Conspiracy theory Alex Jones and his announcement system Info War are at the brink of bankruptcy after years of litigation.  ,
The person who was called a “far-right crime theorist” by CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and NBC, as well as “far-right crime theorist” by CBS and The Daily Beast, may be forced to sell his company to give compensation to the people who were accused of being problems players in the Sandy Hook school shootings. The internet is celebrating Alex Jones ‘ financial loss, and the people are calling for” the total loss of Alex Jones” and his exit from the public stage.  ,  ,
Jones is most certainly a conspiracy theory. He spends his days ranting about the New World Order, vaccines giving kids dementia, false flag activities, and the admitted fact about 9/11. However, Jones is not a traditional, at least in the conventional sense, which is regularly brought up in the sea of angry news stories about his trial.  ,
Jones is a person who was kicked out of George W. Bush rallies, voted for Barack Obama in 2008, picked battles with David Duke, antisemites, and Neo- Germans, and recorded video with Joe Rogan wearing Bush faces outside of the White House to rally the Bush administration. He was not nor is he now a man of the right — and he has n’t claimed to be, to my knowledge.  ,
Not Right or Left, but Anti- Establishment
Given that he has thrown himself completely in favor of President Trump, hangs out with Tucker Carlson, interviews paleoconservative snobs, and gained notoriety for his infamous 2012 interview with Piers Morgan, in which he claimed” 1776 would begin again” if the federal government implemented gun control following the Sandy Hook shooting, you might assume otherwise.  ,
This assumption misses the core of Jones’s ideology. He is a pure populist. His political views clashed with those of the mainstream in the United States.
His history demonstrates that he is equally critical of Republicans and Democrats in power. He consistently pledges his support for candidates on both sides of the aisle who he believes are sufficiently anti-establishment, ergo his backing for both Obama and Trump. In contrast to Jones ‘ praise of the far more populist version of Obama in 2008, corporate media is quick to cite Jones as calling Obama and Hillary Clinton demons in 2016.
As Jones writes in his recent book, The Great Awakening,” One pattern I’ve noticed is that whatever side feels out of power is much more willing to consider conspiracy/corruption theories. When Bush was in office, the left admired what I was saying about the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, but not when Barack Obama took office.
Before 2012, Jones’s reputation was completely different than it is now. He is currently a disgraced media figure facing bankruptcy and a billion dollars in defamation lawsuits as a result of his Sandy Hook claims, but he was a much more niche and reputable journalist in the early 2000s, when the progressive left was much more tolerant of conspiracy theories.  ,
At this time, anti- vax conspiracies were considered holistic and progressive. The federal government was dishonest and provided a military-industrial complex with an imperialist war machine designed to kill Middle Easterners only and profit from it. Americans were being killed for profit by big pharma. Wal-Mart was the people’s enemy. The Sept. 11 attacks were either deserved blowback for the crimes committed by the West or a blatant plot by the Bush administration to steal oil.  ,
In this environment, Jones flourished as a niche contrarian documentary filmmaker among the left, where your troubled cousins were probably pushing you to watch ripped DVDs of” Loose Change.” He was n’t a mainstream leftist voice, nor did he claim to be one, but he would have appealed to a particular, unhinged temperament of the progressive blogosphere at the time.  ,
Jones allegedly managed to con his specialized popularity into audience segments for big stars like Charlie Sheen and Buzz Aldrin. ”  , Filmmaker Richard Linklater addressed the inclusion of Jones in his films”, Waking Life “and” A Scanner Darkly, “in a 2018 interview with The Daily Beast.
He deflected that, at the time, the young Texan shock jock” was n’t so virulent, he just had all that energy,” and that he” just thought he was kind of funny. He acknowledged that the two were merely ideological bedfellows at the time, but he claimed Jones was” this hyper guy that we’d all kind of make fun of.”  ,
During the Bush-Cheney era, I had a brief conversation with him. He has always positioned himself as opposed. So when you’re anti, he’s your bedfellow.”
Jones has also written about how”, In Hollywood in the mid- 2000s, I was a hero to the left for having infiltrated the secretive]mostly Republican ] summer gatherings at the Bohemian Grove. ”  ,
the Party out of power embraced
Given that Jones ‘ conspiracies appeal to the party that feels out of control, it is much more common to see him embrace them now that three years have passed. His broadcasts in recent years focus on the dangers of vaccines, election integrity, the dangers of transhumanism, pedophilic human trafficking, and the” globalist “plans for a post- human new world order.  ,
Meanwhile, the left is currently filled with people who” trust the experts, “because they are confident that their elected representatives can be trusted. Ironically, the left spent the Trump administration spreading conspiracy theories about Russian collusion and the 2016 election, and buying false claims repeatedly about everything from the Jussie Smollett hoax to Covid’s 19 natural origin theories that are now widely accepted to be false.
There are still conspiracy theorists on the left who assert that Bernie Sanders has been defrauded of his deserved nomination or that right-wing special interest groups control Washington, but they are fringe and purportedly support Big Pharma and corporations when attacked by the left’s anti-vaxxers and anti-woke crowd. Leftists still believe in fascist and corrupt CIA influence in almost all areas of political life, according to the more militant” Tankie” leftists.  ,
However, Jones no longer appeals to the fringe left because the broader left no longer does so, and he only appeals to those who feel powerless against the status quo. As one of his fans told The Dallas Morning News“, He has n’t changed dramatically ]since the late 1990s ] and is still the firebrand who will shout at his audience to try and motivate them to pay attention. While the traditional left and right have always had their own distinct subgenres of endemic conspiracy theorists ( John Birch Society, Oliver Stone films, etc. ),” Jones continues to serve as what he always was: a supporter of the opposition.  ,
Tyler Hummel is a Nashville- based freelance journalist, a College Fix Fellow, and a member of the Music City Film Critics Association. He has contributed to The Dispatch, The New York Sun, Hollywood in Toto, The Pamphleteer, Law and Liberty, Main Street Nashville, North American Anglican, Living Church, and Geeks Under Grace.
