Alex Jones (radio host)

Early life

Jones was born in 1974 in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall and the city of Austin, Texas. His parents were a dentist and a homemaker. In his video podcasts, he reports he is of Irish, German, Welsh, mostly English, and partially Native American descent. He was a lineman on his high school's football team and graduated from Anderson High School in Austin in 1993. As a teenager, he read conservative journalist Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which had a profound influence on him and which he calls "the easiest-to-read primer on The New World Order". After high school, Jones attended Austin Community College.

Career

Jones began his career in Austin with a live, call-in format public-access cable television program. In 1996, Jones switched format to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9 FM). Ron Paul was running for Congress and was a guest on his show several times. In his early shows, Jones frequently talked about his belief that the United States government was behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, using the incident to put down a growing "states' rights movement". In 1998, he released his first film, America Destroyed By Design.

In 1998, Jones organized a successful effort to build a new Branch Davidian church, as a memorial to those who died during the 1993 fire that ended the government's siege of the original Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas. He often featured the project on his public-access television program and claimed that David Koresh and his followers were peaceful people who were murdered by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during the siege.

In 1999, he tied with Shannon Burke for that year's "Best Austin Talk Radio Host" poll, as voted by The Austin Chronicle readers. Later that year, he was fired from KJFK-FM for refusing to broaden his topics. His views were making the show hard to sell to advertisers, according to the station's operations manager. Jones stated: "It was purely political, and it came down from on high ... I was told 11 weeks ago to lay off Clinton, to lay off all these politicians, to not talk about rebuilding the church, to stop bashing the Marines, A to Z." He began spreading his show by Internet connection from his home.

In early 2000, Jones was one of seven Republican candidates for state representative in Texas House District 48, an open swing district based in Austin, Texas. Jones stated that he was running "to be a watchdog on the inside" but withdrew from the race after a couple of weeks.

In July, a group of Austin Community Access Center (ACAC) programmers claimed that Jones used legal proceedings and ACAC policy to intimidate them or get their shows thrown off the air.

In 2001, his show was syndicated on approximately 100 stations. After the 9/11 attack, Jones began to speak of a conspiracy by the Bush administration as being behind the attack, which caused a number of the stations that had previously carried him to drop his program, according to Will Bunch.

On June 8, 2006, while on his way to cover a meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Ottawa, Jones was stopped and detained at the Ottawa airport by Canadian authorities who confiscated his passport, camera equipment, and most of his belongings. He was later allowed to enter Canada lawfully. Jones said about the reason for his immigration hold, "I want to say, on the record, it takes two to tango. I could have handled it better."

On September 8, 2007, he was arrested while protesting at 6th Avenue and 48th Street in New York City. He was charged with operating a megaphone without a permit. Two others were also cited for disorderly conduct when his group crashed a live television show featuring Geraldo Rivera. In an article, one of Jones' fellow protesters said, "It was ... guerrilla information warfare."

On July 6, 2017, alongside Paul Joseph Watson, Jones began hosting a contest to create the best "CNN Meme", in which the winner would receive $20,000. The contest was created in response to CNN releasing an article regarding a controversial Reddit user.

On a segment of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver stated that Jones spends "nearly a quarter" of his on-air time promoting products sold on his website, many of which are purported solutions to medical and economic problems claimed to be caused by the conspiracy theories described on his show.

Radio, websites and mail-order business

The Alex Jones Show is broadcast nationally by the Genesis Communications Network to more than 90 AM and FM radio stations in the United States, including WWCR, a shortwave radio station. The Sunday show also airs on KLBJ. In 2010, the show attracted around 2 million listeners each week.

According to journalist Will Bunch, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, the show has a demographic heavier in younger viewers than other conservative pundits due to Jones's "highly conspiratorial tone and Web-oriented approach". Bunch has also stated that Jones "feed[s] on the deepest paranoia". According to Alexander Zaitchik of Rolling Stone magazine, in 2011 he had a larger on-line audience than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh combined.

Jones is the operator of the web sites infowars.com and prisonplanet.com. His website, InfoWars.com, is a fake news website. Infowars editor-at-large is Paul Joseph Watson, who also occasionally guest hosts or co-hosts Jones' radio program.

