Alex Jones, the Holocaust, and Ernst Zündel

Media Matters For America is a leftist media-watchdog that calls attention to instances of people saying things that leftists believe ought not to be said. Look at what he said! This is terrible! But for me, Media Matters serves as a kind of good-news aggregator, collecting instances of people overcoming intimidation and telling the truth. 

Media Matters recently called attention to the fact that on 1 November 2023 Alex Jones aired a video-segment in his Infowars program that supposedly “defended a Holocaust denier and questioned the death toll from the Holocaust.” Media Matters strongly emphasizes that Alex Jones introduced this video with the words, 

“It needs to go viral.”

From a man who has for decades espoused a simpleminded flag-waving patriotism combined with conspiracy-theories that blame everybody except Jews, this was surprising. To me Alex Jones always came across, not really as a martyr for the truth but as a man most interested in promoting himself.

To promote himself in the most expeditious way possible meant that he had to avoid touching certain hot wires, like disputation of the Holocaust.  Back in the 1990s when Jones started broadcasting on shortwave, stations like WWCR had their broadcast days chock-full of programs advocating the militia-movement and warning against the New World Order and “the Illuminati” (Alex Jones' kind of material), but (except for a short period in the early 90s) they were generally unwilling to sell time to a broadcaster like Ernst Zündel who disputed the Holocaust. In 2000 I tried to help Zündel by contacting station WINB about whether they would consider airing Ernst Zündel's weekly half-hour program: the answer was affirmative! Yes, they would! – but then the station backed out, because, I was told, a Jewish employee of this Christian shortwave station had threatened to quit.

Alex Jones, back when he was on radio, never had such trouble from the kind of content that he presented in his broadcasts, because he systematically avoided the genuine hot-wire issues. 

Jones had been initiated into conspiracy-theorizing as a teenager, with his father's copy of None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1976) by Gary Allen (“with Larry Abraham”),  a former speechwriter for George Wallace. As one might expect of a speechwriter for a Southern Democratic politician, Allen aims no criticism explicitly at Jews (White Southerners being traditionally philojudaic).

Alex Jones' Political Bible

None Dare Call it Conspiracy presents a conspiracy-theory about bankers, Communism, and socialism, while maintaining with great difficulty that the focus is not on Jews. Apparently as a safeguard, the author inserts some entirely gratuitous negative references to Adolf Hitler. He says that “everybody knows” that in Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler “poured onto paper his ambitions to rule the world” – which only shows that Gary Allen never read Mein Kampf. He also says that the ADL uses  accusations of anti-Semitism not to guard Jewish or Zionist power but to protect “the super-rich” against anyone who exposes them and their activities.

Gary Allen avoids saying that Jewish-controlled mass-media agitated for U.S. Involvement in the First World War by calling those controllers “the Federal Reserve crowd.”

The problem is that the chapter about bankers' support for the Bolshevik Revolution is almost entirely about Jews. There is a brief mention of non-Jew J.P. Morgan in this context, but his role is trivial compared to what is attributed to Jacob Schiff, and the three Warburg brothers, and the Rothschilds, and other Jews.

Apart from conspiracy-theorizing, Gary Allen's political outlook seems to be a naive conservatism. The trouble with “the super-rich” is that they are power-mad. “Socialism” is their strategy for securing and enhancing their power, at the expense of the Constitution and individual freedom. Although Gary Allen had been a speechwriter for George Wallace, he apparently had learned by 1976 that explicitly standing up for White people was no longer really acceptable, while Constitutionalism, which many saw as another way to protest anti-White policies, was still allowed.

In the perspective that Gary Allen represents, there are no problems in capitalism that would necessitate a government's economic intervention or social programs. There is no inkling of a need for conservatives to adjust to present circumstances, as did Bismarck when he deprived Marxist agitators of grievances by creating the modern welfare-state.

