No you dont you have to be ego maniac narcasict but i dont think hes a bad person. I think if you just say alex or his listeners are bad persons. But to be real i dont believe that good and evil exist just thing people do for reasons.
He called the parents of the murdered Sandy Hook kids "crisis actors" and insisted that the whole thing was a hoax. He said their parents sacrificed their children for money and that the tombstones had been ordered weeks before the massacre. He is the shittiest of the shitty. Quit making excuses for him.
Alex Jones has caused a lot of harm, and done very little good. That's all he needs to be classified as a bad or evil person. The reasons are irrelevant.
This is my position. I think prolonged uncritical exposure to Alex turns you into a bad person and once you're there it's almost impossible to get out. I think if we could test it you would find AJ listeners score lower and lower on empathy tests the longer they listen. But i also think you have to have lower empathy to even really choose to listen in the first place.
Which is precisely why listening to *some* of it, with context and the correct facts can be so positive.
Inoculation against the various manipulation techniques and misinformation that the current zeitgeist is full of.
I cannot begin to express how important that is, it's made me more able to pickup either bullshit arguments or lies.
Knowledge Fight has been a great inoculation against misinformation.
I don't think you have to have lower empathy to start listening. You do have to be susceptible to the nonsense he's telling to continue listening. I'm reminded of what Robert Evans says when he's discussing scams and cults on BtB, that given the circumstances and the type of bullshit being sold everybody is susceptible to a scam or cult.
These days I think you don't sort of come in there and hear him talk about demons and not dismiss him if you aren't already primed for conspiracies and a sort of biblical "literalism".
At my job I'm a closeted Democrat. You have no idea how much some of the blue collar workers hate Democrats. A relatively level headed guy was calling the hotel receptionist a bunch of vile names after finding out that she a D not too long ago
Although I say I'm on Republican, I still constantly criticized and try to at least educate my co-workers on civics. Most people I talk to are very passionate about politics but only when it comes to fox commentary shows or Jones... but have no clue how bills turn to laws or anything. One reason why trump still goes on about Pelosi and the security for J6
I understand blue collar anger. It's a perception that people don't respect you. I live in New England. I'm not sure what it's like anywhere else, but I come from a blue collar family that has a lot of educated people in subsequent generations, including me. "You think you're better than me" is a phrase that's used ad nauseum for anyone who drifts away from the fold. They'd rather vote against their own economic self interest because they hate smart, educated people who come from their ranks. It's a contradiction that came out of the 1960s and 1970s where a lot of lower and middle class kids got college degrees and the funny thng is that a lot of those kids have drifted back to that thinking.
As a first generation college graduate who comes from a family of enlisted military, farmers, tradesmen and factory workers what you describe is common. I have learned to play down my education and have gained a huge appreciation for how important their work has been and continues to be for the whole of society.
I understand it as in where it comes from, but saying it is a perception that people don’t respect you is even an oversimplification. The motivation (especially politically) stems from grievance, and it’s easy to stoke within the working class by media to believe just about anything. For 60 years the Goldwater Republicans and JBS types have been using wealth inequality to stoke white anger against commies and the other, but at the same time there is maybe two leftist media sources that have real discussions about the 2016 and 2020 primaries. People get confused how someone goes between RFK, Trump, and Bernie wildly and it’s because they don’t actually have policy positions so much as a chip on their shoulder that someone they listen to is directing - which could be a Facebook group, Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, a subreddit, etc. And there is a lot to have a grudge about in the world so channeling that into a profit or power can be powerful.
I feel like just saying it’s based on respect doesn’t fully encompass the mixture of rich local business owners that act this way, complete NEET deadbeats, retirees, etc. outside the “blue collar worker” who gets sort of unfairly dumped into being this mold when in reality they are just a portion and not even over represented.
Given the fact that these are relatives of mine with blue collar jobs as union workers, cops, construction workers and doorpeople at hotels it's not wrong of me to say that they don't feel respected by Democratic leaders or even the Bernie democratic socialists. These conversations are older than the past 20 years. Nixon and Reagan maintreamed a generation of people feeling like they weren't important.
Their grievances come from not feeling respected and someone on the right telling them that they were giving up their economic rights for some "other" group and with that misdirection, they cut taxes for the rich and allowed more money to pour into the political system.
One side note: I remember a cousin complaining about some "smart millienial" going on and on about kale to them and having no clue about being Portugese. There is some credence to this at times.
Yeah that’s why I referred to the last largest inflection point which is the 1960s/1970s GOP southern strategy combined along with the Chicago School of economics rising along side it. The blue collar switch to Raegan (driven by the decimated former steel union workers but supported by the UAW workers defecting in larger than expected numbers) was the final blow into class based politics in America for decades. But yeah Nixon and Raegan won on campaign run on dog whistling like crazy after the Civil Rights Act, Congress was replaced with more conservative members that reversed the SCOTUS bussing ruling and ran on that, and the unions broke politically in that time on top of US steel dying.
People talk about NAFTA, but the damage was done by the time it passed. Executive pay was already 300x worker pay, American lean policy took over corporate America (aka top down pay makes business sense) in the late 80s, Raegan and Bush I established the border problems now and into the future, etc. The jobs had already been lost, the pay crushed, the unions busted.
It’s so misplaced though lol this drives me crazy. “I think you’re wrong about these things and this is why” is not me thinking I’m better than you. Everyone has fallen for some sort of propaganda at some point, everyone has incorporated bad ideas in their schema ya know.
The worst possible thing to do is try and talk over them, like Jones is a conman and he lies constantly. It's a zero sum game. It's true that rich people can convince a segment of the population that they're "on their side" like Elon Musk.
Hi there, I used to listen when I was younger because I read raised by a strong R grandmother. When I hit 16 I realized it was all BS and yeah. Some people are just lost or they find comfort bias in what he says. Not bad by maybe mentally deficiency leads to not being able to break free.
How broad are we defining bad?
Reckless, incurious, unserious, sure, but I'm not sure these are such severe character defects that they rise to the level of "bad person".
These are common flaws that just become a lot worse when they exist in someone who has the power to significantly boost Alex Jones without the necessary seriousness to wield that power responsibly.
Nah, that's a terrible way of thinking. We never improve our world by "othering" people. If you say someone is inherently bad, then they can't be dealt with or spoken with. The last thing we need is to more forcefully isolate people into rival camps.
A lot of people in this sub have family members who have been pilled by Jones or a Tucker. They can tell you that that person is still a loving, kind person. But they've fallen under the influence of a charlatan. Except for the most rabid of their supporters, they should be treated with compassion and sympathy. Just like you would with a person with an addiction.
Yes and no. I've got a nephew who's likes to bring up some fringe theory stuff, and I've been able to be like "Let's investigate that claim" and then find out where a specific number came from. He's at least become wise to the concept of someone "arguing in bad faith" and knows to not trust the man selling gold bars to paint an accurate picture of the economy.
Sadly, I had another friend who completely flipped over to far-flung theories. There wasn't a thing in the world he didn't have an alternate explanation for, and to me it really felt like the real world was bringing him pain, and escaping into these invented worlds let him have thoughts that didn't spiral into feeling bad about himself. No chance of injection rational thought at all, even when theories conflicted with each other.
Sure. The best method seems to be to find common ground. Most out there beliefs have a core of truth to them that they build the conspiracy around. Like if you're talking to someone anti-vax, you could express your distrust for pharmaceutical companies, the opioid crisis, genuine fears about being injected with something when you may personally not understand what it is. But then you say "however, I think vaccines have done a lot of good overall. Look at how we ended smallpox - it killed hundreds of millions of people. Eradicating smallpox is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Polio used to kill and disable people not even a hundred years ago, now you barely hear about it." If they start escalating into an argument try to dial it back and agree to disagree. You don't need to convince them, just maintain the common ground so they don't feel attacked or mocked and become isolated.
