Part One: Alex Jones: The Godfather of Fake News

Alex Jones has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, the App Store and pretty much every other mainstream app that is capable of somehow spreading information. In Episode 22, Robert is joined by Noel Brown and Benjamin Bowlin (Ridiculous History and Stuff They Don't Want You To Know) and they discuss how Alex Jones became an architect of modern conservative media.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And today we are talking about a
very special, terrible, terrible person, Alex Jones. Now you probably

(00:21):
know Alex Jones is a ridiculous hob goblin of a
man who spouts conspiracies at the same rate of fire
as of Olcan chain gun. He's been banned from Facebook, Twitter,
the App Store, and pretty much every other mainstream app
that is capable of somehow spreading information. Up until very recently,
Alex Jones is considered nothing but a far fringe loon,
hardly an important voice in our national discourse. But the sad, weird,
almost funny if you can hold back the tears, truth

(00:43):
is that Alexander Jones is one of the most influential
Americans of the twenty first century. He is an architect
of modern conservative media and a pioneer in a field
that employs everyone on the podcast today. Speaking of everyone
on the podcast today, my guest today are Ben Bowling
and No Brown from Ridiculous History. Hey, thanks for having
us on the show. Robert thanks, probably so excited to
talk about this despicable pustule of a man, and especially

(01:07):
because this is uh the second time that the three
of us have hung out. You recently appeared on an
episode of our show, Yes I did, talking about California's
first governor and uh, one of the most famous racists
in Oregon history. That was fun, feel good moment everyone. Well,
today we will be talking about more racism, but not
from a Californian or an Oregonian, actually from from a Texan.

(01:31):
So that's fun. You guys excited? Oh man, thrilled. Let's
do it all right, Let's let's roll into this. Alexander
Emrick Jones was born in Dallas, Texas, in nineteen four.
A two thousand eleven Rolling Stone profile describes him as
the descendant of two lines of Texas frontiersman. I think
this article is one of the first, if not the
very first, major publications that devoted a substantial feature to

(01:54):
the subject of Mr Jones's life. It takes it amused,
slightly mocking, but ultimately quite fon stance towards the infamous
loon quote. He describes a childhood that will disappoint those
searching for the Freudian roots of his crusade. His parents,
a dentist and a homemaker, raised him with love and
the manicured suburb of rock Wall. I was an all
American kid with a great family, he says. I read

(02:15):
Time Life books, played football, was friends with everybody. So
that's uh, that's what Alex says his background was. Yeah, yeah,
so that that seems so far, pretty normal, pretty normal
so far. I mean it's it's hard not to read
him talking anytime he's quoted and like a Alex Jones

(02:36):
been eating cigarettes. You can read the phone book. You
can read the phone book in that boy a lot
of fun. You say, rock Wall? He grew up in
rock Wall. Rock Wall, Yeah, which sounds very down home.
That sounds like a very comforting place to have grown up.
It is. I actually grew up about twenty five minutes
away from Alex Jones and in a place called Plane.
Oh um. So rock Wall is a suburb of Dallas,

(02:56):
and it's it's a pretty affluent place. This the suburbs
on that side of Dallas are generally quite well off,
upper middle class for sure, and Rockwall is one of
the nicer suburbs in that whole area. It is a nice,
quiet and pretty boring place, Mike Judges. King of the
Hill is set in that same area, and it's actually
a pretty accurate depiction of how it was when I
lived there. At least I think that's why I said

(03:18):
it was comforting. King of the Hill is like video
comfort food for me. Put it on like to just
it lulls me into a state of utter bliss. So man, okay,
so when when did things go wrong? Well, uh, that's
kind of something we're all going to have to piece
together here during the story. I've I've I've read as
everything I can about his background, every different article I
found that goes into his childhood. So I'm gonna give

(03:39):
you everything. There's some conflicting stuff here, so oh awesome,
here we go. And also, just hey, man, on a
personal note, thanks for doing that and saving us from it.
I hope you're okay. It wasn't. It's it's finding all
the clips that was really emotionally damaging because I had
to listen to a lot of info wars and it's
but you are going to put us through that part,

(03:59):
So yeah, yeah, no, no, you owe me nothing. All right,
I'm ready. I'm a monster okay. According to Alex, his
parents raised him to be a political quote almost as
an experiment to see what I'd turned into. The closest
thing to a childhood political training with some neighbors who
were members of the John Birch Society. They'd come over
for dinner and I'd be exposed to those ideas starting

(04:20):
at around age two. So this is the first place
where I have questions with that Rolling Stone article, because
no one in nineteen eighty four just had friends that
came over to talk about the John Birch Society. Do
you guys know who? What? That is? No break it
down for us? Okay, So the John Birch Society is
like the prototype for all future right wing conspiracy organizations.
Fred Cooke, the patriarch of the Koch Brothers, was one

(04:41):
of the founding members. Uh. To give you an idea
of these people's intellectual ten there, they believed Dwight D.
Eisenhower was a secret Communist. Oh wait, I am familiar
with these people because they're still like, there's staunchly anti communists.
That's one of their big platforms, right, Yeah, they're staunchly
anti communist and they leave that like a gigantic communist

(05:01):
conspiracy controls most of the world, even during the height
of the Cold War, when like you know, they, like
I said, they think Eisenhower was a was a lefty.
So that should give you an idea of how far
to the right these guys are having friends who just
I don't buy that he just had friends who came
over to talk about the John Bird Society. And other

(05:21):
articles I've read say that Alex Jones's father himself was
a member of the John Birch Society, which makes a
lot of sense. Whatever the truth is, Alex Jones was
probably born into a mix of middle class luxury and
far right conspiracy theories. Every single deep dive on the
man I've read will mention that while young, he found
a book called none Dare call it conspiracy on his
father's bookshelf. Um yeah, yeah, so another quote from Rolling Stone.

(05:46):
According to none Dare, the federal income tax is nothing
but a plot by a cabal of mega rich insiders
who worked to suck the middle class dry and transfer
its wealth to the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. As a teenager,
Jones read the book twice. It's still the easiest to read.
Primaryanth to the New World Order, he says, So this
is like the book that's his his I don't know

(06:06):
what's another influential book, the Bible. This is his Bible,
like his his his fountain. But there you go. But
he always, you know, makes a point. Maybe this is
coming later. I'm sure it is that he's playing a
character and he doesn't even really believe any of this,
But based on what you're saying so far, it sounds
like he has a pretty strong history of believing in
and he just recently started saying that it was a character. Yeah,

(06:29):
and that's for a custody hearing. And speaking of that
custody hearing, the teen custody hearing, which we will be
talking about more in the in the last episode of
this three Party podcast. But during that custody hearing, he
does talk about his childhood some So I'd actually like
to play you a clip from that where Alex talks
about his life at age sixteen. So this will give
us all some idea of what Alex Jones was doing

(06:51):
as a teenager. When I was sixteen, I didn't want
a party anymore. I didn't want to play games anymore.
I grew up. I'd already been in the fights, all
the big rituals I'd already had. Probably I hate to brag,
so I'm not braggie. It's actually shameful. Probably a hundred
and fifty women or more, that's conservative, But over a
hundred fifty women I'd already been in fights with, full

(07:14):
grown man. I was already dating college girls at the
time I was fifteen years old. I was already a man.
So that's a heart blood. I got Harry Balls being conservative, dude, No,
he is be his myth building at this point. I mean,

(07:35):
I mean, come on, no, that's that's all lies. Clearly,
it's it's it's funny. I feel like, yeah, that's forty
four year old al I'll believe a hundred and forty
that's a reasonable number for a fifteen year old. So,
uh yeah, oddly enough. If you want some context for

(07:57):
that video, the first part of it is him talking
about a new World Order plan to stop people from
breeding because we're all supposed to have kids by age sixteen. Yeah.
So anyway, I don't want to be just taking Alex
out of context because whenever the media tells him, yeah,
here's a question, if that's his beef, you know, that
this is this conspiracy to like cut off procreation or whatever.