Allen complains about the conceptualization of the political spectrum that places Adolf Hitler on the “far-right.” He advocates instead that left and right should be defined with more government on the left and less government on the right. This is a concept that has really caught on with “less government” types. That may seem a fine way for conservatives to argue that they have nothing in common with Hitler, but it is too bad that they failed to consider the implications. It has the unfortunate effect of stigmatizing any use of government for a conservative purpose such as upholding traditional morality. Apparently, according to Gary Allen's ideology, only leftists would outlaw pornography or unnatural acts. The spread of this ideology among people regarding themselves as conservative perhaps goes a long way toward explaining how we arrived at our present stage of moral rot.

In recent years some Republicans who call themselves conservative (e.g. Michael Knowles, and the self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh) seem to have recognized that rightwingers who refuse to use the power of the government for rightwing purposes cannot win. They recognize that, histrionics notwithstanding, the Constitution cannot protect us against people who do not respect it, of which there are an increasing number. The kinds of troubles afflicting the USA cannot be fixed, or even contained over the long term, merely by sounding alarms in defense of “freedom.” The era when it was still possible for a thoughtful person to believe that is perhaps decades behind us now.

Nonetheless that old book by Gary Allen seems to have supplied the basic ideological framework upon which Alex Jones still relies. (Marjorie Taylor Green's beliefs also seem to be in this vein.) In a nutshell: the super-rich globalists, who are definitely not a group of Jews (regardless of how many may turn out to be Jews), are trying to destroy our freedom and our constitutional republic with their socialism, and we emphatically hate Hitler with all the histrionics that we can muster, because Hitler was a big-government man and is on the left with those other socialists (who, we repeat, are not all Jews).

Conspiracy-Theories Without Jews

How can anyone broadcast about conspiracy-theory on a daily basis without mentioning Jews? Winston Churchill in his famous essay for the Illustrated Sunday Herald of 8 February 1920 observed that “the International Jews” were “the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century” and also dominated Bolshevism in Russia. In that case: if a broadcaster specializing in conspiracy-theories is averse to criticizing about Jews, what can he discuss?

The late Michael Collins Piper, longtime journalist for The Spotlight and The American Free Press, and author of Final Judgment, which assigns blame for the assassination of President Kennedy to Mossad, devoted his first podcast to explaining what, in his opinion, is wrong with Alex Jones. 

Much of Jones' material, Piper noted, was alarmism about some terrifying future prospect: an emblematic example is the video called Police State 2000, a big moneymaker early in Jones' broadcasting career, about an alarmist forecast that failed to materialize — somehow without damaging Jones' credibility. Piper suggests that forecasts of doom may be a key ingredient in securing Jones' loyal (or cult-like, as Piper calls it) following.

Piper was struck by the fact that on the one occasion when he was invited to appear as a guest on Alex Jones' broadcast, it was not to discuss the nefarious activities of the State of Israel, or some other important question about which he had written, but instead to discuss a news-item of little general importance. This was a demonstration that Jones made efforts to avoid criticizing Jews. 

Piper notes that Alex Jones espouses a false history of the Second World War that is even worse than the mainstream account. According to Alex Jones, “the Nazis” secretly won the war and rule the Western world today. On that premise, Jones could avoid running afoul of Jews, and even win praise and support from some Jews, by blaming “Nazis” for what Jews have been doing.

This bizarre complex of beliefs, on the premise that “Nazis” secretly won the war and took over the Western world, is espoused by Communists and some Jews, and seems to be widespread even today in the far left. Leftists in general tend to use that label “Nazi” very loosely, as we have seen recently in leftist criticism of the Ukrainian war, calling a government with a Jewish president "Nazi." (Moreover, in leftist parlance “nazi” and “fascist” are synonyms, as long ago as Wilhelm Reich's The Mass-Psychology of Fascism,1933.) The origin of this bizarre view of the postwar order probably lies in the United States' shift away from a destructive policy of vengeance against the Germans, starting with the importation of German scientists in spite of organized Jewish protest in 1945, and culminating with the admission of West Germany into NATO. German military officers who served in the war and subsequently held any position of importance have been routinely called “Nazis” in leftist rhetoric (even today), although most were never members of the NSDAP. In that paranoid thought-process the postwar order itself then becomes “Nazi” by association.

