America's most famous conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, has captivated millions with his outrageous claims and media empire - but how did he become so influential?
In this episode, we uncover the controversial rise of Alex Jones, from fringe radio host to conspiracy kingpin, exploring his wild theories and their real-life consequences.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Alex Jones.
[00:00:27] He is America’s best known conspiracy theorist, and for the best part of 30 years he has been going on air and making what might seem to most people like outrageous claims, getting riled up about anything and everything.
[00:00:43] Early on in his career he might have seemed like an object of ridicule, but he has become a household name, listened to and trusted by millions of people all across the United States.
[00:00:55] So, let’s get right into it, and talk about America’s best-known conspiracy theorist.
[00:01:03] On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the United States woke up to the news that the World Trade Centre had collapsed, after being hit by two passenger jets.
[00:01:16] News anchors adopted a solemn tone, trying to process what was not just the deadliest terror attack on US soil, but the single most lethal terror attack in history.
[00:01:31] While the death toll was still mounting, journalists were urging caution, as it was still unclear who was behind the attack.
[00:01:41] In Austin, Texas, one radio host was not so balanced.
[00:01:48] On the same day as the attack, the then 27-year-old Alex Jones told his listeners that, and I’m quoting directly, there was "a 98 percent chance that this was a government-orchestrated controlled bombing."
[00:02:05] It might sound ludicrous, mad to think that someone would make this claim from the other side of the country as bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble, but listeners of Alex Jones’ radio show would not have been surprised.
[00:02:22] He had been repeating similar claims for years, any time there was any kind of major event, especially one that resulted in a major loss of life, he would go on air and say that he didn’t believe the official version.
[00:02:37] The government was lying, and he was the only one brave enough to speak truth to power.
[00:02:45] Now, back then Alex Jones was a mere radio host, still dismissed by most as a bit of a nut-job, a crazy guy who nobody should take seriously.
[00:02:58] But fast forward to today, and he has become a household name, he has grown his conspiracy theory radio show into a mini media empire, interviewed Donald Trump, been subsequently kicked off most major social media platforms, and made tens of millions of dollars in the process.
[00:03:19] His views might be wacky, they might be abhorrent, but they are absorbed by tens of millions of people every month, so his story is worth telling.
[00:03:31] He was born in 1974, and grew fascinated by conspiracy theories as a teenager.
[00:03:39] He was particularly influenced by a book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which puts forward the idea that a group of international bankers financed the communist revolution in Russia as an experiment, and that now there is a plot to impose a global government and mass social welfare programmes, so that the average person is dependent on and subservient to the government.
[00:04:07] Barmy, perhaps, but clearly if you believe it, it would completely change your worldview.
[00:04:14] And Alex Jones believed it, he bought it hook line and sinker.
[00:04:20] He dropped out of college, and almost immediately started his own call-in radio show, where anyone, anywhere, could call in to Jones and make some kind of ludicrous claim, and Jones would nod along and come up with some more conspiracy theories of his own.
[00:04:40] The main event that he was obsessed with at this time was the 1993 Waco siege, when a group belonging to a religious cult called the Branch Davidians refused to allow US government agents into their compound, and the result was a shootout and a fire that cost the lives of 86 people.
[00:05:03] Jones held the government responsible for this, saying that it was an example of US government aggression against its citizens.
[00:05:12] Now, you can learn more about this siege in episode number 229, on doomsday cults, but the short version is that the cult leader, David Koresh, was a mad and manipulative leader who didn’t let his subjects surrender, and who most people believe ultimately bears responsibility for the deaths.
[00:05:35] But that wasn’t what Jones thought.
[00:05:38] He continued to claim that Koresh was a peaceful innocent man who had been murdered by the US government, and he even attempted to raise funds to build a church as a memorial to those who had died in the siege.
[00:05:54] Ultimately, this, as well as his other controversial positions, got him fired from the radio show.
[00:06:02] He would claim it was because he was speaking truth to power, and politicians had ordered for him to be silenced, but his bosses would say it was because his views were so offensive that no companies wanted to advertise on his show.
[00:06:18] Strangely enough, being fired turned out to be the big break that he needed.
[00:06:24] He had been cancelled, before being cancelled was a thing, and this lit a fire in his belly, and allowed him to continue to put forward his point that he was being silenced by the mainstream, by the establishment.
[00:06:39] Shortly after being fired, in 1999, he launched a website called InfoWars.
[00:06:47] It was initially a place for Jones to publish his conspiracy theories, as well as for fans to buy copies of documentaries that he had made.
[00:06:56] But it continued to grow.
