Alex Jones: The Rise and Fall – Part 2

About two years after the Waco Seige, Timothy McVeigh, an anti-governement white supremacist, detonanted a truck bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nicohls, later told authorities the bombing was in response to both the ATF’s handling of Ruby Ridge and Waco. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City gave Alex Jones his first bit of fame. Jones sided with McVeigh’s actions, explaining the bombing was nothing more than a government conspiracy. Jones was quoted in one Daily Beast article as saying, “I understood there’s a kleptocracy working with psychopathic governments – clutches of evil that know the tricks of control.” However, Jones wouldn’t really take off until the most infamous day in American history.

The late 90’s was the breeding ground for the modern right-wing extremism we know today. Radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, William Cooper, and Glenn Beck grew massive audiences on the airwaves spouting anti-immigration, homophobic, anti-semitic, and at times racist sentiments. Many of these beliefs were rooted in some conspiratorial nature. For example, Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh are big pushers of the “Great Replacement Theory”, or the idea that immigrants are being brought to America to take White votes and jobs. Also around this time, Alex Jones moved on from his job as a Austin-based radio shock-jock and started the company that would bring him success, infamy, and later defamation lawsuits: InfoWars. InfoWars initially struggled to gain traction, but like most things, 9/11 changed everything.

9/11 was the day America entered a completely new period. Gone were the whimsical, bubble-gum pop, good vibes of the 90’s. Terrorism from a far-off land had rocked America to its core. Al-Qaeda extremists killed almost 3,000 innocent civilians, firefighters, police officers, and other emergency responders. Even on a day of carnage, Alex Jones wasn’t going to be stopped. According to a  2016 Salon magazine article, Jones at the time said there was “98 percent chance this was a government-orchestrated controlled bombing.” Jones also believes that World Trade Center building 7, which sustained damage during the attack and collapsed around 8 hours after the twin towers fell, was a controlled bombing. His post-9/11 rhetoric, both now and the day Ground Zero was still smoldering, has remained largely unchanged. Jones has always been a big believer in “False Flag Attacks.”