Profiles in Courage: Alex Jones

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Alexander Emric Jones^{[Note 1]} (born February 11, 1974)^[1][2][3] is an American radio show host and conspiracy theorist.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} He hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas, which airs on the Genesis Communications Network^[9] and shortwave radio station WWCR^[10] across the United States and online.^[11][12] His website, Infowars.com, is a conspiracy theories and fake news website.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18]}

Jones has been the center of many controversies, including his promotion of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories,^[19] and his aggressive opposition to gun control in a debate with Piers Morgan.^[20][21] He has accused the U.S. government of being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing,^[22] the September 11 attacks,^[23] and the filming of fake Moon landings to hide NASA's secret technology.^[24][25][26]

He has claimed that several governments and big business have colluded to create a "New World Order"through "manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria".^[27] Jones has described himself as a libertarian and paleoconservative,^[28][29] and has been described by others as conservative, right-wing, alt-right^[30] and far right.^[31][32]

New York magazine described Jones as "America's leading conspiracy theorist",^[33] and the Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as "the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America".^[34] When asked about these labels, Jones said that he is "proud to be listed as a thought criminal against Big Brother".^[33]

In addition to Infowars, Alex Jones also operates the websites NewsWars and PrisonPlanet.

 

 

Early life

Jones was born in 1974 in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall and the city of Austin, Texas. His father is a dentist^[35] and his mother a homemaker.^[22] In his video podcasts, he reports he is of Irish,^[36] German, Welsh, mostly English, and partially Native American descent. He was a lineman on his high school's football team and graduated from Anderson High School in Austin in 1993.^[22] As a teenager, he read conservative journalist Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which had a profound influence on him and which he calls "the easiest-to-read primer on The New World Order".^[37] After high school, Jones briefly attended Austin Community College but dropped out.^[38]

Career

Jones began his career in Austin with a live, call-in format public-access cable television program.^[39] In 1996, Jones switched format to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9 FM).^[40] Ron Paul was running for Congress and was a guest on his show several times.^[41]In his early shows, Jones frequently talked about his belief that the United States government was behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,^[42] using the incident to put down a growing "states' rights movement".^[43] In 1998, he released his first film, America Destroyed By Design.

In 1998, Jones organized a successful effort to build a new Branch Davidian church, as a memorial to those who died during the 1993 fire that ended the government's siege of the original Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas.^[44] He often featured the project on his public-access television program and claimed that David Koreshand his followers were peaceful people who were murdered by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during the siege.^[40] In the same year, he was removed from a George W. Bush rally at Bayport Industrial District, Texas. Jones interrupted governor Bush's speech, demanding that the Federal Reserve and Council on Foreign Relations be abolished. Journalist David Weigel, reporting on the incident, said Jones "seemed to launch into public events as if flung from another universe."^[45]

In 1999, Jones tied with Shannon Burke for that year's "Best Austin Talk Radio Host" poll, as voted by The Austin Chronicle readers.^[46] Later that year, he was fired from KJFK-FM for refusing to broaden his topics. His views were making the show hard to sell to advertisers, according to the station's operations manager.^[40] Jones stated:

It was purely political, and it came down from on high ... I was told 11 weeks ago to lay off [Bill] Clinton, to lay off all these politicians, to not talk about rebuilding the church, to stop bashing the Marines, A to Z.^[40]

He began broadcasting his show by Internet connection from his home.

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Marcel Fontaine, who was falsely declared a suspect in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting by conspiracy-theorist website InfoWars, is now suing Alex Jones for more than a million dollars. 

Fontaine, a young man from Massachusetts, filed suit in the district court of Travis County, Texas on Monday against InfoWars head Alex Jones; InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels; InfoWars LLC; and Free Speech Systems, LLC, InfoWars’ parent company. The suit charges that InfoWars “irreparably tainted” his reputation in a report that falsely claimed he was suspected as the Stoneman Douglas shooter. 

Daniels’ story about the shooting, published Feb. 14, included a picture of Fontaine.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz