Here are some things that Alex Jones, the bellicose conspiracy theorist behind Infowars and Prison Planet, actually believes:
- That a secret cabal of Bilderbergers, Rockefellers and the Illuminati control the world, and plan to kill off most of humanity.
- That “devil worshiping pedophiles basically run the New World Order. They love death and they love killing babies.”
- That Jared Loughner’s attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which killed six people and left Giffords with brain damage, was “a staged mind-control operation” directed by the government’s “geometric psychological-warfare experts.”
- That the government may have deliberately created the tornado that devastated the town of Moore Oklahoma in 2013.
- That the Adult Swim cartoon Mr. Pickles, featuring a demon-possessed border collie, “promotes Satanism, abortion, and the Illuminati agenda.”
- That men are oppressed by bumbling sitcom dads like Archie Bunker and Al Bundy.
Yep, Alex Jones is a Men’s Rights Activist in all but name.
In the video above, ostensibly an analysis of the “the political and social agenda pushed during the Super Bowl,” Jones argues – and I use the term loosely – that the secret cabal running the world is using the media to tear down men and destroy the patriarchal family.
One of their primary weapons? “Bumbling dad” characters on TV sitcoms, which make men in general, and fathers in particular, look silly. (Huh. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this one before.) Demonstrating that he has his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture, he cites the examples of Archie Bunker and Al Bundy.
The rest of his rant is fairly typical Alex Jones material, an ominous if mostly incoherent assortment of dubious assertions and dire predictions about the future. Only this time he works in some oh-so-familiar MRA tropes. Strikingly, though his arguments in favor of the patriarchal family are thoroughly sexist, he displays none of the overt hostility towards women you see amongst Men’s Rightsers, whether on Reddit or on A Voice for Men.
He reminisces about visiting the homes of his alleged “black friends” as a kid, distressed to discover that the mothers were in charge. He suggests that Planned Parenthood’s is up to no good, but doesn’t explain why and tells his listeners to “look it up” themselves. (I looked it up: Apparently they’re a “Eugenics Death Cult.”)
At one point he claims that children are being taught “fisting” in grade school sex-ed classes. No, really.
But my favorite bit comes about 8 minutes in, when Jones, in the midst of explaining away the pay gap between men and women, declares that men are basically hard-wired to work harder than women:
It’s men that are meant to go out and not sleep for three days chasing down mastadons, to run them over the side of a cliff, to haul back enough … meat so that everybody survives for the winter.
That’s right: Alex Jones believes WE HUNTED THE MASTADON TO FEED YOU.
I only skimmed the comments over on Infowars, but I did enjoy this one:
I have to say that I am much less enthusiastic than Wirpaul about the prospect of bearing children, as I am under the impression it hurts a LOT.
I have a confession. My dad actually listens to that man’s nonsense when he comes home on Sundays and Mondays. It once got so crazy, my oldest sister who was visiting from Tennessee decided to make a drinking game out of it (like the “word or words of the day”).
I cannot tell you guys how many times I’ve heard the words “Obama” and “Dear Leader”. Rolled my eyes so hard that they almost fell out of my damn head.
Also, note that there was no drinking involved, because nobody wanted to die of alcohol poisoning.
And last I checked, weren’t sitcoms with “bumbling dad” types usually created by/written by OTHER MEN? Just askin’.
Misogynists never acknowledge that a lot of paleolithic cultures ate a diet heavily based in fish. You don’t have to be a big manly man to catch fish.
I love so many of our grandmothers’ forearms. They’re so strong from having done so much laundry and food processing.
Re: that kids book about suffragettes: Earlier today I was watching a YouTube video with the host of the Young Turks interviewing (and yelling at) a well known “honey badger” who was pontificating on how those naughty suffragettes did all kinds of nefarious things like try to push this one dude off a cliff. I’m not even kidding. Thanks, Shaenon, for showing us her source for these revelations. It must be the only book she has ever read about the history of the women’s movement.