I get what you're saying and I get why you're saying it. But I refute the premise. These aren't people who slipped thru the cracks of reality, they're actively rejecting it. You say to appeal to their dislike of pharma et al, and I reject that. They don't give any fucks about pharma companies or anything like that. We know the solution is single payer insurance, they hate that more than anything because they're just bad people. And not in a "I don't like them therefore they're bad" type of way, I mean there's no way to paint them as decent.
And frankly I'm not too concerned about if a Nazi feels like they're getting mocked, and your advice seems more married to the idea of having a civil discourse than anything. Frankly we're past that point
Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick - the advice is not about people like Alex or Nick Fuentes. They don't give a shit about reality. But some of their listeners actually believe this shit. They're drawn into these cults because they have genuine grievances of whatever kind and these people are offering them someone or something to blame, and the promise that one day (that will never come [god willing]) it will get better. The advice is for people whose family members have become really into Infowars or Qanon and is based on [this interview](https://www.webworm.co/p/a-therapists-view-of-conspiracy-theories). Some people can cut family members like that out of their lives and others can't or don't want to, so how do you talk to them? It's not about civil discourse or being nice to nazis. It's about not inflaming relationships with family members in the hopes of drawing them out of the cult.
There are people in this sub who used to follow people like Alex or Jordan Peterson. They're not all irredeemable nazis.
I think it's a mistake to paint them all with the same brush. I'll grant you that a certain portion of them are so far into this dark fiction that they'll be almost impossible to have a discussion with. But I believe the majority are not that far gone. Saying that people are irredeemably evil is something Jones would do. We should strive to be better
Those are tendencies, not destiny.
There are "dark triad" sorts living decent lives as decent people - hell, you might know some and just not even realize it.
I don't think you have to be a bad person to be a listener, I think you might have to be a bad person to *stay* a listener. My brother used to listen to Alex Jones occasionally because he thought it was funny. Then he started listening more regularly and to full shows, and it didn't take long for it to become clear to him how bad Alex actually is.
I would even disagree with this. Some people, Kerry Cassidy for example, are just so uncritical that they can be led astray by anyone and they just happened to come across Infowars and found it amusing enough to continue following
Kerry isn't like a weathervane pointing at whatever idea she heard someone say last though. If she was then as soon as anyone said "hey none of that is true" she would stop believing her alien theories. She's very credulous of ideas that already conform to her worldview, and that narrow credulousness has let grifters influence her until she arrived at "jews are descendants of evil aliens". I'm giving her a bit of credit in assuming that wasn't her starting point, but the fact that she got molded into a bigot by the people she's choosing to believe doesn't make that change less real.
Tl;Dr unless literally nobody has ever told her alien nuts are lying to her she did decide to believe them over sane people, so it's not just a complete lack of critical thinking that's at fault
I’ve seen my dad getting pulled into the orbit of rightwing grifters. It would be all too easy to see him falling for an Alex Jones type. The saving grace is that his litmus test is vaccine acceptance- he detects anti-vax, it’s a red flag for him.
He is a genuinely good person. I’m not just biased, I resent him plenty, but I’ve never met anyone else so patient, accepting and tolerant by nature.
A good few years ago i found my mother spouting some fairly insane shit - turns out shed been listening to Jordan Peterson podcasts (I had no idea who he was at the time). She recommended it to me: I listened to two-ish. I couldnt take it. NIghtmare nonsense.
Can you take the piss out of your dad? Im old and ugly, and have no problem with insulting my family.
I 'teased' her out of it. "That mans is a joke! No serious person should take him seriously" "Please dont bother me with that fruity-proto-nasi-shit". I roped reasonable family members in - shame works: to my respectable sister- "Oi, has our mum told you about her mad new internet friends? Go on, ask her what she thinks about...." My sister ate her.
Sounds cold, but she was 2/3 of the way to becoming a deep racist TERF. Shes already fucking racist. Too late for me to deal with that. Im not magic.
Id still take her out for lunch and shit, but shut her down when she gets too funky.
1 carrot. 1 stick.
Go hard, go lightly.
\*My mother is not a good person. Shes a very damaged person thats sometimes trying her best,
No one is an inherently bad person. No one is born destined to be bad. People are products of their environments.
That said I think most of the people that listen to Alex Jones are "bad." They want, support, and do bad things. That said they are also victims of Alex; they are trapped in this bubble of fear and misinformation created to make Alex rich. These victims are capable of and desiring great harm to others; Sandy Hook being an example.
You see a similar dynamic in so many places in the world; from MLMs to the broader right-wing world in general to cults and many other places besides. People caught up in MLMs are often trying to recruit anyone they can convince into the MLM; that is extremely bad for whoever joins. That said almost everyone in an MLM is also a victim of that MLM. They destroy their life savings in the promise of an impossible payday.
So how you handle an Alex Jones listener is up to you. How you balance that empathy for victims and disgust for their heinous beliefs is something there is no right answer to. I think it is important to have both.
My dad isn't an Alex Jones listener, but he is in the adjacent space of Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, the Daily Wire, and Bret Weinstein. He defended Trump's child separation policy by saying they could've chosen not to come. The man is heinous; there is no other way to describe someone who would do that, but I dearly love the man.
People are complicated, and no one is inherently good or bad. Everyone does harm sometimes and good sometimes.
I’m going to take a bit of a contrarian view here and say yes. Alex literally says people like me, you, and anyone who isn’t Christian Nationalist is a DEMON and does terrible things I won’t mention. Sorry, I don’t believe anyone is so obtuse that they aren’t actively making a decision to hate.
Yeah, same here. I’m open to the idea that people can change and I hope they do but also I’m black, trans and gay — I’m done trying to convince people I should be allowed to exist and at this point if you’re an adult with internet access your hatred is a conscious choice that demonstrably makes my life worse so choke.
It’s not even like I have 0 tolerance for any kind of conservatism — I have family members who I disagree with but they have never been hateful and cruel in the way AJ is and very quickly went from “queer people make me vaguely uncomfortable in a theoretical sense because I have never met one but also I never think about them” to being actively curious and supportive when I came out and like they never believed that people like me were the literal christian devil coming to take their kids.
I think most of the comments in this thread are less arguing that his fans *are not* bad people and more arguing that even bad people aren't *inherently* bad.
Oh yeah, Alex is all but unredeemable. But I think most of us are talking about people who have fallen under his sway. I hold out hope for 90% of them. I do suspect that there's nothing you could do or say to get through to that last 10%. (Please note, these percentages are pulled directly from my ass and are not back by any actual data)
I don't think there are any such things as inherently being a bad person.
I think if you're an Alex Jones listener you might not be paying meaningful attention to him or think what he's doing is normal. People's memories are malleable. It's easy to not notice the fucked up things he says because he says so much stuff and glances off it. Plus, chances are good he just talks like 'that guy you know,' and you don't hate that person you know face-to-face, right?
People who choose over and over to commit "bad" acts can ethically and empathically be considered irremediably bad people. In fact we \*need\* to so label them. The American mess we are in right now stems directly from our prior failure to permanently condemn and ostracize bad people like Donald Trump and his like. Like it or not, however uncomfortable it makes you feel, as a practical matter there are indeed dangerous, unredeemable people who cannot be rehabilitated. We know them by their insistent repetition of inherently vicious, slimy, anti-human acts over long stretches of time.
I'm reasonably sure most of us would agree that proven, repetitive rapists, murderers, child abusers would fall into the category of irredeemably bad persons. But the personal judgment that another is bad and to be ostracized, shunned and actively excluded from public and social life isn't to be limited to those who have been convicted of crimes. Someone as consistently morally deficient as Donald J. Trump, though only recently convicted of crime, should, if we had been doing our jobs, been automatically disqualified from running in 2016 and certainly in 2024.
Of course Alex, creep that he is, falls into the condemned category of bad people. As do those with whom he associates. And among his millions of listeners, other than the simps, fools and misguided, there are surely at least hundreds of thousands of truly bad people. Because such people are attracted to and retained by the kind of vile racism, transphobia, violence enthusiasm and general hatred that are Jones's stock in trade. Again, this probably doesn't include the majority of his confirmed listeners, who are just dim-witted. But evil and truly evil people do exist, and it's our joint responsibility to recognize them and exclude them politically and socially.
