Since Alex Jones is in the new lately with some of his rhetoric being labeled as hate speech and pulled from Facebook and Youtube I thought this question topical.
While 99.999 percent of sane humans think Alex Jones is a crackpot and avoid his brand of “news/snake oil” at every turn… I have always wondered if HE actually believes ANY of his wacko theories?
How much is just an act where he goes home at night, has dinner and laughs at the miniscule minority of uneducated sheep that spread his lies while he counts his money?
I mean it is one thing to have far from center ideologies like Ted Cruz or Maxine Waters… and from an “entertainment” perspective I would posit that Rush Limbaugh believes a significant percentage of what he says on air.
But surely Alex Jones is just playing to his (insane) base, right?
He does not really believe that:
Glenn Beck is a CIA Operative
The Government can and is controlling weather and creating natural disasters
Bill Gates is trying to wipe out minorities through eugenics
Sandy Hook was a “false flag operation” with crisis actors acting as the dead
The Government is putting chemicals in our water to turn people homosexual
I have friends who often talk about how shady our government is and I often agree with that assessment. When it comes to things like corruption, lobbyists buying votes and burying legislation, coverups for greed and incompetence (i.e. Flint Water Crisis) and general pandering and doing what gets you re-elected even when it is opposed to what is right.
Heck I can even LISTEN (but not agree) with those that question the climate change, the JFK assassination (The Warren Report WAS flawed) or that we did not go to Moon (we did) but I find it really hard to believe that a single human with anything over an 80 IQ would actually believe anything coming from that guys mouth, including the man spewing the crap.
You should have listed his 9/11 CT as well as it’s one he’s pretty well known for. I actually did an IMHO thread on this a year or so ago and the consensus seemed to be that…he’s a huge asshole who doesn’t believe everything he’s saying. My own proof was from a John Oliver episode where John talks about all of the product placement in his show. Once you really start looking into it and know what to look for (and, full disclosure, I haven’t watched or listened to his show, nor his YouTube videos, so the most I saw was what John showed) it’s pretty apparent he’s in it for the money.
I did not forget about the 9/11 conspiracy, I left if out because while I personally find it offensive and nearly as unbelieveable as Sandy Hook, Chemtrails and Gay Water it has - unfortunately - been taken somewhat into the mainstream (thanks to Jessie Ventura among many others).
It is however the modern day equivilent of the grassy knoll so i agree…sadly… it is relevant.
There’s an old joke about a guy who decides on a prank where he spreads a rumor that there’s free money being given out on the other side of town. The prank is successful, and bigger and bigger crowds of people head over to the other side of town, talking about the free money being given out there, adding additional detail as these things go. After a while, the prankster starts to think, hey, maybe there really is free money being given out on the other side of town, and heads over there himself so as not to miss out.
I don’t know anything about Alex Jones specifically. But I think in general that many people who start off with an incentive to spread these types of theories eventually come to believe them to a large extent, regardless of their original motive. They find themselves immersed in arguments and “evidence” in favor of their theories, and in the company of other people who believe them, and - perhaps most significantly of all - after arguing passionately in favor of the theories against others who dispute them their thinking adjusts to conform to what they’re saying.
I refer you to the book Them: Adventures With Extremists by Jon Ronson, published almost twenty years ago, in which the author, then a Guardian journalist and now some sort of Hollywood producer, went to meet various self proclaimed extremists. David Icke. The father from the Ruby Ridge incident. An Islamic extremist, pre-9/11. And a pre-fame Alex Jones. The gatecrashed Bohemian Grove together. He recounts Alex Jones running out to the street to shout at a phone company worker who he thought was sabotaging his internet connection for the Illuminati. I’m inclined to thing that, at least back then, he believed his stuff.
Jones has learned how to profit off of his lunacy. He’s got the best gig. Be crazy as hell, and have your own talk show. Combining those two things is lucrative.
He’s been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This is a rare diagnosis because people with NPD do not seek help, but he was forced into therapy. The NPD makes him committed to his lies. He’ll double, triple down on each and every one of them.
With NPD it’s whatever works, in the moment, for HIM. Belief isn’t really the right word.
Trump is also a Narcissist, although not actually diagnosed as far as I know.
My take on it is, he started out believing a lot of this crap, because hey, young people often believe lots of crap, but when he realized he could make millions of dollars off other people who believed this crap, he knowingly went all-in on just making stuff up. I think the most telling anecdote is this one:
If he really did believe all this “Obama is a literal demon!” business, why would he be worried about the prospect of Obama losing the election? That should have been his greatest desire, but it wasn’t.
Or it means he’s willing to sacrifice his kids’ health in order to avoid the “Alex Jones vaccinates his kids!” scandal headlines.
Whether he believes any of his crap or not, what I’m pretty sure of is, he’s a sociopath, who basically doesn’t care who he hurts in order to succeed. Even if it’s his own kids.
I’m reminded of a 20th century dictator who said that the big lie needs to be repeated over and over. If you say it enough, people will believe it. I think people like Jones understand that.
To summarize various anecdotes I’ve seen from people in the infotainment world who have interacted with Alex Jones off-stage, the consensus seems to be:
He’s not as crazy as he appears to be on-air. A lot of it is an act.