If you want to torture yourself with some of the most idiotic historical revisionism ever:
I’m having fun with my Prison Planet DVDs. The one attempting to die George H W Bush to the JFK assassination isn’t that unreasonable as conspiracy theories go. I’m easing into it. Next up 911 truth stuff. Then I’ll move on to Bohemian grove and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think I’ll save the JFK Jr one for last because it’s the funniest.
Is there a more smug human being in the world the Karen Straughan?
Alex Jones latches on to every reactionary movement out there, because the way things were done in the magical past (pre-Abe Lincoln) were more free than the “Orwellian” present. Or he’s a smart businessman, and knows what market to exploit. One of those. So, I’m surprised he hasn’t butted heads with feminists earlier (probably has actually, but tends to reiterate his points as the years go by). The guy says whatever he wants, knowing that when his doomy predictions never come true, and his insightful “investigations” into conspiracy theories go nowhere, he knows his fanbase won’t stop and say “Hey, how come Alex Jones is constantly wrong and never has had a mea culpa?” I think Alex Jones can be best summed up with a quote of his, that really captures his entire career and philosophy
“You see, 666 is a doubling of 33. And 33 is pi.”
Here you go folks (2:36 for the million dollar quote (sorry if the link is screwed up)
http://youtu.be/n9_gUDQe4uE
33 is pi.
33 is pi.
This is…
WOW.
And he probably has gone after feminism before, but he’s just so… so 33 is pi, that nobody bothers to listen to him to find out.
Not only is he divorced from reality, reality served him a restraining order.
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I’ve encountered a lot of strange ideas over time. I’ve read bullshit from the pseudoscientists (with obsessions ranging from outer space to the weather to evil vaccinations), the sovereign citizens, the rabid homophobes, the nasty racists, the Truthers, the Birthers, the assassination theorists, and, of course, the misogynists. It’s fascinating how they all seem to dovetail into one well of incoherence called Alex Jones. I think I’ll develop a conspiracy theory about it.
I do hate the bumbling idiot dad/angry shrew mom sitcom pairing. It makes both stereotypes look awful–but that doesn’t make it misandry.
33 is pi? Oh my.
And how is 666 a doubling of 33?
I guess my sheeple brain has been too brainwashed by the New World Order to comprehend this advanced math.
Actually a lot of the bumbling father sitcoms (at least when I was young) seemed to have not an angry shrewish mom but a shrewd mom (or housekeeper when, frequently, mom was dead) who quietly kept bumbling dad from getting into really serious trouble — sort of pricking the bubble of the pretenses of patriarchal infallibility.
The main benefit of infowars is I can tell when the SUV on front of me is owned by a character while I’m sitting in line waiting to drop my kids off at school. I’m still trying to figure out who the last SUV belonged to. My guess is the it’s the lone lady who spends too much breath protesting common core standards. She’s the only female conspiracy theorist I know. The rest are middle aged conservative men. A few beers in with them and the good times roll.
There was a “fisting” controversy at a local school in the 90s. Turns out that “teaching a how to guide on fisting”=mentioning that it, and lesbian sex, exists. Why does it seem that all these guys are so hung up on fisting?
I give Alex Jones free speech props, at least. I could never get past the whole reptilian people thing. It actually scares me when he’s right about something, as I find myself second guessing all my logic just because he agrees. :/
Thread needs more reptilian people.
This is where it comes from: There was a period in the 50s and 60s when the CIA covertly funded some liberal but anticommunist organizations (and a literary magazine called Encounter), because they figured that promoting liberal anticommunism would help them fight communism. The people in these organizations didn’t know about it; the money was funneled to them through foundations, etc. Since the CIA was funding the groups without the knowledge of those in the groups, it actually had no direct control over anything they did.
What’s the connection to feminism? In the late 50s,long before her emergence as a feminist, Gloria Steinem worked for a student group that was connected to one of these covertly funded groups and attended some communist student conferences in Europe on its behalf.
The New York Times and Ramparts magazine uncovered and reported on the CIA’s role in these groups in 1966/7, that is, before the start of 2nd wave feminism. Steinem, then a journalist, acknowledged in interviews in 1967 that she’d worked for the group.
That’s the whole story. The fact that one feminist, roughly a decade before she even became known as a feminist, worked without knowing it for a group that got covert funding from the CIA, is now seen as “proof” that “the CIA started feminism and funds it today.”
