Even parasites have the right to free speech

So, recently a couple of friends and some students had asked me about whether or not I was upset—one actually asked if I was “outraged”—about Alex Jones being allowed back in X. I am certainly not outraged, I told them, and not even upset. I had written about this a while back when Jones had first started getting deplatformed from social media. Actually, I am kind of hurt that they didn’t read my old posts about Jones. But in all seriousness, I told them that as someone who tries to be as much of an absolutist about free speech as possible—calling for specific violence, genocide, and murder must be a line any decent person should draw, however—I will defend Jones’ reinstatement on X as strongly as possible. However, I will also use my own freedom of speech to keep pointing out what a morally bankrupt dirtbag he is.

 

As I had also written numerous times before, as I did in one of my recent posts below, Alex Jones is a parasite. He’s a bloodsucker feeding off the grief of others. He has been once since the 1990s when he took advantage of terrorist attacks like the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombing to spin his yarns about the New World Order perpetrating fake terrorist attacks, or “false flag” operations. Of course, the day that must have been the highlight of Alex Jones’ life was September 11, 2001. The murders of 2977 people gave Jones the opportunity to build his conspiracy empire into a multimillion dollar cash cow.

 

Luckily, after he pushed past the bounds of decency one too many times with his lies about the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax and the families of the slain children being crisis actors, Jones was found liable for defamation and now owes $1.5 billion to these families. Justice was done!

 

But is this any indication that Jones had been changed by the Sandy Hook incident at all? Of course not. He has been spreading his same noxious conspiratorial garbage on his Infowars webpage since then.

 

With that being said, however, I need to hold my nose in disgust and approve of him not being cancelled on social media, but only out of principle. This way more of the world can see the utterly unconscionable garbage he likes spewing and more people will continue speaking out against him. Alex Jones is a cockroach that needs the light shined on him rather than be made a martyr through cancellation. He’s not a truth-teller, not a “dangerous” man who threatens the system, not a maverick and not a rebel. He’s just a cheap hustler.

Holy God! Alex Jones might be right about something…!!

 …And the conspiracy culture is still as horrible as ever. So check out this Newsweek article from a couple of weeks ago. One of my students brought this to my attention, asking me what I thought about it; whether or not Jones had a valid point. I had missed the story when it originally came out, so when I read it I agreed that Jones indeed had a good a point. The article was also a textbook case of shoddy, biased news reporting that should be used as a teaching tool in any journalism class.  And I shocked myself and felt kind of unpleasant having to admit these things. But, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

 

The article, as you’ll see, is about Jones’ appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast where Jones said that he feared a terrorist attack on the U.S. in light of the Israel-Hamas war and the growing tensions in the Middle East. And Jones is absolutely right! Living in New Jersey, working just across the river from Manhattan and remembering 9/11, I know that I am living next to the number-one bull’s eye for every terrorist organization in the world. Hamas and every other terrorist proxy of Iran must dream at night or being able to orchestrate another mass-casualty event that will outdo 2001. Or if they wouldn’t try and attack New York, I’m sure they would just as gladly settle for Washington DC, or Los Angeles, or Miami, or any of our other major metropolitan centers. But it’s not just Jones saying this. FBI director Christopher Wray said the same things to Congress in October, warning that the Hamas massacre of October 7 created a terrorist threat to the U.S. “the likes of which we haven’t seen” since the rise of ISIS. None of this should be controversial.

 

Newsweek, unfortunately, thinks that it is, writing that Jones said this “without offering evidence.” Then the article goes on to quote what sounds like a stale Department of Homeland Security boilerplate press release stating they’re working “tirelessly” to make sure this doesn’t happen and that “encounters of known or suspected terrorists attempting to cross the Southern Border, or encounters of those associated with such individuals, are uncommon.” 

 

Uncommon? There were only 19 terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks! What number are we talking about with “uncommon?” With America’s sieve-like Southern Border, there were 2.5 million illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023!! Not fearing a terrorist attack on American soil today is willful blindness and naivete on an epic scale.

 

Jones, of course, said he “feared” that a terrorist threat was imminent, just like any sensible person should. So, it was too bad that he couldn’t offer the kind of precise, actionable intelligence Newsweek seems to want when it dismisses his statement. 

 

Now the way Jones’ argument, or anything he says, is now being framed in this kind of a rhetoric by the mainstream press is his own fault. They rightly hate him and he earned the media’s hatred. Jones earned the hatred of anyone with a shred of empathy and decency. He had been a bottom feeder and paranoia monger, stoking the hatreds and fears of the unstable and alienated prone to believing in the most extreme conspiracy theories. His theories about the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 were used by psychotics to terrorize the families of the victims. He was sued for libel by those families and ordered to pay them $1.1 billion. He got exactly what he deserves. 

 

The point here is that indiscriminately spouting the most outrageous, the most illogical conspiracy theories serves only to taint your credibility forever. It’s a case of the conspiracy theorist who cried wolf. If you claim that evil cabals are plotting against the world every day and point your fingers at the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Satanists, the Deep State, globalist insiders and shadow governments every single day without any proof of their existence, you won’t be taken seriously even when you identify real sources of evil like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Islamist terrorists.