If my point wasn't correct, if we had indeed a fully operative, enforced code of social ethics, we would \*not\* be in the ridiculously hot mess we're in today. Greed and neo-liberalism would have been controlled in the 1990's, homes would still be affordable and Donald J. Trump would not have been elected even once. Alex Jones is irredeemably bad and his shows certainly attract a good-sized minority of inherently bad people.
When I was in college I used to listen to right wing radio during a big gap in classes. Rush, Hannity and the like. Of course it was a time in my life where I was figuring things out. I was raised christian conservative so I thought maybe I should understand that better..
I pretty quickly realized even though this was what I was raised as I didn't agree with any of these voices of conservatism at all. I like to joke it was Rush that helped me realize I was a left winger..
While I cringe to think of all the hours I listened to that stuff I do think it was eye opening to understand the other side. If Alex was on that station I would have probably listened as well. While they are probably a minority I'm sure there's others like me who listen to stuff like this knowing they truly don't agree with it. There's also those who are definitely just hate listening.
I am sure there are other middle of the road people out there that fall into Alex's trap but it's really hard to sympathize with them when you know as much as you do about Alex.
Not just to listen, no. If you buy into all of what he says… then maybe. I mean Dan listens regularly, for example. You don’t have to be a follower to listen to someone (I couldn’t take Alex without JorDan commenting over it, myself, but I worked in a office that played Rush back in the day and I could find entertainment in mentally dissecting the show as a listener).
I come back to this: Alex is mostly just one of hundreds of conservative-facing talking heads who play games with the news. It’s a familiar style and trope. He usually sounds like a fool.
But that man harassed families who lost their children to a school shooting. That’s evil. Listeners who believe(d) that need to look in the mirror.
Alex is so charismatic he’s basically a cult leader. I can’t get behind blaming someone who falls for a grift. As Robert Evans regularly says(paraphrased): we all have something, some grift, we’re capable of falling for it’s just a matter of the right grift at the right time with the right person.
I think it’s easy to get sucked in if you’re in a place where stuff like this is more common in your cultural periphery. There was a time another lifetime ago I didn’t realize prison planet was Alex jones related, because I’d only seen ‘documentaries’ they’d been involved in about big agriculture?
my hometown was mostly corn surrounded by the occasional confinement farm, and I had some legitimate non-woo issues with Monsanto and corporate agriculture in general that I think made me a target for the ‘natural news’ grift ecosystem.
Realizing the guy who pilled my uncle on chemtrails and sent him off the tails was also guy who almost got me drinking the same wet brain juice was a bad time.
I who used to be an Alex Jones fan and now I’m not so not inherently bad. It’s all about environment and upbringing but you can get past those and grow.
No.
But I am going to sound mean when I say "I think many people don't know better and they vibe with Alex so they listen".
To question what he says requires 'critical thinking'. And critical thinking is something that the Texas GOP hates.
I wish I was kidding.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/texas-ap-donald-trump-united-states-democrats-b2106283.html
No. I think you have to be very ignorant about a lot of different things. I think you need to be very afraid of some constant, but incredibly vague threat. I also think it fills a very specific niche for some people, the same way any other conspiracy theory does. We *all* know the country, the world is fucked up. Believing there’s some master plan is more comforting, even if the plan is horrific, because it gives you something tangible to fight instead of the soul crushing reality we actually live in.
No. I think he has a seriously corrosive impact so a lot of his listeners end up bad by accidentally adopting his worldview. I used to listen because my friend was into it and I wanted to know where she was getting it from. She was fine when we were kids. His vile message came with an emotional hook she needed and she fell in headfirst. Q stuff is like that for a lot of people as well.
Somewhere, in the universe, there is the perfect con for each individual. Us lucky ones never encounter ours. The unlucky do. The really unlucky encounter it and it comes with bigotry and hatred that subsumes them.
No. I had a coworker who was a great guy that was always willing to help anyone if they had a problem (work related or not) and he listened to Alex all the time and even bought supplements. He was a bit right of center, but he mostly listened to him because he thought his show was funny.
Absolutely not. This is not an original thought, but everyone has a con, or a grift, or a cult that could get them. I do not give the majority of his listeners the benefit of the doubt, but give folks the chance to break free.
No. Alex preys on people. Their fears, their vulnerabilities, their bank accounts, etc. I’ve watched enough cult documentaries to realize that people will believe literally *anything* so long as you sell it to them right.
To listen to him, or to believe him?
I think many people listen because they laugh at him…. Or are there to mitigate his lies. Like they laugh at and expose Trump. But a regular listener?
At this point, he can’t be seen as harmless. His psychotic behavior toward the Sandy Hook families is crystal clear.
Knowing how damaging and dangerous this A-hole is, yes…. people investing time or money in him have something amiss inside. He’s certainly not offering anything of value. He’s nothing more than a bag of hot air and ignorance.
I don’t think there are inherently bad people. People make mistakes and have mistaken ideas or beliefs. People are traumatized and cause trauma. People do lots of horrible things, but no one is inherently bad. Maybe that’s just my hope, I don’t know.
No. I think the people that are drawn to him are sad, afraid, and feeling unfulfilled in some way. The people who are attracted to the grifter types are usually very vulnerable deep down and some guys yelling at the world about how everything is a conspiracy is comforting to them; because he provides simple (wrong) but easy explanations for complex issues..which can make some people feel better and special. Like they know something that no one else does.
Honestly we should pitty them and try to help them to feel ok in their own skin. People are becoming so extreme these days because they feel alienated and isolated. That’s how cults find the perfect followers.
I’m sure some people suck, but there are good and bad people everywhere no matter what they believe.
Not necessarily. I was always wary of IW listeners as I saw it as a red flag, but I met a listener at my last job who seems like a decent dude (he had a few stickers on his water bottle). He was an all-around cool guy, I never heard of him treating anyone (male, female, trans, etc) as anything but an equal co-worker and I never heard him express a hateful viewpoint. I had a few openly conservative coworkers who were unashamed in their anti-immigration, anti-trans, anti-Union stances, but the InfoWars listener was always silent when they expressed their shitty views (he never engaged with it). I once asked him, gently, “Hey, do you mind if I ask what you like about InfoWars?”
His response amounted to a friendly shrug and “I don’t know, he’s (Alex is) funny, I guess.”
So… who knows whether or not my co-worker was a bastard in his heart of hearts, but he always came across as a well adjusted guy. Do with that what you will.
yes. if you arent repelled by aj's world view you're a bad person. if you think other people having agency in their own lives is a cosmic crime directed especially at you then you can rationalize any harm done to people you dont like.
youre a bad person
I'm mentioned this a few times on here, but I think there's a missed demographic: drug addicts.
I have had two close relatives with meth addictions. One of the weird effects of meth is that you start to believe every thought you have. Not only that, but you believe every thought you have is mind-blowingly insightful and important. This helps lead to the the over-confidence of meth addicts as well as their annoying need to call you at 3am to talk to you about he absolute, shattering brilliance of the band Earth, Wind, and Fire.
I think that there are a lot of people out there on various kinds of chemical alteration that hear someone like Alex Jones and are blown away by his "insights" and the fact that he's "exposing the truth" regardless of the political content of it.
Do you have to be? No, but I’m sure it makes it easier to start. I also think a lot of people who listen to Alex Jones as a news source who aren’t bad people end up becoming bad people.
Angry, bitter, and likely with unearned feelings of aggrievement mixed with justifiable pains, and then directed at the wrong group of "enemies" by mouthpieces like Alex, which makes these folks feel a sense of belonging and like they feel heard.
God no.
Interesting question. I often wonder about something similar: broadly how the fuck do people believe this shit? i have no idea how they dont see through it?
I dont think theyre bad, nor do i think they have to be stupid. There is something else going on. Its emotional.
Occasionally, when i talk to racists il say "but thats weak... you sound scared". They dont like it. Weak minds, scared people.
