OPINION | The most alarming in the history of Alex Jones

Hear Parents of Sandy Hook Victims Confront Alex Jones 2:58

Editor's Note:

Nicole Hemmer is a Columbia University Research Associate on the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics" and the forthcoming "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s".

She co-hosts the history podcasts "Past Present" and "This Day in Esoteric Political History."

The opinions expressed in this comment belong solely to the author of it.

(CNN) --

"Jesse was real. I'm a real mom."

It is an unthinkable statement for a grieving mother: to testify that her 6-year-old son, killed while sitting at school, had really lived, and that she was the woman who had given birth to him and raised him during the few years that he had lived. was alive

But that was the testimony Scarlett Lewis gave this week at a damages hearing against Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist and media personality.

(Jones was found liable for defamation in a default judgment earlier this year.)

• Infowars' Alex Jones Liable for Damages for His False Claims About Sandy Hook Shooting, Judge Rules

After 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Jones began spinning lurid conspiracies that the shooting never happened and the shattered families were just actors.

The conspiracy unleashed years of harassment, as the conspirators targeted grieving parents, who have had to hire security for their protection.

Since the defamation lawsuits were filed, Jones has apologized and claimed that he was in a "form of psychosis" that caused him to believe in the conspiracy theory.

The Sandy Hook conspiracy made Jones the radio equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church, which staged vile anti-gay protests at soldiers' funerals.

But within a few years, Jones would become part of the right-wing power structure, from his interviews with future President Donald Trump to his alleged role as organizer of the January 6 insurrection.

More than that, many in the GOP and conservative movement are increasingly sounding like Jones, making talk of false flags, crisis actors and pedophile rings now a mainstay of right-wing rhetoric.

And while the Trump presidency opened the door for Jones' generalization, it's important to understand that the GOP was ripe for an "Alex Jones" transformation.

From its beginnings in the 1940s and 1950s, the modern conservative movement adopted a conspiratorial mindset.

From the books claiming that former President Franklin Roosevelt allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor to unite Americans in the war, to the John Birch Society's anti-fluoridation conspiracies, to the communist-era witch hunts McCarthy, conspiracy theories have become a central component of conservatism in the United States.

• The insurrection on Capitol Hill was fueled by conspiratorial groups, extremists, and fringe movements

But, with the exception of McCarthyism, the conspiratorial right kept separate from the Republican Party.

Even right-wing politicians, especially those running for president, shied away from the wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who had become popular with their conservative base.

This changed in the 1990s, when politics, entertainment, and conspiracy became increasingly mixed.

Pat Robertson, the televangelist who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, published his conspiracy tract, "The New World Order," in 1991. Drawing on decades of "one world government" conspiracies, Robertson detailed a coalition of the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Freemasons and others working towards a one world government and ultimately the End Times.

It was a bestseller, according to The New York Times.

Robertson was not the only Republican presidential candidate to warn about the new world order.

It became a staple of Pat Buchanan's speeches in all three of his presidential bids between 1992 and 2000. And while the phrase spoke to anxieties about the geopolitics of a post-Cold War world, it also alluded to conspiracy theories. that were becoming increasingly popular not only with conservative bases, but also with Republican officials.

During the Clinton years, members of Congress conducted investigations into black choppers (a staple of 1990s conspiracies) and highlighted countless conspiracies about Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Outside of Congress, the powerful new right-wing radio of the 1990s and 2000s also paved the way for acceptance of Jones.

Glenn Beck's radio show ran through conspiracies at breakneck speed, passing through Common Core, George Soros, and Agenda 21, a conspiracy theory about the United Nations.

It mixed politics and conspiracy not only in its content, but also in its advertising.

Warning that the "End Times" were near, that catastrophe was just around the corner, Beck promoted everything from gold to food storage to "seeds of survival," all of it intended to help listeners survive the impending collapse of society.

(In later years, Beck admitted that he "played a part, unfortunately, in helping to tear the country apart.")

These threads came together in the Obama years, when Beck became one of the most prominent voices in the Tea Party movement and conspiracies spread to the right.

That provided a real opportunity for someone like Jones to break into American politics.

While his grotesque Sandy Hook conspiracies failed to gain traction in Republican circles, others did, like the 2015 “Jade Helm 15” conspiracy. Jones turned a routine military exercise in Texas into a new conspiracy theory. falsely telling his audience that it was a covert effort by the government to prepare to impose martial law.

That conspiracy theory quickly escaped InfoWars circles, making its way onto right-wing radio and into Republican politics.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the state militia to police the exercise.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is preparing for a presidential bid, also legitimized the conspiracy, saying that although he had been assured by the military that it was a routine training exercise, "I understand the cause for concern and uncertainty, because when The federal government has not proven itself trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens do not trust what it says."

• Ted Cruz accuses Big Bird of spreading propaganda for the US Government.

Cruz's spin on it helps explain why the space between Jones and the GOP collapsed in the 2010s. The GOP spent decades arguing that government was corrupt, if not illegitimate, and grew increasingly dependent on of the right-wing media to push the party's message.

So it took very little effort to plunge into the world of wild conspiracy, especially once, with the election of Trump, Republicans realized there would be no price to pay for doing so.

Recent years have suggested the bill is being paid: Trump lost the presidency and Congress, Jones lost his libel trial, and several right-wing media outlets are facing heavy libel lawsuits over their election conspiracies.

However, that still hasn't curbed the party's momentum for conspiracies.

In fact, Alex Jones may never speak at a Republican convention or be a part of Fox News prime-time programming.

But he doesn't have to.

His conspiratorial thinking, his rhetoric and his style are now well integrated into the GOP, a legacy not only of the Trump years but of decades of conspiracy politics.

Alex Jones Sandy Hook Massacre