(08:17):
And he's had a hundred and fifty women by the
age of fifteen, where all his like, you know, bastard children.
He's admitted to I think ten abortions, to like having
having had partners of his have ten abortions over the
years and stuff, and it's usually something he brings up
when he's talking about his like shameful past or whatever,
um whatever, that's important to him. Yeah, but so so

(08:41):
none of that is true, you're saying, right, Like, I'm
absolutely I know he's had sex with people because he
has kids, but I really doubt he had sex with
a hundred and fifty people by the time he was fifteen.
But was he was he really fighting full man? Well,
I don't know, but we're going to be talking about
a fight we know Alex Jones had and we've got
different different perspectives on that fight, including the police report

(09:04):
that Alex filed. So that's coming up in a little bit,
maybe you guys, well, we'll reserve our judgment until then.
Um So, anyway, during his John Hughes movie Worth Adolescence,
Alex Jones stumbled onto his first conspiracy well, he was
out at parties on the weekend, he would watch his
off duty cops sold pot, ecstasy, and coke to other teens.
Jones said to Rolling Stone quote a truck would appear

(09:25):
sometimes with a guy still in uniform inside. Then on
Monday they'd have dare and drug test as for football.
I was like, you want a drug test me when
I know you're selling the stuff. I called them the
mafia to their face. At the time, I didn't know
anything about the CIA drug dealing. So Alex was a
varsity lineman at this point in high school, so it's
entirely possible he went to a lot of parties. And
it's also possible that rock Wall cops sold drugs to teenagers.

(09:47):
That whole chunk of suburban Dallas Fort Worth has horrific
and had horrific drug problems. Um when I was a
kid there in the midnineteen nineties, there was an article
that on a like seven or eight kids died in
a night from heroin overdose. As it was called the
Great Heroin Massacre. And it turned out that Plain oh
was like the heroin capital of the United States, And
in like two thousand one, a bunch of Dallas cops

(10:09):
got busted for planting hundreds of pounds of fake drugs
on people. So there's a lot of police corruption in
that part of Texas. It is entirely possible that young
Alex Jones stumbled upon a real drug conspiracy. Um. He
says that this conspiracy is why he wound up leaving
the Dallas area. He got arrested for driving without a
license and having a six pack of beer in the car.

(10:30):
Um and when the police bought brought him to jail,
he says the police threatened to frame him and send
him away if he didn't stop, you know, talking about
the things that they were doing wrong. Maybe that's true.
Maybe Alex started his career as a conspiracy theorist with
a real conspiracy. It is possible cops in that part
of Dallas have done some shady things, and that's certainly

(10:51):
what your appetite. You know, the first one is legit,
then you know everything you see from then on is
like got that tone to It does sound a little
self aggrandizing though, that the cops were so concerned, you
know what I mean, if they're that bad, why didn't
they just get rid of him? Well, and that's that's
a fair point, and it's almost even if there was

(11:13):
something wrong, because apparently the Rockwell sheriff was indicted on
criminal charges for like organized crime, conspiracy and stuff after
he and his family left Austin. He says they left
that his parents moved to Austin because he was a
threat from the police. I don't know if that's true.
I don't know if they were afraid of him, but
it's entirely possible he saw some evidence of an actual

(11:33):
shady thing going on and that that's what sort of
jump started him. I gotta say, I appreciate that you're
you're being very fair, Robert. I'm noticing that this is
I think my spider since tells me this is about
to get really weird. I mean, it's Alex Jones. Of
course it's going to be really, really weird. But yeah,
he does it. At this point, he hasn't done anything

(11:54):
that's that's inherently terrible, and he may be stumbled upon
a real a real conspiracy. Buckley Hammond, Alex's cousin and
a current Info Wars employee, considers this, uh, this whole
rock Wall police thing to be a major moment for Alex.
Quote the rock Wall cops were lowbrow thugs and Alex
was a hell raiser. The conflict with the cops started
Alex down the road of his current pursuit. Um. So yeah,

(12:16):
that seems plausible. Once he and his family moved to Austin,
Alex quit football, which is probably good. He's not a
man who needs head injuries added on to whatever else
is going on in his head. He also quit smoking
pot because he says it made him paranoid, and we
wouldn't want paranoid Alex Jones. Uh. Decades later, during that
magical two thousand and eighteen custody hearing, Alex Jones admitted

(12:38):
that he still does smoke marijuana once a year, quote
to monitor its strength, like law enforcement does so, just
to make sure nobody anything. He believes that George Soros
is making marijuana more potent. That was his what he
stated in court, and so he's keeping taps. That's just

(13:00):
stop people from breeding and bringing the new world order
with better pot. Did you have you seen the video
of him where he's like talking, He's on a YouTube
clip and in the background he's got all this like
E D M DJ equipment and there's like this conspiracy
about Alex Jones that he is a secret E d
M DJ. He definitely plays a lot of E d
M on Info Wars. Yeah, but like in the background
there's like a t R eight O eight and like

(13:21):
these like c DJ decks and like all of this
stuff that only a super hardcore synth nerd would have.
And it's clearly like a room in his house. I
can tell you. I know, like at least close to
a dozen men over forty in Austin who are electronic
music DJ so and I live in Atlanta and I've
got a bunch of cent stuff in mind, so you know,

(13:42):
me and Alex Jones have that in common. It just
kind of made me feel closer to him. I just
wanted to bring that up earlier. It's just a Texas thing.
Well yeah, I mean it's it's popular in Austin. It's
entirely possible that that's a hobby of his, and if so,
I encourage him to do that and not everything else
he's been doing. Consider E d M a more or
a less positive thing for the world. So so so

(14:02):
it's similar. I guess this testing marijuana his potency. It
reminds me of that old story about Gandhi where he
said that he would have like young female relatives of
his with him to test his like his resolve, his
discipline and yeah, yeah Gandhi and good on Alex Jones
and Allie Stones a real bullward. You know what. It's weird,

(14:24):
But anytime someone talks about doing something to test themselves,
it's almost always a little shady. I don't know. Maybe
normal people don't test themselves, they just indulge sometimes whatever
I'm getting on a getting on a more point here anyway.
Jones claims that near the end of his time in
high school he started reading big fancy history books, including
William Shier's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which

(14:44):
is a really good book, as well as works of
Roman history. He began to see a pattern in history
of government stage terror attacks. Uh and this apparently was
sort of the start of his formation of the ideology
that would take him through into adulthood. So Alex Jones
graduated high school, he wound up gravitating towards the Austin
Community Access cable station and took on basically whatever work

(15:06):
he could volunteer for. When the Oklahoma City Federal Building
was blown up, by Timothy McVeigh. Jones got on the
air and accused the federal government of planning the attack.
Other conspiracy nuts started mailing him tips and information. Soon
Jones became a local Austin celebrity. Brian Blake, the Austin
Public Access station producer, recalled that back in those days,
the station was quote wild and unmoderated, like the YouTube

(15:28):
of its time. And how was gonna be my question?
Like he just had like a like a bully pulpit,
Like he could just do whatever he wanted whenever he
wanted at this time. Yeah, yeah, he could just get
on public Access TV. He had like a slot, and
he also guessed it on a lot of people's shows,
and he would just say whatever he wanted to. Did
you ever end up seeing some of this stuff forever? Oh? Yeah,
we're about to play a clip to it. So I

(15:48):
have found a clip from the show in this era,
and it's pretty remarkable. When you see Jones today, you
wouldn't look at Alex Jones in a modern Info Wars
broadcast and be like that man is polished. But I
think this video makes it clear that he is. He's
just that's the polish he's picked because the early video
shows him before he's developed his full stick. Um. So
for some context, this video starts when one of his

(16:09):
fans calls in to complain about a wildlife preserve in
the area. Uh, and Jones starts mocking him and like,
how dare you doubt the wisdom of the globalist elite
sort of way, so he's he's being satirical. He's not
really mocking the guy, but he's talking to him the
way he thinks that a globalist elite would talk to
this guy. It's kind of weird. Um. The guy doesn't
seem to get the joke and is really uncomfortable with

(16:31):
the fact that Alex is yelling at him. And at
one point the poor fucker call like, thanks Alex for
the call and says he has to go and has
clearly put off, and Alex screams at him, no, submit,
And then this happens, all right, submit how the kid?