[00:06:59] A year later, he used it as a base for a new call-in radio show and he kept on doing the same thing, over and over.
[00:07:08] Every new news event became a subject of attack for Jones, a topic he would go on air about and say “no, I don’t buy the official government version”..
[00:07:19] 9/11 was an inside job, Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake, the Boston Bombing was staged by the FBI, Hillary Clinton was running a paedophile ring, the 2016 election was fraudulent, obviously COVID-19 was a tool of government suppression.
[00:07:39] Anything and everything that the US government was involved in was some sort of scam or trick intended to crush the average citizen, subvert personal liberty and bring forward the new world order.
[00:07:54] And surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, a segment of the US population lapped it up, they tuned in loyally to Alex Jones, week in, week out.
[00:08:08] His audience continued to grow, and according to one report, his website was getting more monthly visitors than mainstream websites like The Economist and Newsweek, with more than 10 million people visiting it every month.
[00:08:24] He had no problem attracting an audience. He was so passionate, he got so worked up while on air, shouting, banging his fist on the table and getting all hot and sweaty, and at least it seemed like he truly believed what he was saying, even if the evidence for his claims was flimsy at best, there wasn’t really much evidence for anything he claimed.
[00:08:50] But what he did have a problem with was attracting advertisers, companies that would pay for their adverts to play on his show.
[00:09:00] A radio show normally needs advertisers to function, to pay the bills.
[00:09:07] But, just like with his first radio show, he was a hot potato. Very few advertisers wanted to be associated with Alex Jones, given the nature of what he was saying.
[00:09:21] So, he had to get creative, or rather, desperate and criminal, depending on what way you look at it.
[00:09:29] He became his own advertiser, and InfoWars became full of commercials for products that it sold.
[00:09:38] And it wasn’t just t-shirts, mugs and novelty pens.
[00:09:43] The wonderful thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that you can sell your own solutions to the problems that you talk about in your show.
[00:09:53] During a segment on the show when Alex Jones would rail against how the government was putting chlorine in your drinking water, he would pause for a commercial break to tell you about how you could buy your own water filter from the InfoWars website, a water filter that had the official Alex Jones stamp of approval, and would protect you and your family from government interference.
[00:10:17] In the middle of talking about how the government is turning society weak, Alex Jones would talk to you about his testosterone supplements or drops that would help your brain function properly and help you think more clearly.
[00:10:33] At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he even developed his own supposed cure and preventive for the coronavirus, which, naturally, was available for sale on the InfoWars website.
[00:10:47] As it is a private company, the amount of money that he was making through this is a subject of much debate, but one estimate put it at around $10 million a year.
[00:11:00] He had found an audience that was prepared to listen to him religiously, and buy almost anything he sold, no matter its efficacy.
[00:11:11] And on the subject of efficacy, of how effective these treatments were, well that is also a subject of much debate.
[00:11:20] Looking closely at the label, almost everything that he sold, and that he still sells, on the InfoWars website, has not been approved by the FDA, the federal authority that regulates new medical supplements.
[00:11:36] But the beauty of an audience that trusts you more than the federal government is that they don’t trust these government approvals anyway, they trust you, so whether a drug or treatment is FDA-approved is somewhat immaterial, it doesn’t matter.
[00:11:54] Alex Jones clearly made a lot of money peddling everything from health supplements to dubious cures, but he would find that his past claims would come back to bite him.
[00:12:07] In terms of the subject of his previous claims, from the 9/11 attacks to Barack Obama having a fake birth certificate, you might listen to those and think “well, it’s just a crazy guy on the radio, nobody is really getting hurt by these claims”.
[00:12:24] But in one particular case, there were real victims.
[00:12:29] On December the 14th, 2012, a 20-year old man called Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother and then drove to the Sandy Hook elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children, before killing himself.
[00:12:46] To state the obvious, it was an act of pure evil that cost the lives of innocent children and inflicted untold heartache and pain on their loved ones.
[00:12:57] But Alex Jones, perhaps unsurprisingly now that you have got to know a little bit more about him, didn’t buy the official version.
[00:13:06] He claimed that the entire thing was a hoax, that it simply didn’t happen, and it was part of a government conspiracy to enact stricter gun controls in the US.
[00:13:19] So while the families and loved ones of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were trying to grieve, there was Alex Jones, not just telling his audience of millions that the entire thing didn’t happen, but using his captive audience to advertise all sorts of bogus supplements and pills at the same time.
[00:13:42] Jones would discover that there were consequences to his actions.
[00:13:48] In 2016, 4 years after the massacre, a group of the victims’ families as well as one FBI agent filed a defamation suit against Jones and InfoWars, and more legal cases followed.