Imagine the creeps who would laugh at others' misfortune

Taking a deep dive into the conspiracy subculture for a project I am working on, I've been seeing the largely expected effort to keep current with the times, or explain that yet another major news event is not as it appears to be. Websites like Alex Jones' Info Wars, Before It's News, State of the Nation, and other such serial fabulists are very predictable arguing that the deep freeze that has been devastating Texas is either not real (Texas has been covered by white plastic-like goo and not snow, some conspiracists argue) or that the storms are a result of a weather-manipulation technology.

Wow!

And while the weather-manipulation technology is the more interesting of the two theories, the identity of the mastermind behind this fiendish plot to freeze the world in Texas is none other than...Bill Gates!

Gates, that overachiever of diabolical New World Order supervillains, must have had some free time on his hands after creating the COVID-19 virus and the microchips inside the vaccines, so he whipped up a quick storm to batter Texas.

The proof of this conspiracy, as usual, is nothing but a long list of links to other conspiracy sites. Or, as in the case of the State of the Nation - turning these days into perhaps the laziest of conspiracy mongers - the links to the evidence lead to yet other SOTN articles.

While the claims of these so-called "Texasgate" and "Stormgate" conspiracy theories are hardly worthy of examining and wasting one's time in refuting, their true repugnant nature emerges if one only spends a few minutes skimming their texts. These "theories" look like the handiwork of gleefully sadistic sociopaths who enjoy mocking others' pain and suffering. Why not take death, destruction, financial ruin, and illness, these people must ask themselves, and exploit them in these ludicrous exercises of cherry-picking facts, misquoting sources, and presenting information wildly out of context all for the entertainment of a collection of ghouls who like to use others misfortunes for entertainment?

If they won’t wear a mask, throw the bums out!

Well, okay, maybe don’t call them bums. At first, be nice. 

Several weeks ago, I was interviewed for this Fatherly.com article about how conspiracy beliefs are tearing some families apart. What can you do if one of your relatives keeps insisting that COVID does not exist, the Earth is flat, and Bill Gates is trying to microchip you through vaccinations to imprint the mark of the Beast 666 on your DNA? 

 

Actually, as I discuss in the article, the most useful approach to pulling your wacky uncle back out of the rabbit hole is not to dismiss his claims as absurdity or call him crazy or naïve. Confrontation will only cause the true believer to dig his heels in and cling to his beliefs even more tenaciously. All you will achieve by that tactic is to drive the conspiracists back to Alex Jones or State of the Nation or Before It’s News, or any of their ilk. Your conspiracy-believing relatives will take a deep dive back into their paranoid safe spaces on the Internet, questing ever more tenaciously to hear reaffirmations of their fringe belief systems…or just gather more “facts,” more ammunition to fight back next time when you try and tell them that Lee Harvey Oswald really did shoot JFK alone.

 

The best method to dealing with the conspiracy believer, instead, is to ask them to examine their belief systems. Ask them to take a close, critical look at the other theorists who have convinced them that time-traveling aliens were really behind 9/11 and see what testable, verifiable evidence these theorists can provide. Or is the evidence provided by these purveyors of colorful stories of grand global cabals just a long list of web links to other conspiracy theorists who make more claims with no verifiable evidence. Ask wacky Uncle Bob to think about whether or not it is suspicious that an Alex Jones or a State of the Nation claim that everything you read about in the news is a conspiracy? If a conspiracy blogger were to claim, for example, that maybe just the JFK assassination was a conspiracy or the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, a reasonably patient person could hear them out. But absolutely every single world event is part of a conspiracy? At that point, Uncle Bob should realize that he is being taken for a ride by an unconscionable liar and fraud, a flim-flam artist who is monetizing traffic to his blog by spinning one outlandish, absurd claim after the next.

 

In fact, this sort of examination of conspiracy web pages has been an ongoing part of my Conspiracy Films class throughout this semester. Among all of the conspiracy sites, perhaps none was a better teaching tool than State of the Nation. My students were able to use it as a prime example of how to spot the most audacious examples of disinformation and fake news.

But, ultimately, will this attempt at helping those poor alienated souls who are feel so disconnected from any kind of a consensus reality always work? And what can one do about the loved ones who cling to their theories the most tenaciously? 

 

Well, legally there is nothing one can do. Just because a friend chooses to live in their own, self-constructed reality, there is no way we can force him to accept the fact the Earth is round or that over 300,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 if they refuse to do so. They can't be forced into the psychiatric care they so desperately need. If these people annoy you enough, you can always just ignore them. Or how about a rule that we don’t talk politics or conspiracy theories around the dining room table this Christmas?

 

But it these people cross the line into dangerous behavior, such as refusing to wear a mask in a crowded place or congregating with the rest of their COVID-denying friends, to only responsible thing to do is to bar them from your life, your home, or from making contact with your family.

Teachergate and Gay Frogs

This fall semester I am teaching my class on the history of conspiracy theories and conspiracy entertainment again, and this time we’re busier than ever. As I post supplemental materials on the course Blackboard shell, it becomes harder and harder to keep ahead of the students. They’re often able to top me finding the most outlandish conspiratorial claims in the shortest amount of time. It’s especially gratifying—or is that disturbing?—to see them find older theories that somehow still finds some adherents.

 

For example, when one of my students found Alex Jones’ rants about the New World Order introducing chemicals into the water supply that turn frogs gay, lots of laughs were had in class. Check out this YouTube clip where someone edited Jones’ histrionics into a music video. While the clip was posted three years ago, there are still Jones fans out there worried about those homosexuality-causing chemicals in the drinking water.

