Alex Jones: never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

Unlike the ‘Never Trumpers,’ Alex Jones was an early supporter and a long-standing supporter of Donald Trump. He was all in for Trump. Bombast loves Bombast. Bullshitters love bullshitters. Trump and Jones fawned over each other in a dubious mutual admiration. Society.

In the past Jones had said Democrats and Republicans were all part of the same wicked game. He said, “the politics of George Bush and Obama are identical.” He had no use for either of them. But like so many, Jones saw something different in Trump. And he liked what he saw. Jones said that he was a populist and believe that is what Trump was too. He was not wrong about that.

Alex Jones was on the extremes. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast The Flame Throwers,

“So far he has stoked fear of a new world order shadow government, accused George Bush of plotting 9/11, claimed that the Sandy Hook elementary shooting was a false flag operation, claimed that  secret Satanic cults made up of government leaders who sacrificed children, vaccines caused autism, there was a Jewish cult running the world, that billionaire Bill Gates was trying to eliminate minority populations, accused Glenn Beck of being a CIA operative, said the government was adding estrogen to the tap water to feminize the population, accused George Soros of organizing a chemical attack in Syria to discredit Bashar el Assad, floated unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, and so much more. “

 

He also believed Hillary Clinton with other prominent liberals was part of a Satanic cult to sexually molest young children in the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington D. C. He urged his viewers to go to the Pizzeria to save the children. One of them went their armed to rescue the poor children, but he could not find any of them. He couldn’t even find a basement. You can sum up Alex Jones by saying he never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.

 

At the time Jones was a pariah among right-wing radio hosts, but that did not stop Trump from embracing him. When Jones interviewed Trump on his show Trump said, “Great to be with you.” He also claimed Jones was very well respected.

 

The future president of the United States was pleased to be with and be interviewed by Alex Jones the man who believed, or at least claimed to believe that those first graders at Sandy Hook school were child actors who were a part of a hoax perpetrated to help government officials take away guns from extreme right! Later the parents of those children sued Jones into bankruptcy for spreading such lies.

 

Jones swooned over Trump. As Ling said, “In Jones view Trump was going into the belly of the beast, the murderous swamp beast that is the deep state.”

And this is what the next president of the United States said about this extreme bullshitter:

“Your reputation is amazing, and I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. And I think we’ll be speaking a lot and in a year or two years, give me time to run things, but you’ll be saying, but a year into office you’ll remember this interview and you’ll be saying ‘Wow, he said he would do and he did a great job. You’ll be very proud of our country.”

 

Watching the president of the United States fawn over one of the worst conspiracy theoriests was sickening.

 

 

 

Immigration is Key

Immigration and Refugees, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

Rush Limbaugh said there was one main reason Trump was leading over all other Republican presidential candidates. That issue was immigration. He was probably right. Republicans were deeply unhappy with prior Republicans like George W. Bush and then Jeb Bush who promised action and failed to deliver. They wanted action. Their resentment at immigrants, whether rational or not, was driving them to Trump. They wanted radical measures like a ban on Muslims or a ‘big beautiful wall.’ They did not want mild mannered Republican talk. They wanted action and in Trump they thought (wrongly as it turned out of course) that Trump would deliver action.

The broadcasters of right-wing radio understood this, even if the Republican establishment did not. Steve Bannon also understood this. He kept driving Trump on immigration and in the 2016 election Trump won a surprising (to many) victory.  I think immigration was the key to that win. Just like it was key to Joe Biden’s unpopularity in 2024. A lot of Americans expect their president to take firm and decisive action to control things on the border. They believe Joe Biden made a big mistake when he cut back most of Biden’s executive orders to hold back illegal immigration, or at least what they perceived to be illegal immigration. They believed this opened the floodgates to illegal immigration shortly after he took office and then did little to change things until just before the election in 2024. Kamala Harris was appointed Biden’s immigration Czar and many believed she did nothing to make things better while she was Vice-President and hold that against her.

Right or wrongly—wrongly in my view—many Americans believe Democrats have “opened the borders” and they don’t like it.  So on we will know what the American voters in 2014 think about this. Will it be enough to  crush Harris’ chances for election? Time will tell.

 

 

A Wrecking Ball

Right-wing Extremism, Sexual harassment/Assault, Trump

 

As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast series about American right-wing talk radio, “And these radio hosts start to look at Trump like one of their own. When he gets attacked, they are the ones cheering him on from the side lines.”

The radio hosts rallie to Trump’s side no matter how outrageous he was. When he said he could grab women by the pussy they supported Trump. When he said John McCain was not a war hero because he was captured and he liked soldiers who were not captured, the radio hosts stood by him.