[00:14:04] He was first ordered to pay $100,00 in compensation, but this would pale in comparison with what was to come.
[00:14:14] By 2022, spread over a bunch of different cases, he was ordered to pay a total $1.5 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of Sandy Hook.
[00:14:29] Now, Jones was rich, but he was not $1.5 billion rich.
[00:14:36] He appealed to his audience to help raise money, to fight “the new world order”, and pleaded with listeners and viewers to buy his products to “fight the info war”.
[00:14:49] It wasn’t enough, and he was forced to declare personal bankruptcy, to start afresh, but was allowed to retain ownership of his companies.
[00:15:01] Despite this court order, as of last year at least, he had not paid a cent in compensation, and was still living the high life, with one report alleging that he was spending $90,000 a month.
[00:15:16] Of course, most of his audience doesn’t care, he doesn’t have to worry about a backlash from them, as they listened to and lapped up his Sandy Hook massacre conspiracy theories in the first place.
[00:15:30] But, there were consequences of the Sandy Hook claims in terms of his ability to reach his audience. Starting in 2018, he was deplatformed, his social media accounts removed from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and practically every mainstream social media platform.
[00:15:50] To listen to Alex Jones today, you either have to go directly to the InfoWars website, or to similar supposed “freedom of speech” media platforms like Rumble. You have to specifically want to listen to Alex Jones, you probably won’t stumble across him.
[00:16:09] Now, listening to all of this, learning about the claims that he has repeatedly made and the real harm that this has done to real people, you might think “fair enough, he doesn’t deserve to have a presence on those kinds of platforms, it's a good thing that dangerous voices like his are marginalised”.
[00:16:28] Or you might think, “well, he might be a nasty piece of work, he might be a madman, but you can’t ban someone just because you don’t like what they say. That’s against the principle of free speech.”
[00:16:41] The reality is that the complete cancellation of Alex Jones might have reduced his available audience, people who might find him in the same way that you might discover someone new on YouTube or Instagram, but it has strengthened his relationship with the people who were already listening to him, the people who were already his dedicated followers.
[00:17:03] He had been telling them for years that mainstream politicians wanted to silence him, and there he was, removed from mainstream media platforms, exactly as he had predicted.
[00:17:16] Now that he is cancelled, he is in some ways even more free to say anything he wants. In fact, he is uncancellable because he cannot be more cancelled than he already is.
[00:17:30] And what’s more, his claims are validated, because exactly what he said would happen, happened; he was removed from the mainstream social media networks.
[00:17:41] If you spend any time watching his more recent stuff, and yes, he is still making shows almost every single day, it has got perhaps even more unhinged, even crazier, with one of his most recent videos claiming that a new world order is engineering a global famine.
[00:18:01] Anything the government does, he seems to reject as false, and he has made it his brand to be worried about anything and everything.
[00:18:11] It is certainly not surprising that he has been dubbed The Most Paranoid Man in America.
[00:18:19] OK then, that is it for Alex Jones.
[00:18:22] Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would certainly not recommend spending too much time watching anything by Alex Jones, but if you want to get a sense of the sort of things that he is talking about, well just Google Alex Jones, and you can decide for yourself.
[00:18:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Alex Jones.
[00:00:27] He is America’s best known conspiracy theorist, and for the best part of 30 years he has been going on air and making what might seem to most people like outrageous claims, getting riled up about anything and everything.
[00:00:43] Early on in his career he might have seemed like an object of ridicule, but he has become a household name, listened to and trusted by millions of people all across the United States.
[00:00:55] So, let’s get right into it, and talk about America’s best-known conspiracy theorist.
[00:01:03] On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the United States woke up to the news that the World Trade Centre had collapsed, after being hit by two passenger jets.
[00:01:16] News anchors adopted a solemn tone, trying to process what was not just the deadliest terror attack on US soil, but the single most lethal terror attack in history.
[00:01:31] While the death toll was still mounting, journalists were urging caution, as it was still unclear who was behind the attack.
[00:01:41] In Austin, Texas, one radio host was not so balanced.
[00:01:48] On the same day as the attack, the then 27-year-old Alex Jones told his listeners that, and I’m quoting directly, there was "a 98 percent chance that this was a government-orchestrated controlled bombing."
[00:02:05] It might sound ludicrous, mad to think that someone would make this claim from the other side of the country as bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble, but listeners of Alex Jones’ radio show would not have been surprised.
[00:02:22] He had been repeating similar claims for years, any time there was any kind of major event, especially one that resulted in a major loss of life, he would go on air and say that he didn’t believe the official version.