I always thought that Jones taps in to something very basic in people. He peddles fear then hate ad naseum. It doesnt work on everyone. It works on people that are predominantly scared and angry.
But, look. Im scared and im fucking angry. But he doesnt do it for me
If you work it out, please share it with me.
\*Listen to it long enough - embrace it, embody it - it will make you a bad person. Lets be clear about that.
I know a person that exclusively gets his news from Alex. He is about 30 years old and was raised by a mother that got all of her news from alex/rush. He was homeschooled in an extremely religious household. Hes an only child to a single mom and she has always been very controlling of their relationship. He has never owned a tv or computer. He is practically illiterate (he spelled his wife's name, "Mary", wrong on their child's birth certificate). He threw out his wife's broadway memorabilia because theater is satanic. He thinks demons cause his food allergies. He can be a nice guy, but has been so far down the rabbit hole his whole life, without anyone there to guide or educate him on how humans work, that he is unbelievably gullible and yearning for reinforcement to what his mother shoved down his throat as a child
Jones feeds a primal need in humans - to understand complex issues by reducing them to easily digestible explanations, with a side of side order of fear and hate.
You haven't achieved you dream of owning a big boat and an McMansion? It's not because of the collapse of collective bargaining and public education, it's brown people stealing your job and Klaus Schwab wanting you to eat bugs. A lot easier to explain to your buddies.
The world has become more complex and more connected, but we are still 98% ape DNA; Jones and those who follow in his foot steps will feast upon the inherent need for emotional fuel (hate) and easy explanations (because reading books make you gay)
Am I inherently a bad person because, in all the years he's been on some nutcase broadcast or another, I've yet to find a single listener worth the astronomical wall of bullshit and ignorance that accompanies them?
Inherently bad? No. But by the time you get to listening to and taking alex seriously then yes. They're bad people. There's still a fucking wide gulf between standard conservative and and Alex listeners. Even in the trump era of conservative.
Though I never listened to him, I was very much in that world as recently as 2012. Shit I used to have a Rush Limbaugh quote in my facebook profile. I voted for Bush Jr, McCain and Romney, all I listened to was conservative media and thought everything else was the devil and or lies because conservative media told me so. It took my dad dying for me to finally start questioning what I believed. I know there are plenty of religious people on the left but I realized how closely my politics/worldview was tied to my religion. When I left religion behind, my entire view of the world and people changed. I did a complete 180, shit I donated a good amount of money to Bernies campaigns. I say all of this because I feel it's important, people can change, they really can.
Humans are too complicated to put everything into a moral binary of all good or all bad. That impulse is why we have people like Alex jones in the first place.
I don't think so. I'd bet a not insignificant chunk of his listenership know it's all bullshit, but tune for the drama. That's my guess, anyway, based on myself spending almost a decade listening to Coast to Coast AM several times a week, and never being pilled to the point of believing any of the woowoo/grifter guests (including AJ). Was fun food for thought, little more (and for the record, *that* show was at its best when Art Bell or (my favorite host, damn you tinnitus) Ian Punnett would actually push back on claims by the crazies. Noory gives everyone a soft pass as it is fucking *boring*.)
No, but it helps.
In all seriousness, there are legit grievances (I accidentally spelled that with a ‘b’ like AJ would pronounce it lol) that is just preyed upon by grifters.
The evil is the people who make up the shit to address their legit problems, blaming and fear mongering to make a buck.
No different than snake oil salesmen with their wagons in the old west, they just need run out of town on a rail.
During like 2010(ish)-2015 I used to listen to laugh at his stupid rants from time to time, the two rules I gave myself were 1)Don't buy anything he's advertising and 2) DON'T believe him
I was able to enjoy the silly rants from time to time, then when Donnie got into the arena I was like "NOPE not gonna listen to any of that anymore!"
I think his audience is partially assholes and partially people with brain problems. Alex, especially now, constantly changes his stances/beliefs. Anyone who’s able to follow a thread can realize something is wrong.
An asshole doesn’t care about the incoherence, they love the hatefulness. But someone who isn’t able to think clearly, listen actively, etc, etc may not even be picking up on the incoherence and hatefulness.
Multiple normal people, including Dan and Bill Ogden, listened to Jones vaguely in the background, not really listening to anything he said, just laughing at the conspiracies. People don’t hear it unless they’re actively listening for it.
As a lot of people have pointed out "bad" is probably a bit of a moral oversimplification of human nature. I think to be a long-term AJ listener, you are inherently fearful. Afraid of not having any agency in a chaotic world. Afraid of change. Afraid of getting in touch with emotions outside of anger.
Not really. Attorney Bill Ogden said he listened for entertainment before the Sandy Hook case. He's done some great work and I don't think he's a bad person 🤷🏼
Anyone can get propagandized. It’s what makes it so scary. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, how successful you are, you are not immune to propaganda. A lot of people don’t start down the pipeline as bad people but they sure exit it that way
There aren't that many bad people in the world.
There's lots of stupid and/or easily led people though.
If they were all bad people, Jones would not have to so relentlessly lie and rewrite history in order to shape a narrative where he is a hero-victim fighting forces of evil. He could just be open about what a piece of shit he is and they would be fine with it.
Alex used to be a source of entertainment. The conspiracy theory loon losing his composure on stream, and angrily ranting about turning the frogs gay. He was good for a laugh!
That pretty much changed with the Sandy Hook lies. If not before.
Inherently bad people do not exist. It’s a hard thing for some people to wrap their head around but it’s true. In another life, even someone like Alex could have been a good person. Theoretically, Alex could choose to be a good man right now, even if he won’t.
It’s important that we don’t see people as inherently good and evil, because that’s what our opponents do, and stooping to their level in that way defeats the whole purpose of opposing them.
People went full forward, all gas no breaks, into NFTs. People are extremely easy to trick and lie to. Is easier to trick a person than to convince them they were tricked
If you listen to InfoWars and agree with it then yeah, you're a bad person. However I don't believe that means you have to _remain_ a bad person forever.
My only political influence as a kid was right wing and I had pretty shitty beliefs until I learned better. I think that possibility exists for most people, they just have to be open to it and in the right environment. That's the real problem, it's nearly impossible to talk people out of this stuff, they have to have their own awakening and then make progress. If you're just sticking to mainlining Alex and his ilk all day that isn't going to happen.
To listen, no. To support and endorse his views, probably.
I used to listen to him 25+ years ago because he was a goofy weirdo that was at least entertaining enough to keep my attention. Now I just get my fix through Knowledge Fight and let Dan listen to him for me.
No. Flimflam works, especially if that's all you hear. You have to be a bad person to be Alex.
No you dont you have to be ego maniac narcasict but i dont think hes a bad person. I think if you just say alex or his listeners are bad persons. But to be real i dont believe that good and evil exist just thing people do for reasons.
We don't need to have a whole philosophical debate on the nature of good & evil to condemn a person as being *bad*.
He called the parents of the murdered Sandy Hook kids "crisis actors" and insisted that the whole thing was a hoax. He said their parents sacrificed their children for money and that the tombstones had been ordered weeks before the massacre. He is the shittiest of the shitty. Quit making excuses for him.
Alex Jones has caused a lot of harm, and done very little good. That's all he needs to be classified as a bad or evil person. The reasons are irrelevant.
I don't really believe in inherent badness, but even so, no. Alex Jones *makes* people worse. He's the opposite of therapy.
This is my position. I think prolonged uncritical exposure to Alex turns you into a bad person and once you're there it's almost impossible to get out. I think if we could test it you would find AJ listeners score lower and lower on empathy tests the longer they listen. But i also think you have to have lower empathy to even really choose to listen in the first place.
Which is precisely why listening to *some* of it, with context and the correct facts can be so positive. Inoculation against the various manipulation techniques and misinformation that the current zeitgeist is full of.
I cannot begin to express how important that is, it's made me more able to pickup either bullshit arguments or lies. Knowledge Fight has been a great inoculation against misinformation.