As Brian Rosenwald said,

“What happens most of the time, is these media and the left and these lords of political correctness they say this, and person tucks his tail between his legs and disappears. They go away. They abide by the judgment. [with enthusiasm] This guy is not doing that. And he very much realizes his audience is fed up. They are fed up with Republicans who don’t seem to get results. They are fed up with these Republicans they see as playing the Washington game. And they want someone who is just going to be an unvarnished champion who is going to fight for them in their battles and when he sees it makes the left angry is going to say, “Good! You deserve to be angry.”

 

The Trump supporters wanted a wrecking ball, not a ballroom dancer. And that is what they got.

It did not matter much to them what he wrecked either. The entire establishment deserved to be wrecked. His supporters loved it when he wrecked things and the left and the establishment and their media peons got mad.  The madder the left got the more the Trumpsters liked it.

 Of course, the Republican establishment was horrified by Trump’s rise. They didn’t want a wrecking ball. They had too much to lose. The Trumpsters had nothing to lose. By Trumpsters here I do not mean all of Trump’s supporters. He had plenty of support in the establishment too. They just thought they could control Trump. They thought Trump  would be their wrecking ball and he would not wreck them! By in large, of course, they were right. After he was elected, he no longer wanted to drain the swamp. He wanted to wallow in the swamp! The line about draining the swamp was all for show. That’s what Trump did best: be the showman. Not the real man.

While the Republican establishment thought Trump would fail and their supporters would desert him, the right-wing radio hosts recognized him as one of their own. They saw in Trump a fellow traveler. They wanted the rage machine. They did not want any namby-pamby lily-livered leaders. They wanted anger. And nothing less would do.

Matt Lysiak  the author of  The Drudge Revolution: The Untold Story of How Talk Radio, Fox News, and a Gift Shop Clerk with an Internet Connection Took Down the Mainstream Media Hardcover  explained that all of this was instrumental to the rise of Trump. As he said,

“Donald Trump would not have finished in the top three in the GOP primary if it weren’t for Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge. I will explain why. The populist wave in media has been growing from Rush Limbaugh and then blown up by Matt Drudge. And without that opening somebody like Donald Trump could not even run. When they said, ‘we’re supporting him, everybody under their conservative ecosystem followed suit.”

 

They all bought into a wrecking ball for president, and that is exactly what they got.

The Republican establishment was cowed.  Jeb Bush had worked for years building up support and financial help, but he was out of the running for the GOP nomination in no time during the 2016 Republican presidential primary race. So too were all the other “normal” Republican candidates.  All were traded for a wrecking ball. According to Matt Lysiak the two people who deserved most of the credit for this were both from talk radio—Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge.

American talk radio had produced a king. A King who raged.

 

The Talk Show President: Trump and Obamacare

Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast, “On issue after Issue, Trump is taking his cue from right-wing radio.” This is what he said about Obamacare: “We have a disaster called ‘The Big Lie—Obamacare.’ They said Obama lied when he promised that people would be able to keep their insurance if they liked it. And according to radio talk show hosts, this was a big lie. They said this was “enslaving the nation to big corporations.”

Right-wing radio host Michael Savage called for “an outright ban on Muslim immigration.” Donald Trump responded this way:

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out ‘what the hell is going on.”

 

Trump outright stole that idea from Michael Savage right-wing radio host. Right-wing radio hosts had been throwing fuel on this issue for so long it finally was adapted by a presidential candidate. Savage did not mind. He was flattered. He thought this would be good for America. He even said, “I’m going to take credit for architecting Trump’s messaging.” And of course he was not the only one. Many right-wing radio hosts were building Trump’s platform. Right-wing radio built Donald Trump.

 

Author Brian Rosenwald explained,

“Trump is not just parroting the lines. He is fully immersed in this character. He is everything that people’s favorite hosts were: he is a fighter. Like people who called in to Rush Limbaugh saying, ‘Thank God you are on the air Rush, now we have a voice. If you interview people at Trump rallies, they are saying the same thing. ‘We finally have somebody to fight for us. He is doing exactly what those hosts have been doing.”

 

 

The right wing hosts made Donald Trump. Trump is the talk show president!

 

Immigration: Appealing to resentment

Immigration and Refugees, Right-wing Extremism

 

Trump knew what he was saying. Over years he had honed his message to get appeal from sources Trump understood. The people who felt resentment. This was actually a new base for the Republican party.

