QAnon

[TheGlyphstone]

It's also worth noting how deliberately mercenary he is about the 'conspiracies' he spreads. That famous episode about the chemicals turning frogs gay? It also included his pitch for an Infowars-branded premium water filter/purifier.

[Humble Scribe]

There's an excellent segment from This American Life where Jon Ronson (who has known Jones since the 90s and infiltrated Bohemian Grove with him) tried to get to the bottom of Jones' childhood and personal myth-making, and how he ended up the way he did.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock/act-two-10

When Ronson first met Jones, he says that he assumed it was all just a schtick - that Jones was a cynical showman who had found a way of grabbing people's attention. But the more he got to know him, the more he realised that Jones has always been paranoid and aggressive and making up stories. And yes, perhaps he has come to drink his own kook-aid. I guess if you are being attacked as a crazy person all the time, if you can create a personal narrative where instead you are a fearless crusader for truth and justice in a world ruled by Satan, it helps draw the sting of a wall of hatred that otherwise might psychologically drag you under.

One of the interesting things that comes out in the radio programme is that several of the people who knew Jones as a teenager and knew from personal experience that he was a violent blowhard still believe the stuff he says about Sandy Hook and Hillary Clinton. We all have our personal filters I guess, and they're not always rational ones.

[Humble Scribe]

I meant Kool-Aid, but Kook-Aid is even better, I think.

[stormwyrm]

I meant Kool-Aid, but Kook-Aid is even better, I think.

Totally gonna steal that! ;D

A "thought leader" (to use the term "thought" very loosely) peddling conspiracy theories must tread a very fine line. They must have mastered the art of Orwellian doublethink, without permitting the inevitable cognitive dissonance drive them truly mad, or believe their own lies to the extent that they drink their own kook aid. In many ways they are comparable to Ingsoc Inner Party Members from 1984, in fact much of what the Party is actually doing can be construed as sustaining a conspiracy theory on a global scale.

1984 is a flawed prophecy: instead of a small number of Big Brothers ruling over huge chunks of the world, we instead have a large number of Little Brothers like Alex Jones, Mike Adams, and the mysterious folk running QAnon similarly ruling over individually tiny groups, often highly geographically dispersed, forming a distributed collective solipsism as it were.

[Beorning]

So, what you are saying is... Alex Jones drove himself delusional? Or that he's a such a pathological liar that he himself can't see the difference between facts and fiction anymore?

[Oniya]

If what Ronson is saying is accurate, Jones was already pretty delusional.  He just figured out how to get paid for it.

[Humble Scribe]

So, what you are saying is... Alex Jones drove himself delusional?

Something like that. I think he started damaged and just spiralled down into his own vortex of insanity.

However, this conversation is an excuse for me to post this again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Q72qYWxKQ

I would definitely buy an Amazon Alexa Jones.

[Beorning]

Wow! What a cool device :)

I stumbled onto this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGAAhzreGWw

I admit I would like to hear more of the threat of vampire pot-belly goblins...

[Haibane]

Wow! What a cool device :)

It reminds me of the old Tom-Tom sat nav unit where you could download Ozzie Osbourne as the voice. That was hilarious.

I had John Cleese giving me directions. It always made driving more fun.

[Andol]

So, what you are saying is... Alex Jones drove himself delusional? Or that he's a such a pathological liar that he himself can't see the difference between facts and fiction anymore?

Actually that is very accurate... he probably already had a mental condition. The delusional of which only got worse because he continued to do his little 'news show' every day. I think that he is a pathological liar, and more just that he has convinced himself that the whole wild stories he tells are true... aka the different between facts and fiction part. 

[Oniya]

https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/sidney-powell-tells-judge-no-reasonable-person-would-believe-her-dominion-conspiracy-theories-were-statements-of-fact/

I debated whether to put this in the other Trump thread, but I figure Sidney deserves to be lumped in with the Qs.  Short version is that Sidney Powell is moving to dismiss the defamation suit brought on her by Dominion because 'no reasonable person' would have thought she was being truthful.

This is the bit where the Superfriends version of Aquaman swims in such fast circles around the Kraken that its eye turn into spirals, and its legs are all tied in a complicated knot with a ridiculously festive bow.

[TheGlyphstone]

Its literally the defense Tucker Carlson used when he was sued for defamation, and the judge accepted it. So there is sadly precedent.

[Oniya]

Twitter is even calling it the 'Tucker Carlson defense'.  The difference is that Tucker didn't file lawsuits in court affirming his belief in his statements - he just blathered about it on Fox News.

[Haibane]

If no-one was expected to believe it then why the fuck did she say it?

Also no-one would really expect people to drink bleach after Trump said it might help prevent C-19, but people died from doing so.

I think that's a reasonable argument for the plaintiff right there.

[Oniya]

If I were the judge, I'd be looking over the top of my glasses and saying something along the lines of:

'Does counsel propose that filing [insert relevant identifier here], wherein counsel herself brought charges regarding this issue, was filed with the knowledge that those assertions were false?'

[Humble Scribe]

Does that mean she's decided a Perjury charge (and presumably disbarment) is preferable to a $1.3 billion Defamation suit? Cool.

[Haibane]

It's the ultimate "I was only joking" defence, isn't it? Pathetic.

[Oniya]

I don't know how fast these things normally move, but at the beginning of February, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (who was notably the target of a kidnapping plot that arose due to the 'election steal' conspiracies) was seeking to have Powell disbarred over this whole clusterfuck.

https://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,4534,7-359-92297_47203-551080--,00.html