He reminds me of NWOSlave, but possibly even less coherent. At least NWOSlave had the decency to stick to text.
Hmm. Let’s see, “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Modern Family” both have that sitcom dynamic. Sometimes the wife is the “only adult in the house” stereotype, like in “Home Improvement,” but other times she’s just a mean person (I could never watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” because she struck me as actually abusive).
The CIA was founded in 1947. I’m sure the founding date of feminism is open to debate but for sure it existed in the 1800s.
Also, feminism has never been exclusive to the US. Is it their contention that the CIA funds it globally? Or just domestically?
Apparently people think the CIA has been around for the entirety of US history. When I Google CIA founding date, CIA founding fathers is what got autofilled.
Well, SHIT. Here I am, almost daily denouncing the CIA’s real, actual skulduggery on my blog.
No wonder I never get paid to sit on my ass and eat scented fucking candles.
About the “Bill Hicks is Alex Jones” conspiracy… I hate to say it, but Bill Hicks would probably have a lot in common with Alex Jones were he still alive. Worse, there’s a chance Hicks might have even been an MRA.
I am actually somewhat of a fan. I was obsessed with Hicks for a while, and even got my hands on a lot of unreleased stuff. He is actually the one who introduced me to the ideas of skepticism and freethought (I know… I know… shut up). I adored his anti-Reagan and anti-Bush rants, his anti-war rants, and his rants against politics in general. I empathized oh so much with his rants against modern (for him 90’s) Top 40 music, and at the time I was a misanthropic little shit. I came so damn close to worshiping the guy as a prophet at one point, just before I started losing my faith. It’s actually kinda sad, looking back on it now, just how close I came to worshiping him… all I needed was an alter, really…
However, Hicks was a top-tier conspiracy theorist (starting with Kennedy and going from there). I can actually kind of understand why some people think Alex Jones may be Bill Hicks.
But there are some problems:
1) They don’t actually look alike.
2) They sound nothing alike.
3) Alex Jones is extremely religious. While Bill Hicks did believe in a personal higher power, he hated religion, especially Christianity, with an almost bigoted-like passion (which might be considered okay if you think hating Christianity is punching up… and he was much more tolerant of Christians, choosing instead to attack the religion itself, the Bible, and fanatics).
4) Alex Jones is extremely conservative. Bill Hicks, by contrast, was hella left-wing. Granted, he was a Libertarian, but he was one of those rare “Socialist Libertarians” we occasionally hear about but always somehow manage to miss actually hearing from.
So in a couple extremely important ways, Jones and Hicks are nearly the exact opposite of each other. And I seriously doubt that Hicks could keep it up for this long.
No… Bill Hicks is dead. Alex Jones is a separate person.
Also, if the CIA is funding feminism, then why are so many feminist groups all over the world opposed to it?
Alex?
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Beaker!
@Mrex, oh there are other Alex Jonesians besides Middle-Aged men, unfortunately.
I used to live in Austin, TX, where Jones and his wack-jobbery are based. Plenty of rich-kid twenty-somethings who so desperately wanted to believe they were part of some fight against the world order.
His trash print-paper is even available for free at delis and hamburger joints and such. Right next to the Onion.
I picked it up once, expecting a laugh. Instead I was so pissed I couldn’t eat. He’d written a three page editorial days after the Sandy Hook Massacre saying that the kid who did the shooting must have been brain washed by the government, that it was too convenient a ploy for “dear leader” to take our guns.
And god, chem trails. I couldn’t escape people talking about chem trails.
“There’s a pretty clear explanation for those.”
“Any scientist that says that is part of the conspiracy.”
My impression of him, at least living there, was that he was Rush Limbaugh for hipsters.
My knowledge of Alex Jones is limited to how I used to joke that right-wing conspiracy theorists probably think that Obama has a time machine only to find out that Alex Jones actually does believe that, and I intend to keep it that way.
@David: Huh. Alex Jones may have proved that the truth isn’t stranger than fiction, but the truth is certainly pretty interesting. Thanks. 🙂