In a wide-ranging feature story this week, New York magazine profiles professional conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones.
Jones, who hosts a radio show and manages a number of websites, is an outspoken believer in most conspiracy theories, spanning both the left-wing (9/11 trutherism) and right wing (FEMA concentration camps) varieties.
Jones’ efforts to break into the mainstream media are a major narrative in the story. In particular, his dislike for Fox News host Glenn Beck–who he accuses of stealing his shtick– plays a big part:
Jones says that Beck built his success on Jones’s act. “Glenn Beck climbed over my back,” says Jones. “He’s like a fiddler crab that grabbed the shell off my back and scurried over me.”
After I asked for examples of how Beck ripped him off, Jones went ahead and created a YouTube video titled “The Glenn Beck Secret,” showing how Beck allegedly lifted Jones’s ideas, one after the other. In Jones’s view, Beck has repackaged his ideas to serve GOP talking points, a tricky way of keeping people tethered to the two-party paradigm that lulls the masses into believing government actually serves their interests (“a control grid used to manipulate the people”).
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Jones takes Beck’s success personally. “It’s very, very painful to see this biological android, a complete actor, reading off teleprompters and singing and dancing around and prancing around, a fairy dancing and prancing around, using my material,” he says.
But while Jones does not have kind words for Beck, he is actually quite close with Beck’s primary fill-in, Judge Andrew Napolitano. Jones calls FNC “alternative media for old people” (something of a backhanded compliment) and cites Napolitano’s show as proof that FNC is embracing his sort of programming.
Interestingly, while Jones believes in a globalist conspiracy, of which media leaders are active participants, he gives Fox News CEO Roger Ailes a pass. The author of the NY mag article insinuates this is because Jones is gunning for a show on one of the networks.
Jones is careful to give Roger Ailes, the Fox News chief, an out on the whole “globalist” agenda. “He actually knows all about this stuff,” says Jones. “His bodyguards keep him safe from the New World Order. And that’s a fact. Navy SEALS. Retired Navy SEALS.”
But if Jones thinks he will be bringing his radio show to FNC or Fox Business anytime soon, he should probably re-think that strategy, as FNC shot down any such thoughts in the article:
“I’m sure Alex, like many others, wishes he had a platform on Fox News,” said Fox News programming executive vice-president Bill Shine. “That’s not going to happen, so he should stick with trying to locate the black helicopters.”