Along with a sweeping ban on social media, the loss of a fawning president and looming legal penalties, Alex Jones’ troubles have weakened his once massive reach and influence. | via TexasTribune
Texas conspiracy theorist Alex Jones records a video for his Infowars show on a street corner in downtown Austin in 2018. While bankruptcy filings for three of his companies earlier this month may be part of his legal strategy to obstruct court proceedings in defamation cases that he has lost, they’re also the latest development in Jones’ downswing from his spot at the top of far-right media.
At the height of his influence in 2018, Jones boasted an audience of about 1.4 million daily visits to his websites and social media accounts, according to The New York Times. And from 2015-18, Jones’ Infowars store raked in more than $50 million annually, HuffPost reported. While the Chapter 11 filings may be part of Jones’ legal strategy to obstruct court proceedings — he used them to delay his Austin jury trial, and Sandy Hook parents pushed to dismiss them last week — they’re also the latest development in Jones’ downswing from his spot at the top of far-right media. Along with a sweeping ban on social media, the loss of a fawning president and looming legal penalties, Jones’ troubles have weakened his once massive reach and influence.
A graduate of Austin’s Anderson High School and an Austin Community College dropout, Jones was removed from his local talk radio spot in 1999 after executives said his fringe views were unsavory for advertisers. Jones “is very good at building a community of people who think the same things as him and providing them with what they want,” she said. “I think it's easy for us when we don't like a figure to demonize them and pretend they are not good at what they do. Actually, Alex Jones is very good at what he does.”
“He became something of a kingmaker in the race, and with that came a really high profile that he didn't understand completely,” Williamson said. “I think he's reaping the results of that.” Only weeks after the 2012 shooting, Pozner remembers reaching out to Infowars by email to ask the outlet to stop labeling the shooting as a government hoax to take away Americans’ guns.
Jones' previous falsehoods “are not harmless theories, but they did not single out individual vulnerable people the way he did with Sandy Hook. That was really crossing a rubicon,” Williamson said. Jones, who has denied without evidence President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 elections, helped obtain at least $650,000 from Julie Fancelli, an heiress to the Publix grocery chain and Infowars fan, to pay for a pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. Of that money, $200,000 was deposited into one of Jones' business accounts, according to the U.S. House’s committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.
“He is a salesman,” Williamson said. “And when you have millions of people watching, it only takes a small fraction of those individuals to turn it into something that really travels and disrupts people's lives.” “We are unable to properly grieve for our baby or move on with our lives because you, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, have deemed that the attacks on us are immaterial, that providing assistance in removing threats is too cumbersome, and that our lives are less important than providing a safe haven for hate,” Noah’s parents wrote.Jones’ Infowars.
“You would go into a rabbit hole just reading about them because they're interesting, and that's the bread and butter of social media,” she said. After his ban from social media, Jones presented himself as a martyr silenced by slanted technology companies for telling the truth. As the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits have developed, Jones has directed fans to donate to a legal defense fund. And after filing for bankruptcy earlier this month, Jones hosted an “Emergency Blowout Sale” on his website.Jones speaks to a crowd gathered at the Texas Capitol in protest of economic shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020.
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