This explains our resident crackpot.....
The Alex Jones story starts in the famously weird city of Austin, Texas. Jones went to high school there, graduating from Anderson High School in 1993 and attending Austin Community College part time afterward.
It isn't entirely surprising that Jones developed his belief in conspiracies, both global and domestic, while living in Austin. The Texas state capital is best known as countercultural hub, a home base for beleaguered Texas liberals. But it’s also served as a kind of clearinghouse for conspiracy buffs.
The city serves as a melting pot for right-wing anti-government types and post-hippie radicals like
Willie Nelson, creating a place where conspiracy theorists of all types can share their theories on evil government plots. They meet at places like
Brave New Books, a basement storefront where, on one 2014 visit, I overheard a staffer and a customer discussing how the government planned the Boston Marathon bombing.
“There’s this really distinctive Austin personality that goes back to the New Left and counterculture days in the ’60s and ’70s,” says Jesse Walker, the books editor of Reason magazine and the author of
The United States of Paranoia. “They [do] this very American style of radicalism and populism.”
After graduating from high school, Jones worked his way into this scene, hosting local cable access and radio shows in the mid-’90s. At the time, the Clinton presidency, and events like the
1993 Waco siege, had caused a surge in far-right, and at times violent, anti-government activity. Jones glommed onto these ideas, arguing that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was a “false flag” planned by the US government as a pretext to crack down on dissenters.
Jones’s presence in the Austin conspiracy scene eventually earned him attention from national hate-watchers. “I first heard about him in late 1998,” recalls Mark Pitcavage, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.
“THERE’S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND!”
People like Pitcavage tracked Jones because he was part of a much broader movement, an anti-government far-right that blames the world’s ills on a grand global conspiracy.
Jones and those like him believe the world has been secretly taken over by a secret global cabal, the so-called “New World Order.” These “globalists,” as Jones types derisively call them, want to take over the United States, which they see as the final stronghold of freedom on earth.
Jones and his fellow travelers also believe that the leadership of the United States, regardless of political party, is secretly working to bring New World Order rule to America. That’s why Jones talks about FEMA setting up concentration camps and Obama taking your guns. (Note: neither of these things are happening.) They’re laying the groundwork for when a New World Order putsch comes.
The only way to stop this, he argues, is for citizens to fight back. For some, particularly those in the militia movement, that means arming yourself against the government. For Jones, it means arming yourself with knowledge about the true nature of the conspiracy; winning the “InfoWar.” His site’s tagline: “There’s a war on for your mind!”
Lots of people around the country preach a similar message. What differentiates Jones from his competitors is his energetic presentation style. Jones yells and rants and raves. He cries, grunts, and growls. He rips off his shirt, slams the table, and pleads with the cameras. He promises you information that “they” are keeping from you, truths about a coming catastrophe that you need to prepare for and that only Alex Jones has the research prowess to uncover.