(16:52):
Of course, I'm illustrating. I'm sorry about being at Hello,
there another government training center. Dude, I've taught you how
to be cool. The cool person goes never think all
the girls is the fool? You know, he wears the

(17:13):
cool clothes. He don't care about politics. None of that
baby looks party. Yeah, I don't care about my future
or the world's future. I'm a caring person. I like tot.
I like this Alex Jones. Yeah, this Alex Jones is fine.
He's whimsical. Man, this is great. He's dapper. Yeah, he's enjoyable.

(17:34):
You want to watch this Alex Jones. He doesn't look
like he hasn't fully drunk his own kool aid at
this point. You know. He also doesn't look like he's
emotionally and financially invested in destroying the world. That's true.
He looks like this is a bit for him, Like
he could do uh snl weekend update or something. I
can see why people would have found him enjoyable and

(17:56):
even comforting to like turn on at night, smoke a little.
It was also aff for a time. It was a
different time. It was not as heavy and weird. I mean,
come on, this feels like an intentional comedy show. Yeah,
still with a bent, but with an intent on making
people laugh more than scaring them into buying do prep

(18:16):
supplies whatever. And he sounds like a normal human being,
not as we'll get to in later clips. He's been
gargling cigarettes and razor blades for the last thirty It's
like what happened to Gallum, you know, like over time
you just like shrivel and degrade into this like totally
new creature. You know, this is like him when he
was see yeah, this is this is Sniegel Jones and

(18:37):
not go I like that. I like that. So at
this point he's he's definitely he rants a lot about socialists, uh,
and he's already ranting about the globalists. But his conspiracy
theory is more like an X Files type of conspiracy.
The military and the police and the CIA or untrustworthy
and spying on people. They're all engaged in a grand
chess game for your mind. And it's not He's not partisan.

(18:59):
The Republican and the Cradit parties are all fake to
this Alex Jones, he got left her on the right.
He's just everyone that's in power at all is in
the same conspiracy. That's Alex Jose at this point, fingers
on the same hand, right, yeah, yeah, just finger yeah exactly.
So this this particular take that he that he developed
secure Jones a comfortable niche in Austin's then thriving community

(19:20):
of weirdos. He became a minor local celebrity and is
in fact one of the people like that slogan, you know,
keep Austin weird that developed in this time in the
late nineties in Austin, and Alex Jones is one of
the people who was the most prominent folks in that
sort of era of kookie quirky Austin. So in he
got his first radio job, a show called The Final

(19:41):
Edition on k jfk FM. The chief conceit of the
Final Edition is that every episode might be the last,
because even then the globalists were perpetually a few days
away from cracking down on Alex Jones. At least, that's
the version of reality that Jones portrayed to Rolling Stone.
Subsequent reporting over the years has revealed a different side
to how he got his show. I found this quote

(20:01):
from a two thousand seventeen Business Insider article. While his
big break came from public Access TV, Jones's first real
job in media was with a local talk radio show.
He got the job with some help from his father,
a dentist, who recommended his son to a patient who
managed the station. After his father made the connection, Jones
was invited for an interview, but his father didn't just
make the connection. BuzzFeed also published a great article on

(20:22):
Alex in two thousand seventeen called Alex Jones Just Can't
Help Himself. It provides even more detail on how Alex's
dad basically got him his first real radio job. Quote,
he said, my son's got some out their ideas, but
I think he'd be perfect. Darren O'Neil, the KJFK manager
who brokered the deal, explained the next week he brought
Alex in for a meeting to secure jones spot on
the station. Jones's father became his son's first on air advertiser,

(20:43):
So there we go. Dad's money is what got Alex
Jones's career started, and his dad is a fairly well
off doctor, definitely upper middle class. It is interesting, if
you're a regular listener to the show too, how many
of the terrible figures in America that we've talked about,
the Koch Brothers, Paul Man for Eric Prince got their
big break from their dad's money. Just kind of weird

(21:04):
how that works anyway, speaking of money that doesn't come
from father's or my doesn't come from Alex Jones it's
time for ads. This This was my way of of
segueing into the ads as perfect. Yeah, thank you, I'm
a professional, Just Sophie, can we just play that? And

(21:27):
we're back. We're talking about Alex Jones and uh yeah,
we just we just got into the fact that his
dad got him his first radio job, which is fun,
perfectly fine if you're not the kind of person who
always brags about how you're a self made man. Um anyway, whatever,
um so, yeah, dad's money aside, Alex Jones is apparently

(21:49):
a natural at radio. Ryan shoe, k JFK's radio engineer,
later recalled Jones's first day quote, he just walked into
the booth, sat down, and started in on a rant
cold I never saw anything like that, according to BuzzFeed Quote.
Other early coworkers said that Jones was famous and often disorienting.
Theatrics have been there from the start. Burke described a

(22:09):
moment when a caller attacked Jones on air as a
soft button up to media type. Jones, according to Burke,
erupted into tears, yelling, my name is Alexander Jones, and
I played football man and my parents are still married
and I'm a damned American the color was stunned. A
coworker recalled, we went to break right after that, and
he put his head in his hands and is rubbing
his eyes all sheepish. He turned to me and said,

(22:30):
was I crying too much? I just turn it on
sometimes and I don't know how to stop. So wow.
So he's really in touch with his emotions. Huh. Pretty
stable guy. Has always been a hallmark of him is
that he gets super worked up and like, you know,
that's sort of him saying, look, I'm just like you.
I feel things I feel deeply. It's an interesting point

(22:50):
because he said, sometimes I just turn it on, but
I can't turn it off. So there's an interesting, like
I guess conflict. They're like, how performative is it? Does
he start performing? I think he's just a method I
think he taps into it, like you know, method acting style.
I don't know. I think that may have been at
at first. I think he probably started out having enough

(23:12):
discretion and self control to tap into it when he
knew it was appropriate for making the show more compelling
and drawing viewers or listeners in. And I suspect maybe
over time he's kind of lost his filter. And lost
his ability to filter like a sane person would because
I think gone completely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's my theory.
So uh, I asked earlier about Alex Jones and what

(23:36):
he's like in a fight, and it just so happens.
We have some some data on that. So in nineteen seven,
another local Austin, UH celebrity known as Space Hitler punched
Alex Jones right in his face several times. Space Hitler
real name Clayton Counts, but I'm going to keep calling
him Space Hitler. Uh yeah. Space Hitler had a habit
of calling into Alex Jones's public access show and making

(23:58):
fun of him. His nickname of choy was Jarhead Jones,
which for some reason Alex Jones hated. Here's how Jones
described him in the police report that he filed. Quote,
he has called my home and told me graphically that
he wants to kill me. I have made a complaint
when this has happened informally a number of times, and
we have contacted the FBI. He has harassed many people
over the past years. His voice is very easy to remember.

(24:20):
It is I would say a Houston type accent. He
is very strange looking, he has eyes that look like
a goats. So it is Space Hitler just a famous
local troll or did he have his own show too?
It's just like the Battle of the shock Jocks. What's
going on? He was just a famous local kind of
like personality eccentric, And I don't think it's true that

(24:42):
he threatened to murder Jones at his home. I think
that's because top bringing in the FBI is classic Alex Jones.
I think he's exaggerating it. But from what's up with
the goat though, I have no idea. I've never heard
anyone describe someone's eyes as being like a goat. Does
that mean they're really close together a really far apart
like octopus? Your guess is as good as mine. I've

(25:02):
seen a lot of days. I have no idea what
he means. Yeah, So from what I can gather from
other people's accounts, Space Hitler was definitely harassing Alex Jones,
although again I don't think he was calling his home
and threatening to disembowel him. There are a number of
versions of what happened in the fight between Space Hitler
and Alex Jones. They pretty much all start when Space

(25:24):
Hitler and some friends came down by the studio where
Alex was like working at the Public Access television studio
and we're harassing Jones, and Jones asked them to step
outside and then pretended to get a gun from his car.
One of Space Hitler's friends mocked him for this and
then punched Alex Jones in the face. Now, Charlie Satello,
who was an employee at the station, says that he