 

The frog theory and video, aside from being hilarious, were also quite useful for our discussion of the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracy theory of the 1950s and 60s. That was a theory Stanley Kubrick had already lampooned in his 1964 classic, Dr. Strangelove. Yet fluoridated-water theory still has its staunch believers to this day.

 

The students’ final project will be the Do It Yourself Conspiracy exercise, where they will have to create their own conspiracy theory using the typical conspiracist’s tricks of the trade: cherry-picking facts to support preconceived ideas, quoting people out of context, making spurious connections between unrelated variables. Usually in the past I had seen some remarkable creations of conspiracy fiction that rival the professional charlatans like Jones or the people at the State of the Nation and the Millennium report sites. This year, however, I’m not sure how the students’ work will stack up against the unadulterated madness of the pros.

 

I mean QAnon? Really people? A vast cabal of human-sacrificing Satanists led by Tom Hanks congregating in tunnels deep underground to drink human blood? Take a look at this Time article to see how committed the QAnon followers are to their cause.

 

And then I noticed a series of posts on the Before It’s News site that quite impressed me. No major news event is left unexploited by the truly committed conspiracists. School closings, apparently, are suspect for a writer named Hank Wolfe, with online education being just a part of a vast 5G mind-control plot he calls "Teachergate." In his posts, Wolfe draws a line between school closings, 5G towers, the New World Order, brainwashing, and all the way to Elon Musk’s neuralink microchip and teachers being replaced by perfectly realistic artificial intelligence simulations on the screens of millions of students across the country.

 

Wolfe’s complete thesis can be read across the following four postings:

 

https://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2020/07/online-education-and-5g-mind-control-exposed-2517291.html

 

https://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2020/08/teachergate-school-cancellation-agenda-exposed-2517416.html

 

https://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2020/08/elon-musk-brain-implants-and-nwo-mind-control-2517431.html

 

https://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2020/09/musk-5g-and-the-school-shut-down-scam-2517449.html

 

The one disappointing thing about Wolfe’s posts is the way he didn’t weave Satan, the Antichrist, or blood-drinking, devil-worshipping celebrities into his yarn. Perhaps it’s because A Call for an Uprising is working that side of the street. Or maybe Wolfe just didn’t get around to it yet. Perhaps that will be his next major revelation.

 

But with theories like Wolfe’s out there, my students will be challenged to reach deep inside their creative core and really work extra hard to top harebrained craziness. 

Unconscionable Monsters...

That’s the only phrase I could use in a recent reply I wrote to a comment on my October 29, 2018 post about the Call for and Uprising YouTube channel that has recently shifted from its laughably ridiculous obsession with Satanists in the entertainment industry to its jumping on a series of repugnant, morally bankrupt Coronavirus conspiracy theories. The worse of these theories—to be found all over the online conspiracy community—all amount to attempting to convince people to ignore the scientific and medical establishment’s guidelines on avoiding the COVID-19 virus. People who actively try to convince others to ignore the safety warnings about this disease can hardly be classified as human. Can there be no clearer example of true evil in this world today than someone who willfully attempts to deceive others into endangering their lives and health? Such behavior is on par with attempted murder.

Among some of the most repellent examples of these theories, found all across web pages like State of the Nation, The Millennium Report, Before It’s News, or Alex Jones’ Infowars, include claims that the virus just simply does not exist, that the illnesses are caused by 5G cell towers, that the entire outbreak was engineered by some mysterious “they” to depopulate the Earth, or that the virus is real but it had been created to then compel people to take vaccines that will kill them. 

Alex Jones, the most high-profile and prolific of these professional scumbags, has also just been warned by the New York State attorney general’s office to stop peddling a “natural” remedy he claims will cure COVID-19. Check out an article about it right here. Jones, of course, knows full well that tens of thousands of his readers and listeners hang on his every word every day. And he knows that there is no cure yet for the virus. Attempting to sell his listeners this modern day version of snake oil (a concoction called colloidal silver that has absolutely no scientifically proven medicinal properties) is the act of one of the most brazen, the most audacious sociopaths in the conspiracy world.

There indeed are a couple of horrible diseases spreading the world right now. The Coronavirus is just one of them. The other one is the conspiracy theory.

The anti-vaxxer terror movement

A couple of recent articles here and here give an overview of the mistake that had been made in the New Jersey State Senate in December which will hopefully be corrected when the legislature reconvenes in February. In a development that helps make New Jersey an embarrassment, a bill to bar all religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was defeated in the senate, thanks to the concerted thuggery and propaganda campaigns of anti-vaxxers, fringe religious zealots, and conspiracy theorists.

I just realized what the anti-vaccination movement and its vocal activists remind me of. They make me think of several recent criminal cases where people who encouraged their depressed friends to commit suicide. Take the Conrad Roy case, for example, where the troubled teenager was coerced into killing himself by his girlfriend through a series of texts and phone calls. Then there was the case of Boston College student Alexander Urtula who was allegedly (the case has not gone to trial as of this writing) harassed, demeaned, and goaded by his girlfriend through a series of some 47,000 text messages into killing himself. 