Stanley Kubric's Dr. Strangelove was a satirical presentation of this disgruntled leftist outlook. Peter Sellers portrayed a caricature of Wernher von Braun whereby indications of the rocket-scientist's former (very limited) association with Adolf Hitler, and the extent of his influence over the President of the United States (also very limited), were both exaggerated to the absolute extreme, as if Wernher von Braun had become the dominant influence in presidential decisions and was steering the USA toward nuclear annihilation because, supposedly, that is what a “Nazi” would do.

Among Jews who represented this kind of paranoia in earnest was the insanely leftist radio-broadcaster Mae Brussel, whose still-active disciple (of undetermined ethnicity) is Dave Emory. Both have experienced some notoriety. Wikipedia notes about Dave Emory:

"… among his more notable claims is that the Bush family was connected to the Third Reich."

This was a point happily taken up by the likes of Alex Jones. Mae Brussel even went so far as to call Henry Kissinger a “Nazi.”

Jews also create some conspiracy-theories that are not about “Nazis.” Long before Alex Jones said it, the proposition that Arabs control Hollywood was espoused (perhaps not uniquely) by the mild-mannered Chuck Harder, an early promoter of the militia movement who obfuscated his Jewish ethnicity and support for the State of Israel during that period (early 1990s). Jew-friendly conspiracy-theories also issued from Lyndon Larouche's heavily Jewish organization, of which Larouche seemed to be the non-Jewish figurehead. 

A very noteworthy false historical claim that Jones often repeated had been published by a group called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Hitler's government was alleged to have inaugurated regulation of firearms in Germany – which, we were supposed to believe, was preparatory to “the Holocaust.” In fact, Hitler's 1938 gun law was less restrictive than the 1928 gun law that it superseded, a fact that was subsequently documented in Gun Control in Germany by William Pierce (1994). In fact, firearms specifically of Jews were confiscated in November 1938, after a Jew assassinated Ernst vom Rath, but this confiscation of firearms from non-citizens (Jews) happened against a background of generally reduced restrictions on firearms for citizens (Germans), a fact that cannot very well be invoked to support alarmism about gun-control. Using Hitler as a bogeyman makes a poor argument against gun-control legislation for that reason, and also because it requires endorsing the Holocaust as a premise — thus helping the authors of subversion to remain beyond criticism. 

On one occasion (in the late 1990s) I attempted to correct Alex Jones by citing this documentation that William Pierce had published. It did no good whatsoever. Like a machine, Alex Jones continued spouting the same propaganda, impervious to facts. This convinced me that Alex Jones knew that some of what he said was not true.

Because of their demand for Jew-friendly conspiracy-theories, broadcasters like Alex Jones (including his forerunner and apparent role-model, William Cooper)  have included much of this kind of misleading material, invented by Jews and espoused primarily by leftists, in their repertoire.

In reaction to this, given the enormous outreach that Jones had achieved, Michael Collins Piper righteously declared some years ago:

“… Alex came under a lot of fire from a lot of people, and rightly so, and I talked about him on my program…. I did in fact criticize Alex because he had come out criticizing critics of Israel and calling them “scum.” 

[…]

And you know, I think that it was Mark Glenn who put it to me quite well earlier: Alex trades on fear. He trades on people thinking that there are bad things about to happen. You know: “Prison Planet,” “Police State,” “Tyranny.”

And the rest of us, I would like to think … what we're trying to do is, identify the problem and say: Okay, here are the people that we need to fight. This is the way to solve things. These are the programs that we need to follow. We need to break the back of Zionism in this country. We need to point out that it is the organized Jewish community, it's the big Jewish money, it's the predatory plutocrats around the Federal Reserve System and the Jewish-controlled media in this country, that are the enemy. 

No, the Arabs don't control Hollywood as Alex Jones says, ladies and gentlemen. 