(25:45):
came out right after Alex got punched, and Alex was
in a frenzy and going crazy. Uh. Satello tried to
calm Jones down, and he and Jones got into an argument,
and then Jones started throwing punches at him. Uh. Satelo says,
quote Alex tried to fight back, but was throwing punches
with no form. The guy is no fighter. So Charlie
Satello claims that the fight only stopped because Alex's dad

(26:06):
arrived and gave Satello a hundred dollars because Alex had
bled on his shirt. Um, so that's that's one side
of the story. That's Space Hitler and Charlie Satello's side
of the story that they're making fun of Alex. He
calls them outside and pretends to get a gun to
scare them, and somebody punches him, and he starts swinging
wildly at people, and someone tries to calm him down,

(26:26):
and he starts swinging wildly at that guy too, and
then his dad comes over and bribes everyone to leave.
So that's one version of the story. Now there's another
side of the story, and it's Alex Jones side. Uh,
And we have the full account of that side because
we have the police report that Alex Jones wrote after
the altercation. I will be putting a link to this

(26:47):
police report up on our website behind the Bastards dot com.
I recommend reading it because it is it is a
work of art and belongs in a museum. But I'm
gonna quote liberally from it here. So in the police report,
Jones identifies himself as an employee of Castle Dental, which
I think he means he was working for his dad
at this time. Jones claims that Space Hitler and his
friends rolled up in a mix of suits and jogging suits. Quote.

(27:09):
I said, why do you call me at home and
on the air and say you want to kill me?
The leader said, yeah, jar head, it is me I'm
not a dumbass like you. I don't put myself out
in front. I'm hidden. No one knows who I am.
I can do what I want and get away with it.
Twenty two year old Alex Jones then claims that a
man who was quote a large Latin Anglo mix type
hit him with no warning. Quote. I did nothing because

(27:30):
I saw that to his left, the ring leader with
the strange eyes had a double edged military type killing knife.
Alex claims, are y'all on board? So far you? Alex
claims that he tried to run away towards the studio,
but that the big Latin Anglo mix type band followed him.

(27:52):
He hit Alex once more, and our hero Alex was
mournfully forced to defend himself. Where's the killing knife in
all of this? I'm sorry, the goat eyes has the knife,
of course, the military The man with the goat eyes
has the military type killing knife. Yeah, okay. So the
big Latin Anglo guy runs after Alex and hits him

(28:15):
once and Alex turns around and defends himself. Quote. I
hit him in the face. He came forward to hit
me again, and I hit him one more time. I
believe he fell to his knees. This is when Alex
claims that that guy Charlie came out and got into
a fight with him. Now Alex leaves out anything about
his dad coming over to stop the fight, and it's
very unclear what actually happened. The Austin Chronicle says that
the security footage has long been deleted, but the cops

(28:36):
apparently saw it and they didn't see anything serious enough
to take further action. My guess is that this was
more of a sad schoolyard fist fight type situation than
the action see Alex Jones recounts. I mean, I guess
he didn't knock anyone to their knees, but it gives
some insight into Alex's head and how I think he
interprets the world. So, yeah, he had to mournfully defend himself.

(28:59):
I mean, I I bet at some point he yelled,
do you know who my dad is? He's dentists. May
have just yeah, he may have just killed dad. Yeah maybe.
Oh man, this is this is very enlightening. Yeah, Okay,
so several days after that fight, Alex Jones. Because that
fight happened in winter of and within between a couple

(29:19):
of days and a couple of weeks after that point,
Alex Jones did a Halloween special guest spot on someone
else's public access television show. So we're gonna watch a
video of Alex, and for you listeners who aren't seeing
the video, the link will be up on the site.
But Alex isn't like a Halloween decorated set. There's a
severed a fake severed head, and a bucket next to him,
and he has a fairly small butcher knife that he

(29:41):
is jabbing a pumpkin with as if he's trying to
murder it. And he's taking calls. His first caller seems
to be making fun of him for being on public
access TV, which is unpaid work, and he asks Alex
what Alex does for a living. So we're gonna play
the clip now, I come on public access and hang out.
I'm on twenty four hours a day, they say, pretty
pretty close. Well, I can assure you I don't make

(30:02):
any money off public access. I can guarantee you that. Well,
you guys have a good one. He appreciate that call.
Hello call, are you on the air? Yes? House? How
you done? Pretty good? I was just kind of curious
if It's true. The police can have laser, laser or
infrared beams if you if you want to call it,

(30:24):
and they can project those in. Yeah, the awesome police departments.
Last time I heard as twenty units. So oh, and
he still looks for everybody listening, he still looks a
pretty good Yeah, he looks like a normal human being.
Like he's clearly got a ship going on. But it's
fun and you you want to you want to watch.

(30:46):
So Alex's radio show at KJFK gradually started to pick
up steam. His coworkers back then describe a man who
was incapable of turning himself off. When they would all
hang out at bars, Alex would come over with a
thick pile of papers and start ranting about globalists or fluoride.
Matthew Hobbley, who worked at KJFK, told BuzzFeed later quote,
he'd come over and go into his spiel, and we
tell him to be cool, and he'd yell, this is

(31:07):
serious stuff. We'd be like, damn, Alex, it's our day off.
But he'd go on and on, and by the time
he was finished, there were papers everywhere. Was he pounding
shots though? Is he a drinker or was he like
a teetote I think he's always been a drinker, but
I don't know. Yeah, Yeah, it seems like some of
the stuff comes from the drink, comes from the place
of drink, And it seems like there's a big need
for attention as well, you know, like he doesn't seem

(31:31):
like the kind of person who's comfortable when he's not
the topic of the conversation or the person speaking. Yeah,
and that that seems to gel with what he did
on Public Access because one of the things he was
famous for was being the guy you could count on
to do guest spots on your thing if you were
away for a week or whatever. He really seemed to
just always want to be on the air, Like that's
been a gulf with Alex since he was a teenager.

(31:53):
Really so interesting. He might like the sound of his
own voice hard to say, uh so yeah. Tragically, Alex's
radio show was not long for this world. The final
edition had its final edition in nine when the station
got bought in. The new management fired Alex for his
quote inside Terror job stuff. Alex made the best of

(32:13):
a bad situation and started his own website, info wars
dot com. He found Tin stations that were willing to
buy his new show, and he started broadcasting it from home.
While running his website. He made a documentary called America
Destroyed by Design, about a world bank takeover of public
land that Jones assured everyone was imminent. This earned him
his first celebrity fan, Richard link Letter, who cast him

(32:34):
as a crazy street profit, and several of his movies,
including A Scanner Darkly. So you want to see more
young Alex Jones, you can find him in A Scanner Darkly.
I just remember Waking Life and that was the first
time I ever even heard of Alex Jones. He was
like the crazy, red faced dude in the cab that's
just like going off. Yeah he's isn't I think he
is Alex Jones and all of the link Letter movies
he appears in. Yeah. As Alex's fame grew, so did

(32:57):
his popularity. He made a deal with Midass Horses, a
syndication outfit that existed to sell gold to crazy people
or sanity disinclined people. Jones started making money of his own,
and by July of two thou one, his show was
on nearly a hundred local affiliate stations across the country.
On July twenty, Alex Jones made his most successful prediction,

(33:19):
Please call Congress, tell him we know the government is
planning terrorism. He referenced the nineteen nine three World Trade
Center attack and identified Osama Bin Lawton as quote the
boogeyman they need in this Orwellian phony system. So basically,
Alex Jones on July predicted that there would be an attack,
very likely on the World Trade Center, possibly involving planes,

(33:40):
and he identified Osama Bin Lawton as the person who
would be blamed for it. Now, I do want to
point out right now that his prediction was not entirely accurate,
and we're going to play a section of that prediction
that you will not find familiar. We've seen the news
stories that you've wanted to blow things up, that you
have blown things job, and that you're saying that four
million of us are gonna die and we need martial
law and the associated press. Yeah, so he wasn't right

(34:03):
about everything, but you got to give a guy credit
calling in July at an attack like that. It's close
enough that he was able to make a career off
of the fact that he predicted the nine eleven attacks
well surely that like he was able to translate that
into listeners that would like follow him to the ends
of the earth, right, And there's also some confirmation bias there,

