The latest confession comes from a lackey of Alex Jones, a guy named Josh Owens. Now that Jones’ empire of lies is crumbling, he finally steps forward to tell all.
I began listening to Jones’s radio show — the flagship program of what is now a conspiracist media empire with an audience that until recently surpassed a million people — in the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency. The American public had been sold a war through outright fabrications; the economy was in free fall thanks to Wall Street greed and the failure of Washington regulators. Most of the mainstream media was caught flat-footed by these developments, but Jones seemed to have an explanation for everything. He railed against government corruption and secrecy, the militarization of police. He confronted those in power, traipsed through the California redwoods to expose the secretive all-male meeting of elites at Bohemian Grove and even appeared in two Richard Linklater films as himself, screaming into a megaphone.
But it wasn’t the politics that initially drew me in. Jones had a way of imbuing the world with mystery, adding a layer of cinematic verisimilitude that caught my attention. Suddenly, I was no longer a bored kid attending an overpriced art school. I was Fox Mulder combing through the X-Files, Rod Serling opening a door to the Twilight Zone, even Rosemary Woodhouse convinced that the neighbors were members of a ritualistic cult. I believed that the world was strategically run by a shadowy, organized cabal, and that Jones was a hero for exposing it.
I had my limits. I can’t say I ever believed his avowed theory that Sandy Hook was a staged event to push for gun control; to Jones, everything was a “false flag.” I didn’t believe that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama smelled like sulfur because of their proximity to hell or that Planned Parenthood was run by “Nazi baby killers.” But it was easy to brush off these fever dreams as eccentricities and excesses — not the heart of the Alex Jones operation but mere diversions.
Owens was a conspiracy theorist who accepted a job from the most far-out conspiracy theorist around. He did not have qualms when he was paid large sums of money, or when Jones threw even more money at him, or when Jones abused animals or his employees, or when he was dragged off to record imaginary Islamic no-go zones. There were all these things he now says he didn’t believe, but he edited videos about them anyway, and willingly spread the nonsense to the populace.
Now he claims he was made uneasy, but it didn’t stop him from propping up the Alex Jones garbage heap for 5 years.
I’m afraid, Josh Owens, that you are not forgiven. Some of us knew all along that he was a ratbag lunatic, it’s deplorable that it took you so long to see the obvious.
Poetic justice would be a leopard eating Owens’ face.
quel pauvre léopard!
rats and ships
uncle frogy
Leni Riefenstahl.
(Just a reminder to all those dumbf*ck, anything-for-a-buck commercial artists out there who sleep through their art history classes.)
I recall Jon Ronson was involved somewhat in Alex Jones getting into Bohemian Grove, a place for a weird midsummer elite frat party with Vegas rules. The area goes back to the late 1800s and elitist redwood conservation I think.
Ronson’s book Them was about the Build a Bears…wait Bilderberg meetings named for a quaint inn where it was first held. Just an informal get together with Chatham House rules, which allows for freer discussion amongst elites, but lends itself to paranoid delusional conspiracy narratives. A Rothschild may have been present. So what? Zbig’s elitist incarnation Trilateral Commission was a less Alantocentric version including Japan. How much actual direct power did either group ever have, or consensus for that matter? I am not that opposed to elites comparing notes on boring globalist matters. Not quite Plato’s philosopher kings if a Southern Democratic governor from Plains GA attended.
The Bilderbergs and TriCom are hard to get a grasp of given all the BS spun about them by bombthrowing conspiracy cranks. Two decent sources are:
Informal Alliance: The Bilderberg Group and Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, 1952–1968 / Thomas W. Gijswijt
The Trilateral Commission and global governance : informal elite diplomacy, 1972-82 / Dino Knudsen.
Owens reminds me of all the seemingly moderate, radio talk show hosts who went from supporting George W. Bush and the war in Iraq to saying that George W. Bush “fooled us.” It’s convenient to suddenly shed responsibility and play the victim after being a willing participant for so long.
Given he started in high school to be attracted this comes across as religious conversion and then growing doubt but not enough to get out.
Does there need to be a Clergy Project for journalists and support staff?
@#6, Mark:
He reminds me of the self-proclaimed centrist Democratic nominees for President who went from voting for the invasion of Iraq and the creation of ICE to saying that Bush “fooled us” and that immigrants are human beings. One of them got the nomination in 2016, another is doing well at the polls now.