The anti-vaccination movement similarly preys on the fears and insecurities of parents, bombarding them through a twisted cyber network of blogs, web pages, and social media sites with deceptive and destructive messages that wind up leading those parents to harm their own children. Telling parents not to vaccinate their children, propagating the lies and fabricated conspiracy theories of Internet charlatans is no different than pressuring someone who is depressed or struggling with various forms of mental illness into committing suicide. There is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to suggest that childhood vaccines are dangerous. Read this op-ed about the issue of vaccine safety and this story about yet another major study that proves no connection between vaccines and autism for a detailed discussion about vaccines and science for more details. And, again, telling a worried parent to the contrary is akin to pressuring and goading a dangerously depressed person into harming themselves. In fact, the woman who had allegedly sent her boyfriend 47,000 texts telling him to kill himself looks like an amateur when compared to the sewage of lies and distortions that flood the internet from the anti-vaccination movement every day. As the Globe and Times articles point out, the New Jersey legislature was basically caught off guard by the sheer size and organization of the anti-vaxxer extremists and the power their deception has over people who are scared, who have to medical training, who are alienated from institutions of expertise and authority. Unfortunately this reprehensible, destructive movement has the power to pressure and intimidate lawmakers as well, intelligent individuals who should know better.

So how frustrating is the defeat of the religious exemption bill in light of the fact that New Jersey’s Lakewood community was hit with a measles outbreak in 2019? It’s frustrating enough to make me wish that anti-vaxxers who encourage parents not to vaccinate their children be treated exactly the same way by the law as the people who manipulate others into committing suicide. Yes, I am most often a knee-jerk, free-speech, staunch libertarian, but cases like these shake the very foundation of some of my beliefs. It almost makes me wish that the purveyors of the anti-vaccination propaganda and the conspiracy theories they are founded on would not be protected by the First Amendment. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, after all. Moreover, religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment are not absolute either. For example, if your religion tells you to commit human sacrifice, the law would certainly take issue with you. And no, parents do not—and should not—have absolute authority over every aspect of their children’s lives. You DON’T have the right to do anything to your children and be free of government interference. You can’t beat your children, for example, and you can’t sexually abuse them either. So you also shouldn’t be allowed exemptions from vaccines based on your religious and philosophical beliefs.

Last year, in fact, I was glad to see the stories about the FBI memo suggesting that some circles of today’s conspiracy community should be viewed as a new form of domestic terrorism. I had written about that on this blog, and it was energizing to see that society is opening its eyes at last to the destructive threat people like the Alex Jones crowd, the Millennium Report, State of the Nation extremists and the rest of their ilk pose to this country. The anti-vaccination movement should be added to this new domestic terror list.

So let’s hope that New Jersey’s elected representatives come to their senses in February and reject the lies, fearmongering, and (what should be criminal) manipulations of the anti-vaxxer terror movement.

Alex Jones and child porn. Maybe it was the Illuminati Deep State!

Well, we’re just going to leave this article by CNBC right here. It’s a breaking story about the Sandy Hook families who are suing Alex Jones receiving electronic files from him that contain child pornography.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. 

Jones, naturally, is claiming that he is the victim of some vicious conspiratorial plot. Maybe it’s by the Illuminati Satanists trying to silence him just before they roll out the New World Order…

Or is this but another slice of Pizzagate?

So many questions. So much intrigue!

No, you should NOT have the right to do your own research and make a choice!

This is an interesting article from a couple of weeks ago that was just brought to my attention. It’s a piece by Jennifer Reich, a sociologist and author of the book “Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines,” condensing the topic of her book. Both the book and the article give a glimpse of the complex decision-making processes of people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. 

Reich especially focuses on the kind of damage unvaccinated children can do to herd immunity, or the way measles epidemics can spread when a large enough segment of a population is not immunized. Parents refuse to consider the greater, herd immunity factor because, as Reich argues, of a cultural atmosphere of hyper-individualized parenting. Parents who have come to believe that vaccines are harmful to their children will quickly and readily ignore the greater good in an effort to protect their own children from a perceived threat.

This complete and total disregard for the greater social good is as infuriating as the fact that somehow at the start of the twenty-first century so much of the world, even parts of the so-called developed world like the U.S. and Europe, is slipping into a new Dark Age of superstition, ignorance, and beliefs in unsubstantiated pseudoscientific crap being shoveled all over the internet by charlatans and conspiracy theorists. And remember what I wrote in several of my posts here: I’m a libertarian and I am all for individuality. I am passionate about forms of government that allow their citizens as much individuality as possible. But I am also passionate about empirical scientific facts, about reason and rationality. Vaccines work! Period! This is a fact that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know that vaccines work just like we know that that Earth is round. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism!! This, too, has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. And vaccines are not a New World Order/Illuminati/Satanist plot to depopulate the world, or whatever deranged fantasies predators and nightcrawlers like Alex Jones, State of the Nation, The Millennium Report, and the rest of the festering moral cesspool that is the “truther” community keeps propagating for attention and profit.

Reich’s article also points out the other frustrating aspect of the hyper-individualistic parents; the parents who want to have the “right to do their own research and make up their minds about vaccines.” Is this sort of behavior not want to make you test which is harder, your head or the nearest concrete wall? Is this not the height of the most toxic sort of hubris, the most insane form of solipsistic behavior? I definitely think so. And, remember, I’m the individualist libertarian! However, facts are facts. Consider the following: if any of these concerned parents suddenly heard a banging and wheezing noise come out of their car’s engine just a moment before said car sputtered to a stop and died on the side of the road, what would they do? Would they pop the hood, roll up their sleeves and go to work trying to fix it right then and there? Would they whip out their smart phones and Google “how to fix dead engine?” Of course, not! They would call a tow truck and have that car taken to an expert to fix the problem. So sorry, folks, but this is why I have no patience and sympathy for the let-the-parents-do-the-research-and-make-up-their-own-minds crowd. The average Middle American soccer mom does not have the ability to research the issue on her own and come to accurate conclusions. Unless that soccer mom has medical training and is a physician, she has no business making decisions about whether or not to vaccinate! This is also why I am once again being uncharacteristically un-libertarian in favoring very tough punitive legal measures against people who refuse to vaccinate their children.

