Alex Jones on CNN

Post Reply New Topic

Alex Jones post-debate

It has an annotation which is against the ToS for language (please don't click on them, just turn them off for all I care about them).

ret*d vs. ret*d. I don't know who to root for exactly in this "debate".

When in doubt just applaud their bravery.

I can't imagine studying CT's in Uni. that is fascinating!!

I would love to read your paper(s)/thesis. PM me if your willing to let me.

He's a nutjob. While he is correct, he is making us look bad. He should be ashamed of making an idiot of himself.

It wasn't the basis of my study, but I did study it somewhat within the context of Holocaust Denial and the mindset and language of Denial groups, 9/11 " truthers", NWO theorists all intertwine because they all base their " facts" on each other. My focus was primarily in European History/Middle East History. But I spent some time debating these guys and so I had to learn the language and idealogy/mindset of these guys. They often come from extreme libertarian positions that have relationships with rural Hate groups and anti-central govt proponents.

Another layer you can add though, I've heard certain recent evangelical pastors/prophets (ie. claiming communication and visions from Jesus) and Paul Revere's of the like who have further backed up the claim that the US is to be conquered soon by very hostile outside forces by the hands of the people that hollowed out our government, ie. we'd replace WWII Poland as the butt of those kinds of jokes as people who completely sold their prosperity and freedom.

I'm not adding this to argue your point but add, you may well agree, that it is not necessarily confined to white power or KKK. Similarly talk about the Illuminati has a lot of popularity in prisons (perhaps as a situational scapegoat) and I could go on with the list of rap artists who buy into the existence and current activity of the Illuminati.

The thing that's incredibly difficult about pinning down and verifying any truths one way or another about mass conspiracy is the sheer amount of flotsam and jetsam out there on the topic. I know that one of the things for instance that people love to go on about lately as evidence for coming martial law is 1.6 billion bullets purchased by the Pentagon. I'd love to know if there are statistics to verify how far this is out of their typical bulk purchase, how much ammunition the armed services and FBI go through in a typical year in course of training; essentially how far out of normal range is this kind of purchase order/requisition? The other thing is a claim that there are dots on people's mailboxes - red for those to be killed immediately (gun owners and conservatives), blue for those in law enforcement who will be forced into action on their behalf (or refuse and go with the red dots), and the green dots would be the re-educatable chumps. My parents have a red-orange dot on the mailbox and it made me curious, I researched for more info and it turns out that these are for the paper routes based on who's getting what kind of circulation of the local news. I've looked around as well and any kind of dot is pretty rare - ie. under this conspiracy theory what would it mean for the majority of people who have no dot? Also with the conservatives in urban/suburban areas it would stand to reason that many of them would have red dots because many of them would often be protesting their city paper by having either a very low or no subsription at all. If I all of a sudden see a dot on every mailbox I might rethink the validity of this one but at this point with such rarity I'd say its shaping up to be a farse.

This is where I think, if we know whats good for us, any of us with enough time on our hands should be sifting through this stuff - partly to put to rest the rubbish that people who are trying to make money off of book deals and public appearances are fabricating for their own gain, but to also draw a contrast to anything that seems to be shaping up clearer and clearer as evident. Often times it seems like the sheer amount of rubbish out there is there for the sake of burying the real story or making people want to give up when they realize the sheer amount of mug-slogging they'd have to do in order to get to the bottom of it all.

That said I've often heard that Alex Jones is a hack, I can't say for sure, but I tend to at the same time look around and see which of his beliefs stay with him or people like him and which of his beliefs are then reiterated and edified by people with no relationship to him. From that standpoint I've seen a little bit of both.

CNN is rarely this entertaining and Alex just comes off to me as someone who has been chugging way too much energy drink, whereas Piers Morgan is a bland talking head on a bland, predictable script. I don't think anyone's mind will actually be changed by this.

I don't believe everything Alex says, but I think it's a good thing that people like him are around, even if they get over the top and unruly. They present ideas that are interesting to think about. People in power are often dishonest and conspiracies do occur. It's a defense mechanism for some to try to blow off alternative points of view as "those lunatic conspiracy theorists" even if they do sometimes have a point or present information that is inconvenient to the official line. The trick to not going overboard with it is to remember that it is in the realm of theory and possibility and to keep an open mind that you might be wrong even with stuff you lean towards believing.