 

One of his advisors was a student of right-wing radio. That advisor listened to a lot of right-wing talk radio. His name was Sam Nunberg. He had studied right wing talk radio. He had heard Mark Levine many times. Nunberg spent thousands of hours listening to right-wing talk radio and made copious notes. He tracked what was being said. He tracked the battle lines between the parties and within the parties.

As Nunberg said,

“So, we have people escaping failed cultures, escaping failed economic systems, and escaping failed governments, coming into this country and bringing all three of those with them. And our country encourages them. Unbridled wave after wave of immigration legal and illegal. It’s taking the country down.”

 

Of course, immigrants are one of the universal scapegoats of authoritarianism or fascism.  There is no more common or reliable object of resentment than the immigrant—the classic other. And they can be blamed for nearly every ill. All  authoritarians and fascists hate immigrants and want them to go away. The sooner the better.

 

Nunberg spent thousands of hours analyzing American conservative talk radio and analyzing them, and his reports went straight to Donald Trump.

Nunberg told Trump he was there to help him market himself.

 

Nunberg said that immigration had made Trump a martyr to the anti-immigration cause. Nunberg had been listening to guys like Glenn Beck. Beck said, long before Trump, “You want to solve the problem of immigration? You know it and I know it. You put up a giant fence. You stop the people who are coming in here because they are criminals, or they want to do us harm.” That became an integral part of Donald Trump’s playbook. That is what he said at his first speech where he announced he was running for the presidency in 2016 at Trump tower on the escalator.  That was what Steve Bannon loved about Trump. That speech energized Bannon; it energized the nation. American was all twisted about immigration. And Trump had a simple solution that everyone could understand. Building a big beautiful fence that will keep those immigrants out. And it all came from Glenn Beck.

Here is what Trump said at a rally in Iowa 2015 long before he declared he was running: “We have to build a fence. And it’s gotta be a beauty. Who can build better than Trump? I build. That’s what I do.”

Anti-immigration is probably the most important plank in Donald Trump’s platform. That is what he was all about. Of the Americans I know who support Trump it is a very important issue. And as Nunberg promised, the crowd loved it. And Trump loved nothing more than the roar of the crowd. He constantly dived in on this winning message.

Nunberg encouraged him to build a wall and to tell the people Mexico would pay for it.  That was better than a fence. And that is what Trump did. 4 months later he said,

I will build a great wall, and no one builds better than Trump. Believe me. And I will build them very expensively. I will build a great, great wall on our Mexican border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

And of course, as we all know, he repeated this message over and over again. And also, of course, his supporters at every rally chanted, “Build that wall. Build that wall.” And they chanted it over and over again. That together with “Lock her up.” Messages the crowds, fueled by resentment and fear, loved ecstatically.

Most of us have forgotten by now, but this was way beyond the Republican national policy. It became Republican policy but only after Trump secured the 2016 Republican nomination for the presidency. Most of the Republicans supported amnesty or at least a path toward citizenship. No one else advocated for a wall and as a result Donald Trump “stole” the Republican nomination. This simple solution demonstrated to Republicans who among the presidential campaigners had the harshest, heaviest platform against immigration and for law and order. Those were the issues the Republican voters were enthralled with. Support for Trump grew quickly and enormously.

And the right wing flourished under Trump. But America not so much.

 

The Talk Show President

Freedom to Read, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

 

In January 2011 at the annual Washington correspondent’s dinner, the Washington Capitol, like much of the world, laughed at Donald Trump. He was a joke. Just before the dinner Donald Trump had spread the lie that Obama was not born in the USA.  And this was Obama’s chance to get back at him and he took it. Until that night he had been very restrained about this birther story that really annoyed him and which he knew was a racist trope. Obama produced his official long form birth certificate and said Trump could now concentrate on issues that really mattered like “did we fake the moon landing.”  Everyone laughed. He mocked Trump as Trump deserved to be mocked. But in the process, he made an enemy. A Bigly enemy. Trump was stone cold mad. According to Justin Ling, “Trump looked like his head was going to explode.”

Trump had ridden the birther conspiracy for 3 years, pushing himself onto the national stage unlike ever before.  The fact that the Washington media was now scorning him might have been an asset. In the world of right-wing politics it certainly was no drawback. 4 years later as a self-proclaimed political outsider Trump descended the golden elevator in Trump Tower to launch his second campaign for the Republican nomination. He was about to become the most famous man in the world! Life was good.

As Trump said that day:

 

“Our country is in big trouble. We don’t have victories any more. When is the last time anybody saw us beating let’s say China in a trade deal? They kill us. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best. They bring in drugs. They bring in crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people…We are going to make our country great again.”

