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Nobody's mentioned Alex Jones, either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29 Jones claims not to be a conservative, and he certainly isn't a Republican, but if you examine his m.o. closely he's actually much closer to the far-right in Europe and the far right of days past: he aggressively borrows political points from the left (he's against the IMF, and military intervention in general; I vaguely remember him spouting alarmist stuff during the Fukushima disaster) but it's combined with a secular end-of-days shtick, survival mentality, and barely concealed racism (Jones was a big George Zimmerman fan) that make it pretty clearly far-right. If you look closely at his points of reference and what's he's done a lot of his deal is about popularizing ideas that were important in the Militia Movement in the 1990's and repackaging them for the new political climate, specifically the New World Order and all the Waco references. Alex Jones had a big blow-up with Glenn Beck a while ago and there were accusations that Glenn Beck was stealing Jones's act: it's entirely possible, and Beck's act was something of a mainstreaming of Jones's straight-up conspiracy mentality. The big difference is that while Beck kind of keeps people in the ever-rightward drifting center, Jones wants you to Get Out and Be Prepared for when the black helicopters show up. Beck was always kind of playing at being crazy: Jones presents this stuff like it's totally sane. Some of Jones's stuff is blatantly crazy: the Bilderburg Group, Bohemian Grove, and lots of other conspiracy stuff you've never heard of. He'll certainly never be on Fox News, and it's tempting to say it's all kind of harmless kookery. But his fans don't think so, and he has real overlaps with the mainstream as represented by Fox News. There's also the same journey ready there for the reader. Infowars.com has the more mainstream stuff: the real weirdness is in the mail-away videos. In the meantime, Jones does endorsements for organic food (the survivalist tie-in) and gold trading. Jones is a big ideological link between what looks like the mainstream populist right and the bona fide far-right. The problem with this stuff isn't that it can just turn people into cranks, or even Patriot Movement people or whatever. It's also a big canalization of real popular anger about the government into death fantasies and paranoia. Jones mostly doesn't politically motivate people: he demobilizes them, tells them to wait for poo poo to Go Down and that the world is controlled by powerful forces beyond their control. But he's also playing a dangerous game. Roadside_Picnic fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 08:00
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Seoinin posted:I get the distinct impression Coulter's on the wane, mostly due to simple redundance. I remember back in like 2004, she was the outrageous commentator. The old school lefty blogs like Sadly, No and Hullabaloo et al spent a disproportionate amount of time kneading their foreheads about her. Malkin's a lot more loathsome than she's often given credit for. She made her stripes defending Japanese-American internment in the middle of the War on Terror anti-muslim stuff.
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Oct 17, 2012 08:37
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