Who or what prompted the InfoWars host’s devolution from contrarian hothead — and platform for valuable ideas — to the lunatic fringe? The answers may surprise you.
Alex Jones is right about the Globalists and The Great Reset. The Davos Boys scare me a lot more than anything else Alex has covered. The Press is really scared to mention Klaus Schwab or George Soros. Alex is not.
"But we all know that some conspiracies are real — like corporate price-fixing, like elaborate murder plots, like the one surrounding the January 6 sedition"
I guess you haven't read any reporting from revolver, which uses the government's own documents to cast reasonable doubt on many of the events of that day. No one has produced a reasonable explanation for why ray epps wasn't charged despite doing much more than the majority of defendants in j6 cases. What else are you totally, blissfully unaware of while you try to lecture everyone else about what is reasonable to believe? You haven't read anything your opponents think, while you lecture others about what is reasonable to believe. You seem too upset about having to "resort" to someone like alex jones to think clearly.
Except for the anomalous civil rights-Vietnam-Watergate era, the mainstream not so much reported as just produced establishment propaganda. That wasn’t so much of a problem when the nation was functional but it is now when the leadership is kind of sociopathic. The powers that be support and enable politicians who were literally killing a couple of hundred thousand Americans -- at least -- by their refusal to respond to a global pandemic responsibly; who support the destruction of our democratic institutions; and are opposed to any meaningful addressing of climate change. Meanwhile, the mainstream is loathe to criticize Republicans and do all they can to promote the party. They irresponsibly underreport GOP election subverting. They fail to give the issue of who’s responsible for blocking action on climate the warranted coverage. And, of course, there’s numerous other areas where their failures has serious consequences.
So a vacuum is formed. And people seek out other outlets they consider more trustworthy and, well, sometimes some decide someone like Jones is a proper source.
But the key thing is that such power as Jones has is less that he took it than the mainstream media gave him the power.
An outstanding take - humane without letting him off the hook, and spot-on about the MSM.
The MSM all too often creates a Truth Vacuum - but it's Ersatz because they actively suppress genuine enquiry, particularly where the right questions are being asked. Most people don't notice that the vacuum's not genuine, but they do know that something's not right. Cue Alex Jones...who ends up as a perfect smokescreen. I wonder if he gets the irony of it.
Thanks for jogging my memories; I also remember watching Jerome Corsi interviews. Wild stuff. Heck besides MSM, 8 years of Obama also helped propel his image.
Saw this on a social media platform just prior to reading your post ...
CONSPIRACY THEORIST, THE TERM USED TO DISCREDIT SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ABOUT THINGS YOU CAN'T BEAR TO LOOK AT. BECAUSE IF IT WERE TRUE, IT WOULD REVEAL A DARKNESS IN THE WORLD THAT YOU'RE SIMPLY NOT READY TO ACCEPT.
At first I thought it a justification for the whackjobs but then realized it also applied to what you wrote about. Your post reified that realization for me. I had no idea that AJ started off as a more reasonable contrarian. Beginning with FoS, and later, the creation of WWW, I've always found your work to be engrossing and enlightening. Looking forward to the next post.
Maybe if Russ had more support from the wage slave narcissists he would investigate and risk his life to do so. That is one hot topic and he has to look out for his reputation too as you are easily labelled a freaking kook. He has written about the Saudis and the redacted pages and the failure lf the 9/11 commission report. His book -- 'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' -- is still relevant today!! Seth Abramson's books about Trump's corruption are very much in the same vein!!
Yes, (and I love your book by the way), but do you really think that Alex Jones is just an accidental anomaly? He has succeeded in further dividing the citizenry in regard to some hot and vitally important topics which needed a clarity of investigation in order to air the dirty laundry and wipe the collectively dirty sphincter of the american empire. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and now anyone who was allowed on Alex's show or who was at anytime associated with him, is just considered a part of the lunatic fringe. A mighty successful psychological operation against the wage slave narcissists of the american empire.
Now the dems are basically covering up for Trump's ties to international mafia and saying that his collusion with Russia (and Saudi Arabia and Israel and Turkey and US intelligence mafia etc) is just a hoax! See Seth Abramson's trilogy of books about Trump's corruption including -- 'Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy' ..
Both Clinton and Trump were on Epstein's flight logs. Oops!!
I first realized that Alex Jones was a shill back around 2008. His moderators banned anyone who talked about brainwashing or what we now call "mass formations". He's like a whipping boy or hall monitor of the internet at best.
russ, i found this to be a very decent (as in humane), balanced description of jones. i was offered a chance to go on his show after you were on in '09, to talk about veterans for peace, and almost accepted but by then my "kook radar" was going off too loudly when i tuned in to check him out.
i find myself agreeing with your notion that the msm helped make him popular because it has shut out nearly every voice daring to question the powers behind the curtain. unfortunately it seems that jones' followers and their fellow travelers have moved beyond serious questioning to swallowing all sorts of nonsense.
Alex Jones is right about the Globalists and The Great Reset. The Davos Boys scare me a lot more than anything else Alex has covered. The Press is really scared to mention Klaus Schwab or George Soros. Alex is not.