I would say that Religious " Evangelicals" or those who come from that bent have always been part of the " Populist" tradition that has despised Central Gov't, because in their mindset the East Coast cities represent business, liberalism, science, progress. It is inherently at odds with their traditional rural base of support and conservatism in regards to Race/Ethnicity. the impact of emotionalism as opposed to intellectual discourse was handed to us in the United States religious tradition during the 1st Great Awakening in the 1730s-40s and the 2nd Great Awakening which saw good and bad aspects to the politicalization of evangelicism including some who used it to attack the U.S govt while others used it to spread the message of womans rights and abolitionism. Alex Jones and people like him thrive on spreading information precisely to people who don't want to make an effort to learn about complicated events or don't have the time to. Its based entirely on simplicity for its message and blame on perveived enemies. Alex Jones is pretty much a Hack but he sadly has followers because...well....their are a lot of uneducated people out there who will believe things to make them stand out, and prisons like you said, are often a breeding ground for radicalism...whether its neo-nazis, black panthers, Mexican gangs...hell even Camp Bucca in Iraq was a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda because the US military mixed radicals from Anbar province within the regular population and their messages of jihad resonated and spread.

While I'd generally agree with that being whole-hat conservatism I'm finding that these people are appearing with increasing acumen on the issues. Its tough for us to say that we haven't worn away some of our most vital checks and balances - including ways of keeping an educated electorate (ie. land owners) or the new populism of the senate post-1913 which pulled the teeth of the states in the legislative process. Now it seems like what we have is a city on a hill ringed with lobbyists almost as far as the eye can see and, thanks to the lobbying network, the public news and discourse coming from it becomes - likely for the most part just due to financial workings rather than any deliberate conspiracy - a fly-by-wire for Washington insiders to control the majority of uneducated voters one way or another. They cater to a fifth-grade and under intellectual level, keep the dialog common-denominator at best and at worst they seem to do what they can in guiding the hand (and voting habits) of people who by all intents and purposes probably shouldn't be voting. The influence of the later shows particularly strong in both the turnouts of presential elections vs. off-year elections, the types of candidates that get elected, and even the types of public unknowns that still get elected at state level and below (as similar to off-year elections) simply because those who don't know a thing typically just know who the D or R presidential candiates are as well as possibly the local hero senator or representative.

I'd at least agree with such conservatives that we need to do something about the erosion of checks and balances. If not and with this much power presently in Washington its an accident waiting to happen and perhaps only a matter of time and election cycles before people who are really cynical enough to do some atrocious things will identify the opportunities and take them in full.

Another thought in this regard, perhaps conspiracy theories (the intuitively convincing but not factual in particular) are best looked at as unwitting political science fiction; science fiction in that they end up essentially being hypothesis-based admonishments against what very well could happen if we let things slide too far. Its there by design because these guys need a pretty strong and persuasive 'it' factor to sell their books and make money, that it factor being along the lines of 'Is it plausible?'.

I would hope ordinary people would see it as Political Science fiction but reality is that I have come across people who truely believe in a lot of the garbage and when countered they ignore inconveniant facts to move on to their next point and try to forget how wrong they were. Perhaps most people see these movements as they truely are as crackpot but they seem to ebb and flow in popularity over time. Its not a true constant. When economics are bad in this country, major issues being debated in Washington, or other national events transpire these groups surprisingly find outlets to spread their messages and go after the emotionally/intellectually vulnrable to further the next generation belief.

I don't think that people who believe stuff like the moon landing being a hoax are a dangerous problem in any real way. The most dangerous beliefs are those that are mainstream or taken for granted as true without being challenged. Blood is not shed over the belief that the government is hiding UFO technology. It's mostly shed when authorities encourage everyone to believe that some Other is the enemy and conspiring against them while dissent is marginalized. Yes, people like AJ do fall into demonizing "the enemy", but he doesn't have the power to drive a nation to war.

I like the idea of conspiracy theories being like political science fiction.

Morgan is trying to score a rhetorical point by citing the UK's gun homicide rate. He keeps mentioning to guests how low it is in comparison to ours, but it was low before the UK handgun ban in 97. Was there ever a time when the UK had a high rate of gun homicides? What about in the 1950s and 60s when it was relatively easy to acquire a gun in the UK? If not, then what is the point of comparing the UK's gun homicide rate to America's when he could have compared them at any time in the last 50 years and the UK rate would have been lower?