Will we really miss Alex Jones?


No.

Here’s a mind-blowing compilation of his conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, what worries me most isn’t that this guy raves online all the time, and has some incredibly stupid ideas…but that there are people who believe him. They don’t disappear when Jones is banned from YouTube.

And you do realize there is now a large idiocy vacuum on YouTube that people will rush to fill?

Comments

  1. mirrorfield says

    Alex Jones might not be missed by everyone, but everyone will eventually regret the precedent set for political corporate censorship. And I have strong suspicions that this example will be held as prima facie evidence in anti-trust actions in near future…

  2. says

    This is not truly a precedent for political censorship. Jones traffics in defamation and slander, which is the appropriate justification for banning him. Unfortunately on my way to work this morning I heard a story on National Pubic Radio that just about had me driving into the ditch. There’s a right wing conference going on, hosted by Eric Erickson, where they’re complaining that the Internet companies — Facebook, Google etc. — have a left wing bias. The reporter just channeled their claims that the tech companies censor right wing opinion — without giving a single example or explaining how they do it. He channeled the claim that they ban Alex Jones but they don’t ban any “far left extremists” — again without giving a single example of what is meant by a “far left extremist” or why they should be banned. The issue with Jones is not that he’s “far right.” If the right wants to claim him then they condemn themselves. Apparently they do.

  3. willj says

    Obama and Hillary smell like sulfur? WTAF. I can’t take it any more. Whiskey is the answer.

  4. rayceeya says

    Couldn’t make it past the first minute or so because I could feel my brain cells deteriorating. It was giving me a head ache.

  5. FossilFishy (NOBODY, and proud of it!) says

    It’s worse than just having someone take his place. His getting punted will be taken by his fan base as confirmation that Jones is right. Such is the conspiracy mindset.

  6. F.O. says

    It’s worse than just having someone take his place. His getting punted will be taken by his fan base as confirmation that Jones is right. Such is the conspiracy mindset.

    If they needed a confirmation they wouldn’t be his fan in the first place.
    TBH I don’t think he gained much.

    Also, availability heuristics: the less visible he is, the less people will believe him.

  7. FossilFishy (NOBODY, and proud of it!) says

    In the long term, yes, cutting into Jones’ media reach is a good thing. I was thinking of more immediate consequences. I fear there’s a real possibility of someone shooting up YouTube again over this. Though to be clear. I’m glad he’s finally being pulled, it’s the right thing to do.

    And you’ve got it backwards about his true believers: it’s big that they don’t need confirmation, it’s that everything is a confirmation. Especially negative consequences for conspiracy beliefs.

  8. Ragutis says

    I’m not up on all these social media whatamacallits, but I don’t believe there’s any he could move to that would bring him a significant portion of his former audience. He’ll endure for a while on radio, twitter, and maybe some small or new platform willing to put up with him to grow their user base, but I’m guessing (OK, hoping) he’ll go the way of Glenn Beck and just fade away. *

    Sadly though, his type of thinking, and the paranoia and gullibility that typified his fan base isn’t going to go away any time soon. There’s a “batshit wacko” vacuum just waiting for another incendiary nut to step up and fill it. Actually, thinking about the comparison I just made, he kind of jumped into Beck’s shoes and cranked it up a few notches. The next one is as likely as not to be even worse and more dangerous.

    *Then again, there’s whispers Sarah Huckabilly Sanders is going to be leaving the White House soonish…

  9. Akira MacKenzie says

    Since this news, I’ve noticed more than a little hand-wringing on the Left about hypothetical reprisals from the Right. Not just about what they’ll do now that Jones have been deprived of some of his taller soapboxes. I’ve even heard some are afraid what will happen if we continue to investigate Trump’s criminal actions, particularly if it results in his removal from office.

    We can not live in fear of our enemies. Ever since Oklahoma City the mainstream left has pussyfooted around the far right, afraid of another terrorist retaliation if we took on their militias, cults, and hate-groups. Now, with the advent of Trump presidency, the rise of the alt.right, and the resurgence of organized racism, we see what our general reluctance to legally deal with white supremacists, Christian fundamentalists, gun nuts, and conspiracy kooks as the dangers they are has wrought.

    If pissing off the deplorables ultimately leads to riot or even civil war, then so be it, but we should not cede ground to them in any way. They minute we back off in the face of their evil, they win.

  10. Ragutis says

    OK, I figured I’d give the video a try…

    I got about halfway though.

    Holy crap. I knew he was out there, but I never realized he was OUT THERE. He’s in the friggin Oort Cloud of sanity. The man is either the greatest scam artist I’ve seen, or is in desperate need of an intervention or a Baker Act. Unfortunately, I suspect everyone around him is just happy to be tapped into his cash cow.

    That said, “Inter-dimensional Interlopers” is going on my list of potential band band names.

  11. Golgafrinchan Captain says

    For added amusement and sanity-protection, try watching any of his videos with no sound.

    He looks like someone who’s been on a weeklong stimulant bender.

  12. says

    Every second of his rabid drivel was leaching my sanity… even as background noise, I couldn’t get halfway through.

    There’s a market for this nonsense; they are known as ‘blockbuster’ movies.

    This type of storytelling is not necessarily to bad effect; recall Rod Serling’s graceful and humane storytelling in The Twilight Zone.

  13. Ragutis says

    Golgafrinchan Captain

    7 August 2018 at 11:57 am

    For added amusement and sanity-protection, try watching any of his videos with no sound.

    He looks like someone who’s been on a weeklong stimulant bender.

    Even with sound, I find myself wondering just how much he spent on cocaine. Then again, coke is probably yet another U.N./New World Order/Reptilian/Deep State/Bohemian/Bilderberg plot, so maybe he’s snorting dried and powdered cow manure. I can’t think of another way for him to get so full of bullshit.