[00:02:37] The government was lying, and he was the only one brave enough to speak truth to power.
[00:02:45] Now, back then Alex Jones was a mere radio host, still dismissed by most as a bit of a nut-job, a crazy guy who nobody should take seriously.
[00:02:58] But fast forward to today, and he has become a household name, he has grown his conspiracy theory radio show into a mini media empire, interviewed Donald Trump, been subsequently kicked off most major social media platforms, and made tens of millions of dollars in the process.
[00:03:19] His views might be wacky, they might be abhorrent, but they are absorbed by tens of millions of people every month, so his story is worth telling.
[00:03:31] He was born in 1974, and grew fascinated by conspiracy theories as a teenager.
[00:03:39] He was particularly influenced by a book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which puts forward the idea that a group of international bankers financed the communist revolution in Russia as an experiment, and that now there is a plot to impose a global government and mass social welfare programmes, so that the average person is dependent on and subservient to the government.
[00:04:07] Barmy, perhaps, but clearly if you believe it, it would completely change your worldview.
[00:04:14] And Alex Jones believed it, he bought it hook line and sinker.
[00:04:20] He dropped out of college, and almost immediately started his own call-in radio show, where anyone, anywhere, could call in to Jones and make some kind of ludicrous claim, and Jones would nod along and come up with some more conspiracy theories of his own.
[00:04:40] The main event that he was obsessed with at this time was the 1993 Waco siege, when a group belonging to a religious cult called the Branch Davidians refused to allow US government agents into their compound, and the result was a shootout and a fire that cost the lives of 86 people.
[00:05:03] Jones held the government responsible for this, saying that it was an example of US government aggression against its citizens.
[00:05:12] Now, you can learn more about this siege in episode number 229, on doomsday cults, but the short version is that the cult leader, David Koresh, was a mad and manipulative leader who didn’t let his subjects surrender, and who most people believe ultimately bears responsibility for the deaths.
[00:05:35] But that wasn’t what Jones thought.
[00:05:38] He continued to claim that Koresh was a peaceful innocent man who had been murdered by the US government, and he even attempted to raise funds to build a church as a memorial to those who had died in the siege.
[00:05:54] Ultimately, this, as well as his other controversial positions, got him fired from the radio show.
[00:06:02] He would claim it was because he was speaking truth to power, and politicians had ordered for him to be silenced, but his bosses would say it was because his views were so offensive that no companies wanted to advertise on his show.
[00:06:18] Strangely enough, being fired turned out to be the big break that he needed.
[00:06:24] He had been cancelled, before being cancelled was a thing, and this lit a fire in his belly, and allowed him to continue to put forward his point that he was being silenced by the mainstream, by the establishment.
[00:06:39] Shortly after being fired, in 1999, he launched a website called InfoWars.
[00:06:47] It was initially a place for Jones to publish his conspiracy theories, as well as for fans to buy copies of documentaries that he had made.
[00:06:56] But it continued to grow.
[00:06:59] A year later, he used it as a base for a new call-in radio show and he kept on doing the same thing, over and over.
[00:07:08] Every new news event became a subject of attack for Jones, a topic he would go on air about and say “no, I don’t buy the official government version”..
[00:07:19] 9/11 was an inside job, Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake, the Boston Bombing was staged by the FBI, Hillary Clinton was running a paedophile ring, the 2016 election was fraudulent, obviously COVID-19 was a tool of government suppression.
[00:07:39] Anything and everything that the US government was involved in was some sort of scam or trick intended to crush the average citizen, subvert personal liberty and bring forward the new world order.
[00:07:54] And surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, a segment of the US population lapped it up, they tuned in loyally to Alex Jones, week in, week out.
[00:08:08] His audience continued to grow, and according to one report, his website was getting more monthly visitors than mainstream websites like The Economist and Newsweek, with more than 10 million people visiting it every month.
[00:08:24] He had no problem attracting an audience. He was so passionate, he got so worked up while on air, shouting, banging his fist on the table and getting all hot and sweaty, and at least it seemed like he truly believed what he was saying, even if the evidence for his claims was flimsy at best, there wasn’t really much evidence for anything he claimed.
[00:08:50] But what he did have a problem with was attracting advertisers, companies that would pay for their adverts to play on his show.
[00:09:00] A radio show normally needs advertisers to function, to pay the bills.
[00:09:07] But, just like with his first radio show, he was a hot potato. Very few advertisers wanted to be associated with Alex Jones, given the nature of what he was saying.
[00:09:21] So, he had to get creative, or rather, desperate and criminal, depending on what way you look at it.