"But we all know that some conspiracies are real — like corporate price-fixing, like elaborate murder plots, like the one surrounding the January 6 sedition"
I guess you haven't read any reporting from revolver, which uses the government's own documents to cast reasonable doubt on many of the events of that day. No one has produced a reasonable explanation for why ray epps wasn't charged despite doing much more than the majority of defendants in j6 cases. What else are you totally, blissfully unaware of while you try to lecture everyone else about what is reasonable to believe? You haven't read anything your opponents think, while you lecture others about what is reasonable to believe. You seem too upset about having to "resort" to someone like alex jones to think clearly.
"Family of Secrets" is a magnificent book, breathtaking in its depth and breadth. I highly recommend it. MarkT
"I felt relief at Jones’s recent guilty verdict for peddling vile lies. "
Why did you feel "relief"?
Which "lies", specifically?
Your arguments in this piece are so weak, so hateful and so stupid as to make me unsubscribe and quit reading you.
Except for the anomalous civil rights-Vietnam-Watergate era, the mainstream not so much reported as just produced establishment propaganda. That wasn’t so much of a problem when the nation was functional but it is now when the leadership is kind of sociopathic. The powers that be support and enable politicians who were literally killing a couple of hundred thousand Americans -- at least -- by their refusal to respond to a global pandemic responsibly; who support the destruction of our democratic institutions; and are opposed to any meaningful addressing of climate change. Meanwhile, the mainstream is loathe to criticize Republicans and do all they can to promote the party. They irresponsibly underreport GOP election subverting. They fail to give the issue of who’s responsible for blocking action on climate the warranted coverage. And, of course, there’s numerous other areas where their failures has serious consequences.
So a vacuum is formed. And people seek out other outlets they consider more trustworthy and, well, sometimes some decide someone like Jones is a proper source.
But the key thing is that such power as Jones has is less that he took it than the mainstream media gave him the power.
An outstanding take - humane without letting him off the hook, and spot-on about the MSM.
The MSM all too often creates a Truth Vacuum - but it's Ersatz because they actively suppress genuine enquiry, particularly where the right questions are being asked. Most people don't notice that the vacuum's not genuine, but they do know that something's not right. Cue Alex Jones...who ends up as a perfect smokescreen. I wonder if he gets the irony of it.
Thanks for jogging my memories; I also remember watching Jerome Corsi interviews. Wild stuff. Heck besides MSM, 8 years of Obama also helped propel his image.
Saw this on a social media platform just prior to reading your post ...
CONSPIRACY THEORIST, THE TERM USED TO DISCREDIT SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ABOUT THINGS YOU CAN'T BEAR TO LOOK AT. BECAUSE IF IT WERE TRUE, IT WOULD REVEAL A DARKNESS IN THE WORLD THAT YOU'RE SIMPLY NOT READY TO ACCEPT.
At first I thought it a justification for the whackjobs but then realized it also applied to what you wrote about. Your post reified that realization for me. I had no idea that AJ started off as a more reasonable contrarian. Beginning with FoS, and later, the creation of WWW, I've always found your work to be engrossing and enlightening. Looking forward to the next post.
Maybe if Russ had more support from the wage slave narcissists he would investigate and risk his life to do so. That is one hot topic and he has to look out for his reputation too as you are easily labelled a freaking kook. He has written about the Saudis and the redacted pages and the failure lf the 9/11 commission report. His book -- 'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' -- is still relevant today!! Seth Abramson's books about Trump's corruption are very much in the same vein!!
Yes, (and I love your book by the way), but do you really think that Alex Jones is just an accidental anomaly? He has succeeded in further dividing the citizenry in regard to some hot and vitally important topics which needed a clarity of investigation in order to air the dirty laundry and wipe the collectively dirty sphincter of the american empire. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and now anyone who was allowed on Alex's show or who was at anytime associated with him, is just considered a part of the lunatic fringe. A mighty successful psychological operation against the wage slave narcissists of the american empire.
Now the dems are basically covering up for Trump's ties to international mafia and saying that his collusion with Russia (and Saudi Arabia and Israel and Turkey and US intelligence mafia etc) is just a hoax! See Seth Abramson's trilogy of books about Trump's corruption including -- 'Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy' ..
Both Clinton and Trump were on Epstein's flight logs. Oops!!
I first realized that Alex Jones was a shill back around 2008. His moderators banned anyone who talked about brainwashing or what we now call "mass formations". He's like a whipping boy or hall monitor of the internet at best.
"controlled opposition". that is what he is. like a broken clock is correct twice a day....same can be said about most media (90 percent).
russ, i found this to be a very decent (as in humane), balanced description of jones. i was offered a chance to go on his show after you were on in '09, to talk about veterans for peace, and almost accepted but by then my "kook radar" was going off too loudly when i tuned in to check him out.
i find myself agreeing with your notion that the msm helped make him popular because it has shut out nearly every voice daring to question the powers behind the curtain. unfortunately it seems that jones' followers and their fellow travelers have moved beyond serious questioning to swallowing all sorts of nonsense.