Now I do agree with Reich’s argument—and the arguments of many other dismayed doctors and scientists—that the real villains in the recent measles outbreaks are not necessarily the parents themselves. The parents are merely gullible and ignorant of scientific and medical data. And, of course, they are also fearful. I completely understand the kind of dread fear any parent might have over the thought of their child becoming sick, disabled for life, or dying. I am completely sympathetic to the fact that any decent parent will always fear for their child’s health and welfare. But the real villains are the ones who feed on this fear, who exploit it, who tell parents lies.

The real villains are the anti-vaccination activists, the conspiracy-peddling vampires like Jones, the State of the Nation editorial staff, The Millennium Report web page, the Call for an Uprising YouTube channel and the rest of their sociopathic ilk.

I'm not sure which one is worse...

On the one hand we had a gang of murdering animals like ISIS on a bombing spree in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing over 300 people.

And less than 24-hours-later - literally, almost on the very same day - we see the bloodsuckers exploiting it for attention and money on the internet.

I had written before about how almost immediately after some tragedy - from the Boston marathon bombing to the various mass shootings - we see the grave robbers, the bottom-feeders of the conspiracy culture posting their demented alternate theories about "false flag" attacks and "crisis actors." Except in the case of the Sri Lanka attacks, these "alternate news" sleaze bags like State of the Nation and the Millennium Report posted their theories about false flag attacks within a few hours of the news breaking from Sri Lanka.

Check out this link to State of the Nation about the Sri Lanka false flag theory and note how it links to the Millennium Report. The two sites are virtually identical, with State of the Nation regurgitating almost everything that appears on Millennium Report, from its anti-vaxxer nonsense to its plethora of delusional stories about prophecies and Pizzagate and massive deep-state conspiracy theories.

And yes, I admit that this is not any sort of measured, civil piece of discourse on an important issue of the day. But how much civility is warranted when we have a grimy little cottage industry of paranoia thriving on the internet today? How much civility do we owe people like State of the Nation, and Alex Jones, and Millennium report, Before it's News, and Sheila Zilinsky and their ilk who capitalize on death and suffering, who exploit grief so they can make money off their web pages, podcasts, and YouTube channels. Can you not see each of these lowlives jumping with glee, with absolute pleasure every time we have another story of mass destruction, mass murder? The higher the bodycount, the more opportunity there is to make a quick buck of the gullible, the paranoid, and the alienated.

Looking at the sickening handiwork of killers...or looking at the people who cash in on the murders by spreading even more fear, even more paranoia through their conspiratorial BS. I'm really not sure any more which of the two sides is actually worse.

By the most basic definition of the word, they are both "terrorists."

Time to call garbage what it is...

So this article was brought to my attention and I scratch my head and wonder how historians and anthropologists in the future will make sense of the early 21st century, a time that appears to be going insane. Long after the atom has been split and men walked on the moon, we wind up in a world where scientists still need to waste their time explaining to adults that the Earth is round and that vaccines that have been administered to people for generations are not causing autism. Worse yet, as the CNN piece above argues, science seems to be losing the social media war to the anti-vaxxers!

And that is where the article asks an important question. What can science and academia do now? Has the war for the minds of the alienated, the troubled, the naive, the paranoid, those so far on the fringes of modern society as to be seeking a community among those who reject all consensus reality, been completely lost?

The answer, hopefully, is 'no.' But what science needs to start doing is what it has dreaded for the longest time. They need to engage the trolls. The thinking among scholars has so far been that replying to the various "truther," "crisis actor," anti-vaxxer and flat Earth conspiracy theorists was a mistake because it gave such charlatans and con artists attention. But this sort of don't-feed-the-trolls approach has not been working. When we are seeing a sudden surge in measles outbreaks because fearful parents have been deceived into withholding life-saving vaccinations from their children, science and academia must fight back. Science must develop a public relations campaign for an evidence-based, rational world view, for a belief system that must be based on objective, quantifiable truth. And science and academia must start finding the nerve to do something they had so far loathed to do. They need to "lower themselves" to the level of the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. They must call the frauds, the con artists, the hustlers like Alex Jones, Call for an Uprising, and State of the Nation parasites exactly what they are. People running the conspiracy and "alternate news" web sites, podcasts, YouTube channels and blogs are blood-suckers and bottom feeders who spread disease and death for a quick buck in online advertising.

At least he's partially right...

I’ve been following the latest news stories about Alex Jones’ legal troubles with a sort of nauseous fascination. The latest twist in the defamation lawsuits brought against him by Sandy Hook families is Jones’ attempt to worm his way out of taking responsibility for inciting the harassment of these families by claiming that he was a victim of “psychosis.” You can check out the particulars of the case in this story in the Columbia Journalism Review, or by just Googling Jones’ name. The “psychosis” story should be among the first that pop up during your search. (Because, of course, the Insiders and the New World Order controlling Google are doing their best to tear a truth-teller like Jones down)

But basically Jones is up against a wall in court and he claims that it was a form of temporary insanity that made him claim for years that the Sandy Hook shooting – like numerous other mass shootings he had been bloviating about – was either a “false flag” attack or a hoax using “crisis actors.” This is similar to the time he claimed in court during his divorce proceedings that the things he talks about on his program are a form of “performance art.” 