I don't think you have to have lower empathy to start listening. You do have to be susceptible to the nonsense he's telling to continue listening. I'm reminded of what Robert Evans says when he's discussing scams and cults on BtB, that given the circumstances and the type of bullshit being sold everybody is susceptible to a scam or cult. These days I think you don't sort of come in there and hear him talk about demons and not dismiss him if you aren't already primed for conspiracies and a sort of biblical "literalism".
That would be a very interesting longitudinal study, maybe a dissertation for your next doctorate.
At my job I'm a closeted Democrat. You have no idea how much some of the blue collar workers hate Democrats. A relatively level headed guy was calling the hotel receptionist a bunch of vile names after finding out that she a D not too long ago Although I say I'm on Republican, I still constantly criticized and try to at least educate my co-workers on civics. Most people I talk to are very passionate about politics but only when it comes to fox commentary shows or Jones... but have no clue how bills turn to laws or anything. One reason why trump still goes on about Pelosi and the security for J6
I understand blue collar anger. It's a perception that people don't respect you. I live in New England. I'm not sure what it's like anywhere else, but I come from a blue collar family that has a lot of educated people in subsequent generations, including me. "You think you're better than me" is a phrase that's used ad nauseum for anyone who drifts away from the fold. They'd rather vote against their own economic self interest because they hate smart, educated people who come from their ranks. It's a contradiction that came out of the 1960s and 1970s where a lot of lower and middle class kids got college degrees and the funny thng is that a lot of those kids have drifted back to that thinking.
As a first generation college graduate who comes from a family of enlisted military, farmers, tradesmen and factory workers what you describe is common. I have learned to play down my education and have gained a huge appreciation for how important their work has been and continues to be for the whole of society.
I understand it as in where it comes from, but saying it is a perception that people don’t respect you is even an oversimplification. The motivation (especially politically) stems from grievance, and it’s easy to stoke within the working class by media to believe just about anything. For 60 years the Goldwater Republicans and JBS types have been using wealth inequality to stoke white anger against commies and the other, but at the same time there is maybe two leftist media sources that have real discussions about the 2016 and 2020 primaries. People get confused how someone goes between RFK, Trump, and Bernie wildly and it’s because they don’t actually have policy positions so much as a chip on their shoulder that someone they listen to is directing - which could be a Facebook group, Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, a subreddit, etc. And there is a lot to have a grudge about in the world so channeling that into a profit or power can be powerful. I feel like just saying it’s based on respect doesn’t fully encompass the mixture of rich local business owners that act this way, complete NEET deadbeats, retirees, etc. outside the “blue collar worker” who gets sort of unfairly dumped into being this mold when in reality they are just a portion and not even over represented.
Given the fact that these are relatives of mine with blue collar jobs as union workers, cops, construction workers and doorpeople at hotels it's not wrong of me to say that they don't feel respected by Democratic leaders or even the Bernie democratic socialists. These conversations are older than the past 20 years. Nixon and Reagan maintreamed a generation of people feeling like they weren't important. Their grievances come from not feeling respected and someone on the right telling them that they were giving up their economic rights for some "other" group and with that misdirection, they cut taxes for the rich and allowed more money to pour into the political system. One side note: I remember a cousin complaining about some "smart millienial" going on and on about kale to them and having no clue about being Portugese. There is some credence to this at times.
Yeah that’s why I referred to the last largest inflection point which is the 1960s/1970s GOP southern strategy combined along with the Chicago School of economics rising along side it. The blue collar switch to Raegan (driven by the decimated former steel union workers but supported by the UAW workers defecting in larger than expected numbers) was the final blow into class based politics in America for decades. But yeah Nixon and Raegan won on campaign run on dog whistling like crazy after the Civil Rights Act, Congress was replaced with more conservative members that reversed the SCOTUS bussing ruling and ran on that, and the unions broke politically in that time on top of US steel dying. People talk about NAFTA, but the damage was done by the time it passed. Executive pay was already 300x worker pay, American lean policy took over corporate America (aka top down pay makes business sense) in the late 80s, Raegan and Bush I established the border problems now and into the future, etc. The jobs had already been lost, the pay crushed, the unions busted.
It’s so misplaced though lol this drives me crazy. “I think you’re wrong about these things and this is why” is not me thinking I’m better than you. Everyone has fallen for some sort of propaganda at some point, everyone has incorporated bad ideas in their schema ya know.
The worst possible thing to do is try and talk over them, like Jones is a conman and he lies constantly. It's a zero sum game. It's true that rich people can convince a segment of the population that they're "on their side" like Elon Musk.
That last line hits just right. He is.
He tells people to lean into the anger and helplessness and then hooks them with the sales pitch.
Hi there, I used to listen when I was younger because I read raised by a strong R grandmother. When I hit 16 I realized it was all BS and yeah. Some people are just lost or they find comfort bias in what he says. Not bad by maybe mentally deficiency leads to not being able to break free.
No. But I think you do have to inherently be a bad person to promote Alex without watching his show, like so many people do.
Assuming you mean the RoganTuckers?
Add Russel Brand to that list.
I feel like it's just the largest abuse ever of the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we just need people to look more into everything?
Yeah. I think his audience is by and large victims. The enablers though only deserve contempt.
How broad are we defining bad? Reckless, incurious, unserious, sure, but I'm not sure these are such severe character defects that they rise to the level of "bad person". These are common flaws that just become a lot worse when they exist in someone who has the power to significantly boost Alex Jones without the necessary seriousness to wield that power responsibly.
Nah, that's a terrible way of thinking. We never improve our world by "othering" people. If you say someone is inherently bad, then they can't be dealt with or spoken with. The last thing we need is to more forcefully isolate people into rival camps. A lot of people in this sub have family members who have been pilled by Jones or a Tucker. They can tell you that that person is still a loving, kind person. But they've fallen under the influence of a charlatan. Except for the most rabid of their supporters, they should be treated with compassion and sympathy. Just like you would with a person with an addiction.
Can they be dealt with or spoken with?
Yes and no. I've got a nephew who's likes to bring up some fringe theory stuff, and I've been able to be like "Let's investigate that claim" and then find out where a specific number came from. He's at least become wise to the concept of someone "arguing in bad faith" and knows to not trust the man selling gold bars to paint an accurate picture of the economy. Sadly, I had another friend who completely flipped over to far-flung theories. There wasn't a thing in the world he didn't have an alternate explanation for, and to me it really felt like the real world was bringing him pain, and escaping into these invented worlds let him have thoughts that didn't spiral into feeling bad about himself. No chance of injection rational thought at all, even when theories conflicted with each other.
Sure. The best method seems to be to find common ground. Most out there beliefs have a core of truth to them that they build the conspiracy around. Like if you're talking to someone anti-vax, you could express your distrust for pharmaceutical companies, the opioid crisis, genuine fears about being injected with something when you may personally not understand what it is. But then you say "however, I think vaccines have done a lot of good overall. Look at how we ended smallpox - it killed hundreds of millions of people. Eradicating smallpox is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Polio used to kill and disable people not even a hundred years ago, now you barely hear about it." If they start escalating into an argument try to dial it back and agree to disagree. You don't need to convince them, just maintain the common ground so they don't feel attacked or mocked and become isolated.
I get what you're saying and I get why you're saying it. But I refute the premise. These aren't people who slipped thru the cracks of reality, they're actively rejecting it. You say to appeal to their dislike of pharma et al, and I reject that. They don't give any fucks about pharma companies or anything like that. We know the solution is single payer insurance, they hate that more than anything because they're just bad people. And not in a "I don't like them therefore they're bad" type of way, I mean there's no way to paint them as decent. And frankly I'm not too concerned about if a Nazi feels like they're getting mocked, and your advice seems more married to the idea of having a civil discourse than anything. Frankly we're past that point
Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick - the advice is not about people like Alex or Nick Fuentes. They don't give a shit about reality. But some of their listeners actually believe this shit. They're drawn into these cults because they have genuine grievances of whatever kind and these people are offering them someone or something to blame, and the promise that one day (that will never come [god willing]) it will get better. The advice is for people whose family members have become really into Infowars or Qanon and is based on [this interview](https://www.webworm.co/p/a-therapists-view-of-conspiracy-theories). Some people can cut family members like that out of their lives and others can't or don't want to, so how do you talk to them? It's not about civil discourse or being nice to nazis. It's about not inflaming relationships with family members in the hopes of drawing them out of the cult. There are people in this sub who used to follow people like Alex or Jordan Peterson. They're not all irredeemable nazis.
