Is Alex Jones merely a terrible person or the worst person? These are the options, I’m afraid. No doubt he has some competition for that “worst person” status, but he’s a strong contender. Jones, the loudmouthed conspiracy peddler, claimed that he trolled and harassed the parents of murdered children because of a mysterious and self-diagnosed psychosis.
Give me a break.
Alex Jones spread lies and harassed grieving parents, particularly the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, because Jones is no better than the man who carried the gun into the school and shot their children. Jones is no better than the money-grubbing liars at the NRA that make school shootings in America not only possible, but inevitable. Jones has no redeeming qualities that I can see. By all accounts, he’s a terrible businessman, a terrible father, a terrible husband, and a terrible radio host.
His entire agenda is to peddle aggressive lies and paranoia to the most gullible people in society and then, when those people are hooked on his nonsense, to sell them overpriced and useless nutritional supplements, doomsday prepper plans, and other nonsense. That some people swallow what he sells does not excuse his actions. It merely shows us that many people are easily duped. That’s not news.
The damage that Jones has caused is incalculable. In addition to the emotional pain he’s inflicted on the survivors and parents of children killed in school shootings, he also sought to publish parents’ names and addresses so his rabid supporters could harass them in person.
And now one of those parents has taken his own life. I know we can’t draw a direct line from this suicide to Alex Jones, but Jones threw fuel on the fire of that parent’s grief and he ought to be held accountable. Jones’s response to the suicide, by the way, was to complain that it made it harder for him to defend himself in court. He insinuated that the suicide might be part of the larger conspiracy. So, yeah, worst person.
Jones argues in his many court appearances that he’s a member of the media and that everything he says is protected by the First Amendment. Jones is protected by the First Amendment—it protects us all—though only a fool would consider a man like Jones to be a journalist. But he is not protected from the consequences of his hateful speech. Thankfully, a judge has ruled that the parents of these murdered children can sue Jones for defamation. Many have done so, hence his unhinged depositions about his undefined “psychosis.”
I hope Jones has to give every dollar he has ever earned to to the parents at Sandy Hook. I hope he is stripped of absolutely everything he owns. I’d love to see him end up in jail, but I suspect that’s unlikely. Still, if he’s as delusional and unhinged from reality as he claims, he ought to be locked up somewhere.
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