Alex Jones is famous for being a walking and talking meme. He has gone viral for saying conspiratorial statements such as “they are putting chemicals in the water that are turning the freaking frogs gay!” However, this man and his company, Infowars, have caused irreparable damage to the country.
Alexander Emerick Jones was born and raised in Texas, and Jones credits his father for “opening” his eyes to the world around them by reading books like “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” in the house. This book speaks at lengths about the corrupt government, anti-taxing and government spending. Jones calls it a “primer” on understanding The New World Order.
Jones dropped out of community college after one semester and then, with the help of his father, he went into community radio by doing public service announcements before he began supporting conspiracy theories. In 1999, he started his website called InfoWars which shared conspiracy theories. It wasn’t until he got fired from the community radio station that he started his radio show with the same name. His early work was about Y2K and how George Bush was a bad president. However, he started to gain a following by talking about how 9/11 could have been faked, something he celebrated predicting on the day of the deaths.
As Jones gained attention and following, he knew that his spot on the far right with audience he had was a spot that other people could come for, so he started calling other people like Rush Limbaugh fake and accusing them of working with the government. Jones would brag on air about his “connections” in both the US government and Russian government and how world leaders “call and talk to him” all the time.
However, InfoWars was a business first and a conspiracy spreader second. Infowars was first owned by Genesis Communication Network, and Jones would talk about the coming fall of America and how the gold would help people in said fall. This would set everything up for the owner of Genesis, Ted Anderson, to show up and sell gold to the audience of scared listeners. Jones has since moved away from Ted Anderson because he was being investigated for shady business dealings, but the format he helped set up is something Jones still stands by. This fear-mongering is how his company makes money selling vitamins, minerals, essential oils and other overpriced items, and it is how Jones got into his current mess.
Back in 2012, the Sandy Hook School Shooting led to 27 deaths and two injuries. As the nation was grieving the loss of 20 children, Jones saw a chance like he has with ever other national tragedy: a chance to make money. He started to question the shooting on air and asked his audience to look into it, as well as sending some reporters to “just ask questions.” This “just asking questions” routine led to grieving families being harassed by people saying hurtful things like “you never had a child” or “your child isn’t dead.” This led to the families begging him to stop. When he did not, it resulted in their suit against him.
Jones then started to play legal games with these grieving families. He wouldn’t give over all the documents and stretch out the discovery process. He then cycled through lawyers who gave the family run-arounds and tried to delete all the documents related to the case. It wasn’t until he was held in contempt of court that the verdict was decided. Jones started to work with the system to limit the amount of money he owed the families. In an attempt to protect his personal and business interests, he declared bankruptcy. This only made it worse for Jones because he had to release his finances for the world to see.
Now Jones and his company are trying to figure out how to save their business and not be put into debt with nearly a billion dollars in damages owed to the family.
