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The first few chapters of that book the guest author wrote are painful to read. The next few chapters are from a different book entirely. ... goes to show the nature of the problem, really. I'm hardly finished with it, but I noticed a few interesting gems thus far. What I found surprising, despite having listened to a large part of Knowledge Fight, was how embedded Alex's first wife was in early Infowars. It's easy to forget, considering how public and bitter their divorce was, and especially since it was her expert witnesses in the child custody case that made public Alex's narcissistic personality diagnosis. The reason they first met was because they were both attempting to gin up media attention, and she was even there during the Bohemian Grove infiltration, even if that isn't mentioned much these days. It also gets into just how much money they were making at the time, even if Dan and Jordan are insistent that the financial documents given to the court cases were likely fudged or laundered to appear much lower than they actually are. quote:In those years Kelly, Jones’s right hand, was preoccupied with homeschooling the couple’s three young children and tending to the demands of their new, moneyed lifestyle. The couple had a house on Lake Travis, but their base was a walled compound outside Austin, a heavy-beamed, stucco former ranch house with a safe full of firearms. The kids tumbled about with the family’s four dogs: Kelly’s Chihuahua, Bambi, a Labrador named Biggie, and two French bulldogs, Captain Fantastic and Sparky.
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Mar 10, 2022 16:56
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InfoWars is generally aware of Knowledge Fight, or at least parts thereof. In some of the early days of the podcast, they noticed an InfoWars producer was following them on Twitter. After the NYT story about them, one of Alex's lackeys spent some time attacking them on air. They only had the NYT story to go on, and even then, they followed Alex's style of only reading the headline, making a story up based on that headline, and then talking about that made-up story while refusing to engage with the actual story any further. KF's response was to point at it and laugh. They then ignored it, because it wasn't Alex doing it, and thus it was too boring to be worth their attention. Even if Alex did respond, there would be no real difference. As we've seen in the recent episodes, Alex is generally a bad debater who can only win using Gishgalloping, active misdirection, and generally yelling over people. Dan and Jordan have been quite clear that there is "no point in actually talking to Alex," for that reason at least. It is logistically impossible to have anything approaching genuine conversation with Alex. Even if Knowledge Fight were to become an object of Alex's narcissistic rage, it would still be a one-sided conversation that Dan and Jordan are under no obligation to entertain. It is my opinion that Alex is nothing more than an object of study. I think Dan and Jordan would agree with that assessment. It is also worth noting that in the Sandy Hook book that NYT writer published, she said that there were an utterly bizarre amount of media at the Texas-based court hearings aside from her, including an HBO documentary crew. KF is far from the only non-InfoWars thing interested in Alex right now. If I had to guess, based on everything we know about modern-day Alex, it is probably impossible for him to know anything of substance about Knowledge Fight, at least for anything beyond a nebulous sense that KF exists. Between managing what is left of his company, figuring out the content production schedules for up to 4 hours of syndicated content for five to six days a week, actually filming that content, dealing with the multiple court cases, and then doing the barest minimum to attend to his family and private life... Alex probably genuinely does not have the time to listen to a podcast, much less at 600 episodes. He is genuinely too busy. Unless there is content in it, which Dan and Jordan would not provide, Alex can't spare the time for it. Even when Lenny Pozner was asking Alex to stop using his dead son as a prop for his agenda, Alex made it very clear that the only way he would even look at Pozner in the face was if he was recording his show at the same time.
