Podcasters Track Descent of Alex Jones

As Infowars traffic falls, hosts who mock it wonder what they'll do next
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 19, 2021 5:48 PM CDT
Podcasters Mock Alex Jones in Their Search for Meaning
Infowars host Alex Jones rallies pro-Trump supporters outside the Maricopa County Recorder's Office in Phoenix in November.   (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes are following Alex Jones closely on his way down, but they aren't fans. They are growing concerned, though, about the Infowars host hitting bottom. "He just feels less and less in control of what he's doing. The presentation is reckless and absurd," Friesen said, adding that the conspiracy theorist these days seems "so reactive, so self-contradictory." Their podcast, Knowledge Fight, has been skewering Jones since January 2017, the New York Times reports, produced in a spare bedroom on the North Side of Chicago. The two aren't in it just for the mockery; they're seeking insight and the answer to questions like "How did we disrespect information and the conveying of information so much that we ended up where we are in 2021?" If Infowars disappears, the podcasters aren't sure what they'll do next, though they say it might involve someone else who profits from misinformation. "We haven't found anything, anybody, who's as interesting as Alex," Friesen said.

Jones faces more competition now on conspiracy rants, from Tucker Carlson and other fringe voices. Daily traffic to the Infowars site has plunged, per the Times, helped by Jones' removal from social media platforms in 2018 and '19 over hateful and abusive posts. His live broadcast of the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol brought a spike in traffic, but it's fallen since to about one-fourth of that peak. Just this month, the US Supreme Court declined to help him in a lawsuit he faces over his calling the Sandy Hook shootings a hoax. Early in the pandemic, Jones suggested he might eat his neighbors to survive the lockdown. And former President Trump's exit may have left Jones a little lost, the podcasters say; Jones is a fan. The rants in the early days seemed like "performative outrage," Holmes said, adding that when he listens to Jones rage now, he thinks, "This is somebody who is not in control." (More Alex Jones stories.)

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