The reality is probably closer to his so-called performance art. Or, to put it more accurately, a con job. Jones, I am certain, has never suffered any sort of psychosis that drove him to spout all of his illogical, contradictory, unprovable mountains of horse turd on his show. He is a showman who has been telling his delusional, gullible, alienated fans exactly what they want to hear. No psychosis there, only an absolute and utter lack of scruples. 

With this psychosis claim, one can see that he is also a pathetic coward who can’t bear to admit any responsibility for his reprehensible behavior and take the consequences like a man.

But the reason I am nauseated by all of this is because I think of all the people who still listen to him and take all of his words as gospel. No matter that their idol admits to being either a liar or mentally unstable, his fan base will still continue to hang on his every word, believing in all of his claims of NWO and Illuminati and Insider conspiracy theories. 

So Jones is at least partially right when it comes to his fans. Believing in these conspiracy theories is a form of mental illness.

No, it is not amusing

So something has been nagging at me over the past several days. I just somehow knew that I had made a mistake in my post below about the State of the Nation article about me. And then it hit me. I had used the word “amusing” in describing their links to other conspiracy web pages about the Sandy Hook shooting. And there is absolutely nothing amusing about any of these theories about “false flag” attacks and crisis actors and people pretending to be grieving over nonexistent children in the aftermath of some kind of hoax at Sandy Hook.

Vile, perhaps. These false flag conspiracy theories are vile beyond all comprehension. They are disgusting. They are filthy. They are examples of the absolute depths of depravity some people are capable of sinking to. 

And what is even more revolting than the conspiracy believers are the people who make a living feeding the delusions of these sick, demented individuals. Just as I had written here before, I am absolutely convinced that perhaps the people who are getting the biggest laugh out of the absurdity, the sheer stupidity of these theories are the people behind all the scores of conspiracy web pages, blogs, and various types of social media. I am certain that Alex Jones does not believe a word of the garbage he spews on his show every day. Likewise, I am certain that all the other Jones wannabes out there, the people running the State of the Nation site or the Call for an Uprising YouTube channel, or all of the other charlatans peddling in paranoia, are probably laughing every day at the rubes they are swindling with their Pizzagate and Qanaon and anti-vaxxer bilge.

But then the rubes turn into the people who harass the parents of children who had died because they haven’t gotten a flu vaccine. Check out this article about parents having to suffer the loss of a child and then becoming the victims of the anti-vaxxer sociopaths. The believers in these conspiracies become the human trash that harassed the Sandy Hook parents like Jeremy Richman who took his own life earlier this week. Read the article about Richman’s death right here. He had been one of the people suing Alex Jones for accusing the Sandy Hook parents of being crisis actors.

So no, none of this is amusing.

The sad "State of the Nation"

So how does that saying go that if you have enemies it means you’ve stood up for something some time in your life? 

A few days ago the State of the Nation website ran this little insult piece about me, claiming that not only am I the “torchbearer” of the anti-conspiracy movement, but that my “torch went out.” To illustrate that my torch went out, they provided several examples of the typical “proof” that is in the tool box of all conspiracy theorists worth their salt: links to unsubstantiated claims made by other conspiracy theorists and articles and quotes taken out of context. Do check out their links and see for yourself. They are quite amusing, especially the link that supposedly blows the lid off the Sandy Hook false flag conspiracy…posted by someone called “Dr. Eowyn” from the Millennium Report web page. It’s fascinating to see that much of the content on the State of the Nation page is just material reposted from the Millennium Report. Although the Millennium Report doesn’t appear to be reposting stuff from State of the Nation. Or at least they didn’t run the article about me. I’m somewhat disappointed.

Now am I upset about the State of the Nation’s article? Not in the least. As you will see when you visit their page, these are the people who argue that the California fires were started by lasers from space! How upset can you be if people like this criticize you? Plus, if you scroll down to my anti-vaccine post below, someone criticizing me put up their own link to the State of the Nation article. That person also thought that I would remove their comments and give them the comfort of feeling like the martyr for the “truth” they crave for. As I wrote here before, I won’t remove any criticism of me, and I certainly do not need to remove any State of the Nation fan’s conspiracist rants. Illogical, absurd foolishness will be recognized as such by the normal people that make up the majority of the population. The tinfoil garbage of State of the Nation, Millennium Report, Alex Jones, the Before It’s News website, the anti-vaxxer movement, and the rest of their ilk will be laughed at and dismissed by most individuals whose IQs are larger than their belt size.

And the State of the Nation piece also reminds me of the work I also need to do as a writer and educator. The sad fact is that we do have a number of unfortunate lost souls out there who, for whatever reason, are so alienated from mainstream society and all sources of expertise and consensus reality that they choose to believe in fantasies about the Illuminati, the New World Order, Satanic secret societies running the world, and autism-causing vaccines being given to children on purpose. The paranoia of these people is then being fed by unscrupulous charlatans like Alex Jones, the State of the Nation, Before It's News, or A Call for an Uprising-type YouTube channels. It’s only education that has a chance of standing up to this new rising Dark Age of irrationality.

Enjoying "Project Blue Book"

And now for something completely different…a few of my impressions of the new History Channel series, “Project Blue Book.” 