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Mar 18, 2022 08:29
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Marsupial Ape posted:If Alex Jones actually goes to jail over contempt of court I am going to die laughing. Just half assing his way through life has taught Alex nothing about consequences. The Sandy Hook court case is in a civil court, not a criminal court. The question to ask here is if a civil court can levy a contempt of court charge in the same way that a criminal court can. Being put under oath in a civil court is already something that doesn't seem to affect Alex much, and given at least two of the Sandy Hook cases are already in default judgement territory... If contempt of court is a thing that can even happen here, it probably would've happened already. It would be funny if Alex did go to jail over this. I just don't think it is within the given remit. EDIT: Reading into this, the trail this stunt is being pulled on is the one where the victim's families are being presented by Koskoff, Koskoff, & Bieder, which is not the firm that Mark Bankston is from. We're probably not going to learn the details of this from a firsthand account on the show. Morroque fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 13:45
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If I had to guess, someone, somewhere, made a mistake during this week's frippery with the civil court. InfoWars is allowed to make as many wilful mistakes about the media as it wants, but the moment someone else in the media makes a mistake about InfoWars, he'll bray about it for the next six months. ... no, it isn't fair, but that's life under narcissist rule. EDIT: It was delayed by a few hours, but the episode is up now. Morroque fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Mar 25, 2022 |
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Mar 25, 2022 06:21
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I do wonder what "the InfoWars audience" necessarily meant at times. While I do generally agree with Dan's hypotheses regarding the "wet concrete" metaphor and audience dynamics, I also had to wonder how many times when Kit talked about "what the audience wants" he was actually just talking about what Alex wants. From Kit's position, he essentially would be writing for an audience of one. The thing about it being "breaking news" is another weird one, because we know InfoWars dresses up old news as if it was breaking news all the time, so for Kit's description of things to still be true, that would only mean that Kit himself is not the person with editorial control to decide what old news stories become new again.
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Mar 31, 2022 07:15
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Perhaps it's the circumstances, but I am very apprehensive about having some semblance of empathy for anyone involved in this. We need to keep in mind that the reason Alex is currently on time-out is because Dan could posit a reasonable theory for why Alex could have a health problem in the face of his legal troubles, only for that eminently reasonable theory to turn out wildly optimistic. If you give an inch, they'll still take a mile, all without any real effort on their part. I watched the full deposition video on Youtube in the days before the episode came out, and when Kit started crying, I didn't know what to think. I was taken aback by it, sure, but it didn't strike me as him having a sudden revelation about how deep trouble he was in. "Mysterious" is the word I would use. Was it a fundamentally human reaction? Yes. Do we know the reasons for why that human reaction even happened at all? No, absolutely not. Jordan posited the theory that it was more like a repulsion to someone experiencing hard mental dissonance while still not equipped to handle it, and even Dan had to note that an extremely pessimistic view does exist where Daniels was not crying about anything relating to Fontaine, but rather in defense of himself. After they went off the record and returned, Kit was no longer crying, and the tone of the deposition largely resumed the same evasive demeanor that it had before. The only change, however slight, was Kit was a bit more willing to throw blame towards Alex for some things, but even that might have been out of exhaustion rather than a fundamental change in position. It wasn't part of Knowledge Fight's cut of the deposition, but near the very end Kit Daniels was super contrite and very apologetic towards Fontaine. On its face, it would've been the thing you wanted to hear, but for some reason it rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me of back when I was in grade school and having to deal with getting bullied by other kids. In the times when it escalated and a grownup got involved, the bully gave the same general apology in the same general tone that Daniels did. It felt genuine enough at the moment, but in a few days, it would be gone. As if it never happened. The things which prompted the bullying were group endeavors, and those group dynamics were the products of homeostasis. Individually, one on one, the bully would always apologize. Yet when they returned to their group of friends, old habits would soon resume. Considering the people Daniels is surrounded by and the systems that he participates in, there is very little chance that Daniels' apologies would end up meaning anything in the aggregate. The propaganda systems he is surrounded by have a structural incentive and inclination to never give someone like Fontaine any amount of sympathy, for any reason. Daniels lives in that world, relies on it for his source of income, and likely is embedded there to the point of being unable to actually leave even if he wanted. EDIT: I know this feels like everything is moving so quickly because of Alex's antics, but the Connecticut trail for this isn't set to begin until September 1st, it seems. This isn't even slightly over. Morroque fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Mar 31, 2022 |
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Mar 31, 2022 10:21
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Perhaps it wasn't "empathy" Ogden had for Owen by the end of things, so much as it was "pity." Given the degree to which the case has progressed, there is nothing Owen can do to defend himself, and even the otherwise very-legitimate claim he has of being given malpractice-worthy bad legal advice is just another thing for him to get pulled apart over. While Alex likely has a great degree of criminal-accounting to attempt to hide his wealth, Owen does not. And the weirdest part? I almost believe him when he says he didn't know much about the topic. The eight minutes he got sued for happened when he was filling in on a broadcast he didn't normally have slotted. It is very likely he did not have time to prepare both the script and the edited video. Someone else did, but even then Owen still steadfastly refused to throw anyone else under the bus for it. It is incredibly likely that it was prepared entirely at Alex's behest, but still... Owen was filling in on Alex's show, so we have to know that the "someone" who gave Owen the script and edited video could not have been Alex directly, as if he was there then he would just hog the camera himself.
