From Alex Jones to Trump | The Press

There’s a thread leading from Alex Jones to Donald Trump. From the most vicious conspiracy theories to the denial of an election result.

And by separate paths, American justice is advancing towards these two termites of democracy.

On Friday, Jones was ordered to pay 49 million to the parents of a 6-year-old child murdered at his school. On Monday, the FBI raided Trump’s estate in Florida.

Which report ? To go back to the sources of Trumpism, you have to go through Alex Jones, probably one of the worst media scoundrels this country has ever known.

Highly impressed as a youth by anti-Communist theories, Jones really started his career after the Oklahoma City bombing – where an American terrorist blew up a federal building, killing 168 people and injuring more than 800. He claimed that the act was the act of the federal government itself. Just like the attacks of September 11, 2001. He has already said that chemicals were introduced into the water of cities to increase the number of homosexuals.

The great propagator of false rumors on Hillary Clinton (Pizzagate, etc.), it is also him.

But what really made him famous was the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.

Already, Jesse was an 11-pound baby at birth. At 6, he was the tallest in his class. When the killer entered the classroom, he stood in front of him to arrest him, and according to the police, this saved the lives of nine other students.

Jesse Lewis was 6 when he was shot, along with 19 other children and 6 teachers at this infamous Connecticut school.

He was treated to a funeral worthy of a head of state or a war hero.

What happened to the parents of this child in the 10 years that followed is a compendium of the media and political drift of the United States – which infects the whole world.

Jones had founded InfoWars, an “alternative news” site that claimed to say what the mainstream media didn’t. This killing never happened, he said. Comedians played fake parents. It was actually a vast set-up to allow the government to impose gun control and seize citizens’ guns.

In the years that followed, bereaved parents received tons of insulting and threatening letters. Because thanks to the internet, Jones had a “national” and rabid following.

Parents had to change their address to escape the harassment.

A few had the courage to pursue Jones. And last week, a Texas jury ordered him to pay the parents $49 million. This amount may be reduced on appeal. But for once, Jones faced his victims in a court of law.

There’s been a lot of media coverage about the moment when the parents’ attorney reveals to Jones that he’s in possession of all of his text messages, mistakenly released by his own attorney. Jones was caught in the act of perjury several times.

But the most extraordinary moment, I would say the most political, was when Jesse’s mother, Scarlett Lewis, testified. As Jones was not obliged to attend the trial, he had taken great care never to be in the presence of the parents. He even made shows by broadcasting the trial, which he commented on live. But this time, this mother was facing Jones, for the first time, and looking at him testifying. And very calmly, she spoke to him.

“The truth, the truth, you have to agree… It’s a difficult truth, nobody would believe that, I don’t want it to be true either. My son existed. Does it also need someone to perpetuate the idea that it’s a hoax? Do you think I’m an actress? Do you understand what you are doing? Why are you doing this? For money ?

“It’s unbelievable that we have to implore you, and punish you to stop saying it…”

She not only expressed the incredible pain that this harassment caused the parents. She showed that if there is no longer any truth, if absolutely everything can be denied, there is no longer any institution that holds, because there is no longer trust, neither between people , or between citizens and the state. There is no more security, even.

It was no longer political theory. It was embodied, lived down to his guts.

Which brings us to Donald Trump, a big consumer of InfoWars. Trump granted several interviews to Jones. The conspirator was even happy to hear almost word for word his sentences taken up by Trump – for example, the idea that the media is “the enemy of the people”. Or that Ted Cruz’s father murdered John F. Kennedy.

One of Trump’s main strategists, fellow scoundrel Steve Bannon, is also an avowed fan of Jones, calling him “one of the greatest political thinkers since the Founding Fathers.”

All of Trump’s talk about the “Deep State”, the state within the state, which would really control the government, is pure conspiracy.

But of course, the most serious is Trump’s unprecedented denial of the mathematical outcome of the election. The so-called electoral “fraud” that never happened. He led more than 40% of Republican voters in this idea. Many prominent candidates now claim that the vote-counting system in the United States – thus the very basis of the system – is rigged. These “Jonesian” ideas, once marginal, are now accepted by large segments of the population. Because the internet has given them a tremendous spreading effect. And because Trump was the official political relay.

Will Jones’ conviction change him? He is banned from major platforms, but he still has his media entries. On Monday, he was saying that Obama is plotting a terrorist attack to get Democrats re-elected in the midterm elections.

But at least, after all these years, in a courtroom, under oath, he was confronted, unmasked, condemned. It’s not nothing.

Will Trump be charged with incitement or some other crime? Maybe not. But the federal police (whose director he himself chose) and the justice system do their job.

It’s already that.