{"id":2266573,"date":"2024-06-13T01:34:03","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T05:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/remember-when-alex-jones-was-a-darling-of-the-far-left\/"},"modified":"2024-06-13T01:42:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T05:42:49","slug":"remember-when-alex-jones-was-a-darling-of-the-far-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/remember-when-alex-jones-was-a-darling-of-the-far-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Recall When Alex Jones Was Favored by the Far-Left?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fremember-when-alex-jones-was-a-darling-of-the-far-left%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2266573&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Alex Jones, a \u2063controversial conspiracy theorist, and his media platform Info\u200d Wars\u2063 are facing potential financial ruin as a result of litigation from families of the Sandy Hook \u2062school shooting, \u200dwhich he infamously labeled \u200das involving crisis actors. The\u200d media and legal pressures seek his financial downfall and removal from public influence.<\/p>\n<p>Contrary to commonly held \u200copinions of him as a right-wing figure, Jones&#8217;s political stance is \u200bcomplex \u200cand non-traditional. While he has supported prominent\u200c right-wing personalities\u200b and causes, he \u2064has \u2064also \u200bbacked left-leaning movements\u200b and\u200b candidates when it aligned with his\u2064 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/matt-gaetz-gop-primary-endorsements-pit-him-against-mccarthy-yet-again\/\" title=\"Matt Gaetz's GOP primary endorsements once again put him at odds with McCarthy\">anti-establishment\u200c views<\/a>. Originally, during the\u200d early 2000s,\u200c his skepticism of\u2063 the government and various conspiracy theories found favor with the\u200b progressive left.<\/p>\n<p>Jones experienced\u2064 a shift in his audience and reputation\u2064 post-2012, particularly after making \u2064unfounded claims\u2063 about the Sandy \u200dHook shooting. \u2063Despite his controversial actions and statements over the years, \u2064he\u2062 continues \u200dto \u2064influence \u2062a segment of the population\u2062 who resonate with his populist and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-rundown-gop-still-demanding-answers-voters-disapprove-of-hunter-plea-deal-liberals-capitalize-on-fatal-tragedy\/\" title=\"GOP demands answers, voters disapprove of Hunter plea deal, liberals exploit tragedy.\">anti-establishment rhetoric<\/a>.\u200b His career illustrates\u200d how media\u2062 figures can tap \u200binto the \u2063sentiments of disillusionment and distrust towards mainstream political entities, fluctuating\u200d in alignment depending on \u2062the prevailing political climate.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>After years of litigation, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his news network Info Wars stand at the precipice of liquidation. <\/p>\n<p>The man described by CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and NBC as a \u201cright<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/with-trump-gone-dems-target-gop-rep-taylor-greene\/\" title=\"With Trump Gone, Dems Target GOP Rep. Taylor Greene\">-wing conspiracy theorist<\/a>,\u201d and by CBS and The Daily Beast as a \u201cfar-right conspiracy theorist,\u201d may be forced to sell his business to pay restitution to the Sandy Hook school shooting families he accused of being crisis actors. The families are pushing for <a href=\"https:\/\/pamphleteer.co\/post\/review-the-truth-vs-alex-jones\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cthe total destruction of Alex Jones\u201d<\/a> and his departure from the public stage, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/alex-jones-deserves-to-lose-much-more-than-a-billion-dollars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the media is celebrating his financial destruction<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1795026400\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f36be255f96e18a8c7ec8acfd10cb700 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f36be255f96e18a8c7ec8acfd10cb700\"><\/div>\n<p>Jones is most definitely a conspiracy theorist. He spends his days ranting about the New World Order, vaccines giving children autism, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/republicans-call-double-standard-on-greenes-committee-removals-point-to-omar-remarks\/\" title=\"Republicans Call Double Standard on Greene\u2019s Committee Removals, Point to Omar Remarks\">false flag operations<\/a>, and the alleged truth about 9\/11. However, the ocean of furious news stories on his trial consistently gets one thing wrong \u2014 Jones is not a conservative, at least in the traditional sense. <\/p>\n<p>Jones is a man who was kicked out of George W. Bush rallies, voted for Barack Obama in 2008, picked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2016\/10\/28\/13424848\/alex-jones-infowars-prisonplanet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fights with David Duke, antisemites, and Neo-Nazis,<\/a> and recorded videos with Joe Rogan wearing Bush masks outside of the White House to protest the Bush administration. He was not nor is he now a man of the right \u2014 and he hasn\u2019t claimed to be, to my knowledge. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not Right or Left, but Anti-Establishment<\/h2>\n<p>You\u2019d be understandable for thinking otherwise, given that he\u2019s thrown himself fully behind President Trump, hangs out with Tucker Carlson, interviews paleoconservative gadflies, and gained notoriety for his infamous 2012 interview with Piers Morgan, wherein he proclaimed that \u201c1776 would commence again\u201d if the federal government implemented gun control in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. <\/p>\n<p>This assumption misses the core of Jones\u2019s ideology. He is a pure populist. His views cut against both sides of mainstream American politics. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-601d97a86d8f9f1a31419ae90aa186ec fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-601d97a86d8f9f1a31419ae90aa186ec\"><\/div>\n<p>His history shows he\u2019s equally critical of Republicans and Democrats when they\u2019re in power. He consistently throws his support behind candidates on both sides of the aisle who he perceives as being sufficiently anti-establishment \u2014 ergo his support for both Obama and Trump.\u00a0(Corporate media are quick to quote Jones calling Obama and Hillary Clinton demons in 2016, but omit his praise for the far more populist version of Obama in 2008.)