Alex Jones

Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American conspiracy theorist, radio show host, documentary filmmaker, and writer. His syndicated news/talk show The Alex Jones Show, based in Austin, Texas, airs via the Genesis Communications Network and shortwave station WWCR across the United States, and on the Internet in video form.

Jones has been the center of many controversies, including his controversial statements about gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He has accused the U.S. government of being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 attacks and the filming of fake Moon landings to hide NASA's secret technology. He believes that government and big business have colluded to create a New World Order through "manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria." Jones describes himself as a libertarian, paleoconservative and an "aggressive constitutionalist." Mainstream media sources have described Jones as a conservative, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, and a libertarian.

New York magazine described Jones as "America's leading conspiracy theorist," and the Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as "the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America." When asked about these labels, Jones said that he is "proud to be listed as a thought criminal against Big Brother."

Early life

Jones was born in 1974, in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall and the city of Austin, Texas. His father David Jones is a dentist; and his mother, a homemaker. In his video podcasts, he reports that he is of Irish, German, Welsh, mostly English, and partially Native American descent. He was a lineman on his high school's football team and graduated from Anderson High School in Austin, Texas in 1993. As a teenager, he read Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which strongly affected him, and which he calls "the easiest-to-read primer on The New World Order". After high school, Jones attended Austin Community College.

Career

Jones began his career in Austin with a live, call-in format public-access television cable TV program. In 1996, Jones switched format to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9FM) . Ron Paul was running for Congress and was a guest on his show several times. In his early shows, Jones frequently talked about his belief that the US government was behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, using the incident to put down a growing "states rights movement". In 1998, he released his first film, America Destroyed By Design.

In 1998, Jones organized a successful effort to build a new Branch Davidian church, as a memorial to those who died during the 1993 fire that ended the government's siege of the original Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas. He often featured the project on his public-access television program and claimed that David Koresh and his followers were peaceful people who were murdered by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during the siege.

In 1999, he tied with Shannon Burke for that year's "Best Austin Talk Radio Host" poll, as voted by The Austin Chronicle readers. Later that year, he was fired from KJFK-FM for refusing to broaden his topics. His views were making the show hard to sell to advertisers, according to the station's operations manager. Jones stated: "It was purely political, and it came down from on high.... I was told 11 weeks ago to lay off Clinton to lay off all these politicians, to not talk about rebuilding the church, to stop bashing the Marines, A to Z". He began spreading his show by Internet connection from his home.

In early 2000, Jones was one of seven Republican candidates for state representative in Texas House District 48, an open swing district based in Austin, Texas. Jones stated that he was running "to be a watchdog on the inside" but withdrew from the race after a couple of weeks.

In July, a group of Austin Community Access Center (ACAC) programmers claimed that Jones used legal proceedings and ACAC policy to intimidate them or get their shows thrown off the air.

In 2001, his show was syndicated on approximately 100 stations. After the 9/11 attack, Jones began to speak of a conspiracy by the Bush administration as being behind the attack, which caused a number of the stations that had previously carried him to drop his program, according to Will Bunch.

On June 8, 2006, while on his way to cover a meeting of the Bilderberg group in Ottawa, Jones was stopped and detained at the Ottawa airport by Canadian authorities who confiscated his passport, camera equipment, and most of his belongings. He was later allowed to enter Canada lawfully. Jones said about the reason for his immigration hold, "I want to say, on the record, it takes two to tango. I could have handled it better."

On September 8, 2007, he was arrested while protesting at 6th Avenue and 48th Street in New York City. He was charged with operating a bullhorn without a permit. Two others were also cited for disorderly conduct when his group crashed a live television show featuring Geraldo Rivera. In an article one of Jones's fellow protesters said, "It was... guerrilla information warfare."

Media

The Alex Jones Show syndicated radio program is broadcast nationally by the Genesis Communications Network to more than ninety AM and FM radio stations in the United States, and to WWCR Radio shortwave. Live broadcast times are weekdays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. CST and Sundays from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. CST. The Sunday broadcast is also broadcast by Emmis Communications' KLBJ Radio. According to Texas Monthly editor Nate Blakeslee the show had a listenership of 2 million per week in 2010.

According to journalist Will Bunch, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, the show has a demographic heavier in younger viewers than other conservative pundits due to Jones's "highly conspiratorial tone and Web-oriented approach". Bunch has also stated that "there was always a cast of bottom-feeders like cult radio personality Alex Jones to feed on the deepest paranoia". According to Alexander Zaitchik of Rolling Stone magazine, in 2011 he had a larger on-line audience than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh combined.

Jones is the operator of several websites (such as infowars.com and prisonplanet.com) centered on news and information about civil liberties issues, global government and a wide variety of current events topics.

Views

Politics

Mainstream sources have described Jones as a conservative, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, and a libertarian. Jones sees himself as a libertarian and denies being a right-winger. He has also called himself a libertarian, paleoconservative, and an "aggressive constitutionalist."

Religion

Jones is a Christian and expresses high regard for the Bible, often citing its more prophetic books: "I just want to try to be a pure and virtuous person. I want to try to transcend my flesh and be the true leader that we're all meant to be.... I feel the spirit of the Creator and it embraces me with chills...."

However, he views organized religion as part of the New World Order, saying, "One of the biggest problems in the United States is organized religion. Not just Christians, but Hindus, Muslims, other people. The leaders of their denominations have been funded openly by governments and corporations to preach doctrines of submission to government, submission to tyranny." He is also very critical of Pope Francis and considers him to be a socialist advocate of a global government, and a global religion but ignoring traditional Catholic issues such as abortion.

Controversies

Jones has been the center of many controversies, such as the one surrounding his actions and statements about gun control after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He has accused the US government of being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11 attacks. Jones was in a "media crossfire" in 2011, which included criticism by Rush Limbaugh, when the news spread that Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the 2011 Tucson shooting, had been "a fan" of the 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change of which Jones had been an executive producer.

TV shows and interviews

In January 2013, Jones was invited to speak on Piers Morgan's show after promoting an online petition to deport Morgan because of his support of gun control laws. The interview turned into "a one-person shoutfest, as Jones riffed about guns, oppressive government, the flag, his ancestors' role in Texan independence, and what flag Morgan would have on his tights if they wrestled." The event drew widespread coverage, and according to The Huffington Post, Morgan and others such as Glenn Beck "agreed that Jones was a terrible spokesman for gun rights." Jones's appearance on the show was a top trending Twitter topic the following morning.

On June 9, 2013, Jones appeared as a guest on the BBC's television show Sunday Politics. During a discussion about conspiracy theories surrounding the Bilderberg Group meetings with presenter Andrew Neil and journalist David Aaronovitch, a critic of such theories, Aaronovitch implied that they do not exist or that Jones is a part of them himself. It was then followed by Jones's shouting and regular interruptions, to which Andrew Neil ended the interview, describing Jones as "an idiot" and "the worst person I've ever interviewed." According to Neil on Twitter, Jones was still shouting until he knew that he was off-air.

• Reference: Wikipedia