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Apr 2, 2022 01:33
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If I hear that Opening Arguments episode correctly, the only reason Alex wasn't arrested for contempt of court was because he was in Texas and this was the Connecticut court. Because he was across state lines, the judge in question did not have the authority to issue an arrest warrant to any Texas-based law enforcement? The financial penalty involved counts upwards until halfway through April, upon which it gets locked in and Infowars foregoes the ability to get it reimbursed. We have about two weeks until we find out if Alex has to cough up half a million dollars or not. I'm tempted to go back and find the episode where he openly bragged on air about his unspecific plans to make sure the Sandy Hook Families get no money.
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Apr 2, 2022 11:34
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It is not unreasonable for him, mechanically speaking, to consider suicide. If he does indeed have the narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis that his ex-wife's custody case reported him as having, then he was always at risk for it. NPD might have the complex where they crave the adoration of others as a source of narcissistic supply, to the point of developing abusive relationships in order to keep the lines of supply functioning as such; but the flip side of that is if all lines of supply dry up instantaneously, things can turn dark very quickly. It does cast the multiple times he swore he would "never kill himself, and if he did, it was a government conspiracy to hide the truth," in a different light. This claim has been a constant throughout his career, and since the majority of the claims about his imagined enemies are a source of projection, there is a chance he has struggled with suicide ideation in the past at least once. However, the relationship between narcissism and suicide is only limited to cases of severe narcissistic injury, while the link between narcissism and suicide more generally is still understudied. The other caveat is, as Jordan points out, Alex does not understand the meaning of words. Language is not a means of communication for Alex so much as it is a type of birdsong meant to draw the attention of other, similar birds. The suicide narrative might have just been a song Alex found he could easily sing. We always have to keep in mind that words on InfoWars might not have meaning. My guess the more likely thing which could cause Alex to finally lose it is not being bankrupted as such, but rather anything which would cause him to lose access to his ability to broadcast the show. That would be a significant enough narcissistic injury to consider. But given the way the three court cases are going, we don't know if the judgments would end InfoWars, or if they will demand InfoWars to continue operation in order to make the necessary payments. Morroque fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Apr 3, 2022 |
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Apr 3, 2022 09:30
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Tree Dude posted:Alex quirk that's been driving me crazy lately: Any time he tells you how to search for something While I can totally believe it was originally borne out of laziness back in the early aughts, the exact technique he is now using is called "google-bombing." In effect, he is trying to game Google's page-rank algorithms by using his non-bot audience to inflate the search popularity of specific terms which favours his business and propaganda narratives. Some other varieties of online extremist content producers will attempt the same method by telling someone: "Do your own research! Search for X." What is not stated, however, is that the propagandist in question usually had already set up websites or content channels using that terminology in advance. This way they not only have any unsuspecting target ready for entry into their promotional ideology, but they also benefit from the search engine interfacing, which even non-marks would still provide them by searching for the terms in the first place.
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Apr 6, 2022 03:29
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It does make me wonder where he got the idea. He was doing it early, but my impression of him is as someone who would have been technologically-illiterate at the same point, given the number of times he blames government interference for basic tech problems. That search results could be manipulated would be a rather advanced concept for him. (It's likely he just got the idea from one his tech people or webmaster, and then ran it into the ground.)