(34:24):
I think, because if if people want to believe that
he's making accurate predictions, it's very easy to ignore all
the inaccurate predictions he made before that. It's like the
Nostradamist effect. I mean, not Damas predicted nine eleven, you guys,
come on, yeah, exactly, Like if you predict doom and
gloom every single day for years, sometimes those predictions will

(34:45):
line up with a real attack. And the nine World
Trade Center attack was a really prominent terror attack. Osama
bin Laden was a prominent terrorist, Like, it's not out
of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah, So that's my question here, Robert.
Do you think that did he claim to have any
insider information or was he privy to something? Yeah, I
mean he claimed to have sources, and he claimed to

(35:07):
have because he was talking about how like we know
that the press is going to support martial law and stuff,
like he was basing all of this. He always says
that he's got like white papers and sources and stuff
that he reads all this from. But he claimed to
have had inside information that this attack was coming from
an anonymous source, from a bunch of anonymous sources and
stuff like He that's classic Alex Jones, as he always says,

(35:29):
this has been verified, this has been proven, we have
the sources, and then he doesn't give them, um but
credit where it's due. He he called a terror attack
that sounded like nine eleven wound up being a couple
of months before nine eleven. Um. Here's Alex Jones speaking
later about this time. Quote. I went on the air
and said those were controlled demolitions. You just watched the

(35:50):
government blow up the World Trade Center. I lost seventy
of my affiliates that day. Station managers asked me, do
you want to be on this crusade going nowhere or
do you want to be a star. I'm proud I
never compromised. So Jones got in trouble at first because obviously,
right after nine eleven he declared it to have been
a government attack, and he was probably the first prominent
person in the country to declare the nine eleven attacks

(36:11):
of a government conspiracy. Um, this is like nine eleven
was an inside job. That was sort of the big
buzz phrase that was around at the time, and he
is the guy who started like he's not obviously, I'm
going to guess that when that happened, thousands of conspiracy
theorists around the world had similar ideas, but Jones was
the first prominent conspiracy theorists to really hammer home his

(36:32):
belief that nine eleven was an inside job um and
gained traction with it too write whether positive or negative.
He was the first. He became the face of that, yeah,
because he would replay that clip of him predicting it
and stuff, and that got him tens of thousands of followers,
probably millions by the time, you know, the real height
of that conspiracy theory. And I'm not the man to
deny anyone there crowning achievement. Alex as if nothing else,

(36:54):
probably the luckiest conspiracy theorist in history. But like you said,
he makes a lot of predictions, and I want to
make sure that we provide some context here, because Alex
Jones has predicted one disaster a day for roughly twenty
straight years, uh and through Yeah, so just so no
one thinks he's psychic. I would like to zoom forward
real quick to two and the release of the Robert

(37:15):
Rodriguez and Danny Trejo film Machete. Now, Alex was terrified
of this movie because it showed Mexicans with machetes attacking
mostly white bad guys. So here's a prediction he made
about the movie Machete, just so we don't think that
maybe he is magic or whatever. And this is an
Austin thing too. Rodriguez is an Austin guy, right, yeah, yeah,
yeah right. And and Rodriguez and Jones know each other. Um,

(37:36):
I don't think well, but they met. Yeah, whether he
knows it or not. Robert Rodriguez, I would say it's
a nine chance right now is going to trigger racial
riots and racial killings in the United States with the
September release of his film Machete. First of all, it's

(37:59):
like the most owner Robert Rodriguez film ever. Like, I
don't know if anybody saw that movie. I saw it.
I saw it, and to you know what, to Jones's
credit here at least he wasn't trying to say. And
also I want to note our super producer, Casey is
outside the booth with us, and he is laughing so
hard at some of these that we can hear him

(38:21):
in here. Ye. True, that's true. Well well played, sir. Well,
I mean you guys remember the machete race riots, right,
that was that was a dark time for this country.
Were going to come back from that. I'm surprised you
can still buy them in stores. I did just want
to say that. We Ben and I also do another
show called Stuff They Don't Want you to Know. That's like,
we're not a conspiracy theorists. We call ourselves conspiracy realist.

(38:42):
But the idea is like critical thinking applied to conspiracy theories.
So it's like we look at them, it's like, why
are people talking about this? What are people saying on
the internet? Why is this interesting? Why is this a
fascinating thought experiment? And we get so many crazy emails
in our email box, and and most a lot of
them are like these like group emails that are just
sent to dozens and dozens of addresses, and almost all
of them are just predicting a disaster a day. So

(39:04):
he set the tone for this. I mean, this is
a thing, yeah, and it's a smart thing to do.
If you want to be in the business of making conspiracies,
you want to make as many prophecies as you can
because it moves the same thing that like an evangelical
doom and Gloom preacher would do. You know, you make
you make so many predictions about the end of the
world or whatever, and it doesn't matter that each of

(39:25):
them is fake, because what's important is people. Some people
want to always be that amped up. They want to
feel like the snakes are always that highney. Yeah. Yeah,
it's about the journey to the end of the world,
not whether or not the world ends. So Jones treated
his luck as prophecy, and his show began to spread

(39:45):
like wildfire. At first, he was mostly popular in the moist,
weird underground of Internet nerds in the early two thousands,
which I'm gonna guess everyone on this podcast was a
member of one way or the other. I just cringed
at your use of the word moist, but that's that's
a personal thing for me. I thought it was there
was evocative, inappropriate, but disturbing. Yeah. Yeah, Well, we passed

(40:05):
Alex Jones around like a joint. He was. He was
Bill Hicks without the humor. He was Robert Anton Wilson
without the humanity. He was a strange and unique little
nuts screaming into the abyss when we went on strung
out red eye drives across the southwestern wherever you happen
to be driving late at night. But as the Internet spread,
so did Alex Jones. Uh and he would not stay
small forever. But now it's time for This is not

(40:30):
going to be one of my smoother ad breaks, but
it's it's it's time for an ad break. Ads. We're back,
and we're talking about Alex Jones, who has has just
you know, started to really drive home the fact that
he predicted eleven along with a bunch of ship that

(40:51):
never happened. Anyway, He's making a lot of hay out
of that. And his first big break came courtesy of
a man you may know, Charlie Sheen. In two thousand six,
Jones interviewed Sheen on info Wars about his belief in
nine eleven conspiracy theories, most of which had of course
been spread via info Wars. This video, because Charlie Sheen
is a prominent guy, went really really viral, and that

(41:12):
same year, Alex Jones published the nine eleven conspiracy film
Loose Change. He was a producer on Loose Change um,
which is why a lot of people will still make
the joke that jet fuel can't melt steel beams. That's
where that comes from. So Alex jones loose change really
really ignites the nine eleven conspiracy movement um and for
the first time in his life, Alex Jones became more

(41:33):
than just a local Austin celebrity or a nut beloved
by truck drivers. He launched the info Wars store in
two thousand six, and he started selling diet supplements in
two thousand thirteen, using his shows as free advertising for
his own products. Alex Jones was the first person to
really grasp how much money could be made by being
famous and trusted and selling people bogus healthcare products on

(41:53):
the Internet. Nowadays been Shapiro, Gwyneth Paltrow, dozens and dozens
of different public figures sell various health products using their
sort of websites and podcasts and and media networks as
a way to drive sales. But Alex Jones was the
guy who invented that you know it doesn't have behind
the Bastards branded life straws. I think you're missing out

(42:14):
on that niche, you know, for just you can get
a bottle of twelve behind the Bastards iodine tablets guaranteed
to make sure you have enough iodine to listen to
this show. I personally endorsed those. By the way, I
think you get a price break if you order in bold.
What about Cyanide tablets, That's what I want. We also
sell Cyanide tablets. Yeah, those are cheaper. Um, you know,

(42:36):
we're trying to really drive the Cyanide but anyway, Yeah,
so I just feel it's important to recognize that that
Alex Jones was kind of like the like the Steve
Jobs of sleazily selling people expensive supplements on the internet.
Like he really like huh yeah, I mean he he
blazed that trail. He was the first guy I had.

