May 10, 2017

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The world on May 10, 2017

  • In a move that reportedly surprised nearly everyone, Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Just before this, Comey had requested additional resources to expand the investigation into the connections between Trump campaign members and hostile foreign agents, particularly Russians. Many believed that the firing was retaliatory, but Trump apologists argue that Comey was out of line in his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's server (and probably Benghazi). White House spokesman Sean Spicer's account put responsibility for the decision to fire Comey on advice from the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (he has disputed this claim), but Trump's own account contends that he's been planning to fire Comey long before Rosenstein's memo.
  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a memo to Trump advising him to fire Comey. This is, very possibly, a violation of his pledge to recuse himself from all investigations into Trump campaign members and their connections to Russia. Some experts have speculated that this could be possible grounds for disbarment, and potentially even impeachment.

What Alex Jones was up to:

Knowledge Fight Podcast covering May 10

In the wake of Comey's firing and the inevitable questions it will raise, Alex desperately needs to get control of the narrative. Instead of dealing with the subtle issues involved in firing a Director of the FBI, Alex's agenda is 3-pronged:

  1. Claim that Comey was secretly a Globalist, blackmailing Trump with fake investigations
  2. Claim that Comey was weird, and that behind the scenes no one liked him
  3. Argue that it is time for Trump to "go on the offensive"

The last point is an overt call for Trump to shore up his power, and essentially is an indication that Alex Jones is okay with the idea of Trump setting in motion a authoritarian coup of our government. This sort of thing is in direct conflict with the principles that Alex's career was built on, but he pushes this narrative all the same.

He allows himself to believe it because he thinks (or at least claims to think) that Trump may have to use authoritarian techniques in order to crush a greater evil, namely The Globalists. However, this is not why he is pitching this narrative. This is a question that has no answer at present, but it does not appear that his willingness to contradict a 20 year career by uncritically joining a politician's cult of personality is a decision he would make unless out of desperation.

Though Comey's firing is absolutely the biggest piece of news in our country, Alex spends surprisingly little time covering it. Instead, he discusses the following:

  • Alex conducts an interview with Roger Stone, a man who almost certainly was being investigated by the FBI, about how great it is that Comey got fired. Senators told Stone not to destroy any documents back in March 2017, which is a strong indication that he was at least being investigated by the Intelligence Committees in Congress, if not other entities. The lack of journalistic ethics displayed by Alex Jones in having an interview with Stone, without disclosing his position as a likely target of Comey's investigation, is staggering.
  • Alex makes erroneous claims about Trump hurting Russian gas prices by suggesting that we are going to start using coal again. Further, Alex lies to make it seem like "clean coal" is a real thing, though it is not.
  • Alex tells a highly dramatized version of "elites" trying to lure him to join their side. This is an essential part of his narrative about himself, as it illustrates that he is on a selfless crusade to wake up the masses. His standing up for truth is being done at the cost of him living the luxurious life that everyone else dreams of. If you believe him about this one thing, you are essentially signing off that 1) evil elites actually exist (which has to be true, since they tried to tempt Alex), and 2) Alex is not motivated by money (or selling t-shirts and weird supplements) and therefore he is above reproach. We believe that no such tempting ever happened, and this is a piece of fiction that Alex uses to subconsciously get his listeners to accept these premises without realizing they're doing so.
  • Alex makes some suspiciously worded calls to violence. You can make the argument that he is not enciting violence, but at very least, he is threatening that violence is  going to become necessary if people don't stop trying to take down Trump. The thing that makes this very problematic is that he is saying these things within a rant that began with thoughts about race, vis-a-vis misrepresenting Black Lives Matter. When the monologue begins with racially based complaints about civil rights groups, it is very difficult to hear Alex's in any other way than as deeply racist. The threats, the othering language; so much of his bullet points are themselves popular dog-whistles ("we actually work," "we built this country," etc), and it is very hard to believe that he doesn't know that, or that he is doing this accidentally.