Yes, Alex Jones is Terrible, But the War on Infowars is a War on Us All

 Alex Jones has come a long way since his days of calling out the  Federal Reserve, fighting the two-party paradigm, pushing for a real  investigation into 9/11 and calling for an end to war in the Middle  East. Now, he pushes anti-Muslim rhetoric,  plays right along with the two-party paradigm, and serves as little  more than a cheerleader for the current president, all while stoking  divide all the way along. Recently, his vitriol has gotten him thrust in the limelight once  again and a concerted effort by corporate media giants to silence him  and purge his information has taken place. 

On Monday, it was announced  that Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube all permanently deleted the  Infowars and Alex Jones Channels, Podcasts, and pages. Outside of their  own domain, Infowars was nearly entirely purged from the internet. While the thought of silencing this loud mouthed Trump-pumping  Islamophobic blowhard may be appealing to you, the effects of such a  coordinated move and ability of of these corporations to silence him are  chilling. According to a report out of the Guardian, 

All but one of the major content platforms have banned  the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced to  act in the wake of Apple’s decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and  his Infowars website. Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for “repeated violations  of community standards”, the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated  Jones’s account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being  subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the  entirety of one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”.

Although he used to try to bring people on the left and the right  together by exposing the establishment, Alex Jones now serves to divide  them. Headlines like Fake Trump Prank Call Fools Dumb Liberal or Sweden Bans Christmas Street to Avoid Offending Muslim Migrants are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ignorant and outright hateful content put out by Jones and company. 

But, it wasn’t the divide and conquer and hate peddling that got the  attention of of these social media giants. It was when Jones challenged a  politician to an imaginary political gun fight that sparked the ban  hammer. 

Last week, during the Infowars broadcast, Jones went on a rant pointing out special counsel Robert Mueller’s connections  to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. During the rant, Jones  challenged Mueller to an imaginary duel and used qualifiers like  “politically” to state that he was not actually threatening physical  harm but could stand up to him in the political arena. He then addressed  Mueller while pointing his finger in a gun shape. 

“That’s a demon I will take down, or I’ll die trying. So that’s it.  It’s going to happen, we’re going to walk out in the square,  politically, at high noon, and he’s going to find out whether he makes a  move man, make the move first, and then it’s going to happen. It’s not a  joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going  to get it, or I’m going to die trying, bitch. Get ready. We’re going to  bang heads. We’re going to bang heads,” Jones swore. 

While his words and body language were certainly questionable,  whether or not it constituted an actual threat remains to be  seen. Threatening a federal official with violence is a class C or D  felony, punishable by up to five or 10 years in prison, yet no police  action has been taken against Jones, likely indicating that authorities  do not have enough evidence to charge him with an actual crime. 

For the past two and a half years, Jones has hopped on the Trump  train and pushed a level of divide akin to that of the mainstream media.  Jones has co-opted his viewership and transformed the ones who stayed  on into Trump-loving anti-Muslim fanatics. This transformation caused a riff within the libertarian community as  a whole and even inside Infowars with many employees jumping ship while  others were fired and gagged. 

His political enemies are likely salivating over the recent bans.  However, even if you hate Alex Jones with every inch of your body,  silencing him is a win for tyranny and censorship. Regardless of what you think about Alex Jones, what is happening to him is the digital equivalent of book burning. In a tweet on Monday, WikiLeaks summed up this scenario quite well.   

The power of these four companies wield to effectively wipe out an  entire organization all within a 12 hour time frame is as immense as it  is chilling. Sadly, because Jones was vitriolic, this ominous precedent  is going to be carried out without much resistance and with overwhelming  support.   Alex Jones’ rhetoric whether hateful or not deserves its platform  like everyone else. Ideas in the conversational realm fight for  themselves. 

Racism, bigotry, sexism: these things are dying out — not  because some corporate overlord with massive influence over the flow of  information wiped them out — but because they were debated in the public  sphere and those who held them were shown to be the idiots that they  are. 

When everyone is told what to think, and ideas — even racist and  vitriolic ones — are kept from them, everyone becomes an idiot,  completely dependent on this system of censorship to tell them what to  think. A dangerously slippery slope indeed. Alex Jones has become the first unperson in this war on information. It’s time to start paying attention before we all experience a similar fate.