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Apr 6, 2022 12:00
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It's an obvious lie, but we're all too happy to pretend it's the truth. Just this once. As a treat.
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Apr 7, 2022 01:04
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The depositions this time were carried out by Koskoff, Koskoff, and Bieder, who are up in Connecticut and not down in Texas. As they are not the firm that Bankston and Ogden are from, Knowledge Fight does not have a working relationship with them. They also seem to be incredibly media-shy, even in situations which would otherwise favour them. While they did appear in The New York Times writer's book on Sandy Hook, even then, it was only briefly. While I don't know for sure, I suspect the reason for this has to do with their clients. Their court case represents the largest bulk of Sandy Hook victim families who were subject to harassment, and likely are in a position to not want any further attention in their direction. They also are suing Alex in Connecticut where the massacre happened, rather than down in Texas on Alex's home turf like Bankston's and Ogden's clients are. It was Bankston's observation that InfoWars openly ignored the Texas set of Sandy Hook cases, but were "playing to win" in Connecticut. (Both had default judgments, but they happened for entirely different reasons.) I suspect the reason for this other case more seriously -- by some impossible standard of the term -- is because since more people suing him in that case, the possible damages would be that much higher. The perspective we've been afforded from only the cases in Texas is a relatively small part of the overall whole. The only part of it I find frustrating is that we don't know if this meant Koskoff, Koskoff, and Bieder had any differences in how the approached InfoWars as a subject matter. I get the feeling that's the sort of thing Dan would find fascinating.
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Apr 7, 2022 12:41
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A thing which concerns me: this may be related to the underlying mechanics of how the holding companies worked. At some point in the past, Alex forced everything InfoWars did through a that top-level holding company, on the stipulation that the holding company were to get 70% of the profits. InfoWars proceeded to not pay that 70%, and racked up a "debt," which it then rushed to pay off as soon as the lawsuits began ramping up. This was likely how Jones was attempting to shield his assets from litigation. The "bankruptcy" might be a part of that plan, as the corporate entities mention as going to bankruptcy court aren't either the holding companies or the "free speech systems" company Mark Bankston mentioned. Alex claimed, possibly correctly, that InfoWars was "upto its eyeballs in debt." It would only be a lie of omission to leave out exactly who he was in debt to. (Himself, if the suit allegations are to be believed.) We need to keep in mind that, although he doesn't look like it, Alex is a multi-millionaire. Donald Trump was able to use bankruptcy proceedings to further enrich himself, and we have to assume that same elite privilege would be available to Alex. (We're only reacting "lol rip" because that is how us normal people would deal with possible bankruptcy, but Alex is far from normal.)
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Apr 19, 2022 09:00
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We don't know much about David Jones outside from the broad strokes of his history. If I were to paint a possibly-inaccurate picture of what we know, it would swing wildly between an evil arch-conservative who was deep in the Birch, or the unfortunate father who a wildly special needs child who would proceed to consume his entire life. The amount these two realities can coexist isn't nothing, but it isn't a wide margin either. Alex's ex-wife claimed it was David Jones's idea to move into the nutritional supplement business, but that was just around the onset of the divorce, so we don't know exactly how involved he got in the operations aside from it originally being his idea. She's made the claim on a few occasions that Alex's parents are the true people who can control him and his business, but it is a difficult claim to rely on considering Kelly Jones is highly motivated in what she discloses about her ex-husband opposed to what she does not. Also considering that Alex's wild antics regarding coronavirus nearly got David Jones killed and likely permanently maimed him besides, the question of "who really is controlling who" becomes more difficult to answer. My bet on where he got the idea is probably less scandalous. He's had a number of anti-government weirdos on his show over the years who have had no few number of anti-tax ideologies empowered by tax evasion grifts. Alex likely got the idea from one of them.