<\/p>\n<p>As Jones writes in his recent book, <em>The Great Awakening<\/em>, \u201cOne pattern I\u2019ve noticed is that whatever side feels out of power is much more willing to consider conspiracy\/corruption theories. The left loved what I was saying about the Patriot Act and the War on Terror when Bush was in office, but not so much when Barack Obama took office.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Before 2012, Jones\u2019s reputation was completely different than it is now. Whereas he is currently a disgraced media figure grappling with bankruptcy and a billion dollars in defamation cases due to his Sandy Hook claims, he was a far more niche and respected journalist in the early 2000s, when the progressive left was far more amenable to conspiracy theories. <\/p>\n<p>At this time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/following-damar-hamlins-freak-collapse-its-the-mindlessly-obedient-vaccine-fanatics-who-are-truly-cruel\/\" title=\"Following Damar Hamlin\u2019s Freak Collapse, It\u2019s The Mindlessly Obedient Vaccine Fanatics Who Are Truly Cruel\">anti-vax conspiracies<\/a> were considered holistic and progressive. The federal government was corrupt and fed an imperialist war machine designed solely to kill Middle Easterners and make money for the military-industrial complex. Big pharma was killing Americans for profit. Walmart was the enemy of the people. The Sept. 11 attacks were either deserved blowback for the West\u2019s crimes or a purposeful Bush administration conspiracy to steal oil. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-eb3d3caf41c44ab9f261d0a63f423094 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-eb3d3caf41c44ab9f261d0a63f423094\"><\/div>\n<p>In this atmosphere \u2014 where your unhinged cousins were probably pushing you to watch ripped DVDs of \u201cLoose Change\u201d \u2014 Jones thrived as a niche contrarian documentary filmmaker among the left.\u00a0He wasn\u2019t a mainstream leftist voice, nor did he claim to be a leftist, but he would have appealed to a specific unhinged temperament of the progressive blogosphere at the time. <\/p>\n<p>Jones was allegedly even able to spin his niche popularity into film cameos and audiences with major celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Buzz Aldrin.\u201d\u00a0Filmmaker Richard Linklater addressed the inclusion of Jones in his films, \u201cWaking Life\u201d and \u201cA Scanner Darkly,\u201d in a 2018 interview with The Daily Beast. <\/p>\n<p>He deflected that, at the time, the young Texan shock jock \u201cwasn\u2019t so virulent, he just had all that energy,\u201d and that he \u201cjust thought he was kind of funny.\u201d He claimed Jones was \u201cthis hyper guy that we\u2019d all kind of make fun of,\u201d but also admitted that the two were nominal ideological bedfellows at the time. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI talked to him a bit during the Bush-Cheney years. He always positioned himself as anti. So when you\u2019re anti, he\u2019s your bedfellow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jones has also written about how, \u201cIn Hollywood in the mid-2000s, I was a hero to the left for having infiltrated the secretive [mostly Republican] summer gatherings at the Bohemian Grove.\u201d <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Embraced by the Party out of Power<\/h2>\n<p>Twenty-three years later, it is far more common to see Jones embraced by populist conservatives, given that his conspiracies are more appealing to the party that feels out of power. His broadcasts in recent years focus on the dangers of vaccines, election integrity, the dangers of transhumanism, pedophilic human trafficking, and the \u201cglobalist\u201d plans for a post-human new world order. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the left is currently filled with people who \u201ctrust the experts,\u201d because they are confident that their elected representatives can be trusted. The irony is that the left spent the Trump administration spewing conspiracy theories about 2016 election interference and Russian collusion, and bought false claims time and again about everything from the Jussie Smollett hoax to Covid-19 natural origin theories we now know to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/06\/03\/opinion\/covid-lab-leak.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">false<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There are still conspiracy theorists on the left, who claim that Bernie Sanders has been cheated out of his deserved nomination or that right-wing special interest groups control Washington, but they\u2019re fringe and nominally defend Big Pharma and corporations when they\u2019re attacked by the right\u2019s anti-vaxxers and anti-woke crowd. The more militant \u201cTankie\u201d leftists still see fascist and corrupt CIA influence in almost all areas of political life. <\/p>\n<p>Yet Jones no longer appeals to the fringe left because he only appeals to people who feel powerless against the status quo, and the broader left no longer does. As one of his fans told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/texas\/2018\/08\/10\/why-do-people-listen-to-infowars-alex-jones-at-all-we-asked-them\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Dallas Morning News<\/a>, \u201cHe hasn\u2019t changed dramatically [since the late 1990s] and is still the firebrand who will shout at his audience to try and motivate them to pay attention.\u201d\u00a0While the traditional left and right have always had their unique brands of endemic conspiracy theorists (John Birch Society, Oliver Stone movies, etc.), Jones continues to be what he always was \u2014 an ally to the anti. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1507cfa608662840f6dc8f437eccf53c fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1507cfa608662840f6dc8f437eccf53c\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After prolonged litigation, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his network Info Wars face potential liquidation. Described by major networks as a &#8220;right-wing&#8221; or &#8220;far-right conspiracy theorist,&#8221; Jones might have to sell his business to settle debts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3027,"featured_media":2266574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screen-Shot-2024-06-12-at-10.06.18-AM.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2266573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screen-Shot-2024-06-12-at-10.06.18-AM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2266574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}