** Warning: some comments transcribed in this article may shock. **
The post-Trump era could have been that of the return to glory of Alex Jones. In fact, it is starting to look more and more like the end for the conspiracy pope in the United States. All the more reason to look back on his journey.
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Sentenced to pay the modest sum of 965 million dollars in damages to several families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, for having falsely claimed that they were actors who had invented this tragedy, Alex Jones yet had a avenue in front of him to become again this guru of the new American right.
This stature has assured him an influence that is remarkable to say the least and above all has laid the foundations of the QAnon world in which we are now. So let’s take a look back at his journey.
Who is Alex Jones?
Telling Alex Jones is above all integrating the before and after 2016 and the election of Trump to the American presidency.
On December 2, 2015, Donald Trump, then a candidate for the Republican primary, told the Mr. Jones online show that he would never let him down. Then, within hours of his election to the presidency in November 2016, facing Hillary Clinton, Jones declares that “the goal of my life, of my career, is finally accomplished”.
“I will continue. But now that I realize it, just to tell you, I won,” he exclaims.
Alex Jones is an American conservative radio commentator based in Austin, Texas. He is the host of Alex Jones Show and runs the site InfoWars.coma site recognized by many players, including the verification site Politifact.com, as fuel for conspiracy theories and fake news.
Student of Rush Limbaugh
Born in 1974 and having climbed the stairs of a style of conservative commentary made famous in the United States by the now deceased Rush Limbaugh, Jones has always been known to have been heavily influenced by the Waco, Oklahoma, massacre that ‘ he analyzes as “confirmation of the inexorable progress of invisible and evil forces” (as a reminder, this slaughter is linked by the United States federal government to the headquarters of the Davidian sect).
He began his radio career in 1996, in Austin, with the show The Final Edition to then create the Alex Jones Show, concurrently with its service, which in 1999 became the website InfoWars.
Screenshot / Matthew Mahon / DER SPIEGEL
Alex Jones posing for the German magazine “Der Spiegel”
The influence of September 11, 2001
It was then that September 11, 2001 happened. He then took the lead by making himself one of the strongest promoters of the theory according to which this attack was a plot either by the Bush administration to promote the “New World Order or from Israel.
From there, the ecosystem InfoWars is accelerating its growth, boosted by conspiracy theories and the explosion of the internet and free online video content.
More and more absurd theories
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jones has been the promoter of many theories, all more or less preposterous, such as the falsehood of the Sandy Hook shooting, of course, Hillary Clinton being a demon, the juice boxes of fruits that would cause children to become gay, the use of a gay bomb by the American army, George Soros who would be a goblin, Justin Bieber who would be an instrument of satanics to vampirize the conscience of young people, etc.
Nevertheless, if he is the instigator and the broadcaster of these eccentric theories, he also uses them to incite his army of followers to attack his enemies.
In the context of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a Jones supporter, following a discussion on his show, wished to storm, heavily armed, the pizzeria where the plot was allegedly taking place.
As a reminder, Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory according to which the democratic elites, like the Clintons or the Obamas, and the American financial elites, like George Soros or Bill Gates, meet in the basement of a pizzeria in the region of Washington DC to sacrifice children after raping them and draining them of their blood to use as an elixir of eternal youth.
Bullying and banishment
This example is one of many where Jones was also the driving force behind strategies of intimidation by his supporters to fight his enemies as he declared victory following the election of Donald Trump.
Banned since 2018 from many platforms such as YouTube, Twitter or Spotify, heavily condemned for his lies on Sandy Hook, his legal setbacks are not over.
He is thus still being attacked for defamation by one of the people who captured on video the murder of a left-wing protester by a neo-Nazi during the events in Charlottetown in 2017. He had accused the latter, Brennan Gilmore, of being an agent of the “deep state”.
The Capitol bombing
He is also summoned to appear before the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol on January 6 to talk about his participation in the planning of the events.
The evening before the assault, he was present on an adjacent stage with members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, white supremacist militias, and shouted not knowing “how this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they have one”.
Always admired… despite everything
Despite this, he still remains championed in the media by figures like Fox News star host Tucker Carlson, who calls him a better journalist than many reporters in the mainstream media. And politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene keep visiting her, bringing her more views and traffic, and therefore ad revenue.
Meanwhile, his online presence continues: his memes, his new products and guides of all kinds and his donation platforms ensure him a continuous flow of income which will perhaps allow him to pay the many compensations he will have to make. .