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Apr 20, 2022 00:01
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It might be a bit late to make it onto tonight's episode. Maybe Monday's. I'm reading the Department of Justice document on the matter, and I'm torn. There seems to be the simultaneous reading of "Alex Jones should not be using the bankruptcy code and we should not hear this case," versus "we should not be hearing this case on an emergency basis." The first reading is the one we're hoping for, but the second reading is liable to cause even more delays to the trails. Bloomberg News Wire posted:(Bloomberg) -- An arm of the U.S. Justice Department cast doubt on far-right radio host Alex Jones’s use of bankruptcy as three companies he once owned prepare for their first day in court Friday.
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Apr 22, 2022 02:27
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Froghammer posted:Just underlying that these people are monsters. Alex started his trump card bankruptcy plan seven years ago and kept it in his back pocket this whole time. Was that part of the Sandy Hook investigation? I don't recall any mention of a plan or intent to stiff the legal charges before the onset of "I apologize to the listeners and the crew for threatening to leave; I'll be better tomorrow." He certainly was bragging that "they'll get no money" at that point. Apparently though, a creditor party to the bankruptcy as it currently stands is someone who settled out of court for another defamation amount, only for Alex to just not pay them anything anyway.
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Apr 23, 2022 16:48
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My current theory with Alex vis-a-vis "Hollywood" is that it is similar to the time when Alex really wanted to go on Rogan, but Rogan wasn't booking him, so he started making all these terrible threats towards Rogan until he got what he wanted. The thing Alex hates about Hollywood specifically is that it isn't giving him the fame and attention he thinks he is entitled to.
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Apr 26, 2022 00:06
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Just because Alex isn't a "globalist" does not preclude him from acting like one, both for his own indulgence and for the purposes of complaining about it later. It's okay when Alex does it, apparently.
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Apr 26, 2022 01:40
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I tried to tune into the first bankruptcy court hearing, but was a bit bamboozled by the setup. While you can watch a video of it from a web browser, it will only be video; the audio portion must happen over a phone line instead. I had to skip out on that because it would've been a long-distance phone call from my position.
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Apr 29, 2022 18:11
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I am outside of the United States, yes.
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Apr 29, 2022 18:22
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What gets me is that this version of trying to inspire stochastic violence from his audience was when Alex was in a good mood.
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May 2, 2022 20:09
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Regrettably, enough people do listen. Dan does seem to have a general list of the people who were stochastic agents of Alex, while Elizabeth Williamson made a good case that the Comet Ping Pong gunman was also one of his, but these agents' interpretations of what Alex seems to want from them is usually a confused mess. It is like they were reacting to the general "vibe" of what Alex was saying, but had to fill in most of the blanks with their own ideas; both for the impetus towards violence in the first place (as designed by this process) but also in what the violence is even for at all. It does paint Alex's whole "all gun violence that paints my allies in a bad light is a government conspiracy were they turned a mentally ill person into a 'patsy'" thing in a different light. Alex would certainly know all about that, though not for the reasons he'd like. I do wonder when the calls towards violence generally started on the show. My impression of the current 03 investigation suggests it wasn't really a factor at the time, but we know it happened at least since Sandy Hook. Morroque fucked around with this message at 13:04 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 09:55
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I realize this may come off as a really basic question, but what does "nonsuit" mean in this context? Does it mean they are dropping the lawsuits against those specific corporate entities? (Under the logic that those corporate entities no longer meaningfully exist.) Would doing so mean they can resume legal action against the specific persons involved without the bankruptcy putting a stay on things?
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May 9, 2022 21:57
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Mr. Nice! posted:Yes nonsuit means they dropped them as defendants from their lawsuits. Since Jones has declared these are empty shells that have no assets, the families have all filed voluntary dismissals of the three bankrupt entities. The suits continue against Free Speech Systems and Jones personally along with the rest of his enterprise, but the bankrupt entities are no longer defendants. This is a safe thing to do, right? Jones cannot, for example, cancel the bankruptcy and start funneling assets back into the empty shell companies to hide wealth from his legal obligations?