[00:09:29] He became his own advertiser, and InfoWars became full of commercials for products that it sold.
[00:09:38] And it wasn’t just t-shirts, mugs and novelty pens.
[00:09:43] The wonderful thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that you can sell your own solutions to the problems that you talk about in your show.
[00:09:53] During a segment on the show when Alex Jones would rail against how the government was putting chlorine in your drinking water, he would pause for a commercial break to tell you about how you could buy your own water filter from the InfoWars website, a water filter that had the official Alex Jones stamp of approval, and would protect you and your family from government interference.
[00:10:17] In the middle of talking about how the government is turning society weak, Alex Jones would talk to you about his testosterone supplements or drops that would help your brain function properly and help you think more clearly.
[00:10:33] At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he even developed his own supposed cure and preventive for the coronavirus, which, naturally, was available for sale on the InfoWars website.
[00:10:47] As it is a private company, the amount of money that he was making through this is a subject of much debate, but one estimate put it at around $10 million a year.
[00:11:00] He had found an audience that was prepared to listen to him religiously, and buy almost anything he sold, no matter its efficacy.
[00:11:11] And on the subject of efficacy, of how effective these treatments were, well that is also a subject of much debate.
[00:11:20] Looking closely at the label, almost everything that he sold, and that he still sells, on the InfoWars website, has not been approved by the FDA, the federal authority that regulates new medical supplements.
[00:11:36] But the beauty of an audience that trusts you more than the federal government is that they don’t trust these government approvals anyway, they trust you, so whether a drug or treatment is FDA-approved is somewhat immaterial, it doesn’t matter.
[00:11:54] Alex Jones clearly made a lot of money peddling everything from health supplements to dubious cures, but he would find that his past claims would come back to bite him.
[00:12:07] In terms of the subject of his previous claims, from the 9/11 attacks to Barack Obama having a fake birth certificate, you might listen to those and think “well, it’s just a crazy guy on the radio, nobody is really getting hurt by these claims”.
[00:12:24] But in one particular case, there were real victims.
[00:12:29] On December the 14th, 2012, a 20-year old man called Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother and then drove to the Sandy Hook elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children, before killing himself.
[00:12:46] To state the obvious, it was an act of pure evil that cost the lives of innocent children and inflicted untold heartache and pain on their loved ones.
[00:12:57] But Alex Jones, perhaps unsurprisingly now that you have got to know a little bit more about him, didn’t buy the official version.
[00:13:06] He claimed that the entire thing was a hoax, that it simply didn’t happen, and it was part of a government conspiracy to enact stricter gun controls in the US.
[00:13:19] So while the families and loved ones of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were trying to grieve, there was Alex Jones, not just telling his audience of millions that the entire thing didn’t happen, but using his captive audience to advertise all sorts of bogus supplements and pills at the same time.
[00:13:42] Jones would discover that there were consequences to his actions.
[00:13:48] In 2016, 4 years after the massacre, a group of the victims’ families as well as one FBI agent filed a defamation suit against Jones and InfoWars, and more legal cases followed.
[00:14:04] He was first ordered to pay $100,00 in compensation, but this would pale in comparison with what was to come.
[00:14:14] By 2022, spread over a bunch of different cases, he was ordered to pay a total $1.5 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of Sandy Hook.
[00:14:29] Now, Jones was rich, but he was not $1.5 billion rich.
[00:14:36] He appealed to his audience to help raise money, to fight “the new world order”, and pleaded with listeners and viewers to buy his products to “fight the info war”.
[00:14:49] It wasn’t enough, and he was forced to declare personal bankruptcy, to start afresh, but was allowed to retain ownership of his companies.
[00:15:01] Despite this court order, as of last year at least, he had not paid a cent in compensation, and was still living the high life, with one report alleging that he was spending $90,000 a month.
[00:15:16] Of course, most of his audience doesn’t care, he doesn’t have to worry about a backlash from them, as they listened to and lapped up his Sandy Hook massacre conspiracy theories in the first place.
[00:15:30] But, there were consequences of the Sandy Hook claims in terms of his ability to reach his audience. Starting in 2018, he was deplatformed, his social media accounts removed from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and practically every mainstream social media platform.
[00:15:50] To listen to Alex Jones today, you either have to go directly to the InfoWars website, or to similar supposed “freedom of speech” media platforms like Rumble. You have to specifically want to listen to Alex Jones, you probably won’t stumble across him.
[00:16:09] Now, listening to all of this, learning about the claims that he has repeatedly made and the real harm that this has done to real people, you might think “fair enough, he doesn’t deserve to have a presence on those kinds of platforms, it's a good thing that dangerous voices like his are marginalised”.
