160: January 22-25, 2009
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Today, Dan tells Jordan all about what happened between January 22nd and 25th, 2009 on the Alex Jones Show. There's some truly absurd stuff here, including appearances from Joe Rogan and a legit rap legend. Plus, the gents learn a little more about Bob Chapman, the man who saw Ronald Reagan get pegged.
Tidbits
- Teaser: New wonk level coming
- Keegan donated InfoWars magazines
- Freedom Works and Citizens for a Sound Economy background
- Alex is oblivious to Koch machinations
- Collapse will be here in 2-3 weeks
- FOX and Glenn Beck are co-opting Alex's talking points
- Glenn Beck background
- Commercial: School of Phenomenal Memory
- Guest: Bob Chapman and Ted Anderson do the gold sales game
- Guest: Joe Rogan is in studio
- Joe and Alex have only one story
- Joe likes Ron Paul
- Federal Reserve disclosure info
- Obama is going to be worst than Hitler
- Guest: Art Acevedo, Austin Police Chief
- Alex legit needs money
- Guest: KRS-One
- KRS-One is the good hip hop
- KRS-One is into 9/11 truth
- 4 days to cannibalism
- Hip hop stands with Alex Jones
- Bob Chapman comes back, says go all in on gold and silver, now here's Ted
- Guest: Steve Shenk, selling food buckets
- 2009 Alex knows Iran has a peaceful nuclear program
- Alex reports on KRS-One show
- Alex's True Story: all the celebrities love me
- Obama didn't swear in properly, wouldn't swear on a bible
- Bob Chapman helped finance None Dare Call It Conspiracy
- Bob Chapman background
- Bob has ties to apartheid South Africa
- Bob lived in Rhodesia
- Bob's magazine, The International Forecaster
- Alex and Corsi have turned on QAnon
Notable Bits
- Alex's True Story
Detailed Show Notes
This portion was reproduced from the official Knowledge Fight website.[1]
Guests
- Joe Rogan: Joe Rogan is a comedian, actor and MMA enthusiast who hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the world. While his show originally was an entertaining blend of testosterone, conspiracy dabbling, and pseudo-spirituality, it has shifted over the years to becoming a platform for malicious entities to soft-peddle awful rhetoric, more or less unquestioned. When Alex Jones was on the show, Rogan allowed Alex to lie to his audience repeatedly about very serious topics. When Rogan had Alex's economist friend Peter Schiff on, Rogan allowed Schiff to spread narratives about how everyone needs to buy gold because the dollar is going to collapse, only to reveal at the end of the show that he himself sells gold. This isn't even taking into account all of the horribly inaccurate and irresponsible shit he's allowed people like Milo, Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, and many others to disseminate to his audience, seemingly lacking the ability or interest in debating their rhetoric. What I'm getting at is that Rogan is cool and fun, but he may not be as sharp of a critical thinker as he presents himself to be.
- Art Acevedo: Art Acevedo was, at the time, the Austin Chief of Police. He appears on InfoWars from time to time because he believes in community outreach, and in being accessible as a leader of the department. He and Alex enjoy a bit of a jocular relationship, with Acevedo doing mildly insulting but good-natured impressions of Alex to his face. His appearances are generally pleasant, but they're mostly just Alex asking if Acevedo has heard about various stories Alex read on WND or Zero Hedge, and Acevedo saying "no."
Narratives
There is a very interesting turning point that we can see starting to take shape on this episode of the show, namely that Alex Jones is starting to see the beginnings of what will become the Tea Party, and he realizes that he is not on the team.
Alex is beginning to see his own worldview being imitated by Glenn Beck, and he's seeing his "good buddy" Ron Paul appearing on Beck's show, and it is starting to confuse him:
In reality, this should be the least confusing thing imaginable.
In 1984, Ron Paul was made the first chairman of Citizens For A Sound Economy, a think tank entirely funded by Charles and David Koch.
In the 2008 presidential election, Ron Paul ran for the Republican primary. He came up real short, coming in 4th behind John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney. To Paul's credit, he beat the shit out of Rudy Guliani, who ended up with a respectable zero delegates.