I’ve seen the first two episodes of this series and as someone who used to love the X-Files (even as my skepticism of large-scale conspiracies grew), I am so far liking it. It is a good-looking series boasting some nice production values in its recreation of the early 1950s. I also like its quiet, silently menacing tone. It, so far, appears to be a show that wants to reward the patient, attentive viewer who is willing to invest his time in following the unfolding of a complex narrative and layered mythology. I hope the show will continue on this path of low key, subtle mystery and not devolve into ever more garish, hysterical conspiracy theories and over-the-top action. There is a place for action in the proper context, but “Project Blue Book” would be more interesting if it stays on the path of menace, mystery and unease.

The show is a very loose dramatization of astronomer J. Allen Hynek’s side gig as a consultant for the U.S. Air Force’s three major UFO-study projects: “Sign” (1947-49), “Grudge,” (1949-52) and “Blue Book” (1952-69). As the title of the show makes obvious, it focuses in on his “Blue Book” years. Hynek would become famous for being perhaps the most prestigious member of the scientific community to publicly declare that he had come to believe that the UFO phenomenon was the manifestation of something truly unexplained, perhaps extraterrestrial visitations or something extra-dimensional. He would also coin the UFO-encounter classification system of “close encounters of the first kind,” “second kind,” and “third kind.” He even had a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s iconic film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Interestingly, Hynek was originally a staunch skeptic for decades when it came to the issue of UFOs. Throughout his years consulting for projects Sign and Grudge, he would enthusiastically debunk claims of UFO encounters as misidentifications of natural phenomenon. He had also famously dismissed a series of sightings in Michigan as being caused by nothing more than “swamp gas.” The swamp gas explanation of UFOs had become something of a punchline in the debate of the phenomenon.

But it was during Hynek’s time with Project Blue Book that his view of the phenomenon changed. Prompted by eyewitness testimony he had grown to trust as being credible, made by competent people whose character was beyond reproach – as well as his realization that some 11% of professional astronomers claimed to have seen unexplainable aerial phenomena – Hynek had become a staunch believer in the otherworldly nature of UFOs. He would eventually found the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.

So I am curious as to the approach this show will take toward the claims of government cover-ups and vast conspiracies. The real Hynek, of course, would claim that the Air Force and top-level government officials also suspected the extraterrestrial nature of the UFO phenomenon but they were set on denying it from the public. But TV shows and movies have already shown perhaps literally hundreds of iterations of the “vast, shadowy government conspiracy to hide the aliens.” I am curious about where this show will go.

It would be interesting to see the show differentiating between a cover-up – the U.S. military wanting to hide that fact that it knows nothing about the true nature of this unexplained phenomenon – and outlandish conspiracy theories about back-engineered alien UFOs in Area 51.

I will admit that I am very much open minded to the idea of intelligent alien life somewhere on other planets. Scientists having detected scores of Earth-like planets over the last several years, it only makes logical sense that life would arise elsewhere in the universe. I am even open minded to the idea that intelligent, technologically advanced alien races have discovered the means to interstellar travel and visited the Earth. A significant percent of UFO sightings have never been satisfactorily explained.

But it is the outlandish conspiracy theories I found completely unbelievable: the back-engineered UFO theories, the alien bases under government installation theories, the claims that aliens made deals with the governments of the Earth to abduct humans for ghastly experiments in return for providing our scientists with fabulous technological secrets…which said scientists have kept secret for some reason. As if incredibly advanced alien visitors would actually need to make deals with the Earth’s leaders.

But J. Allen Hynek himself was the proponent of a very conservative and strictly rigorous scientific analysis of the UFO phenomenon. I am certain that today he, too, would be appalled by what the “conspiracy community” have come to believe as the gospel.

And I’m sure J. Allen Hynek would detest Alex Jones.

And the mystery persists!!

So this article is a quick overview of the legal hit Alex Jones just took from a group of Sandy Hook parents. Apparently he needs to turn over marketing and financial documents in the parents' group's lawsuit against him. This is information that could reveal the deliberate campaign Jones waged against the survivors and parents of the Sandy Hook shooting, accusing them of being a part of conspiracy to stage the attack as a "false flag" event and being paid "crisis actors."

This is the very least Jones deserves in perhaps the most despicable display we have seen from the modern conspiracy community. Still it's interesting, isn't it, that the New World Order of the Illuminati is merely taking Jones to court, rather than making him disappear "mysteriously" from the face of the earth? Such sinister plots, after all, are what Jones has been accusing the "elites" and the "insiders" of, right?  So why is Alex Jones still alive?? I just can't figure this out!

The Internet and paranoid thinking

This New York Times video is quite a good overview of the current phase online conspiracism is moving through in its ongoing evolution. As I have been writing before, the details of the conspiratorial claims are no longer really what scholars of the phenomenon need to focus on and engage with - all the silliness of the Pizzagate and Illuminati New World Order claims have no evidence whatsoever to back them up and they are really not worth the time to argue with - but the dynamics of cyberspace technology and audiences of the disaffected who create communities around the claims are really the most fascinating and troubling glimpses of 21st century culture. As this Times story points out, the core of conspiracism now is no longer to make specific claims about aliens, reptilian "elites," the Antichrist, the New World order or the Freemasons. The new phase of the conspiracy culture had evolved to a state where all consensus knowledge must be denied. The "ask questions" mantra of Alex Jones and all his imitators boils down to a call to reject the very concept of facts and all evidence-based rationality. The modern world of "alternative facts," indeed. The 21st century at its most disturbing.