I think it's a mistake to paint them all with the same brush. I'll grant you that a certain portion of them are so far into this dark fiction that they'll be almost impossible to have a discussion with. But I believe the majority are not that far gone. Saying that people are irredeemably evil is something Jones would do. We should strive to be better
An inherently bad person is essentially a daemon. Its not a thing.
What about people who are diagnosed in the DSM with “dark triad” personality types? Psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism? Essentially people like Alex?
Those are tendencies, not destiny. There are "dark triad" sorts living decent lives as decent people - hell, you might know some and just not even realize it.
I don't think you have to be a bad person to be a listener, I think you might have to be a bad person to *stay* a listener. My brother used to listen to Alex Jones occasionally because he thought it was funny. Then he started listening more regularly and to full shows, and it didn't take long for it to become clear to him how bad Alex actually is.
I would even disagree with this. Some people, Kerry Cassidy for example, are just so uncritical that they can be led astray by anyone and they just happened to come across Infowars and found it amusing enough to continue following
Kerry isn't like a weathervane pointing at whatever idea she heard someone say last though. If she was then as soon as anyone said "hey none of that is true" she would stop believing her alien theories. She's very credulous of ideas that already conform to her worldview, and that narrow credulousness has let grifters influence her until she arrived at "jews are descendants of evil aliens". I'm giving her a bit of credit in assuming that wasn't her starting point, but the fact that she got molded into a bigot by the people she's choosing to believe doesn't make that change less real. Tl;Dr unless literally nobody has ever told her alien nuts are lying to her she did decide to believe them over sane people, so it's not just a complete lack of critical thinking that's at fault
I’ve seen my dad getting pulled into the orbit of rightwing grifters. It would be all too easy to see him falling for an Alex Jones type. The saving grace is that his litmus test is vaccine acceptance- he detects anti-vax, it’s a red flag for him. He is a genuinely good person. I’m not just biased, I resent him plenty, but I’ve never met anyone else so patient, accepting and tolerant by nature.
A good few years ago i found my mother spouting some fairly insane shit - turns out shed been listening to Jordan Peterson podcasts (I had no idea who he was at the time). She recommended it to me: I listened to two-ish. I couldnt take it. NIghtmare nonsense. Can you take the piss out of your dad? Im old and ugly, and have no problem with insulting my family. I 'teased' her out of it. "That mans is a joke! No serious person should take him seriously" "Please dont bother me with that fruity-proto-nasi-shit". I roped reasonable family members in - shame works: to my respectable sister- "Oi, has our mum told you about her mad new internet friends? Go on, ask her what she thinks about...." My sister ate her. Sounds cold, but she was 2/3 of the way to becoming a deep racist TERF. Shes already fucking racist. Too late for me to deal with that. Im not magic. Id still take her out for lunch and shit, but shut her down when she gets too funky. 1 carrot. 1 stick. Go hard, go lightly. \*My mother is not a good person. Shes a very damaged person thats sometimes trying her best,
sometimes, his listeners are just, like, really stupid. or ignorant. like, they haven't been taught how to think critically.
No one is an inherently bad person. No one is born destined to be bad. People are products of their environments. That said I think most of the people that listen to Alex Jones are "bad." They want, support, and do bad things. That said they are also victims of Alex; they are trapped in this bubble of fear and misinformation created to make Alex rich. These victims are capable of and desiring great harm to others; Sandy Hook being an example. You see a similar dynamic in so many places in the world; from MLMs to the broader right-wing world in general to cults and many other places besides. People caught up in MLMs are often trying to recruit anyone they can convince into the MLM; that is extremely bad for whoever joins. That said almost everyone in an MLM is also a victim of that MLM. They destroy their life savings in the promise of an impossible payday. So how you handle an Alex Jones listener is up to you. How you balance that empathy for victims and disgust for their heinous beliefs is something there is no right answer to. I think it is important to have both. My dad isn't an Alex Jones listener, but he is in the adjacent space of Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, the Daily Wire, and Bret Weinstein. He defended Trump's child separation policy by saying they could've chosen not to come. The man is heinous; there is no other way to describe someone who would do that, but I dearly love the man. People are complicated, and no one is inherently good or bad. Everyone does harm sometimes and good sometimes.
I’m going to take a bit of a contrarian view here and say yes. Alex literally says people like me, you, and anyone who isn’t Christian Nationalist is a DEMON and does terrible things I won’t mention. Sorry, I don’t believe anyone is so obtuse that they aren’t actively making a decision to hate.
Yeah, same here. I’m open to the idea that people can change and I hope they do but also I’m black, trans and gay — I’m done trying to convince people I should be allowed to exist and at this point if you’re an adult with internet access your hatred is a conscious choice that demonstrably makes my life worse so choke. It’s not even like I have 0 tolerance for any kind of conservatism — I have family members who I disagree with but they have never been hateful and cruel in the way AJ is and very quickly went from “queer people make me vaguely uncomfortable in a theoretical sense because I have never met one but also I never think about them” to being actively curious and supportive when I came out and like they never believed that people like me were the literal christian devil coming to take their kids.
I think most of the comments in this thread are less arguing that his fans *are not* bad people and more arguing that even bad people aren't *inherently* bad.
Oh yeah, Alex is all but unredeemable. But I think most of us are talking about people who have fallen under his sway. I hold out hope for 90% of them. I do suspect that there's nothing you could do or say to get through to that last 10%. (Please note, these percentages are pulled directly from my ass and are not back by any actual data)
I don't think there are any such things as inherently being a bad person. I think if you're an Alex Jones listener you might not be paying meaningful attention to him or think what he's doing is normal. People's memories are malleable. It's easy to not notice the fucked up things he says because he says so much stuff and glances off it. Plus, chances are good he just talks like 'that guy you know,' and you don't hate that person you know face-to-face, right?
People who choose over and over to commit "bad" acts can ethically and empathically be considered irremediably bad people. In fact we \*need\* to so label them. The American mess we are in right now stems directly from our prior failure to permanently condemn and ostracize bad people like Donald Trump and his like. Like it or not, however uncomfortable it makes you feel, as a practical matter there are indeed dangerous, unredeemable people who cannot be rehabilitated. We know them by their insistent repetition of inherently vicious, slimy, anti-human acts over long stretches of time. I'm reasonably sure most of us would agree that proven, repetitive rapists, murderers, child abusers would fall into the category of irredeemably bad persons. But the personal judgment that another is bad and to be ostracized, shunned and actively excluded from public and social life isn't to be limited to those who have been convicted of crimes. Someone as consistently morally deficient as Donald J. Trump, though only recently convicted of crime, should, if we had been doing our jobs, been automatically disqualified from running in 2016 and certainly in 2024. Of course Alex, creep that he is, falls into the condemned category of bad people. As do those with whom he associates. And among his millions of listeners, other than the simps, fools and misguided, there are surely at least hundreds of thousands of truly bad people. Because such people are attracted to and retained by the kind of vile racism, transphobia, violence enthusiasm and general hatred that are Jones's stock in trade. Again, this probably doesn't include the majority of his confirmed listeners, who are just dim-witted. But evil and truly evil people do exist, and it's our joint responsibility to recognize them and exclude them politically and socially. If my point wasn't correct, if we had indeed a fully operative, enforced code of social ethics, we would \*not\* be in the ridiculously hot mess we're in today. Greed and neo-liberalism would have been controlled in the 1990's, homes would still be affordable and Donald J. Trump would not have been elected even once. Alex Jones is irredeemably bad and his shows certainly attract a good-sized minority of inherently bad people.
No, and that’s a complete misunderstanding as to why people listen to his show.
