Alex Jones

And for a podcast it's very well organised (I don't do podcasts but every now and then if the topic engages me I will give it a go and hate it, not the case this time).

- Didn't know his background but the level of invention in your history is something that seems quite deeply American.

- I really loved the first couple of series of the X-Files and this is kinda how I took what I heard of Jones. Just a 'wacko' full of fun conspiracy theories.

- Fun is the word and it's good that, even at this point, they acknowledge what a good broadcaster he was. He did something that was worth a listen.

- I didn't know he was talking about Bin Laden before 9/11 but I'm not sure how impressed I should be. I think if you kept up your knowledge about who American services were funding at one point, or certain operations (basically reading the fine print) then sooner or later you get onto something big.

Anyway I am still on that EP. Would've liked them to go more into Waco and the Oklahoma bombings, and how it might have been big events for the likes of Jones.

I really loved the first couple of series of the X-Files and this is kinda how I took what I heard of Jones. Just a 'wacko' full of fun conspiracy theories.

Been thinking a lot about how back in the 90's for me conspiracy thinking was fun shit like Bigfoot or aliens, coupled with a sort of laudatory skepticism of govt institutions. That world is long gone though and sadly even the most fun conspiracy theories seem to go back to racism if you dig deep enough into them.

The ep was good, a lot of stuff I didn’t know about as I’ve never really followed Jones. Was he really a “liberal darling” during the bush era? The ALAB hosts are otm that when Glenn says says this he is talking about Glenn but then they seem to agree that this actually applies to AJ. I’m sure his audience included lefter leaning burnout types back then but feel like “liberal darling” implies more than that

i felt they were saying more that yes, anti-bush types certainly sat back and enjoyed when jones was excoriating bush and he had chaos-clown's licence (despite being a hilarious nutjob) but no he was never actually a "liberal darling" (= glenn's claim, which they are repudiating)

albeit repudiating more by implication than direct statement

Yeah Jones was still a fringe figure, hardly Jon Stewart-level.

Been thinking a lot about how back in the 90's for me conspiracy thinking was fun shit like Bigfoot or aliens, coupled with a sort of laudatory skepticism of govt institutions

yeah i think about this a lot too, there was so much stuff in the 90s depicting conspiracy theories as a fun oddball personality quirk, generally harmless and often funny. whereas nowadays if a stranger starts telling me JFK is still alive or that the president is secretly an alien i get legit worried for my safety and try to get away as fast as possible. things like X Files and Slacker definitely hit differently for me now in that sense

Dale was always the most fun character on King of the Hill

beliefs mark lane probably would NOT have endorsed

(i) jfk's head just did that by itself
(ii) AND HE SURVIVED

JFK was dyed Black and sent to a mental health institute with Elvis. Ffs has nobody seen that documentary Bubba Ho-Tep

Been thinking a lot about how back in the 90's for me conspiracy thinking was fun shit like Bigfoot or aliens, coupled with a sort of laudatory skepticism of govt institutions

Absolutely. When I rewatched X-Files last year, I supplemented it with ’90s episodes of Art Bell. It was very entertaining, but I refrained from googling the guests for fear of finding out they’ve moved on from believing in the Philadelphia Experiment and energy auras to MAGA shit. While I’m sure some of the guests were right-wing at the time, the show/theories always came across as apolitical in its kookiness.

There’s obviously plenty of leftists still wary/against the government (with good reason), but it does seem that being anti-government has become a right-wing signifier. My partner (who’d never seen the X-Files) raised an eyebrow sometimes because the show seemed to vaguely right-wing, though that stuff really came from post-Watergate/counterculture skepticism. It certainly was a bit jarring to watch it now and realize that the main villain in the show was "the deep state", though one made up of bipartisan Cold Warriors rather than evil Dems.

Mark Fenster’s Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture does a great job talking about X-Files and how Mulder pretty much was an investigator of this stuff not for emancipatory reasons, but for selfish ones. He also can’t just be an investigator about, he also has to write about it. There’s a compulsion inherent in the culture that you both consume and produce content about it, which is why you got so many blogs and zines and YouTube channels breathlessly recounting each other’s findings.

Also how the very 90s naïve idea that all that would be required to be justice or right a wrong would be to pull the mask away and show who the wrongdoer really was. Scooby Doo logic, and you can see how it still applies today as a LOT of people have never really be given a correct idea of what power is, how it works, and who actually holds it.

back in the 90's for me conspiracy thinking was fun shit

I used to work with a guy who was convinced that the main reason Hitler invaded Russia was for their hemp, he knew there was no chance of winning the war without that sweet, sweet soviet hemp

He was also a big Chomsky fan, and tried to convince me that all the major networks conspired to keep Chomsky off the airwaves because he spoke the unvarnished TRUTH, rather than him being a boring old blowhard

Funny that it never occurs to Mulder to tell the world about all the mutants, psychic killers etc. he encountered—he only cared about proving the existence of aliens, even though more people were killed throughout the series by the Monster of the Week than alien bounty hunters.

I always preferred those early stand-alone freak-of-the-week episodes over the big deep-state/alien conspiracy story arc that ended up consuming the show

The little speech (around 45 mins) talking about the eventual degradation of trust between the public and its leaders, aligned to the growth in conspiracy -- all beginning with that Karmic parallel from Vedic literature -- was pretty convincing.