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May 10, 2022 00:58
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I doubt it would come up on the show, but cryptocurrencies in general seem to be in free-fall. When Jones accepted the 26 bitcoin on April 28th, the price of those in USD was about $1,033,323.20, or $39,743.20 per individual bitcoin. As of today, that amount of bitcoin would be worth only about $745,433.00, or individually at $28,670.50 per bitcoin. Alex sent the first batch of bitcoin elsewhere almost immediately. (SPLC doesn't exactly know where, aside from "elsewhere" in general.) When he got the second bitcoin input on April 30th, Alex transferred that money elsewhere on May 3rd, when individual bitcoin were valued at $37,720.00 per. Bitcoin began its free-fall almost the day after that. It is incredibly likely that Alex tried to convert the bitcoin into USD as soon as he got it, given that he has a clear and obvious pressing need for liquid assets. Though the problem in doing that is that bitcoin's connectivity to real money was always tenuous, so I can't help but wonder if Alex was in a rush to convert into a lot of USD right away, but that USD might not have been available, what are the chances he caused the crash? There are a few other explanations, of course. This is happening to cryptocurrencies in general, rather than to any specific flavour of thereof. Since interest rates were raised in the previous year, actual investors were likely ready to transfer their activity into assets much safer than bitcoin as soon as the tax season was over. Had he held onto the bitcoin for any longer, Alex's supposed crypto-millions would've devalued by about 25%.
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May 12, 2022 21:52
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For anyone who thinks "$30K isn't enough to carry water for InfoWars," I watched the Bankston-led deposition when it first came out. It wasn't part of Knowledge Fight's cut of the video, but InfoWars originally wanted to bill her only $25K and she had to talk them up from there. My opinion at the time was if she was billed $30K for the Texas-based Sandy Hook cases specifically, then she got a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, as she was also a corporate representative for the Connecticut Sandy Hook cases and the Marcel Fontaine cases too, it's likely that lump-sum had to apply to all three cases at once. In which case, she probably should've demanded much more. Much, much more. The context of what the judge specifically requested of the InfoWars consul was new to me though. I'm not sure if Paz was not given that information by Pattis, or if it didn't occur to Paz to see it herself. (Given the fact that she had read the previous depositions in the case, the latter is less likely.) I wondered what to make of her for a while, but in all chance, it won't matter. Even if it will be later revealed that Paz is also an InfoWars true believer, it won't change the fact that her performance was more a product of Alex's design rather than her own. I wonder though... Would the fact that Jones was working to hide his wealth from libel and defamation cases from the start do anything against the legal malpractice claim against Patti's and his other lawyers? If evidence suggests he was always acting in a way as to shield his assets from any and all damage claims, and it was likely the case that Jones viewed any legal proceedings as irrelevant to his wealth because of it, then would it necessarily matter if he got bad legal advice at all? (InfoWars employees, on the other hand, would still have grounds for malpractice even if Jones does not.)
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May 25, 2022 18:45
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I do think, given the past timings of the "money bombs," the first bitcoin donation was likely arranged in advance. If the value of Bitcoin began to plummet, but the arranged value was set in USD that would probably prompt the whale to keep pumping out more Bitcoin to make up the amount. It's all just speculation, though. The fact that the bitcoin wallet had no blockchain transactions for several years before donating to Alex does limit the overall clues we can use to determine their identity. It is also possible that the blockchain wallet had no owner. That whoever first had the Bitcoin amount either died or lost access to it, and some associate of Alex managed to gain it for themselves, surreptitiously.
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May 28, 2022 10:40
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... well. That certainly explains why Pattis was perfectly content to make appearances on InfoWars even after Jones "fired" him on the basis of legal malpractice. Even the choice to fire Pattis was just another attempt at a delay tactic, one that Pattis himself likely suggested.