  14. Jeremy Shaffer says

    mirrorfield at 2:

    Alex Jones might not be missed by everyone, but everyone will eventually regret the precedent set for political corporate censorship.

    The only real precedent set here by YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, and so forth is that people like Jones can spend years violating the terms of service they agreed to in order to use those platforms and get away with it before some number-counter calculates keeping them around will be worse for them than the inevitable whines of political censorship from the right-wing.

    Really, the precedent you express concern for was set some time ago when the right-wing started their cries of “liberal bias” in the media, and news companies responded by altering their reporting in order to give a “balanced” covering, which would only favor the right and inevitably shut many left-leaning voices out. For the most part, we’ll see an endless parade of how horrible Jones is being treated and censored, but not much will be said on the ceaseless defamation, distortions, falsehoods, and outright insanity that is the defining features of his content- aside from hawking snake oil- or the above mention that his removal was due to his consistent violations of those platforms’ terms of service. It’ll be a shallow depiction as punishment for being a part of the political right, and the lack of substance to those claims will see little light, because that was the precedent set long ago.

    Instead of worrying about how the right will retaliate, maybe we should be setting our efforts on how we can reverse the above so that maybe the person who fills the void left by Jones will have a harder time gaining traction.

  15. Dunc says

    He’s also a raging hypocrite. The terms of service for InfoWars state:

    We may review and delete any content you post on the Website or elsewhere utilizing our Services or System if we determine, in our sole discretion, that the content violates the rights of others, is not appropriate for the Website, or otherwise violates this Agreement..

    […]

    You will not post anything libelous, defamatory, harmful, threatening, harassing, abusive, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise illegal.

    […]

    If you violate these rules, your posts and/or user name will be deleted.

    Remember: you are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted. All civilizations have rules and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe.

    [My italics]

  16. prae says

    Holy faucking crap.

    I barely ever heard the names “Alex Jones” and “Infowars”, and just assumed it’s just another american right-wing propaganda channel like FOX news.

    I had no idea such levels of tinfoilhattery were even possible. And people actually believe him? Well, so much for humanity. Let’s hope the rats or ravens or squid or whatever comes next has more luck at the whole “sapience” thing.

  17. Sakura No Seirei, Zoë, born into the purple says

    There are actually people on Mumsnet, of all places, crying havoc and claiming that Alex Jones is being unfairly silenced, ‘Freeze Peach, freeze peech, etc, etc.’.

    Mind you, the same people are also virulently anti-trans and post some hate content of their own over there, so perhaps it’s no surprise they’re so keen on keeping Alex Jones on the big social media platforms. Fellow travellers and all that.

  18. ck, the Irate Lump says

    Marcus Ranum wrote:

    I suspect we’re not rid of him, yet. He’s going to pop up somewhere else with a full-on martyrdom show.

    That’d be different from his current full-on martyrdom show… how? He’s been regularly predicting his imminent assassination for years. Regardless, Twitter’s @jack has committed to ensuring that Jones retains his platform, and took a jab at the press for not properly countering Jone’s bullshit, so it’s not like he’s out of public platforms to promote his shit on.

  19. secondtofirstworld says

    There’s a website I frequent for laughs when people post fail questions, you know the ones where common sense applies (like, can you get pregnant from the bedsheet if others just had sex on it).

    Here’s my translation on one guy’s take on why Jones was banned: Alex Jones spoke the truth about the Illuminati, posted up to date analyses and now this!

    Skeptics have been saying if the deep state exists, why can’t we talk about it? An up to date posting, an intelligent person gets banned from speaking in the land of the free only because he writes about the Illuminati. End quote.

    It’s clear this guy never heard him talking about school shooting being false flags or encouraging people in harassment. But to him and thousands of others non-Americans whose lives he doesn’t ruin directly, he will be missed.

  20. blf says

    It’s clear this guy never heard him talking about school shooting being false flags or encouraging people in harassment.

    It’s not clear at all the guy never heard Jones bellow those nonsenses; not-mentioning ≠ not-hearing. He(I assume) perhaps hasn’t heard, or heard but forgot, or heard but didn’t understand or doesn’t consider it relevant (especially to his Illuminati hypothesis), or heard but somehow incorporated it into his Illuminati delusion.

  21. secondtofirstworld says

    @blf #25:

    There were articles about false flag myth creation but by the time Sandy Hook happened most of the media has been handed over to state control, so unless they translated it, it’s very possible these conspiracy nuts are unaware. The core problem is, and that website has been run over with in the politics section (just like Reddit prior to moderation) that through the media they totally control the narrative. Since they introduce these characters as being anti-immigration (and one weekly magazine even claims Jones criticizes Trump, which he doesn’t) the population doesn’t really care, not even if anti-immigration means them immigrating. ‘Cause you know, we’re special cookies, having us is a favor to you. Seriously, I personally know at least 5 guys who will tell you that because our patriots prevented postpartum infections, invented the biro (in Argentina, where it got funding), discovered Vitamin C, invented the Rubik’s cube that practically makes owe us thanks eternally, and this why we totally can’t be xenophobic, ’cause, sure, that’s how critical thinking works.

    If the world you have to live in (and I did) is black and white, it’s no surprise the rumor spreads like wildfire that Jones was removed for being an outspoken critic, a trait that liberals can’t stand. The saddest thing is, I wish I could say funniest is when the prevalence of an ideology is being tied to parties representing them. A low support automatically means low existence and not intricate interconnectedness of decades-long communism that persecuted free thought and thus only centered in big cities. Jones’s base is the blue collar, bluegrass world (no disrespect to folk music), so it’s only natural similar communities will rather listen to him than to reason. I miss the days when he was Cenk Uygur’s biggest problem.