[00:16:28] Or you might think, “well, he might be a nasty piece of work, he might be a madman, but you can’t ban someone just because you don’t like what they say. That’s against the principle of free speech.”
[00:16:41] The reality is that the complete cancellation of Alex Jones might have reduced his available audience, people who might find him in the same way that you might discover someone new on YouTube or Instagram, but it has strengthened his relationship with the people who were already listening to him, the people who were already his dedicated followers.
[00:17:03] He had been telling them for years that mainstream politicians wanted to silence him, and there he was, removed from mainstream media platforms, exactly as he had predicted.
[00:17:16] Now that he is cancelled, he is in some ways even more free to say anything he wants. In fact, he is uncancellable because he cannot be more cancelled than he already is.
[00:17:30] And what’s more, his claims are validated, because exactly what he said would happen, happened; he was removed from the mainstream social media networks.
[00:17:41] If you spend any time watching his more recent stuff, and yes, he is still making shows almost every single day, it has got perhaps even more unhinged, even crazier, with one of his most recent videos claiming that a new world order is engineering a global famine.
[00:18:01] Anything the government does, he seems to reject as false, and he has made it his brand to be worried about anything and everything.
[00:18:11] It is certainly not surprising that he has been dubbed The Most Paranoid Man in America.
[00:18:19] OK then, that is it for Alex Jones.
[00:18:22] Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would certainly not recommend spending too much time watching anything by Alex Jones, but if you want to get a sense of the sort of things that he is talking about, well just Google Alex Jones, and you can decide for yourself.
[00:18:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man called Alex Jones.
[00:00:27] He is America’s best known conspiracy theorist, and for the best part of 30 years he has been going on air and making what might seem to most people like outrageous claims, getting riled up about anything and everything.
[00:00:43] Early on in his career he might have seemed like an object of ridicule, but he has become a household name, listened to and trusted by millions of people all across the United States.
[00:00:55] So, let’s get right into it, and talk about America’s best-known conspiracy theorist.
[00:01:03] On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the United States woke up to the news that the World Trade Centre had collapsed, after being hit by two passenger jets.
[00:01:16] News anchors adopted a solemn tone, trying to process what was not just the deadliest terror attack on US soil, but the single most lethal terror attack in history.
[00:01:31] While the death toll was still mounting, journalists were urging caution, as it was still unclear who was behind the attack.
[00:01:41] In Austin, Texas, one radio host was not so balanced.
[00:01:48] On the same day as the attack, the then 27-year-old Alex Jones told his listeners that, and I’m quoting directly, there was "a 98 percent chance that this was a government-orchestrated controlled bombing."
[00:02:05] It might sound ludicrous, mad to think that someone would make this claim from the other side of the country as bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble, but listeners of Alex Jones’ radio show would not have been surprised.
[00:02:22] He had been repeating similar claims for years, any time there was any kind of major event, especially one that resulted in a major loss of life, he would go on air and say that he didn’t believe the official version.
[00:02:37] The government was lying, and he was the only one brave enough to speak truth to power.
[00:02:45] Now, back then Alex Jones was a mere radio host, still dismissed by most as a bit of a nut-job, a crazy guy who nobody should take seriously.
[00:02:58] But fast forward to today, and he has become a household name, he has grown his conspiracy theory radio show into a mini media empire, interviewed Donald Trump, been subsequently kicked off most major social media platforms, and made tens of millions of dollars in the process.
[00:03:19] His views might be wacky, they might be abhorrent, but they are absorbed by tens of millions of people every month, so his story is worth telling.
[00:03:31] He was born in 1974, and grew fascinated by conspiracy theories as a teenager.
[00:03:39] He was particularly influenced by a book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which puts forward the idea that a group of international bankers financed the communist revolution in Russia as an experiment, and that now there is a plot to impose a global government and mass social welfare programmes, so that the average person is dependent on and subservient to the government.
[00:04:07] Barmy, perhaps, but clearly if you believe it, it would completely change your worldview.
[00:04:14] And Alex Jones believed it, he bought it hook line and sinker.
[00:04:20] He dropped out of college, and almost immediately started his own call-in radio show, where anyone, anywhere, could call in to Jones and make some kind of ludicrous claim, and Jones would nod along and come up with some more conspiracy theories of his own.
[00:04:40] The main event that he was obsessed with at this time was the 1993 Waco siege, when a group belonging to a religious cult called the Branch Davidians refused to allow US government agents into their compound, and the result was a shootout and a fire that cost the lives of 86 people.