[…]

We need to continue calling Alex on the carpet, and saying to him: Alex, the new world order doesn't have anything to do with Hitler. The new world order has to do with Israel. It has to do with Judaism. It has to do with Talmudism. It has to do with these very forces surrounding our controlled media, and the Federal Reserve money-monopoly, and all of these things that you talk about, Alex, but you never relate to the real sources and causes of the problem.” (Michael Collins Piper)

One who has called Alex on the carpet was Dr. E. Michael Jones. Despite being no admirer of Adolf Hitler himself, when he heard from Alex Jones that Hitler promoted sexual immorality, Dr. Jones informed Alex that the truth was roughly the opposite of what he was saying.

In addition to copying conspiracy-theories from Jews, Alex Jones has invented some himself. A running theme since 2012  has been the alleged use of crisis-actors to stage spree-shootings and other such shocking events that occasionally appear in the news. Crisis-actors exist, but their professed application is in emergency drills, not staged media-events to deceive the public.

Alex Jones' Success and Downfall

By energetically peddling conspiracy-theories that were agreeable to Jews, and by diverting the patriotic resistance that should be criticizing Jewish and Zionist power into other directions – in some ways, into the opposite direction – Alex Jones became a very wealthy mega-celebrity. He declared in the Infowars show cited by Media Matters that his company's operating expenses alone were $30 million annually (Alex Jones, Infowars 1 November 2023: 1:39:00), and he has been accused of bringing in $50 million per year.

But, let us be fair to Alex Jones. Not everything that he says is false, and although much of his presentation is histrionics and nonsense, I do not believe that the man is entirely void of sincerity. I thought that I was seeing a change in Alex Jones in 2003 when, in his reaction to the invasion of Iraq, he ventured into territory previously avoided (although the change was not thorough or permanent, as Piper's criticisms a few years later indicate). Joe Rogan, who has known Jones for years, says that Jones is a man troubled by alcoholism and other difficulties, but is well intentioned, and has been right more often than he was wrong. Specifically Rogan gave Jones credit for drawing attention to the case of Jeffrey Epstein's operation for generating blackmail-material against public figures. With some hesitation, despite the fact that Alex Jones must know that some of what he says is not true — perhaps he justifies it in his own mind as tactical dishonesty — I accept Rogan's assessment that Alex Jones is well intentioned.

It was perhap a fit of good intention that induced Alex Jones inadvertently to crosse organized Jewry by becoming an early and highly visible supporter of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Jones famously conducted a long interview with Trump in 2015 when the campaign had barely begun and was still regarded by many as a joke. If Trump's campaign had failed as establishment interests expected, Jones might not have experienced any repercussions from supporting him. But since Trump won in 2016, Jones came to be taken seriously, not so much for the reliability of what he says as for the influence that he nonetheless wielded as Trump's ally. For this it seems that Jones  became a target. That is how Jones sees it – 

“I've been persecuted like nothing in my life for supporting [Trump].” (Jones quoted by A. Slisco, Newsweek, 27 August 2022)

–  and he is very likely correct.

Many actions have been taken against supporters of Donald Trump. The deplatforming of rightwingers from Youtube and social media was an important part of the campaign of anti-Trump measures. Jones too was deplatformed, at roughly the same time by the several companies hosting his programs, with the result that he created his own platform.

Alex Jones' past recklessness became a weapon used against him. Among the conspiracy-theories that Alex Jones invented was his contention that the spree-shooting by a schizophrenic teenager at Sandy Hook Elementary School, wherein 26 children died, was entirely fraudulent, and that the grief-stricken parents were all crisis-actors. He proclaimed this just a few hours after the event, which happened in 2012. 

In 2018, the middle of President Trump's term, a suit was filed based on Jones' statements from six years earlier. Why the wait? It seems that suing Alex Jones began to appear much more worthwhile in the interim, after he became an important ally of President Trump. It certainly looks politically motivated. In court, Jones repented of his reckless statements and declared that the Sandy Hook shooting was “100% real.” Nonetheless he was assessed on the order of $1 billion in damages, which he is not being allowed to avoid through bankruptcy. 