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Jun 3, 2022 00:19
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I think everyone can be a bit too hard on Jordan at times. He does a very, very, important job as Alex's heckler. By this point, literally anyone else would make the tragic mistake of giving Alex more credit than he deserves, which would be any credit at all. If it ever came to the point where Knowledge Fight actually had to confront Alex directly, Dan's research and factual correctness would be easily rendered moot by any single gish-gallop. Jordan's common reaction of interrupting what Alex is saying with loud and rude morkery is more likely to both defuse Alex and get under his skin. Given the nature of the subject matter the podcast has to deal with, it is an entirely necessary job. Morroque fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jun 5, 2022 |
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Jun 5, 2022 03:33
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The weird pivot to being pro-cop after the George Floyd Rebellion while still riding the câchet of years of previous warnings against "the police state" is a strange development. I know Dan and Jordan don't feel confident in their coverage of the Uvalde shooting given how little we know of the facts on the ground, but it might still be something worth documenting anyway. Yet for however strange it is, it is also entirely unsurprising. The one impression I got of Alex following the Trump years, is that if a genuine police state ever were to form, he would always end up being their biggest sycophant and propagandist. I just thought it would only ever be because he only cares about things which affect him personally and everything else is just a false flag, but Dan seems to think there are some traces of intentionality and foreplanning in this specific case.
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Jun 6, 2022 07:47
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On the other hand, he is a narcissist. So when he's talking about God, he's really just talking about himself. The God of Alex's imagining has very little to do with any Christian or Abrahamic equivalent, but he can target fundamentalists so long as they sound similar enough.
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Jun 9, 2022 15:52
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It is curious that Alex has been out of studio this entire time. I'm under the impression that the Jan 6 hearings haven't been terribly scandalous -- or at least any more scandalous than the event already was -- so what could be prompting Alex's uncharacteristic caution is a question. Even Dan and Jordan are of the opinion that while Alex was providing support to many people who organized the insurrection in the leadup, Alex himself likely didn't do all that much the day of. I'm open to being wildly wrong on this count, but if there were anything obvious about Jan 6 that concerned Alex and the attempted sedition, then it would've been something that he didn't record on camera. Though maybe he just doesn't have any good talking points yet...
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Jun 15, 2022 19:17
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0konner posted:Was there any confirmation outside Jones’ own assertions that he had negotiated immunity with the committee? Actual media reported at least some cooperation between Jones and the committee which I don’t interpret to mean he actually ratted on anyone but if he wasn’t actually given immunity from perjury I could imagine him reacting live to the hearings would be a no-go for him. I don't exactly recall where it was mentioned, but Jones sent a letter to the committee essentially offering cooperation in exchange for immunity, but was extremely unspecific about what he wanted immunity from. Somewhere in the thread is a Twitter source from a law-degree-haver saying that Jones' letter to the committee was legally worthless, because he was asking for immunity "in general," which isn't really how it works. The only difference we have with regards to the Jan 6 committee and the Sandy Hook trials is that his is a criminal trial instead of a civil one. The civil courts could only levy monetary fines for misbehaviour, and Jones essentially has bottomless pockets given his position in the right wing media ecosystem. In other cases, he can simply choose to not pay them, as one settled-out-of-court defamation trial plaintiff showed up as a creditor to his bankruptcy trail having still not received payment despite having settled years ago. Conversely, this is a criminal matter where penalties for noncompliance have actual teeth, but we have no previous basis for how Alex would compose himself regarding a criminal court.
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Jun 16, 2022 02:08
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While his alcoholism is usually noted, Alex does have a habit for recreational drugs, though not in any way that is entirely unique to him. As Alex is a narcissist, his drug habits likely correlate to the drug habits of other narcissists. From what I've read of the research, narcissism's relationship with substance abuse is largely a thrill-seeking behavior which also correlates with other non-substance-involved behaviors like excessive gambling. According to Rogan, Alex is addicted to some forms of prescription stimulants. One time Alex was on Rogan's show, Rogan cornered Alex about it, to which Alex responded in an uncharacteristically defensive manner. Dan and Jordan noted it was both an odd thing for Rogan to say and an odd way for Alex to react, but the show's policy is only to approach Alex in his role as a propagandist, and to leave the personal life of him and his likely-suffering family on the side. (Unless, of course, something from his personal life is obviously getting in the way of his professional life.) I don't think it's been brought up again directly since, but I do remember it. The other question to note regarding this is maybe Rogan was actually lying, so even if it would line up with other evidence, you'd still have to worry if Rogan is trustworthy source. The implied joke regarding the original "a little breakie for me" comes from one of several times when Alex shows up late, throws a low-energy fit, leaves to "start the show over," and comes back 15 minutes later in a suddenly high-energy state. Even for the badly-managed poo poo-show that it is, Alex likely wouldn't be able to handle the workload that running InfoWars requires without some form of chemical assistance. It is, and has always been, an extreme workload that even a "properly run" media org would struggle with. As a point of comparison, Tucker Carlson only needs to manage five hours of content a week, but Alex's radio contracts demand more than three times that much, and on a shoestring budget. (In both what little money Alex spends on the show, and in terms of the poor quality of his working staff.) And we also know that his supplements aren't of much help to him in this regard, as he has used them on-air multiple times and his reaction to those was... different. Interesting, but different. It's not much of a control group, but his reaction to known abusable substances versus whatever the hell his supplements are suggests the two groups are too un-alike to be considered the same.