Consumer products

A 2017 piece for German magazine Der Spiegel by Veit Medick indicated that two-thirds of Jones' funds derive from sales of a successful range of his own products. These products are marketed through the Infowars website and through advertising spots on Jones' show. They include dietary supplements, toothpaste, bulletproof vests and "brain pills", according to Medick, amid a wide range appealing to "anyone who believes Armageddon is near".

In August 2017, Californian medical company Labdoor, Inc reported on tests applied to six of Jones' dietary supplement products. These included a product named 'Survival Shield', which was found by Labdoor to contain only iodine, and a product named 'Oxy-Powder', which comprised a compound of magnesium oxide and citric acid; common ingredients in dietary supplements. Labdoor indicated no evidence of prohibited or harmful substances, but cast doubt on Infowars' marketing claims for these products, and asserted that the quantity of the ingredients in certain products would be "too low to be appropriately effective".

Views

Mainstream sources have described Jones as a conservative, a conspiracy theorist and an outlet for pro-Russia propaganda. Jones has described himself as a libertarian and a paleoconservative.

Following the 2016 Republican National Convention, Jones and Roger Stone began plotting the removal of Ted Cruz from his Senate seat in 2018 through potential challengers Katrina Pierson and Dan Patrick. Jones supports Donald Trump and has consistently denounced Hillary Clinton. Jones said that Trump called him on the day after the election to thank him for his help in the campaign.

Controversies

Jones has been the center of many controversies, such as the one surrounding his actions and statements about gun control after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He has accused the United States government of being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11 attacks. In 2009, Jones claimed that a convicted con man's scheme to take over a long-vacant, would-be for-profit prison in Hardin, Montana was part of a FEMA plot to detain U.S. citizens in concentration camps. Jones was in a "media crossfire" in 2011, which included criticism by Rush Limbaugh, when the news spread that Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the 2011 Tucson shooting, had been "a fan" of the 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change of which Jones had been an executive producer. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for his ties to Alex Jones. In 2017 he was criticized for claiming that the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack was a hoax.

Legal action

In February 2017, the lawyers of James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction for his role in pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Under Texas law, Jones was given a month to comply or be subject to a libel suit. In March 2017, Alex Jones apologized to Alefantis for promulgating the conspiracy theory and retracted his allegations.

In April 2017, the Chobani yogurt company filed a lawsuit against Jones for his article that claims that the company’s factory in Idaho, which employs refugees, was connected to a 2016 child sexual assault and a rise in tuberculosis cases. As a result of the lawsuit, Jones issued an apology and retraction of his allegations in May 2017.

Television shows and interviews

In January 2013, Jones was invited to speak on Piers Morgan's show after promoting an online petition to deport Morgan because of his support of gun control laws. The interview turned into "a one-person shoutfest, as Jones riffed about guns, oppressive government, the flag, his ancestors' role in Texan independence, and what flag Morgan would have on his tights if they wrestled." The event drew widespread coverage, and according to The Huffington Post, Morgan and others such as Glenn Beck "agreed that Jones was a terrible spokesman for gun rights". Jones's appearance on the show was a top trending Twitter topic the following morning.

On June 9, 2013, Jones appeared as a guest on the BBC's television show Sunday Politics, during a discussion about conspiracy theories surrounding the Bilderberg Group meetings with presenter Andrew Neil and journalist David Aaronovitch. A critic of such theories, Aaronovitch implied that they either do not exist or that Jones is a part of them himself. Jones began shouting and interrupting, and Andrew Neil ended the interview, describing Jones as "an idiot" and "the worst person I've ever interviewed". According to Neil on Twitter, Jones was still shouting until he knew that he was off-air.

Personal life

Jones has three children with ex-wife Kelly Jones. The couple divorced in 2015. In 2017, Kelly sought sole or joint custody of their children due to Alex's behavior. She claimed "he's not a stable person" and "I'm concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress" (Adam Schiff). Alex's attorney responded that "he's playing a character" and described him as a "performance artist". In court, Jones denied playing a character and called his show "the most bona fide, hard-core, real McCoy thing there is, and everybody knows it." The court awarded Kelly the power to decide where their children live.