 

 

And of course, the message implied: Only one man can turn things around. He is a strong man. The man we need. Donald Trump. Only he can save us. That is the clarion call of the fascist. It is dangerous out there and only one man save us, and he is a strong man.

I am not saying America is fascist. I am saying there are many fascists in America and they are attractive to a lot of Americans. Fascism could happen in America. It is by no means impossible. We must be careful and wise.

And of course, like any wanna be fascist Trump had his scapegoats in the cross hairs: immigrants. As he said, “I am going to build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”

Most of the press did not take Trump seriously. Most people did not take Trump seriously. That included me. The Dummy. I thought, like so many others that there was no way Trump would win the Republican nomination. I was wrong. Bigly wrong.

Rush Limbaugh did not laugh. He took Trump seriously and he loved what he heard. He said, “I tell you this is going to resonate with people.” And he was right! He also made another wise comment: “The more the media hates this and makes fun of it, the more support Trump is going to get.” And he was bigly right again.

The extreme right would never be the same again.

The Rise of Barbarism in Ukraine

Classic Books, Freedom to Read

 

Of course, much to our current astonishment just as librarians saved knowledge from destruction at the hands of the Nazis and communists (see my earlier post https://themeanderer.ca/the-holocaust-and-books/) , the same thing is happening in Ukraine. As Richard Ovenden said,

“Librarians in Ukraine are facing major challenges. They are trying to do their main jobs while under attack. The psychological impact is huge: but still they carry on, protecting their collections, innovating with new services, determined to save knowledge and support their communities. What little we can do to help, we must.”

 

Libraries and archives are again being attacked in the Ukraine  by the forces of darkness. Too many of us thought days like this were behind us. Barbarism is never behind us. It can also spring up again.

 

At the time of Richard Ovenden’s  CBC lecture in 2023, 47 public libraries and archives in Ukraine had been destroyed. Ovenden said a further 158 are badly damaged and 276 had received what he called, “some damage.”

To repeat, barbarism is never defeated. We must constantly be on guard.

 

Demonization of Librarians

2018 Trip to Southwest USA, Freedom to Read

 

Besides the banning such great books by such profoundly ignorant people, Richard Ovenden was also troubled about the “demonization of librarians as combatants in the war for our minds.” This has been particularly egregious in the United States.

 

Of course, we know things will only get worse, particularly in the US, as the presidential election gets closer. One party, the Republican Party has staked its territory on the side of compelling the banishment not just of books, but truth itself. Sadly, we in Canada have come to realize that the craziness inevitably flows from them to us. We have a party in Canada that slavishly follows every ugly trend thrown up by our American neighbours. The latest is the Republican War on Woke and Trans, swiftly mimicked by Conservatives in Canada who seem to have very few original ideas.

 

“The American Library Association reports that during 2021-22 there were more than 2,500 book bans in 138 different U.S. school districts and libraries, spread across 32 states covering four million pupils.”

 

Librarians are highly skilled and trained professionals.   Yet in the US and in Canada there have been attacks against librarians as sexual deviants who are grooming children for exploitation. All of this has been done on the thinnest of grounds. Some want to remove all books with sexual content. Others limit the attacks based on gender issues that they don’t want discussed in schools. Such cases are extremely stressing to librarians but are becoming normalized much of it under the dubious rubric of parental rights. We have had parental groups launching attacks against libraries and their staff in Canada by what certainly appears to be a tsunami of ignorance. So far it seems the attacks have not been as successful in Canada as they have been in the US. Perhaps that is sign that the conservative movement is not yet as strong as it is in the US. But it’s getting there.

 

Fortunately, so far, defenders of libraries have been successful in advocating for the freedom to read and the complementary freedom to learn. Ovenden is not blind to “the irony that the more people want to ban books the greater the desire of people to read the books.”

 

Margaret Atwood is one of the most banned authors and she has stood up to the banners saying in effect, go ahead, your efforts will only make people want to read my books the more. And this is likely true. The fact is the book banners are still in a small minority, though admittedly, a loud minority.

 

At one time Bodley’s Library in London used the Roman Catholic index of banned books as a convenient shopping list for books it should acquire.

 

As Ovenden said, “book banners aren’t very bright.” Smart people know diversity in books is one the treasuries of a good library. Book banners are engaged in an assault by the ignorant.

All of this may be amusing, but the sad fact is that in the US, the land of extremes, it is now dangerous to work in libraries in many parts of that country.

That is why it is so important for all of us to support the library staff who are standing on the front line in defense of our core freedoms. As Ovenden said, “libraries and librarians are worth fighting for.

I couldn’t agree more.