I did not like the overall tone of the reporting. If Alex Jones is inadvertently inciting violent actions by unbalanced listeners (and there's not much evidence of that; just an incident in Bohemian Grove that I'll describe later in this post), then Nightline had better go after the other conservative broadcasters who spew anger and paranoia, men with much bigger audiences than Jones - Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck. Any one of them could accidentally influence unstable fans to do crazy things to "save the country" or "get the bad guys".
Nor do I think that "paranoia porn" (while funny) is an appropriate label for the hardcore fearmongering and misinfo that these broadcasters represent. We can't forget that while the things Jones & Company say are amusing to some, it's all deadly serious to others.
But ABC did have some key, valid points: Jones is angry, and Jones is paranoid, and Jones twists the news out of all recognition to make it sound like part of a New World Order takeover agenda. Reporter Dan Harris heard Jones declaring that a CNN article endorses a one-child policy for America (it's Jones' contention that a global one-child policy will be instituted), but when Harris read the article he found a humorous piece that mentioned one-child policy in a sarcastic manner. This is something Jones does again and again: He finds sinister NWO propaganda in Squidbillies, articles with ironic titles, movies that he likes, and movies that he doesn't like (although, if he watched them carefully, he would see that some of them are actually consistent with his own beliefs).
In my opinion, the greatest "danger" posed by Jones is not violence by unhinged listeners, but the ignorance, fear, paranoia, and hatred that is instilled in many of his fans by the distorted information he and his guests provide. Do we really want a large group of people believing that:
- schizophrenics are demons?
- hate crimes are actually just events staged by Jewish interest groups?
- you should never go to the doctor?
- all food and water contamination is part of the plan to kill 90% of us?
- psychiatric meds are bad and you should never take them?
- if your country makes some guns illegal, it's morally acceptable to keep your guns and ambush police officers?
At least one of Jones' fans went into hiding with his family last year to avoid corpse-eating robots, flu vaccines, and "imminent" martial law.
In 2002, believing that "child molesters and human sacrificers" were vacationing at Bohemian Grove, Richard McCaslin snuck onto the property armed with a handgun, a rifle, a sword, a knife, and a crossbow. He was apprehended before anyone was harmed.
But the bottom line is that Alex Jones isn't responsible for his listeners' actions. He has every right to spew misinformation and paranoia over the airwaves - a Constitutional right. And it's not the mainstream media's job to make people paranoid about his paranoia, as Nightline tried to do. It's up to the listeners themselves to check Jones' facts and think for themselves.
11 comments:
I read your link here to the Crod Dundee article, the one with a bold quote from Jones, about how "First they took his guns and then they killed him"....No where in your article could I discern, from what you wrote, that Alex Jones was advocating that irate gun owners ought to ambush and kill police officers. The quote(s) dont say or imply that.
...(When a govt bans certain guns, then..)... where does Alex Jones say that we should ambush and kill cops under this circumstance? while you never say that Jones advocates this directly, you say his listeners will believe this is what they need to do(morally acceptable), once certain guns are banned. If true, then it is taking a long time for a cop to bite it, since he's been on the air for over 14 years.
If you mean that his phrasing is cabable of confusing a listener to the point the listener thinks Jones is telling him that the govt will take away some of his guns, and then that listener ought to whack his cop neighbor, then please show the quote of Jones where the confusion creeps in- the Jones quotes in this post dont convey a hearty green light to murder jack booted pigs at the donut shop, after the govt takes away certain weapons.
And when I heard Jones mention the shootout in question, he may have had his facts mixed up, but I didnt hear him say that the mad shooter should have ambushed any cops. Jones said merely that the madman wouldnt turn in his guns, so the cops came to his home and killed him.
No, of course Jones didn't explicitly tell anyone that it's okay to ambush cops, but you obviously didn't read the post that you're complaining about. If you had, you would know that Rod Ansell's guns were not confiscated (they weren't even his guns), and he was not in his home when the confrontation occurred. He was hiding by a roadside, picking off officers who were manning a roadblock. OF COURSE listeners would be confused! They'd get the impression - like I did before doing any research - that Rod Ansell was an unarmed man ruthlessly gunned down by cops. At no point did Jones say Ansell was in the wrong. In fact, he made it sound like Ansell was a martyr to gun control laws. If you knew anything about the case, you'd know that wasn't the situation at all.
From now on, please read the posts before trying to critique them. Or maybe just check the facts for yourself instead of taking Jones' word for something.
P.S. It's evident to me that Jones didn't know the facts of the case, either. If he did, he would never have used Ansell as an example. I give him that much credit.
I read the article- the details of the Australian are not a factor here for Jones,
Jones merely refers to an incident abroad. only a handful of listeners would try to find out who Jones was evening referring to....From this, you post that Jones said something that was a green light to ambush your local cop. I dont see the connection. "they killed him in his home" doesn't come across as maybe leading a listener to think its morally acceptable to ambush cops. the leap is too great....
.For that part of the post to make sense, you would have had to have quoted Jones and that quote would have had to be such that one could see lighteners thinking Jones was endorsing the ambush of cops, after certain guns were confiscated.
My non-quoting aside, don't you find it a little disturbing that Jones uses examples without knowing any of the details?
Nightline and their ilk have a lot of gall.....they have the issue backwards= many mainstream media outlets cheer leaded the run up to mass murder in Iraq in 2003, and continue to beat the war drum to annihilate Iran, when Jones was opposed to these things, while they point their bloody fingers toward Jones and say or imply that he is encouraging violence, which hasn't really happened.....wow....the world is turned upside down
Good point.
"It's up to the listeners themselves to check Jones' facts and think for themselves."
And the thing is... they claim they do check his facts and that all the facts absolutely check out. I haven't spoken to every listener of Jones' show but most everyone I've had discussions with claims that they check his facts and that his facts are basically 99.9% correct if not 100%.
As for Jones being against war. Cool. However, I don't think him or his ilk have been that great for the anti-war movement. Webster Tarpley polluted many an anti-war protest with his conspiracy mongering and followers of Jones have done the same. They attach themselves to people speaking out on legit issues and make everyone look nuts so you could say Jones kind of helps the establishment.
Poplawski?
Poplawski was a Jones fan and gunned down police officers.
Poplawski believed - as Jones keeps suggesting - that the NWO police would "take away his guns".....
@ Paul
I think Tarpley et al have been a fly in the ointment for the anti-war movement, diluting the message with conspiracy theories and Kennebunkport Warnings and whatnot.
@ TLNL All I know is that Jones was very upset about Poplawski, insisting he wasn't a fan. It was a real sore spot for him - I don't think he mentioned McCaslin at all, but he obsessed on Poplawski for quite a while.
I didn't mention the Truther who turned to Jones before murdering his own father, either, because it's my opinion that that probably would've occurred with or without Jones.
Pop-the -law-ski vehemently denounced Jones for not being 'antisemitic'....the Popper was savaged by Jones in turn.
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