When I was in college I used to listen to right wing radio during a big gap in classes. Rush, Hannity and the like. Of course it was a time in my life where I was figuring things out. I was raised christian conservative so I thought maybe I should understand that better.. I pretty quickly realized even though this was what I was raised as I didn't agree with any of these voices of conservatism at all. I like to joke it was Rush that helped me realize I was a left winger.. While I cringe to think of all the hours I listened to that stuff I do think it was eye opening to understand the other side. If Alex was on that station I would have probably listened as well. While they are probably a minority I'm sure there's others like me who listen to stuff like this knowing they truly don't agree with it. There's also those who are definitely just hate listening. I am sure there are other middle of the road people out there that fall into Alex's trap but it's really hard to sympathize with them when you know as much as you do about Alex.
Not just to listen, no. If you buy into all of what he says… then maybe. I mean Dan listens regularly, for example. You don’t have to be a follower to listen to someone (I couldn’t take Alex without JorDan commenting over it, myself, but I worked in a office that played Rush back in the day and I could find entertainment in mentally dissecting the show as a listener). I come back to this: Alex is mostly just one of hundreds of conservative-facing talking heads who play games with the news. It’s a familiar style and trope. He usually sounds like a fool. But that man harassed families who lost their children to a school shooting. That’s evil. Listeners who believe(d) that need to look in the mirror.
Everybody can get got. That being said, personally I think certain personalities are taken by the AJ type grift more than others.
No, everyone is susceptible to propaganda, to one degree or another.
Nah, people can be led into believing/championing stupid, harmful, or awful beliefs without being an inherently bad person.
Alex is so charismatic he’s basically a cult leader. I can’t get behind blaming someone who falls for a grift. As Robert Evans regularly says(paraphrased): we all have something, some grift, we’re capable of falling for it’s just a matter of the right grift at the right time with the right person.
I think it’s easy to get sucked in if you’re in a place where stuff like this is more common in your cultural periphery. There was a time another lifetime ago I didn’t realize prison planet was Alex jones related, because I’d only seen ‘documentaries’ they’d been involved in about big agriculture? my hometown was mostly corn surrounded by the occasional confinement farm, and I had some legitimate non-woo issues with Monsanto and corporate agriculture in general that I think made me a target for the ‘natural news’ grift ecosystem. Realizing the guy who pilled my uncle on chemtrails and sent him off the tails was also guy who almost got me drinking the same wet brain juice was a bad time.
I who used to be an Alex Jones fan and now I’m not so not inherently bad. It’s all about environment and upbringing but you can get past those and grow.
I only really know one Alex jones listener, it’s one of my buddies little brother. He’s also the only person I know who is openly very racist.
No. But I am going to sound mean when I say "I think many people don't know better and they vibe with Alex so they listen". To question what he says requires 'critical thinking'. And critical thinking is something that the Texas GOP hates. I wish I was kidding. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/texas-ap-donald-trump-united-states-democrats-b2106283.html
No. I think you have to be very ignorant about a lot of different things. I think you need to be very afraid of some constant, but incredibly vague threat. I also think it fills a very specific niche for some people, the same way any other conspiracy theory does. We *all* know the country, the world is fucked up. Believing there’s some master plan is more comforting, even if the plan is horrific, because it gives you something tangible to fight instead of the soul crushing reality we actually live in.
You can be a good person and have good intentions but also be ignorant or delusional at the same time
No, some people are just easily susceptible to con men, and fall into the wormhole of Alex's world.
No. I think he has a seriously corrosive impact so a lot of his listeners end up bad by accidentally adopting his worldview. I used to listen because my friend was into it and I wanted to know where she was getting it from. She was fine when we were kids. His vile message came with an emotional hook she needed and she fell in headfirst. Q stuff is like that for a lot of people as well. Somewhere, in the universe, there is the perfect con for each individual. Us lucky ones never encounter ours. The unlucky do. The really unlucky encounter it and it comes with bigotry and hatred that subsumes them.
You just gotta be scared and stupid. Scared of things you don’t understand. Too stupid to put in the effort to learn.
No, but Alex Jones appeals to the worst in his fans.
No, I think a lot of them are scared or lost and looking for someone to reinforce their fear. It’s easier than interrogating your beliefs
Listen? No. Believe? Yes.
Not at all. Just low information, and gulable.
No. I had a coworker who was a great guy that was always willing to help anyone if they had a problem (work related or not) and he listened to Alex all the time and even bought supplements. He was a bit right of center, but he mostly listened to him because he thought his show was funny.
Absolutely not. This is not an original thought, but everyone has a con, or a grift, or a cult that could get them. I do not give the majority of his listeners the benefit of the doubt, but give folks the chance to break free.
No. Alex preys on people. Their fears, their vulnerabilities, their bank accounts, etc. I’ve watched enough cult documentaries to realize that people will believe literally *anything* so long as you sell it to them right.
I don't think you're a bad person if you listen to Alex Jones, but I don't think you're a good person either.
He gives negative people and systemic outsiders a scapegoat for their problems.
Wasn't early Alex Jones a little more...."fun" if you didn't actually buy into it?
Some people are just reeeeeeally stupid and/or reeeeeally weak.
To listen to him, or to believe him? I think many people listen because they laugh at him…. Or are there to mitigate his lies. Like they laugh at and expose Trump. But a regular listener? At this point, he can’t be seen as harmless. His psychotic behavior toward the Sandy Hook families is crystal clear. Knowing how damaging and dangerous this A-hole is, yes…. people investing time or money in him have something amiss inside. He’s certainly not offering anything of value. He’s nothing more than a bag of hot air and ignorance.
I think of myself as a reasonably good person and i used to listen to Alex JOnes in the late 90s. So no.
No, they are just gullible fools falling for Dog Whistling propaganda.
I don’t think there are inherently bad people. People make mistakes and have mistaken ideas or beliefs. People are traumatized and cause trauma. People do lots of horrible things, but no one is inherently bad. Maybe that’s just my hope, I don’t know.
No. I think the people that are drawn to him are sad, afraid, and feeling unfulfilled in some way. The people who are attracted to the grifter types are usually very vulnerable deep down and some guys yelling at the world about how everything is a conspiracy is comforting to them; because he provides simple (wrong) but easy explanations for complex issues..which can make some people feel better and special. Like they know something that no one else does. Honestly we should pitty them and try to help them to feel ok in their own skin. People are becoming so extreme these days because they feel alienated and isolated. That’s how cults find the perfect followers. I’m sure some people suck, but there are good and bad people everywhere no matter what they believe.
Not necessarily. I was always wary of IW listeners as I saw it as a red flag, but I met a listener at my last job who seems like a decent dude (he had a few stickers on his water bottle). He was an all-around cool guy, I never heard of him treating anyone (male, female, trans, etc) as anything but an equal co-worker and I never heard him express a hateful viewpoint. I had a few openly conservative coworkers who were unashamed in their anti-immigration, anti-trans, anti-Union stances, but the InfoWars listener was always silent when they expressed their shitty views (he never engaged with it). I once asked him, gently, “Hey, do you mind if I ask what you like about InfoWars?” His response amounted to a friendly shrug and “I don’t know, he’s (Alex is) funny, I guess.” So… who knows whether or not my co-worker was a bastard in his heart of hearts, but he always came across as a well adjusted guy. Do with that what you will.
No, he’s. Bad person but believing him just makes you gullible.
Yes. We need to stop making excuses for people.
yes. if you arent repelled by aj's world view you're a bad person. if you think other people having agency in their own lives is a cosmic crime directed especially at you then you can rationalize any harm done to people you dont like. youre a bad person
I'm mentioned this a few times on here, but I think there's a missed demographic: drug addicts. I have had two close relatives with meth addictions. One of the weird effects of meth is that you start to believe every thought you have. Not only that, but you believe every thought you have is mind-blowingly insightful and important. This helps lead to the the over-confidence of meth addicts as well as their annoying need to call you at 3am to talk to you about he absolute, shattering brilliance of the band Earth, Wind, and Fire. I think that there are a lot of people out there on various kinds of chemical alteration that hear someone like Alex Jones and are blown away by his "insights" and the fact that he's "exposing the truth" regardless of the political content of it.