What Infowars Really Said about Ernst  Zündel

Based on Media Matters' report I might believe that Alex Jones has entirely abandoned his old, feverish rhetoric based on war-propaganda, and is now one of us. Media Matters implies that in that Infowars program of 1 November 2023 Alex Jones more or less adopted Ernst Zündel's position on the Holocaust. Jones showed a video that defended a Holocaust Denier, and he said that it should go viral! In reality, after watching Jones' program of that day, I can report that the good news is neither so simple nor quite so positive as Media Matters portrays. Neither Jones nor his videographer Greg Reese espoused Zündel's position on the Holocaust. In fact, Reese seems in his video not even to know what Zündel's position was.

The recurring theme within that Infowars show of 1 November 2023 was freedom of speech. This has become a special concern for Alex Jones, not only because of the suit against him for his reckless statements in 2012 and the enormous damages that he has been ordered to pay, but also because he has been banned from Twitter.

Early in the show, Jones played a clip of Elon Musk telling Joe Rogan that freedom of speech meant freedom for precisely the speech that one personally dislikes. Later, Jones, introducing Greg Reese's video about Ernst Zündel, said that it “tied in” with what Musk had said.

In the video, Greg Reese shows that he knows that Zündel's offense was to publish and distribute in Canada in 1983 Richard Harwood's booklet Did Six Million Really Die?  It seems however that Reese did not read through the booklet, because his summary of it is very poor:

“The main argument was simply challenging the number 6 million. Many others have worked out the math and concluded that 6 million would've been impossible.” 

Ernst Zündel is thus misrepresented as believing what Alex Jones believes, that the Holocaust was a real event except that the numbers are wrong. 

Reese argues that the censorship exerted upon Ernst Zündel – because of a position much less bold than what  Zündel actually said — was unjust. The video in a way defends Ernst Zündel, but it does so by misrepresenting him. It says that this quibble about numbers, much more timid than the point that Zündel actually made, is arguable.

Greg Reese's video would have been much more impressive if it had defended Ernst Zündel's right to say what he really said. Even more impressive if, on top of correctly representing him, it had said that what Ernst Zündel really said was correct.

Jones seems to have a slightly more accurate notion than Greg Reese of what Zündel actually said. He knows that Zündel was not merely quibbling about numbers. Jones admits that he himself doubts the numbers but does not deny the Holocaust or admire Hitler like Ernst Zündel. He calls Ernst Zündel  a “quack.” Jones says in effect that even a terrible person like Ernst Zündel – you see how terrible he is! – deserves freedom of speech.

That is as close as Jones came to saying anything positive about Ernst Zündel.

If it is accepted that Ernst Zündel should not be censored then surely an entirely admirable figure who vows belief in the Holocaust, as Alex Jones does, must deserve readmission to Twitter. That seems to be the thesis of the show as a whole, and it was Alex Jones' purpose in promoting Greg Reese's video, although the video was not tailored to support that point.

Greg Reese's video also says that current leftist censorship in general relies on the suppression of “Holocaust Denial” as a precedent. There may be something to this. Precedents do have some importance.

The Holocaust Hoax itself however is very clearly used as a pretext for suppressing speech. We hear that criticizing Jews (or non-White people), or even the State of Israel, must not be allowed, because then “genocide” will ensue.

That was essentially Richard Harwood's impetus for writing Did Six Million Really Die? Harwood explains that the question, “Did six million really die?” is relevant because of the uses of the Holocaust in postwar political rhetoric. The smear against Germany had become a smear against White Westerners in general (e.g. in Manvell and Frankl's 1967 book The Incomparable Crime). It was used to suppress nationalism, and therewith to suppress opposition to immigration and miscegenation. In particular Harwood seems to have been interested in the rhetoric used  to destroy Enoch Powell's prospect for becoming Prime Minister of Britain. He mentions that it was also used by the State of Israel to extort reparations from Germany.  Later he mentions Paul Rassinier's observation that the State of Israel and the Soviet Union alike exploited “the extermination legend” for “political and financial advantage.”

If the Holocaust Hoax itself is a tool for suppressing speech, then the best approach to guarding Freedom of Speech is not to insist, as Alex Jones in effect does, that liars have a right to tell lies – who can be enthusiastic about that? – but rather to persuade people that the man who was called a liar turned out to be correct: that there was no Holocaust.