Monday, April 17, 2017

What Does Alex Jones Believe?

Alex Jones, the half-mad conspiracy theorist of Infowars, is involved  in a custody battle with his ex-wife. His lawyer says to ignore the way he makes his living:
At a recent pretrial hearing, attorney Randall Wilhite told state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.”

“He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said of Jones. “He is a performance artist.”
Which is an interesting way to describe a man believed in by hundreds of thousands, perhaps including the current president of the United States.

His ex-wife, though, says he is really like that:
But in emotional testimony at the hearing, Kelly Jones, who is seeking to gain sole or joint custody of her three children with Alex Jones, portrayed the volcanic public figure as the real Alex Jones.

“He’s not a stable person,” she said of the man with whom her 14-year-old son and 9- and 12-year-old daughters have lived since her 2015 divorce. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.

“I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress,” she said, referring to his recent comments about California Democrat Adam Schiff. “He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.”
Honestly it is very hard to tell what anyone really believes.

2 comments:

Shadow said...

I've long thought radio personalities like Jones, Linbaugh, Hannity, and Levin are entertainers whose schtick is politics. But one has to wonder that if you play the same role long enough if you don't become the role. As to what Jones or his wife says or what their attorneys say, I don't believe anyone in a divorce case. There's probably less lying in murder trial.

G. Verloren said...

Well the most straightforward way to test the claim is to to examine his correspondences outside of his career. Letters, emails, reasonably impartial character witnesses, et cetera.

If he has any normal interactions with other people which clearly demonstrate that he's merely playing a part, they'll turn up pretty quickly. If they don't, he's probably not acting.