(42:56):
I had no idea seriously that he was the pioneer there.
I thought he was just you know what it is,
it's because it's so ubiquitous, like alarmist conspiratorial shows that
you know, you hear the ads about how the economy
is gonna collapse and then it goes to another ad
about how you should buy gold. But he gotta start

(43:18):
with buying gold was his first big thing and that
but I didn't know he was the first. And like
in two thous fourteen when Glenn Beck was everywhere on
the air. He was always selling like gold stuff and
that he was that was very much descendent from Alex Jones,
because he was the first guy to realize that, like,
there's a whole constellation of expensive things that people who
are scared about the end of the world always want

(43:39):
to buy. And if you can keep them convinced that
the world is always ending and get them to trust you,
and then tell them that your ridiculous safety supplies or
supplements or whatever will protect them, that you can make
a shipload of money. And that's actually what our second
episode is going to be. But I just wanted to
make the point that years before Gwyneth Paltrow made Goop,
Alex Jones was selling people silver to put up their butts.

(44:00):
Now uh Inforce grew into a major production. No longer
was Alex recording a show from his house and filming
video in a spare room. Now he had a studio,
semi professional production values, and a whole staff. One of
his producers from this early period was impressed by Alex's
ability to talk for an hour about stories he hadn't
read more than the titles of. Another employee recalled the
BuzzFeed quote. Sometimes he'll say he has sources and he's

(44:24):
been told a piece of news that has been confirmed,
but we wouldn't have that information. Later we'd find out
it was because a week earlier we had a caller
on air who theorized about something and Alex repeated at
as fact. So you mentioned earlier having um uh doing
your conspiracy show and getting emails from nuts. I suspect
a lot of Alex's sources are emails like that, because

(44:46):
he's think of the lists Alex Jones must be on
like yeah, and he's just like, we we have it
confirmed now from the email. It's just like and he
shakes it too. He I'm shaking a bunch of paper
right now. Very it does feel good. We should be
filming this so people can watch me shake at a

(45:07):
camera and get all red faced. Anyway, um yeah. So
in September two thousand and seven, Alex Jones interrupted Haraldo
Rivera live on Fox News. Rivera was doing what I'm
sure was a tasteful and informative report on quote, the
secret world of restroom gay sex um. But then Alex
showed up to get in the middle of it, shouting
nine eleven was an inside job through a megaphone until

(45:29):
he was removed by the NYPD, which is like almost
a singularity of classlessness. Haraldo Rivera talking about gay restroom
sex while Alex Jones rants about nine eleven conspiracies on
the same frame of a television show. It's amazing. I
can't tell me we have a clip of this, because
there's got to be a clip. I'm sure we're just
gonna have to use our imaginations. You're gonna have to

(45:49):
use your imaginations for that. I didn't pull that one
up because there was other clips. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
who wants to be Haraldo. I'll take one for the team.
I say we put the kash on this and move on.
On March eighteenth, two thou eight, Alex Jones became an
invited guest of Fox News. Judge Andrew Napolitano had him

(46:11):
on as quote the Great Alex Jones. They talked about
the fact that Alex and inval Wars had suddenly become
a substantial influence on other conservative media personalities like Glenn Beck.
Alex said, I've never seen an awakening this big. I'm
seeing Glenn Beck talk about the New World Order on
Fox I'm seeing you talk about it, We're seeing Lou
Dobbs talk about it, We're seeing mainline hosts Limbos even

(46:32):
talking about world government. Michael Savage is talking about how
Obama may stage crises to bring in martial law. So
all the things that I was talking about in the
wilderness ten plus years ago are now hitting mainstream and
it's great. So that's okay. I'm sorry, hold on, hold
on point of order, Robert. Michael Savage as mainstream, that

(46:52):
guy's looney Tunes. You know, I I hate to argue
with you on this, but I grew up in Texas
with a very conservative family, and I heard Michael Savage
three or four times a week. And my parents aren't
conspiracy theorists. They're just very conservative. He's not that far outs,
like if you're right wing, he's not. He was not,
in that period of time far out of the stream.

(47:13):
Do you know what it was that? I bet it's
because I started listening to him later in life, maybe
later in his career, and when when I heard him,
he was like based in California and talked about how
much he hated the comedies in California but he still
lived there. Oh boy, and I don't know what he's
doing now or if he's he's gone further to the

(47:33):
fringes now, but when I was a kid, at least
I heard him a lot. Um, he's definitely like like
Glenn Beck, one of those voices who was just regularly
a part of our lives. So um. The first broadcast
of the Alex Jones Live Show was in April of
two thou eight. I found a copy of at least
a lot of that broadcast. The link will be up
on our site. But the first minute and a half

(47:54):
is just the A C d C song Balls to
the Wall. Uh. Then Alex class Yeah, he's got great
taste in music. Um, he puts up a lot of
obscure like industrial metal from the eighties. Uh So something
that's always interested me Alex jones musical taste, which is

(48:14):
why it's interesting that you say he might be a
secret DJ. I would kind of love to hear his music. Yeah, anyway,
A C d C song Balls to the Wall place
for a minute and a half, and then Alex Jones
begins ranting about how all of the world religions are
controlled by the same group of people. Eventually, the footage
cuts to Alex Jones wearing a Ron Paul toothousand and
eight t shirt. He's talking with an Irish guest about

(48:34):
Margaret Thatcher. Alex allows his guest to speak for a while,
occasionally cutting in to move things along. When the show
starts to drag, he talks about the Illuminati, and they
eventually wind up on the subject of Senator Joseph McCarthy,
who Alex loves. He goes on a rant about how
the Soviet Union was funded by the U. S. Army,
So we're gonna play a clip from that that the
army and then our government was funding to Soviets. He

(48:55):
was totally destroyed instantly because that was about to expose
that Commune's was just a fake front, just like we
knew from books that were written and inside people that
Mao was put into power. Now it's admitted on the
History Channel, and they have the old CI Section chiefs
who are now dead, but videos of them admitting that
they put Mao into power. Alan Watt. So we're at

(49:17):
normal Alex like today Alex Jones by by two thousand
eight or so, his politics are a little bit different,
but you hear the voice right, He's gone all gravel
in dark, So he's definitely there. He's still kind of
bipartisan because he's definitely saying that, like the whole government
is engaged in a conspiracy to make people believe communism

(49:37):
is real when it's just a front for the U. S. Army.
So he's not a partisan hack yet, but he's definitely
evolved from beginning. Alex Jones. Yeah, uh. The election of
Barack Obama as President of the United States was probably
the best thing that ever happened to Alex. It seems
to have taken him by surprise, as does the surge
of far right sentiment that immediately followed President Obama's election.

(49:58):
The podcast Knowledge Fight is currently going over every post
election episode of Alex Jones's show to kind of document
Alex's transition from a total political outsider to a dedicated
profit of the far right. But they've shown that he
didn't see the Tea Party coming. The first episode of
his show, when the Tea Party got brought up by
a caller, he clearly had no idea what it was. Eventually, though,
he got on board and realized that this represented a

(50:20):
group of people that he could sell stuff to. Alex
Jones and info Wars were responsible for spreading that viral
poster of Obama as the joker. If you glanced at
a tea party protests in two thousand nine, you would
have seen that. Um. In March two thousand nine, Alex
Jones released the documentary The Obama Deception, a two hour
movie about how Barack Obama was a grave threat to quote,
the hope of free humanity. Jones made the case that

(50:42):
President Obama was going to take away America's freedom, a
thing that totally happened. You all remember that, right, um.
One former employee later described the mood and info Wars
at the time as quote, we were getting more and
more calls from people who seemed unwell, claiming that the
FBI was watching their house. We kept saying we're the underdogs.
That was our mantra. But slowly it started to feel

(51:04):
more like we were becoming the majority. Oh yeah, which
is so what what? What? Like? What spurred this change
in him? I mean like he was just so freaked
out by Obama in particular. That's like, I don't know,
that's a good question because it makes sense why he
because he obviously he hated on Bush a ton he
believes Bush murdered thousands of Americans to start a war

