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Donald Trump's dark advisor: the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

2022-08-07T07:31:01.399Z


Host Alex Jones is America's top conspiracy theorist. His most powerful listener: Donald Trump. The story of a disturbing alliance - and a SPIEGEL+ classic from 2017.


Propagandist Jones having lunch

Photo: Matthew Mahon / DER SPIEGEL

It's almost eleven in the morning, three minutes before the start of his show.

The studio is down to 18 degrees but Alex Jones is sweating.

He dabs his forehead and goes over the day's script.

Jones says his staff have found some glorious stirs, scandals that should have surfaced long ago.

Alleged "secret plans" by large Internet companies to block conservative websites.

The "truth" about the radioactive contamination in Fukushima.

"Jesus," Jones groans.

"Where should we start?"

The screens light up behind him.

A red light flashes.

Three two one.

Cameras on, film off.

"We're live," Jones calls into his microphone. "It's Wednesday, February 8, 2017, and the Democrats are melting away like a gang of mentally ill kids."

No, Jones is not a normal moderator.

The founder of the Infowars platform has lived in his own world for more than 20 years.

In it there are clear friends and clear enemies,

it teems with intrigues and scandals, cover-ups and conspiracies.

Jones believes that the global elites have joined forces against the US to destroy the country.

He's spreading this message from Austin, Texas, five days a week on his "Alex Jones Show."

He reaches over a hundred radio stations and his website millions of Americans.

Alex Jones, 43, is America's biggest conspiracy theorist.

A crazy fringe figure - that was Jones' label so far.

As he says, he is now in regular contact with the President and whispers his ideas to him.

He says: "Trump and I have spoken several times since the election. About freedom and our common goal of destroying our opponents."

Times have changed in America.

Since November, who was a freakish fringe figure has moved closer to the mainstream, and in the age of alternative facts, people with a bizarre worldview are suddenly becoming influential media figures.

No one says that more than Jones, the epitome of fake news.

During the election campaign, Alex Jones resolutely sided with Donald Trump, now the President of the United States is his biggest fan, and Jones has a direct line to the White House.

"Your reputation is fantastic," Trump gushed when he was a guest on The Jones Show during the election campaign.

"What you're doing is epic - you're on George Washington level," Jones retaliated.

At that time already caused horror,

that Trump was allying himself with Alex Jones, a man who has said a lot of crazy things in his life.

He believes the government has weather weapons that it can use to create artificial tornadoes.

He is convinced that gay marriage is the conspiracy of a global secret society "to bring about the collapse of the family" and "abolish God".

He is "95 percent certain" that the World Trade Center was not destroyed by an attack on September 11, 2001, but was blown up by the government.

The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which left 20 children dead, was a "duck" of gun opponents.

There is hardly a subject on which Jones does not have his own unsupported truth to offer.

Trump himself is prone to lies, fabrications and half-truths.

That's why his symbiosis with Jones is a worrying thing.

The two share a passion for breaking down the complex world of politics into simple ideas.

Both appeal to an audience that could probably do without the Congress in Washington.

They love raw emotion and breaking taboos, hate the big media houses and TV stations and the republican establishment.

"We are two saints of the same zeitgeist," says Alex Jones.

Ever since Trump declared war on the mainstream media, Jones has seen himself as a journalistic avant-garde.

In Washington, some fear that his dark world of thoughts will be reflected in everyday government life.

When Trump recently fantasized about millions of illegal votes and accused the press of not reporting enough about terrorist attacks, many heard Alex Jones speak.

Because he was one of the first to spread these theories.

The same goes for the scientifically untenable claim shared by Trump that vaccines cause autism.

Alex Jones - coarse stature, massive body, round face with a pointed chin - takes a lot of time for the conversation, uses the breaks in the show for small talk, hands him water and talks about his three children.

"It's hard to switch off," he says.

"I see propaganda everywhere."

Jones' studio is located in an industrial area on the outskirts of Austin.

Exactly where is not allowed to be written anywhere for security reasons.

Cameras monitor the entrance, the windows are covered with black blinds, and guests have to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Everyone in Austin knows him.

When he takes to the streets, people point to him or ask for signatures.

Jones fears for his safety, he has hired a bodyguard.

You never know.

A sign hangs

at the entrance to the studio : "Liberty or Death".

There is a water dispenser in the hallway that says "Liberal Tears."

Jones' empire is vast.

There are four studios, equipped with the latest technology, as if they were part of a national cable network.

There is a hall where promotional videos are shot, open-plan offices and relaxation zones with table tennis and slot machines.

Jones calls his offices the "Central Texas Command Center and Heart of the Resistance".

For the first time in his life, Jones is a little bit confident, he says, that America's demise can be averted after all.

The worrying thing is that Alex Jones has come to see his company as a kind of propaganda arm of the President, mobilizing the Commander-in-Chief's foot soldiers to save the fatherland.

That can be more dangerous than just spouting a few baseless conspiracy theories.

In association with right-wing national sites such as Breitbart News, Gateway Pundit and LifeZette, which also have good access to the White House, Alex Jones sees himself as part of a kind of right-wing front, together they want to break the power of the traditional media.

Jones speaks of the President as of a leader.

He sees the first few weeks of his term as a "total victory".

The entry decree?

The deportations?

Trump's dream of a police state?

Everything great.

Toughness, that's what matters from his point of view now.