Ron Paul officially lost the nomination on June 12, 2008, and shortly after, the first public flickers of the Tea Party began to pop up in the wake of Paul's failed campaign, with Paul kicking off his "Campaign For Liberty" on Sept. 2, 2008 at a rally he was holding on that date specifically because he was not invited to speak at the Republican National Convention, happening Sept. 1-4, 2008 and Ron Paul is apparently petty as fuck.
After this, chatter swirled that he would run on the Libertarian ticket or with the Constitution Party, but in the end, he endorsed Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. Chuck, by the way, is a really fucked up Christian Fundamentalist who holds such positions as "the Zionists run the media," "homosexuality is a moral perversion," and (this is a direct quote) "I believe the South was right in the War Between the States, and I am not a racist." I'm relieved to hear that he's not a racist.
Ron Paul embodied the philosophy that really works out well for corporate monsters, but it turns out that in practice, people just don't really like him enough to vote for him when there are other options on the table. He ended up with only 5.6% of the popular vote in the 2008 primary. Really think about that; that is about 1/4 of what 3rd place finisher Huckabee ended up with. Ron Paul is not, and has never been, all that popular.
The entire time after the 2008 election, it was completely obvious that Ron Paul was going to run again, so the struggle for the extreme right became "how do we find any votes for this guy who is not all that popular?" Enter the Tea Party.
In her book Dark Money, Jane Meyer quotes economist Bruce Bartlett:
"The problem with the whole Libertarian movement is that it's been all chiefs and no Indians. There weren't any actual people, like voters, who gave a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create an actual movement. "
The Tea Party was the most successful attempt at creating a movement, and the Kochs did it through spending loads of money on conservative radio personalities like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin, funneling their money through organizations like FreedomWorks, filling in advertising losses caused by groups like the Heritage Foundation ceasing their support around this time.
The Tea Party grew, and did so largely because of the financial backing and co-opting of the movement by conservative billionaires, most importantly, the Kochs.
To get back to the point, Alex is beginning to see the roots of this movement happening, and he is realizing that he is on the outside looking in. He thought Ron Paul was his guy, but it turns out that Glenn Beck is actually on TV. Also, it turns out that the people who made Ron Paul the first chairman of their think tank 25 years prior are the same people who were in 2009 paying Glenn Beck millions.
The picture is far more complicated than this, and it's very likely that the Tea Party and trying to create an artificial movement against taxes has been something that has been in the works with the Kochs for years. That is not the most important piece for our interest. What is important here is that Alex is seeing this planned operation go live, and he is not a part of it. And he's Alex Goddamn Jones, the greatest patriot to ever hate taxes; he damn well should be a part of this thing.
I highly suspect that this mentality will be pretty consistent in Alex for a while, until he most likely joins up as a propagandist for his "good buddy" Ron Paul's Tea Party team, and immediately changes a number of his positions (he somehow has to change his positions to becoming against net neutrality, becoming hostile toward Iran, becoming dismissive of police brutality, and abandoning his support for Palestinian rights, while retaining his clear love of Russia and his belief that climate change is a scam).
As for the rest of this show, it's really nothing too important.
The interview with Joe Rogan is kind of fun, because Joe is fun, but everything they talk about basically follows this pattern:
Alex: *Says something outrageous, like "Obama is worse than Hitler"*
Joe: "That's crazy. Are you serious?
Alex: "I am very serious. I will give you zero proof of anything I say, but I know things"
Joe: "That's amazing."
It's not Joe's job to rake Alex over the coals on Alex's own show, so this isn't meant to be a severe criticism of Joe, just a way of saying that the interview is not very interesting, unless you want to hear about how Fear Factor worked.
The only other important thing that happens on this episode is that Alex has an interview with Bob Chapman, who once again is on the show to talk about how the dollar is going to collapse any day now. Bob is presented as a financial expert, but he exists on this show solely to scare the audience enough to get them to a suggestible state where they will be receptive to Ted Anderson's sales pitch (Ted Anderson is the owner of the Genesis Communications Network, which broadcasts Alex's show, as well as Midas Resources, which sells gold/silver. It is an outrageous conflict of interests).
This is ridiculous in how brazen and open the scam is, but this is the sort of thing they do all the time on InfoWars. Potential Federal Trade Commission violations just kind of blend into the background when you do them all the time.