He was also a big Chomsky fan, and tried to convince me that all the major networks conspired to keep Chomsky off the airwaves because he spoke the unvarnished TRUTH, rather than him being a boring old blowhard

Plenty of boring old blowhards on the US news in the 90's iirc. Don't need a conspiracy to see why journalists wouldn't be too enthusiastic about inviting a dude over who consistently highlights what a bad job they're doing tho.

the karmic fissure section was effective not least bcz the spaker (andy) is ordinarily the show's stand-out sardonic shitposter, viz the most likely to announce that something very bad is very good merely bcz it entertains him and let you unravel the layers (in fact he did just this at the start) -- this ep he had flu and was dosed up on like sudafed and just let the argument roll on flawlessly out thru cringe to content

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company were ordered Thursday to pay an extra $473 million to victims' families and an FBI agent for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax, adding to a nearly $1 billion jury verdict issued last month. https://t.co/WsQJrMDyw1

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 10, 2022

I hope for his sake this is the end of it, because I feel like the next judge Alex Jones goes up before is gonna rule that any person who sees him on the street can immediately demand — and receive — all the money in Jones's wallet, and his shoes.

That sounds perfectly fair to me.
I feel like I’m owed damages just from having to live in the same dimension as that piece of shit.

one useful thing to do in this dimension is look at a clock! if you're in a dream, time won't work, so it's a way to potentially snap out of this one

Did you learn that from my dream? recently on ILX Dreams...

haha, peace, i'd never seen that! that's pretty incredible! i could see being in someone else's dream involving air conditioning because i've had some intense psychological experiences involving un-installing a window AC unit and accidentally letting it come crashing down from the second floor (no one was injured!). the landlord was so kind and understanding about it that i just moved on -- it makes sense that somewhere in the dream world i'm still dealing with air conditioners. glad i had your help in your dream!

but no, the clock thing i mentioned in the post above was something mentioned in Waking Life -- not during the segment with Alex Jones, but elsewhere.

jesus I haven't seen Waking Life since it came out and did not realize Alex Jones was in that

yeah, a scanner darkly, too. there's been some brief discussion upthread. kinda weird of linklater but i guess in jones' earlier days he could be seen more as a ...harmless angry ranting guy...rather than a guy who could be so fucking wrong, for so long, that he was successfully sued for a couple billion dollars or whatever he's up to now, simply for being so fucking wrong and so loud about it

he is one of the most persistent, loud, angry, and wrong voices in all of human history. it's kind of incredible

the ultimate guy who both smelt it and dealt it

He had a reputation as local wacky crank here in Austin for a long time

like if Art Bell transformed into Goebbels

files for personal bankruptcy, "the Infowars host has between $1m and $10m of assets and between $1bn and $10bn of debt."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63837309

It's kind of nuts to me that someone could be worth 10 million dollars and file for bankruptcy. What does bankruptcy filing really do other than protect him from debtors? Does that include the judgments against him? I assume so. If a prosecutor had proof he reallocated his assets to fake bankruptcy, is that fraud?

wake me up when they take away his fucking microphones, cameras, and internet access

^^^

god we need some good vandals to just show up and disrupt every broadcast

wake me up when they take away his fucking microphones, cameras, and internet access

otmfm as long as he still has that outlet to spread his hate speech, this bankruptcy is fucking meaningless

Hmmmm

Some news: Tomorrow SPLC will publish Part 1 of a five part series into the text messages found on Alex Jones's phone.

Investigation by me and @MeganSquire0.

I think this is the first story I've ever worked on where my editor stuck a content warning on top of it.

— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) February 1, 2023

Alex Jones should be sentenced to subsisting entirely on his snake oil supplements.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023/02/01/infowars-alex-jones-says-he-lives-hell-texts-show

Jones and Enlow’s tracking efforts seem to take place on days that Jones himself is conducting an affair. Jones contacts Enlow to monitor Erika Wulff Jones on days when he is also in touch with a woman named “Pat Johnson,” which is the alias he entered into his phone to represent an Austin-based married woman with whom he exchanges texts of an intimate nature. (As an example, Jones texted Pat Johnson on the morning of May 11, 2020, requesting “a sucky,” apparently asking her to give him oral sex.)

That DOES require a content warning. I feel like I’ve read a page from the Necronomicon now.

APOLS

Alex Jones to Timothy Fruge, 11:32.12 a.m.:
Please bring vodka to con room

Alex Jones to Timothy Fruge 2:29.58 p.m.:
Please tell D to get me a bottle of vodka out of his safe and put in my office now

Alex Jones to Erika Wulff Jones, 12:03.50 a.m.:
I can’t believe you wore the wedding ring to fuck hon

Alex Jones to Erika Wulff Jones, 12:03.52 a.m.:
Him

Alex Jones to Erika Wulff Jones, 12:04.08 a.m.:
I am okay with it just don’t ware it anymore

Oh fun.

Does anyone but me remember the story of Bill O'Reilly's wonderfully clumsy attempt to seduce a subordinate, wherein he speaks of her using a "felafel" in the shower, by which he apparently meant a "loofah"?

Or maybe there are people who rub themselves with fried chick peas. I don't wish to kink-shame.

don't think I ever got over "I love you, alive girl"

"So much better than the dead kind."

Oh but back to Jones for a sec

And nothing can stop it
It seams
It’s like gravity
A black hole (hole emoji)

^ primo fake Metallica lyrics

(hole emoji)

I wouldn't expect one of the main job roles of a personal trainer to be "guy who brings me vodka on demand at 9am" but here we are