The California fires: It was aliens!!

Not to say "I told you so," but...I told you so. In the preface to my book, Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious," I predicted that no matter what major world event - especially something bad - hits the headlines, within hours the Internet would be flooded with conspiracy theories about how the real cause of the event is some evil, sinister plot by a hidden cabal of super villains. The mainstream media, of course, are in on it all and are "keeping everyone asleep."

So the latest calamity we have been watching on the news over the past several weeks, the massive wildfires that swept through California, is now being blamed on a grand conspiracy of the "New World Order," the "globalists," the "internationalists," the Rothschild banking organization, the military, the CIA, and the Illuminati. Check out this Mercury New article about the latest in the conspiracy theorizing about the fires. But for the most cringe-inducing part of the whole article, read the feedback from all the conspiracy believers. Not to give anything away, but the comments make for a very strong argument for why laws for the involuntary hospitalization for mental illness need to be toughened. What scares me more than the idiocy of the conspiracy theories is the fact that the people who wrote the comments after that article are out there walking around on our streets.

Of course, I'm not surprised that the California fires inspired conspiracy theories. I'm surprised, though, by the high absurdity of it all. As the Mercury News article explains, the mainstream of the fire-conspiracy-believers is convinced that the fires were caused by military-controlled laser weapons fired either from space or from aircraft. I, quite foolishly and naively, thought the conspiracy web pages and YouTube videos would be claiming that "mysterious" figures have been running around in the California wilderness setting fires. Conspiracists, though, are proving to be infinitely more creative than I am, apparently. Laser weapons are much cooler and scarier than merely guys sneaking around in the brush and setting fires. Even the rhetoric of the conspiracists is full of high-tech-sounding jargon like "DEW," or "directed energy weapons" and "geoengineering." Could have come out of a real slick technothriller!

Then, according to this article, other subcultures of the fire-conspiracists are certain that space aliens caused the fires. And I'm not kidding either. Check out the article!

Spreading this nonsense, of course, are the usual suspects. Believers in the "Pizzagate" and "false flag" mass shooting conspiracies are on the bandwagon. Alex Jones' Infowars website has numerous videos espousing the theory. Because, you know, Jones is still alive. These sociopathic New World Order conspirators who are willing to launch a ray gun attack on California, murdering dozens of people so far, have not yet figured out how to kill off Jones and keep him from spreading the "truth."

Another scuzzy little web page that has gone all in on the fire conspiracy is the "State of the Nation: Alternative News, Analysis, and Commentary" page. Aside from their very long list of Satanic pizza gate conspiracy links, the fires now have jumped to the top of their agenda.

All of this would be laughable, were it not for the fact that people had lost their lives in these fires. Others had their homes, their livelihoods wiped out. For bottom-feeding lowlife like the people behind "State of the Nation" and Alex Jones, it's another perfect opportunity to profit off the grief of others.

How come no one has killed Alex Jones yet?

I ask this after a recent discussion I had with a friend of mine who insisted that conspiracy theories like the ones about the JFK assassination and 9/11 are somewhat plausible - he "doesn't exactly" believe them, but could imagine that powers within the government would be willing to attempt such plots - and they could be successful because dissenters within the conspiracy could just be killed off. He - as JFK conspiracists often do - pointed to a series of "suspicious" deaths of people connected to the Kennedy assassination.

First of all, let's just clear the air about these deaths. There is nothing suspicious about them and these people who might have "known too much" died years apart and years after the Kennedy murder. For a superb examination and discussion of this, please take the time to read (and it will take you a little while since it's over 1000 pages) the late Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History about the assassination.

But conspiracy believers are generally big on assassinations. They believe no tangible evidence exists to prove their massive, complicated accusations because whistleblowers have either been killed off or they have been intimidated into silence through death threats.

So how come some conspiracists don't stop for a second and consider why these assassins from the New World Order haven't yet eliminated people like Alex Jones and the rest of his ilk? Why haven't they offed Jones years ago and made it look like an accident (but plant secret clues to the evil deeds the way criminal masterminds do in murder mysteries or in comic books the way the Riddler always does?).

The reason, of course, is because 9/11 conspiracies, "crisis actors," or Qanon conspiracies are exactly like comic books. They're fantasies!

Marco Rubio is THE MAN!!

This is fantastic! Florida Senator Marco Rubio - and fellow University of Miami alumnus - threatened to lay the smackdown on a heckling Alex Jones. Check out the article right here!

Apparently Jones did what he often liked to do in the past, namely go off in public bellowing tantrums and heckling. You know, to warn the American people about what's really going on and how the Illuminati are turning the world into a fascist state. Now, ironically enough, the kerfuffle began because Jones was upset at Rubio criticizing totalitarian states' attempts at censoring the Internet. So Jones started heckling Rubio during a press conference, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the Democrats' crackdown on the Internet. The Democrats? Hmm...right! And Jones apparently has no problems with Donald Trump's recent threats against Google?

Well, but that's just Alex Jones for you...

Anyhow, Jones' harangues eventually prompted Rubio to say, "I'll take care of you myself."

But do check out Jones' whining reply in the article, beseeching the press nearby to see how he has been threatened. Because, you know, the system is trying to silence him so he can't tell the American people what's really going on.

I recently commented that it was a mistake for tech companies like Facebook to ban Jones because they're turning him into the kind of martyr he wants to become. But still, a threat of a good ass-beating by a senator is just too awesome.

Go Canes!