“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
Lots of people hate Alex Jones. Granted, he loses his mind live on air often (which digital entrepreneurs remix to great effect). His style is abrasive and, at times, psychotic. So what?
He’s also been right about a lot – often decades before other media figures. For it, he has spent his entire career on the fringes of the fringe “far-right” in the political wilderness
Limp, finger-in-the-wind politicians and well-heeled corporate-funded “journalists” could learn something about passion and conviction.
InfoWars, Alex Jones’ media operation, despite its flaws, occupies space in the context of the larger media ecosystem: namely, as a permanent thorn in the side of the ruling class who has been on the frontier of the fight against corporate-state plutocracy for decades.
Ill-tempered gadfly; decorum-free monkey wrench; digital pirate ship; choose your metaphor.
The very continued existence of InfoWars in the dark corners of the web – a fact which the social engineers desperately and forever lament – is itself a repudiation of their social control.
Back in the 90s and aughts — when he was just a local nuisance to the Texas political machinery — Alex Jones talked about NSA spying before anyone knew who Glenn Greenwald or Edward Snowden were.
He was, in short, an enemy of the technocracy before “technocracy” became a household term. His legacy shapes the resistance to authoritarianism in the United States and beyond to this day.
For anyone who wants to check his bone fides, the internet is awash with Alex Jones’ colorful warnings about the dangers of corporate media censorship years – decades even – before the current culture wars erupted over the Big Tech takeover of the public square. Ditto for the surveillance state.
A huge percentage of his dire predictions came true, and worse.
A decade ago, on the July 6, 2010 broadcast of InfoWars, Jones portended, at least in part, the COVID civil liberties mess we find ourselves in:
“I don’t want you to sit here and hear me make these claims [about quarantines, limited movement, forced vaccines, GMO food, biometrics ID cards] …they’re producing these policy papers so fast that you could never read them all…
You’re not going to be able to go to the ball games anymore. You’re not going to be able to just go out and get drunk with your friends. You’re not going to be able to just go out and enjoy yourself… The only chance we’ve got of beating this scientific dictatorship… is for the rank and file of this planet to realize that you have a choice to make on what your destiny’s gonna be.”
What seemed outrageous and conspiratorial at the time now seems, in light of the events of the past year, merely an accurate accounting of the present sad state of affairs.
Critics claim that Alex Jones is himself a disinformation agent, or, similarly, “controlled opposition.” It’s possible – in the final analysis, only God truly knows how the chess pieces stack.
If InfoWars is indeed a disinformation operation sponsored by the deep state, though, then purging it nearly entirely from the digital landscape is an odd way to get the message out.
In the summer of 2018, overnight, Silicon Valley tech giants and the government — aided by heavy pressure from the corporate press — colluded to systemically ban Jones and InfoWars from literally every major social media platform:
In an unprecedented move, even the porn website YouPorn banned Alex Jones.
All of which begs the question:
For all his flaws, Alex Jones has set the template for demolishing fragile corporate media narratives that rely on politeness and self-censorship to thrive. It’s all garbage, all the time; treat it as such – this is the ethos of InfoWars.
Playing footsie with criminals in power doesn’t work. The Texas maniac put on a clinic in how best to approach bad-faith media actors in a classic 2013 interview with CNN.
Piers Morgan appeared fully prepared to politely browbeat a backward Texas gun lunatic into submission in traditional British fashion, just in time for tea.
What became rapidly apparent was that Morgan had not done his due diligence in researching the guest he had invited and, as a result, was woefully unprepared to manage the situation he found himself in.
Alex Jones threw an impromptu Tea Party on national television, to which Piers had no effective rebuttal:
“The mega banks that control the planet and brag that they’ve taken over in Bloomberg, AP, Reuters, you name it, brag that they’re going to get our guns as well…
I’m here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms. It doesn’t matter how many lemmings you get out there on the street begging for them to have their guns taken. We will not relinquish them.“
Normal CNN guests, the ones who suck at the teat of the corporate-state media gravy train, never mention the illegitimate global banking cartel that controls US policy on CNN, nor do they threaten insurrection on national television.
This is precisely the attitude that the American people need to adopt: a hardline “just say no” policy vis a vis bad-faith corporate-state media actors with malevolent agendas. Don’t quibble over minutia, don’t equivocate, don’t grovel – steamroll them.
Canadian pro-freedom activist Chris Skye – who credits the InfoWars ethos as a source of personal inspiration – has channeled the spirit of revolutionary dissent into a growing #JustSayNo Twitter campaign.
The only effective strategy to defeat the budding medical tyranny is simultaneously exceedingly difficult and straightforward: do not comply.
Make attempts at your enslavement as difficult, cumbersome, and logistically challenging as possible. Assert your natural human rights at every turn. Just say no.
As Alex Jones explained all those years ago to a culled CNN propagandist, “it doesn’t matter how many lemmings” are out there eager to forfeit their rights.
We will not relinquish them without a fight. Just say no.
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Contact him via his portfolio or on LinkedIn.