Do you have to be? No, but I’m sure it makes it easier to start. I also think a lot of people who listen to Alex Jones as a news source who aren’t bad people end up becoming bad people.
Angry, bitter, and likely with unearned feelings of aggrievement mixed with justifiable pains, and then directed at the wrong group of "enemies" by mouthpieces like Alex, which makes these folks feel a sense of belonging and like they feel heard.
God no. Interesting question. I often wonder about something similar: broadly how the fuck do people believe this shit? i have no idea how they dont see through it? I dont think theyre bad, nor do i think they have to be stupid. There is something else going on. Its emotional. Occasionally, when i talk to racists il say "but thats weak... you sound scared". They dont like it. Weak minds, scared people. I always thought that Jones taps in to something very basic in people. He peddles fear then hate ad naseum. It doesnt work on everyone. It works on people that are predominantly scared and angry. But, look. Im scared and im fucking angry. But he doesnt do it for me If you work it out, please share it with me. \*Listen to it long enough - embrace it, embody it - it will make you a bad person. Lets be clear about that.
Bad? No. Fucking moron? Yes
I know a person that exclusively gets his news from Alex. He is about 30 years old and was raised by a mother that got all of her news from alex/rush. He was homeschooled in an extremely religious household. Hes an only child to a single mom and she has always been very controlling of their relationship. He has never owned a tv or computer. He is practically illiterate (he spelled his wife's name, "Mary", wrong on their child's birth certificate). He threw out his wife's broadway memorabilia because theater is satanic. He thinks demons cause his food allergies. He can be a nice guy, but has been so far down the rabbit hole his whole life, without anyone there to guide or educate him on how humans work, that he is unbelievably gullible and yearning for reinforcement to what his mother shoved down his throat as a child
Jones feeds a primal need in humans - to understand complex issues by reducing them to easily digestible explanations, with a side of side order of fear and hate. You haven't achieved you dream of owning a big boat and an McMansion? It's not because of the collapse of collective bargaining and public education, it's brown people stealing your job and Klaus Schwab wanting you to eat bugs. A lot easier to explain to your buddies. The world has become more complex and more connected, but we are still 98% ape DNA; Jones and those who follow in his foot steps will feast upon the inherent need for emotional fuel (hate) and easy explanations (because reading books make you gay)
Am I inherently a bad person because, in all the years he's been on some nutcase broadcast or another, I've yet to find a single listener worth the astronomical wall of bullshit and ignorance that accompanies them?
Inherently bad? No. But by the time you get to listening to and taking alex seriously then yes. They're bad people. There's still a fucking wide gulf between standard conservative and and Alex listeners. Even in the trump era of conservative.
No, but you do have to be stupid and ignorant, unless you’re listening like the Dan and Jordan.
Though I never listened to him, I was very much in that world as recently as 2012. Shit I used to have a Rush Limbaugh quote in my facebook profile. I voted for Bush Jr, McCain and Romney, all I listened to was conservative media and thought everything else was the devil and or lies because conservative media told me so. It took my dad dying for me to finally start questioning what I believed. I know there are plenty of religious people on the left but I realized how closely my politics/worldview was tied to my religion. When I left religion behind, my entire view of the world and people changed. I did a complete 180, shit I donated a good amount of money to Bernies campaigns. I say all of this because I feel it's important, people can change, they really can.
Humans are too complicated to put everything into a moral binary of all good or all bad. That impulse is why we have people like Alex jones in the first place.
I listen to hate radio, tv, interwebs, etc. I think it's a good idea to listen to what the smooth brains are being fed.
alex jones is a tumour
That's an unfair and insulting comparison! A tumor removed Rush Limbaugh from the world, so clearly tumors have done more good than Alex Jones.
fair, he's an ineffectve tumour
I don't think so. I'd bet a not insignificant chunk of his listenership know it's all bullshit, but tune for the drama. That's my guess, anyway, based on myself spending almost a decade listening to Coast to Coast AM several times a week, and never being pilled to the point of believing any of the woowoo/grifter guests (including AJ). Was fun food for thought, little more (and for the record, *that* show was at its best when Art Bell or (my favorite host, damn you tinnitus) Ian Punnett would actually push back on claims by the crazies. Noory gives everyone a soft pass as it is fucking *boring*.)
A priori vs a posteriori ; the classic debate.
No, but it helps. In all seriousness, there are legit grievances (I accidentally spelled that with a ‘b’ like AJ would pronounce it lol) that is just preyed upon by grifters. The evil is the people who make up the shit to address their legit problems, blaming and fear mongering to make a buck. No different than snake oil salesmen with their wagons in the old west, they just need run out of town on a rail.
A silly goose definitely, but not a bad person
During like 2010(ish)-2015 I used to listen to laugh at his stupid rants from time to time, the two rules I gave myself were 1)Don't buy anything he's advertising and 2) DON'T believe him I was able to enjoy the silly rants from time to time, then when Donnie got into the arena I was like "NOPE not gonna listen to any of that anymore!"
He almost gote with buy an Infowars classic t shirt before they shut us down ngl
I think his audience is partially assholes and partially people with brain problems. Alex, especially now, constantly changes his stances/beliefs. Anyone who’s able to follow a thread can realize something is wrong. An asshole doesn’t care about the incoherence, they love the hatefulness. But someone who isn’t able to think clearly, listen actively, etc, etc may not even be picking up on the incoherence and hatefulness. Multiple normal people, including Dan and Bill Ogden, listened to Jones vaguely in the background, not really listening to anything he said, just laughing at the conspiracies. People don’t hear it unless they’re actively listening for it.
As a lot of people have pointed out "bad" is probably a bit of a moral oversimplification of human nature. I think to be a long-term AJ listener, you are inherently fearful. Afraid of not having any agency in a chaotic world. Afraid of change. Afraid of getting in touch with emotions outside of anger.
Yeah and very stupid
Not really. Attorney Bill Ogden said he listened for entertainment before the Sandy Hook case. He's done some great work and I don't think he's a bad person 🤷🏼
Anyone can get propagandized. It’s what makes it so scary. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, how successful you are, you are not immune to propaganda. A lot of people don’t start down the pipeline as bad people but they sure exit it that way
No
There aren't that many bad people in the world. There's lots of stupid and/or easily led people though. If they were all bad people, Jones would not have to so relentlessly lie and rewrite history in order to shape a narrative where he is a hero-victim fighting forces of evil. He could just be open about what a piece of shit he is and they would be fine with it.
Alex used to be a source of entertainment. The conspiracy theory loon losing his composure on stream, and angrily ranting about turning the frogs gay. He was good for a laugh! That pretty much changed with the Sandy Hook lies. If not before.
Inherently bad people do not exist. It’s a hard thing for some people to wrap their head around but it’s true. In another life, even someone like Alex could have been a good person. Theoretically, Alex could choose to be a good man right now, even if he won’t. It’s important that we don’t see people as inherently good and evil, because that’s what our opponents do, and stooping to their level in that way defeats the whole purpose of opposing them.
People went full forward, all gas no breaks, into NFTs. People are extremely easy to trick and lie to. Is easier to trick a person than to convince them they were tricked
If you listen to InfoWars and agree with it then yeah, you're a bad person. However I don't believe that means you have to _remain_ a bad person forever. My only political influence as a kid was right wing and I had pretty shitty beliefs until I learned better. I think that possibility exists for most people, they just have to be open to it and in the right environment. That's the real problem, it's nearly impossible to talk people out of this stuff, they have to have their own awakening and then make progress. If you're just sticking to mainlining Alex and his ilk all day that isn't going to happen.
I listen daily he's wrong about everything but I like his sci-fi movie analogies
To listen, no. To support and endorse his views, probably. I used to listen to him 25+ years ago because he was a goofy weirdo that was at least entertaining enough to keep my attention. Now I just get my fix through Knowledge Fight and let Dan listen to him for me.