[00:05:03] Jones held the government responsible for this, saying that it was an example of US government aggression against its citizens.
[00:05:12] Now, you can learn more about this siege in episode number 229, on doomsday cults, but the short version is that the cult leader, David Koresh, was a mad and manipulative leader who didn’t let his subjects surrender, and who most people believe ultimately bears responsibility for the deaths.
[00:05:35] But that wasn’t what Jones thought.
[00:05:38] He continued to claim that Koresh was a peaceful innocent man who had been murdered by the US government, and he even attempted to raise funds to build a church as a memorial to those who had died in the siege.
[00:05:54] Ultimately, this, as well as his other controversial positions, got him fired from the radio show.
[00:06:02] He would claim it was because he was speaking truth to power, and politicians had ordered for him to be silenced, but his bosses would say it was because his views were so offensive that no companies wanted to advertise on his show.
[00:06:18] Strangely enough, being fired turned out to be the big break that he needed.
[00:06:24] He had been cancelled, before being cancelled was a thing, and this lit a fire in his belly, and allowed him to continue to put forward his point that he was being silenced by the mainstream, by the establishment.
[00:06:39] Shortly after being fired, in 1999, he launched a website called InfoWars.
[00:06:47] It was initially a place for Jones to publish his conspiracy theories, as well as for fans to buy copies of documentaries that he had made.
[00:06:56] But it continued to grow.
[00:06:59] A year later, he used it as a base for a new call-in radio show and he kept on doing the same thing, over and over.
[00:07:08] Every new news event became a subject of attack for Jones, a topic he would go on air about and say “no, I don’t buy the official government version”..
[00:07:19] 9/11 was an inside job, Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake, the Boston Bombing was staged by the FBI, Hillary Clinton was running a paedophile ring, the 2016 election was fraudulent, obviously COVID-19 was a tool of government suppression.
[00:07:39] Anything and everything that the US government was involved in was some sort of scam or trick intended to crush the average citizen, subvert personal liberty and bring forward the new world order.
[00:07:54] And surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, a segment of the US population lapped it up, they tuned in loyally to Alex Jones, week in, week out.
[00:08:08] His audience continued to grow, and according to one report, his website was getting more monthly visitors than mainstream websites like The Economist and Newsweek, with more than 10 million people visiting it every month.
[00:08:24] He had no problem attracting an audience. He was so passionate, he got so worked up while on air, shouting, banging his fist on the table and getting all hot and sweaty, and at least it seemed like he truly believed what he was saying, even if the evidence for his claims was flimsy at best, there wasn’t really much evidence for anything he claimed.
[00:08:50] But what he did have a problem with was attracting advertisers, companies that would pay for their adverts to play on his show.
[00:09:00] A radio show normally needs advertisers to function, to pay the bills.
[00:09:07] But, just like with his first radio show, he was a hot potato. Very few advertisers wanted to be associated with Alex Jones, given the nature of what he was saying.
[00:09:21] So, he had to get creative, or rather, desperate and criminal, depending on what way you look at it.
[00:09:29] He became his own advertiser, and InfoWars became full of commercials for products that it sold.
[00:09:38] And it wasn’t just t-shirts, mugs and novelty pens.
[00:09:43] The wonderful thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that you can sell your own solutions to the problems that you talk about in your show.
[00:09:53] During a segment on the show when Alex Jones would rail against how the government was putting chlorine in your drinking water, he would pause for a commercial break to tell you about how you could buy your own water filter from the InfoWars website, a water filter that had the official Alex Jones stamp of approval, and would protect you and your family from government interference.
[00:10:17] In the middle of talking about how the government is turning society weak, Alex Jones would talk to you about his testosterone supplements or drops that would help your brain function properly and help you think more clearly.
[00:10:33] At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he even developed his own supposed cure and preventive for the coronavirus, which, naturally, was available for sale on the InfoWars website.
[00:10:47] As it is a private company, the amount of money that he was making through this is a subject of much debate, but one estimate put it at around $10 million a year.
[00:11:00] He had found an audience that was prepared to listen to him religiously, and buy almost anything he sold, no matter its efficacy.
[00:11:11] And on the subject of efficacy, of how effective these treatments were, well that is also a subject of much debate.
[00:11:20] Looking closely at the label, almost everything that he sold, and that he still sells, on the InfoWars website, has not been approved by the FDA, the federal authority that regulates new medical supplements.
[00:11:36] But the beauty of an audience that trusts you more than the federal government is that they don’t trust these government approvals anyway, they trust you, so whether a drug or treatment is FDA-approved is somewhat immaterial, it doesn’t matter.
