Super Deluxe, a multimedia production company with a bent toward the strange and humorous, has compiled some of the more ridiculous ravings of conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones into a Bon Iver–styled song — and the result has gotten more than 11,000 views on YouTube and has been shared more than 17,000 times on Facebook as of this writing.
Jones is infamous for his unhinged rants and conspiratorial accusations on topics ranging from alleging that 9/11 was an inside job to helping spread the “Pizzagate” conspiracy. To be sure, his rants are foremost deeply disturbing, particularly when you consider some people take them so seriously that they actually act on them; one man fired a gun inside a DC pizzeria because of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy. But Jones’s rants are also often ridiculous. The Super Deluxe video handpicks several in that vein and, by changing their tempo and tone, shows them for how absurd they are.
Jones’s following, however, is no joke. His website, also called Infowars, attracts 4 million unique US users each month. Among those followers is President Trump, who Jones said called him after the election to thank him for his support.
“He was just thanking me for fighting so hard for Americans, and for Americanism, and thanking my listeners and supporters and to let me know that he was working really hard around the clock,” Mr. Jones said to the New York Times.
As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has written, Jones’s popularity is the result of an environment that conservatives created — one that also nourished the political rise of Trump, a peddler of conspiracy theories even before he was a candidate. “The key point here is even ‘respectable’ elements of the conservative movement like National Review and [Glenn] Beck have, for decades, been very happy to manipulate far-right conspiracies — either to build support for typical Republicans or to make a buck,” writes Beauchamp. (Jones’s notoriety has also cost him, though. In April, he lost a custody battle against his ex-wife after her lawyers argued that his hostile TV persona mirrors his real-life personality, which creates a bad environment for their children.)
Alex Jones’s popularity — and particularly his ties with the current president of the United States — is a disturbing reflection of the political moment. Which may be exactly why viewers of the Super Deluxe video found it so satisfying to see Jones’s signature combative delivery disarmed by hearing it turned into a gently ethereal folk song, one that made his rage merely ridiculous.
You can download the song here.