(51:25):
using whatever the hell. I don't I don't want to
get into nine eleven conspiracy theories. But he hated Bush,
but he Obama didn't even do anything for him to
hate him. I think that's what I'm saying. Yeah, it
was just hope. It was just like, let's turn the tide.
Let's just do some different stuff and you know, be
good people. I think there's a lot of implicit racism.
I think that's yes, Yeah, I think there's a lot

(51:47):
of implicit racism in the surge of fire right sentiment
that that sprang up after Obama's election. With Jones, I'm
not sure. I'm sure some of its racism. I think
a lot of it, though, might just be simple economic
makes sense, knowing if I can scare the ship like
bushes out of the White House, so I can't scare
the left anymore into buying my ship right, because their

(52:09):
guys in office and they think that this war stuff
is going to get reduced. So now I have to
scare people on the right. Well, how do I scare
people on the right. I make Barack Obama look like
a demon trying to take their freedom. Any wasted no
time doing that. No, immediately. Yeah, and that's something that's
pretty easy for him to do. But I appreciate your point.
You can't be a showman without a show, you know

(52:31):
what I mean. So do you do you think that
it was I know we're speculating here, but do you
think it was a matter of that cognizant level of
calculation or do you think he was just going with
the flow. I think it's probably a mix of both. Um,
we'll get into that a little bit more later. But
I I see some calculation at the start of it,

(52:53):
because Obama hadn't done anything yet to justify a freak out,
and he engineered the week out with Bush. Obviously, something
like nine eleven happened. Something as crazy as planes flying
into a tower. People will make conspiracies about it, and
he jumped onto that, and maybe that was legitimate. He
may have really believed every conspiracy he threatens he spread
about nine eleven. I do think Obama marks the point

(53:16):
where he's just trying to make money. Um. Yeah, but
that's my theory. Um, So they made a lot of
money in early two thousand nine. Yearly Obama years on
good days Alex would run around yelling you get a bonus.
We had a huge sail day. Another former employee recalled
a time when Alex took everyone out to the Info
Wars warehouse and shot at boxes of DVDs with a

(53:37):
bow and arrow, apparently in celebration. This was recalled as
a fun time. Um. Like all great artists, Alex stole.
In particular, he stole from Rush Limbaugh. Several former employees
claimed he nursed an intense jealousy for the right wing
radio icon. Jones's signature smokes thirty packs a day. Voice
is apparently an imitation of Rush Limbaugh's voice, and if
you listened again, we listened to his earlier stuff, he's

(53:59):
clearly putting on a voice because he doesn't always talk
like that. Um. One employee later claimed quote, we'd spend
weeks getting everything just right in the studio. Then he'd
go for a drive and hear Rush again and say
I need my voice to sound something like that, and
so we'd completely re engineer the sound to make him gruffer.
So that's interesting A key moment. Nowlex's evolution happened in

(54:20):
two thousand eleven, because that's the year he got really
good at google bombing. According to that Rolling Stone profile quote,
asking his audience to stage a mass online search of
the phrase revolt against the t s A, a tactic
known as google bombing, Jones instantly manipulated the term to
the top of Google search index. As intended, the maneuver
caught the sensitive traffic antennae of Matt Drudge, who put
the t s A story on the national news agenda.

(54:42):
Our show was the detonator on the cap of the
t s A story, and Drudge was the barrel of
the gun, says Jones, So this is like early fake news,
Like this is like yes, he's also the fucking Steve
Jobs of fake news, because he really figured out he's
not just putting out fake news stories. He wrecking eyes
is how to get his listeners to manipulate the algorithms

(55:03):
of social media and search engines in order to make
it trying to tip the scales, to like freak people
out and to like start some kind of firestorm of
paranoia that's in his favor to help him sell bullshit exactly. Yeah,
question was it phrased as when he when he was
telling his audience to do this, was it phrased as
you can go search now to learn more about this

(55:25):
or was he telling them make this the top search term?
He was telling them to make this a search turn.
He was staging like he like that was the explicit goal,
and he's he says like again, like that, like are
the goal was to get this story to Matt Drudge. Um.
I mean, I guess a lot of our listeners don't
read the Drudge Report regularly, but it is. It is

(55:46):
currently number one hundred nineteen on Alexa, the hundred nineteenth
most popular website on the entire Internet. Um. There are
very few websites in existence larger than the Drudge Report.
It is one of the most fluential, you could call
it journalism outlets on the planet. And Drudge and Jones
have a mutually parasitic relationship. When Alex was banned from Twitter,

(56:09):
that was the top story and the Drudge Report a
few minutes later. Um. Drudge regularly will scan info wars
and will put like basically comb the crazy out of
his stories and then put them up on his side. Like.
That's been going on for years, and it started at
least as early as two thousand eleven. Alex Jones speaks
positively of Matt Drudge and regularly cites his website as well.

(56:30):
He feels differently about Glenn Beck. So here's that Rolling
Stone profile. People inside his company tell me Beck follows
what we do closely, says Jones. It's frustrating that I've
never sold out yet I'm being gobbled up by this
giant pac man who puts my work through his corporate
media assembly line. He takes information from me about secret
combines and elites and then spends it against big government,
but he ignores big business. He says, George Soros is

(56:52):
at the top of the New World Order power pyramid.
Give me a break. I have no love for Soros,
but I don't trust Beck. Of my audience hates him.
New listeners on me. I'm a back wannabe. I'm like, no,
it's the other way around. So we have Alex Jones
to thank for a lot of Glenn Beck. Um. Yeah,
easily wounded this ego he is, and it's it's fun

(57:12):
that he talks about. He says, George Soros isn't a
big deal back in two thousand eleven or so, because
he does not shut up about George Soros today George
Soros is making our marijuana stronger. He's behind everything bad. Now.
It's just interesting how he switched over time. But Obama's
first term is a great time for Alex Jones. It
goes so well, in fact, that people who were close

(57:33):
to him at the time speculate that he voted for
Barack Obama in two thousand twelve. One employee recalled quote,
he just kept saying, oh my god, if Obama loses
were out of business. One of the guys in there asked,
you didn't vote for Obama? Did you? And Alex said nothing,
just a grimace. I don't know what it meant. So
that's there's a conspiracy for us to start about Alex Jones.

(57:58):
I know at least three employees to BuzzFeed stories about
how a number of people at info Wars at the
time suspected Jones had voted for Obama. This remains my
favorite Alex Jones conspiracy. So him insane. I mean, I
wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised he made
If he's cynical enough to do it, then I don't know.

(58:20):
And if he did it, that's proof that this is
I mean, maybe he wasn't lying in his his his
custody hearing, and this is all in act. I don't
think it's all in act, But I wouldn't be surprised
if he voted for Barack Obama because he wanted millions
of dollars and because he wanted to continue being relevant,
and he attached his relevance to being able to stir
up hate against you know, the system, the president. So

(58:43):
Obama one and two twelve, obviously, and for a little
while things remained good in jones Land. He made millions
of dollars selling supplements, rifle parts and survival supplies like
seeds and body armor. It's possible that during the Obama years,
Jones took home like twenty or thirty million dollars himself,
maybe more um. In two thousand thirteen, at an event
for the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones met Roger Stone.

