already believes). For at least ten years he has predicted, in his rather popular radio program, the imminent roundup of Americans by the New World Order.

In addition to his radio program, he is also the director of several straight-to-video documentaries, and he runs the websites Infowars and PrisonPlanet (for those who wish to avoid the site itself, it is detailed here).

Some conspiracy theories endorsed by PrisonPlanet are:

-The Bilderberg Group (or Skull and Bones, or the Freemasons - it depends on the day, it seems) controls some/most/all governments in the world as well as the economy.

-The New World Order will kill almost everyone. Vaccine programs seem to be just one of their methods – of course Jones has endorsed Andrew Wakefield as a martyr. To get a feel for the level it is pitched at, you may want to check out this one - or then again, maybe not.

-In fact, Hurricane Katrina was merely an opportunity to test out the FEMA concentration camps.

-And the tsunami in south-east Asia in 2004 was man-made.

-9/11 was (of course) an inside job.

This is, of course, only a selection; in general it is hard to find a loon that Jones does not take seriously. He is basically a living embodiment of whale.to.

Other bizarre antics are chronicled on his wikipedia page. Apparently the ravingly mad and utterly dense (but British) Vicount Monckton views PrisonPlanet as a legitimate news outlet. That explains a lot.

The interesting thing about Alex Jones’ reasoning is that he does not seem to run with the common fallacy ‘authorities (e.g. scientific) say X; I don’t like X; hence there must be a conspiracy’, but rather with the inference rule ‘everything is part of a conspiracy; authorities say X; hence X is false’ (which is a fallacy as well, of course, but a somewhat more interesting one).

Now, some may think Alex Jones is batshit crazy, and he is. But surely he is beaten by Lorie Kramer, who believes that Alex Jones is a pawn created by the New World Order to divert attention. Seriously. And if that is not enough, this site, run by Gary & Lisa Ruby, claims that Jones is part of a scientologist conspiracy to take over the world and demolish Christianity. I guess this is what you risk when you start to gain notoriety in the hyper-paranoid and chaotic field of conspiracy theory.

Among Jones’s more notable collaborators is the equally insane Paul Joseph Watson, who may consider himself indicted by this entry as well (he does not deserve a separate one). Watson is, among other things, behind this, uh, illuminating screed.

Diagnosis: The ur-loon. Extremely famous and frighteningly influential, but one suspects that he would be able to convince anyone who were not already at least mildly unhinged. Jones may be partly in it for the money, but there is little question that he actually believes much of whatever falls out of his mouth.

19 comments:

  1. I concur.  Alex Jones has some mental health issues. Read about them here: http://www.dailybrian.com/brian-brown-on-alex-jones.

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  2. Good article ^^

    He actually got me to belive some of his bs for a week or so.. It was during the large SOPA outcry. Well he can only hit so many false ones before he hits something somewhat true, even though he of course puts it together with all his bat shit crazy stuff.

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  3. Unsurprisingly, Alex Jones has been advocating some wonderful conspiracy theories in the wake of the movie theater massacre in Colorado: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/07/21/alex-jones-on-shooting/

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  4. Alex Jones recently claimed that the government is putting chemicals into products to produce more gay people to reduce the population. True, he regularly makes claims like that, but it is nevertheless worth mentioning.

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  5. Looks like the WND is now picking their news straight from Alex Jones’s webpage without very much effort to hide it, though I guess it was just a matter of time before that happened.

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  6. Alex Jones is being crazy again. And I cannot even be bothered to mention his insane comments on the Boston Marathon bombings.

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  7. This one is pretty good on Alex Jones's Boston Marathon conspiracies.

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  8. More display of absolute batshit crazy here and here.

    He has recently also claimed that atheists worship Satan, and provided an absolutely insane rant on transgender people.

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  9. Jones explains how a government weather weapon could have been behind the Oklahoma tornado here, and fails rather abysmally.

    Here are some reactions to Jones's (relatively) recent BBC meltdown.

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  10. Business as usual. Jones links the Syrian weapons proposal (Kerry's) to a human extinction plot, a connection that seems perfectly vivid in Jones's imagination. And here he hearts Rand Paul, which should really get Paul to reassess whatever the fuck it is that he is doing.

    But this display of narcissism is priceless. It also explains a lot.

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  11. Let's not forget. he claimed that Hurricane sandy was "steered" into New York by helicopters.

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  12. Trying to follow the lunacy of Alex Jones is a rather quixotic task, but some recent highlights:
    - Jones was more or less responsible for the idea that Obama was planning to set off a nuclear bomb in Washington, D.C. (later moved, rather arbitrarily, to Charleston) and blame it on Syria. The idea quickly gained traction in certain wingnut circles, and was in particular promoted by Garrow.
    - His claim that we are currently living in the Hunger Games.
    - A purported link between the Illuminati and the Kardashians (no less), as demonstrated by the Kardashians' Christmas cards.
    - The death in a plane crash of someone tangentially involved in the birther bullshit did not go unnoticed at InfoWars (nor by the usual suspects, like Jerome Corsi).
    - Jones's feeble defense of D'Souza.
    - Jones praying for Bob Barr's return to Congress.
    - And, as usual, the Superbowl being the occasion for certain coded messages from the Illuminati. Since they don't have cell phones or emails and rather communicate through gestures and code words in public.

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  13. Because what hear on CNN (Constant Negative News) and all the other left wing news is always right. NOT! Stop hanging out with the sheeple. You want truth? Watch what everyone else is doing and do the complete opposite. The masses have been brainwashed

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  14. He may actually be British -
    http://alex-jones-is-british.blogspot.com

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  15. He flip flopped on Sarah Palin. He's a charlatan. Going wherever the populist wind blows
    http://exconspiracy.blogspot.com/2017/05/alex-jones-and-his-big-flip-flop-on.html

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  16. And now we have a sitting American president who favours this kook over what he calls "fake news." Good job, Murica!

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  17. Yeah man I listen to him once a week. Entertaining as heck.

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