Youtube (bane of my existence) thinks I like Alex Jones and always has something new of his for me to watch. It all started because I wanted to watch someone say insane shit for a few minutes. Alex Jones is a huge celebrity. He's almost an industry. He has a radio program, a regular internet "broadcast", he sponsors dozens of products, he is a very big deal. He is also bat-shit crazy. You might remember him for his appearance on Piers Morgan's show - the one that degenerated into him screaming at Piers about "another 1776!!!!!!!!!!!!" I left a few exclamation points off the transcript.
The completely bizarre thing about Jones is that not everything he says is crazy. Every point he makes is crazy but most of the things he says are just true. He takes three or four accurate stats (or facts or opinions of others) and puts them together to make something fucking completely out there, too weird to be real, crazy crazy crazy. Personally, I find the detail with which he embroiders his ravings fascinating. Almost every show he talks about "Agenda 21" like he read the title in a secret book he wasn't supposed to see. What are Agendas 1 through 20? Who knows? It's Agenda 21 that's the killer.
There are thousands, possibly millions of people who believe every word this lunatic says. And, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, he is a fairly reliable source for info other news outlets won't run with. This is not, as Jones would have it, the "Liberal Media Elite". It's another kind of media self-censorship. The one Chomsky identified but bigger, more ramified. The relationship between the media and the populace isn't as simple as it was in the Cold War (when Chomsky first published his theories of media's self-censoring propensity). No one really knows who the "enemy" is anymore. So painting the enemy as self-destructive, always wrong, fundamentally evil, and against "us" isn't as simple as it was when the Soviet Union still existed.
If you have some time on your hands, watch Jones' explanation for what he admits was a slightly crazed performance on Piers Morgan. I'm not going to link it because then Youtube will become convinced I believe in Agenda 21. Watch any episode of Infowars. As soon as you know what Jones believes - that a conspiracy of rich liberals, crooked monopolists, and dictator wannabes are in control of absolutely everything - it is simple enough to spot the distortions. Why, you might ask, should I waste my time doing such a thing? It's kind of fascinating to watch a guy weave facts into paranoid delusions.
For example, David Suzuki said a few months ago that moving the reactor rods at the Fukushima plant in Japan could release so much radiation the West coast of Canada and the US would have to be evacuated. Immediately before that he said the radiation released into the ocean would spread via ocean currents and, over the course of years or decades, reach the West coast and it would eventually contaminate the groundwater, the fish, the atmosphere, etc. Jones played the clip and started screaming about evacuating the US because of Fukushima. Not a part of the US, not as a result of radiation in the ocean, not over years or decades. The whole US as a result of moving the reactor rods. Suzuki has recently said he regrets the comments he made (possibly as a result of people like Jones deliberately misinterpreting them). Still, Jones performance was something the see. Three or four facts, plus someone else's opinion, equals insane non-sense.
Jones would be a sad character if he wasn't doing so well for himself. There is a lot of shit happening one might consider a genuine reason to freak the fuck out - witness my previous entries on climate change. But Jones is a fake out freak out. He is obsessed with his freedom (from taxes) and his constitutional rights (to own as many guns as he wants). That's a little unfair. Jones knows a surprising amount about the content, interpretation, and history of the US constitution. But his claims about how it is being attacked (as part of Agenda 21) are ludicrous.
The oligarchs with their anti-matter reactors have done a deal with Communist China and we'll have more about that later in the show.
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