(59:06):
This was the beginning of what I like to call
the likeliest friendship in history. Former Paul Manafort partner and
sure to be frequent Bastard pod side character Roger Stone
told The Washington Post this we kind of hit it off.
He's fearless, as showman. He likes a drink, a cigar,
bouty stories, hunting and fishing. He's a man's man. Roger
Stone self man's man. Yeah, full grown man's man. And

(59:30):
Roger Stone now hosts a show on Info Wars. We're
just last week he defended himself against the surely looming
indictment that's coming from the Muller investigations. So that's that's
that's fine, that's fine, that's it is good fun. And
Roger Stone, no one has ever been more ready to
be an inful Wars guest than Roger Stone. He is

(59:51):
was made for that show. It's like they poured him
into a mold. What a guy anyway. Other people around
Jones at this time say that as Obama's second term
drew to a cloth, Alex started to change. One ex
employees said, quote, it became less about affecting change and
more about being sensational and making money. It didn't start
out that way. He was a lovely person to hang
around for a long time, but soon that evaporated. Four

(01:00:13):
employees described Alex Jones to BuzzFeed as quote a tyrant.
One person called him Blackbeard meets Hitler one minute just
on a high and swashbuckling and calling us to action
the next punching out walls. So when Donald Trump first
appeared on the scene, Jones didn't pay him very much
mind uh. He kind of dismissed him as a plant
by the globalist or a fake at first. But then

(01:00:34):
Roger Stone got involved in the Trump campaign and introduced
Alex to Donald Trump. In December of two thousand fifteen,
Trump appeared on info Wars for a thirty minute conversation
with Alex Jones. In fifteen years, Alex had gone from
running a website out of his spare room to talking
with the soon to be president for an audience that
numbered in the tens of millions. But Alex Jones never
lost the common touch. To prove that, here's a video

(01:00:56):
he filmed when Caitlyn Jinner transitioned in two thousand and fifteen.
Just so you know, listener, in this video, he is shirtless.
This is the first of many shirtless Alex Jones videos,
and he's wearing what he admits are his own dirty
gym socks on his ears. So trans zoological, I believe,
is the term. I may just had to be transabled
and shot my arms and legs off, and I mean
known as a biscuit and living a box. We're taking

(01:01:18):
care of And if you don't accept it, your hateful.
In fact, if you don't adopt my life style and
where dirty brown socks on your ears after you work out,
you're a racist, you're a homophobe, you're an anti zoological phobe.
You're a piece of filth. So now I become my
new self. Yeah, he's pretending to be a dog in that.

(01:01:40):
So yeah. And and just just to point out, he
had a lower third on the screen that said rough
rough Jones. Yes Jones, Yeah yeah. Now is this the
first shirtless Alex Jones video? No, I don't think this
is the first time. It's the earliest I found maybe,
but he's there's I have up on the site, will have.
I think it's like a sixteen minutes super cut of

(01:02:00):
a I don't even think they're all of the shirtless scenes.
We will be talking about that. But I think at
this point his degeneration into modern Jones is finished. Like
it's kind of like watching Danny DeVito's character and always
sunny from the second season where he's a businessman, to
like where he's eating garbage. Alex Jones has got from
a charming man in a suit who talks like a

(01:02:20):
normal person to wearing his filthy gym socks on his
ears insulting a random woman for no good reason, like
he's he's completely degenerated now anyways, full gollumn Jones. At
this point he is Schmigel has died long ago. Yeah,
So two thousand sixteen went the way we all know

(01:02:41):
it did. Donald Trump gradually defeated his Republican rivals and
eventually Hillary Clinton. Alex Jones watched his reach and influenced
growth throughout the campaign. Thanks to the algorithms on Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube who he had a direct highway into the
brains of tens of millions of people. In two thousand eleven,
his YouTube channel had some eighty million views. By two
thousand team that number was more than one point two billion. Now.

(01:03:04):
Donald Trump called Jones after his election victory to thank
Jones's viewers for their support and Alex Jones for quote
standing up for what's right. According to Alex Jones, this
is what the President elect said. I just talked to
kings and queens of the world, world leaders, you name it,
but it doesn't matter. I want to talk to you
to thank your audience, and I'll be on in the
next few weeks to thank them. So that didn't happen.

(01:03:25):
He didn't show up on info Wars again. I think
the adults around Donald Trump were like, you can't keep
showing up on info Wars. Maybe they should minders to say,
people who rip up his paperwork. Yeah, I'm sure it
was hit him on the hit him on the nose
of the newspapers, like, no, not go on, Alex Jones,
that time is gone for you. Maybe they played a
super cind of shirtless Alex Jones for him, and we're

(01:03:47):
just like, we can't let you do this. He's like,
but Putin. Putin doesn't wear a shirt. He's probably so
pissed that he has to wear shirts right now. Oh God,
thank thank God for that. I will let timently say
whoever is keeping a shirt on the president as a
hero if that's a difficult thing to do. Um anyway.

(01:04:07):
On November nine, Alex Jones, in tears, cheered Donald Trump's
plan to quote build a better world. He toasted champagne
glasses with Roger Stone. Frank Sinatra's My Way, played Alex Jones. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sorry. So he turned it on, but he couldn't
turn it off again the tears. Yeah, I mean he
can't turn it off anymore. I think he's past that
point in his life now. He's he's always on. He's

(01:04:30):
like when your bomb told you not to make that face.
You know, if you if you stay a racist conspiracy
theorist long enough, it'll stick that way. So Alex Jones was,
after Trump's election on the service at least, on top
of the world. But like the conspiracies he loved, there
were more twists and turns in his journey than we're
visible on the surface. On Thursday's episode, we're going to
talk about Alex's vicious, multi year, multimillion dollar divorce, his

(01:04:54):
frankly shocking custody battle, and the moment when Icarus like
he flew too close to the sun and got banned
from all mainstream social media. Tomorrow, though, we're going to
talk about Alex Jones, a supplement empire, and all the
people he may have gotten killed along the way. So
that's what's coming up. I'd like to thank both of you,
Noel Benjamin for for being on my show, for talking
with me about Alex Jones. How are you feeling after

(01:05:16):
part one of this epic three part thing. A little
bit dead inside, a little broken, a little on the
verge of of a nervous breakdown, but also you know,
kind of chipper and ready to see what comes next. Personally,
I'm thrilled. I'm learning a lot. And uh when when
started stuff they'll want you to know, I figured we'd
run into Alex Jones, but this, this deep dive is

(01:05:38):
a real eye opener. Man. The Steve Jobs stuff alone, Yeah,
I really think that's a fair way to build him
because whatever else he is, and this is something people
if you talk about, like two people who would like
study broadcast radio history and like podcasting and how it's
sort of evolved, he's a seminal figure in that he's
an important figure in the industry that we're all involved in. Um,

(01:05:59):
he is an innovator. He's also the shirtless guy that
we saw wearing his own filthy gym socks on his
ears for no real good reason. Um. He contains multitude. Yeah,
I could also like your Rudyard Kipling reference there earlier
with the common touch. I have a question, just no spoilers.

(01:06:20):
Robert but in the next episode, are we gonna learn
whether or not Alex Jones sells branded tinfoil? I mean,
I actually haven't run across Jones selling tinfoil, but we
are going to talk about the lead based supplements that
he sold the people. I mean, alright, no Benjamin, you

(01:06:40):
guys want to plug your plug doubles before we close
out this episode. Absolutely. Noel and I are the co
host of a show called Ridiculous History, which examines the strange, bizarre,
unusual people, places, events, and things throughout the span of
human civilization. It's a little shallower dive, but it's it's
a lot of fun, and the episodes are, like, you know,

(01:07:00):
thirty five minutes and pretty easy to get through and
binge nice and snack able podcast episodes. We do those,
and we also do a show called Stuff That I
Want You to Know, which applies critical thinking to conspiracy theories.
Um and I think we did one on Alex Jones
turning the frogs gay pretty recently and that was that
was a lot of fun. But I've I've learned a
lot more than I ever wanted to know, And God,

(01:07:22):
it sounds like we're gonna learn a lot more still
this is just the beginning of the journey. Um. In
the meantime, while you're waiting for the next part of
this three part series, I'm behind the Bastards. Uh. You
can check out every podcast we've ever done for either
show on our websites Ridiculous History Show dot com or
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com beautiful.
You can find me on Twitter at I right, Okay.

(01:07:44):
I have a book on Amazon, A Brief History of Vice,
where I experiment on myself with dangerous ancient drugs, so
you can pick that up too if you want. You
can find this podcast on the internet at behind the
Bastards dot com, where we'll have all of the sources
and video clips for this ridiculous three part episode, and
you can find us on social media Instagram, Twitter, at
at Bastards pod. So uh, We'll be back tomorrow and

(01:08:07):
Thursday with more ship about Alex Jones. Until then, maybe
try buying a T shirt off of our t public
store Behind the Bastards. You can. You can get Nachos,
not Nazis, uh, Derrito's not Dictators, DJ stalind We got
all that stuff, so buy it and and tune in
for the next episode and remember I love about h