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Jun 17, 2022 11:13
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I'm not much of a social drinker, but I can't imagine Kerry as pleasant to be around. My impression of her is that she would only want to talk about aliens, while also getting very passive-aggressive if you say anything about the aliens that is even slightly out-of-line with her byzantine lore. This might just get a limitation of the format, though. Because of the show's editorial policy to only approach what they say in their media and not meddle in their personal lives, I'm in no position to imagine Secret Space Program weirdos in a format that isn't: 1) them talking about their racist-but-in-a-weird-way fan fiction, or 2) making me accomplice to some poorly-executed crime. Zigami, though, I just have no idea. He's one of the recurring crazies I could never get a handle on one way or the other.
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Jun 23, 2022 10:57
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It would be interesting, if a bit boring, to look at that eventually documentary to see if anything in it would date to this specific period when Alex was out-of-office. It would mean he likely commissioned the documentary itself, with the goal of it being to maintain audience during the Sandy Hook trials.
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Jun 24, 2022 20:59
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In perhaps more confusing news, someone got the idea that if Steve Pieczenik actually did complete all those academic degrees or not, then there would be a record of some kind. In turn, someone located his PhD thesis at the MIT academic library. Regrettably, it is possible that he could in fact have all the accreditation that he said he did, but only because the chronology given was a little off. He got his PhD in '82, after the Aldo Moro assassination, and his thesis is apparently him talking about it in a rather self-serving way. If he is talking about it honestly or not, it's impossible to say. Even from a skim of the first few pages, my guess is he isn't. It's... uh... Basically a giant advertisement for his early novels, and about how his entirely fictional novels are somehow better than actual researched texts on hostage negotiation. How his classifies as academic research worthy of a Doctoral Degree is a bit beyond me, but the thesis actually exists in MIT's library, so...
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Jun 28, 2022 11:56
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The thing that surprised me were the parts where they showed Alex taking direct orders from Ali Alexander in both the November rallies and on January 6th. Even including a line from Alexander himself saying that Jones had no agency in this matter and that he was to follow orders exactly. Even for an edit job, that one heck of a thing to leave in. Considering they edited out the existence of Nick Fuentes, I'm wondering why leaving Ali Alexander bossing Jones around was seen as "less" bad.
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Jul 30, 2022 19:36
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My interpretation of Snowden picking Glenn to manage his media work in publishing the NSA files was that it was an option of last resort. He tried working with other journalists within the media nexus at first, but their reluctance to use encrypted means of communication caused Snowden to think they were just giving him the runaround. Greenwald also refused to use encryption, but another journalist named Laura Portias actually did all the work in getting the files safely to publication. But since Glen is a massive media hog, he took all the credit for Snowden's leaks anyway, even though he only did a fraction of the work and nearly burned Snowden in the same way he later did the Russian inference source. Though even this much might be tempting things. Anytime a topic related to Greenwald ever happens, the conversation stops being about that topic and instead starts being about Greenwald himself. ... There is some overlap with Alex there, in a way. Maybe he sees more of himself in Alex Jones than he really cares to admit.
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Aug 1, 2022 17:54
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