[00:11:54] Alex Jones clearly made a lot of money peddling everything from health supplements to dubious cures, but he would find that his past claims would come back to bite him.
[00:12:07] In terms of the subject of his previous claims, from the 9/11 attacks to Barack Obama having a fake birth certificate, you might listen to those and think “well, it’s just a crazy guy on the radio, nobody is really getting hurt by these claims”.
[00:12:24] But in one particular case, there were real victims.
[00:12:29] On December the 14th, 2012, a 20-year old man called Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother and then drove to the Sandy Hook elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children, before killing himself.
[00:12:46] To state the obvious, it was an act of pure evil that cost the lives of innocent children and inflicted untold heartache and pain on their loved ones.
[00:12:57] But Alex Jones, perhaps unsurprisingly now that you have got to know a little bit more about him, didn’t buy the official version.
[00:13:06] He claimed that the entire thing was a hoax, that it simply didn’t happen, and it was part of a government conspiracy to enact stricter gun controls in the US.
[00:13:19] So while the families and loved ones of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were trying to grieve, there was Alex Jones, not just telling his audience of millions that the entire thing didn’t happen, but using his captive audience to advertise all sorts of bogus supplements and pills at the same time.
[00:13:42] Jones would discover that there were consequences to his actions.
[00:13:48] In 2016, 4 years after the massacre, a group of the victims’ families as well as one FBI agent filed a defamation suit against Jones and InfoWars, and more legal cases followed.
[00:14:04] He was first ordered to pay $100,00 in compensation, but this would pale in comparison with what was to come.
[00:14:14] By 2022, spread over a bunch of different cases, he was ordered to pay a total $1.5 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of Sandy Hook.
[00:14:29] Now, Jones was rich, but he was not $1.5 billion rich.
[00:14:36] He appealed to his audience to help raise money, to fight “the new world order”, and pleaded with listeners and viewers to buy his products to “fight the info war”.
[00:14:49] It wasn’t enough, and he was forced to declare personal bankruptcy, to start afresh, but was allowed to retain ownership of his companies.
[00:15:01] Despite this court order, as of last year at least, he had not paid a cent in compensation, and was still living the high life, with one report alleging that he was spending $90,000 a month.
[00:15:16] Of course, most of his audience doesn’t care, he doesn’t have to worry about a backlash from them, as they listened to and lapped up his Sandy Hook massacre conspiracy theories in the first place.
[00:15:30] But, there were consequences of the Sandy Hook claims in terms of his ability to reach his audience. Starting in 2018, he was deplatformed, his social media accounts removed from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and practically every mainstream social media platform.
[00:15:50] To listen to Alex Jones today, you either have to go directly to the InfoWars website, or to similar supposed “freedom of speech” media platforms like Rumble. You have to specifically want to listen to Alex Jones, you probably won’t stumble across him.
[00:16:09] Now, listening to all of this, learning about the claims that he has repeatedly made and the real harm that this has done to real people, you might think “fair enough, he doesn’t deserve to have a presence on those kinds of platforms, it's a good thing that dangerous voices like his are marginalised”.
[00:16:28] Or you might think, “well, he might be a nasty piece of work, he might be a madman, but you can’t ban someone just because you don’t like what they say. That’s against the principle of free speech.”
[00:16:41] The reality is that the complete cancellation of Alex Jones might have reduced his available audience, people who might find him in the same way that you might discover someone new on YouTube or Instagram, but it has strengthened his relationship with the people who were already listening to him, the people who were already his dedicated followers.
[00:17:03] He had been telling them for years that mainstream politicians wanted to silence him, and there he was, removed from mainstream media platforms, exactly as he had predicted.
[00:17:16] Now that he is cancelled, he is in some ways even more free to say anything he wants. In fact, he is uncancellable because he cannot be more cancelled than he already is.
[00:17:30] And what’s more, his claims are validated, because exactly what he said would happen, happened; he was removed from the mainstream social media networks.
[00:17:41] If you spend any time watching his more recent stuff, and yes, he is still making shows almost every single day, it has got perhaps even more unhinged, even crazier, with one of his most recent videos claiming that a new world order is engineering a global famine.
[00:18:01] Anything the government does, he seems to reject as false, and he has made it his brand to be worried about anything and everything.
[00:18:11] It is certainly not surprising that he has been dubbed The Most Paranoid Man in America.
[00:18:19] OK then, that is it for Alex Jones.
[00:18:22] Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would certainly not recommend spending too much time watching anything by Alex Jones, but if you want to get a sense of the sort of things that he is talking about, well just Google Alex Jones, and you can decide for yourself.
[00:18:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:18:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