His 100% identification with Trump could already be observed on a daily basis during the election campaign.

For months he overwhelmed the Democrats with hate speech.

In October it was Clinton and Obama's turn.

Clinton was "a miserable, psychopathic demon from hell," he cried on his show.

He heard that "Obama and Clinton smell of sulfur".

The phrase made a career for itself within a few hours.

Clinton addressed Jones, Obama made fun of it at a performance, sniffed his hand and grinned.

The scene became an internet hit, but also garnered massive attention from Jones.

Jones is not crazy.

He is well-read, can research and understands something about international politics.

When the microphone is off, he sometimes lectures as dryly as if he were an official of the European Commission.

When the microphone is on, he slips into his role and becomes a fury.

Jones grew up in the Dallas suburbs with a father who was a dentist and a mother who was a housewife.

After high school, he was introduced to the conspiracy world through the John Birch Society, an extreme right-wing, anti-Communist organization.

He tested his theses on the radio.

After a right-wing extremist attacked a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, he accused the government of being involved.

He became well known in Austin, a local broadcaster gave him his own show.

In 1999 he founded the Infowars website.

Jones' rise is an example of how the Internet has revolutionized and, in part, poisoned the American media landscape.

From small niche products some considerable devices have grown.

Established brands are fighting for survival, alternative platforms such as Breitbart News, Newsmax or Infowars are creating their own worlds.

They are echo chambers of hate that become home to all those who search for simple answers in the complicated world.

Everything can be found in this world

, clues are spread for every crazy theory.

Clinton a killer?

Appropriate from Jones' point of view, because as Secretary of State she shared responsibility for the Libyan war.

The government is poisoning the drinking water?

Well, if you add fluoride, you are playing with the health of the citizens.

"Jones is so effective because he has a clear theory of how the world works and he bends all the facts to fit that theory," said University of Florida professor Mark Fenster, who has researched conspiracy theories for years.

Everything Jones says, his helpers chase through multiple channels.

Jones claims up to three million listeners tune in every day.

According to the reach meter Quantcast, a good eight million people visit Infowars every month.

Almost two million have subscribed to his YouTube channel, and more than a million follow his Facebook page.

"I'm practically in a living room with people," says Jones.

"It's like we're sitting around a campfire."

He employs more than 60 people.

Students, journalists, activists, IT specialists, social media experts.

They help the presenter to prepare his show.

And they write stories for the Infowars.com website.

Not everything there is nonsense.

There are boring reports from news agencies about the latest survey results and their own analyzes of current developments in Washington.

But there are also reports of a "satanic ritual" by Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl.

And about CIA schemes to assassinate Trump.

Jones finances his company

two-thirds by marketing his own products.

He sells toothpaste and brain pills, bulletproof vests and guns, sleeping pills and potency drops.

His show's commercial breaks are full of his own products, and business is good.

Anyone who believes in the end of the world can stock up here.

As promising as the Trump era seems to him, it could also turn out to be a problem.

Not everyone around him thinks his oath of allegiance is correct.

For Jones, governments have always been a code of evil.

A dark force.

He bred his audience with his hatred of Washington.

Now he talks about Trump as if he were his Minister of Propaganda.

That could lead to disappointment among some of his fans.

It's now just before twelve o'clock, the show is on the commercial break.

Jones is annoyed.

Trump is under pressure over his immigration decree, which Jones can't understand because he believes the president just wants to keep "radical Muslim hordes" out of the country.

"I actually wanted to show a couple of beheading videos on the show so that everyone can see what kind of barbarians these Islamists are," he says.

"But I think I'll do something else."

The camera turns on again.

"There are a billion Sunnis," Jones calls into the microphone.

"These are the people who attack shopping malls. These are the people who throw gays off buildings. These are the people who pour acid on women's faces."

Behind him on the screens are images of disfigured women.

The noses are missing.

Forehead and cheeks are burned.

"There you have your beauties," he calls out.

Jones is stunned that not all Americans share his panic about the "jihadists."

From his point of view, this danger is so great that he would prefer not to let anyone enter the USA at all.

"Now don't give me the Statue of Liberty," Jones says during a break in the show.

"She's a propaganda symbol. We should stop worshiping her and always bowing to third-world nationals who show up here with tuberculosis and leprosy because of this damn symbol."

Next, Jones wants

open an office in Washington.

"Maybe ten people" will be hired to report on the White House, he says, almost like a traditional medium.

Roger Stone, a radical advisor to the president, is supposed to help him with this, who in a book described ex-president Bill Clinton as a serial rapist, for which there is no evidence.

The two struck a deal, and Stone has been hosting the Jones show for an hour a week for a few weeks now.

"The elite may laugh at his views," says Stone.

"But Alex Jones reaches millions of people, they are the foot soldiers in the Trump revolution."

It's afternoon, Jones is walking through the studio.

Adrenaline is high and blood sugar is low.

He has to eat something now.

His people have put griddles on the table in the conference room.

Chicken, Beef, Sausages.

"Good barbecue," says Jones.

"Already tried?"

He piles the food onto a plastic plate, then suddenly takes off his shirt, he doesn't explain why.

He sits shirtless and scoops meat into himself.

A caricature of masculinity, but also a show of power over the reporter in front of him.

He can do whatever he wants.

Then Jones stands up and holds a sausage to his crotch.

"Do you want to suck?" he asks.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-08-07

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