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DisInfo Wars: An Example of the Dangerous Bullsh*t Peddled by Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson

We need to talk about Alex.

We here at the Daily Grail are no strangers to ‘alternative’ news – it is, after all, pretty much, the site’s raison d’être: to keep our eyes on the fringes of the current paradigm, looking for new and interesting ideas (although we’re happy to stop and have a laugh together at some of the stranger things out there too).

And, having been in this website business for 20 years, we have an understanding of the prime techniques used to build a big, loyal audience, and make money off the back of it – and we have strenuously avoided them at all costs. Because those techniques are awful:

1) Appeal to your core audience’s belief systems/ideologies by constantly reinforcing them, and casting yourself as the leading promoter and defender of those beliefs.

2) Keep your audience in constant fear that people opposed to their ideology and beliefs are coming for them, in order to keep them ‘huddled under your wing’.

3) Use sensationalism and outright fiction to reinforce #1 and #2, in order that you have amazing content that nobody else does.

We see these techniques regularly in other sites in the ‘fringe’ world, and one of the worst abusers of them through the years has been InfoWars.com. But in the last few years, awful exploitation has turned into – in our opinion – something more dangerous.

Disinfo Whores

Let’s look at a single example as illustration – although, in reality, you could have a full-time job analysing the problems with InfoWars content. Last week, InfoWars published an article written by Paul Joseph Watson, who has in recent years quite successfully stepped out of the shadow of his mentor Alex Jones (PJW now has 885,000 followers on Twitter – 60,000 more than Jones himself).

The article’s title is “REVEALED: UN PLAN TO FLOOD AMERICA WITH 600 MILLION MIGRANTS”, with a sub-title reading “By 2050, 73% of population would be immigrants or their descendents”. It is based on a U.N. strategy document that looks at the looming problems associated with ageing populations around the world, and whether migration could help alleviate some of those.

600 million migrants pouring into America by 2050! Those are, as Watson says on his Twitter account, “absolutely crazy numbers”, and surely can’t be real? But, yes, America is about to be flooded with migrants because, according to the InfoWars article, the UN strategy paper says that…

…mass migration to the west is needed for governments to maintain “many established economic, social and political policies and programmes”.

The strategy document sets out six potential scenarios for each country or region of the world necessary to meet this goal.

Under the most severe scenario, large numbers of migrants will be required to “maintain the potential support ratio” (of a population) at the highest level.

Paul Joseph Watson tweet, as usual complete bullshit

What InfoWars and Watson don’t tell you, in the article, or in their tweets, is that the U.N. strategy document quite clearly also says that ‘Scenario 6’ – which forms the basis for the InfoWars article – is not a viable plan!

This scenario is clearly not realistic; therefore, immigration cannot prevent ageing of the population.

So why did the U.N. even include that scenario, InfoWars readers will no doubt respond, unless the U.N. was really sending a coded message to the Globalist elite letting them know the secret plan they need to pursue, amirite?

Actually, that too is explained in the document: each of the scenarios was simply based around mathematically matching various benchmarks and/or targets to see what numbers were produced – in the case of Scenario 6, the “crazy numbers” are a result of that scenario being ‘tasked’ with figuring out what level of migration would be needed to continue to match 1995 levels:

Scenario VI keeps the potential support ratio at its 1995 level, which was 4.3 for the European Union, 4.8 for Europe, 4.1 in Italy and the United Kingdom, 5.6 in the Russian Federation and 12.6 in the Republic of Korea. The total number of migrants needed to keep the potential support ratio constant until 2050 is extremely large in all countries.

It is on the basis of these figures that the paper then notes that “Scenario VI is clearly not realistic”. Furthermore, in the conclusion, it notes that:

Such high levels of migration have not been observed in the past for any of these countries or regions. Moreover, it seems extremely unlikely that such flows could happen in these countries in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it appears inevitable that the populations of the low-fertility countries will age rapidly in the twenty-first century.

As a result, rather than proposing a flood of migrants into the U.S. and Europe, the strategy paper actually dismisses it as an option, then discusses other possible solutions for dealing with the problem of an ageing population, such as the (admittedly also rather unpalatable) idea of raising the ‘working-age span’.

In fact, contrary to Watson’s claim that the U.N. was going to carelessly flood America with migrants, not only does the paper say that scenario isn’t feasible, it even takes care to note that “international migration can provide countries of destination with needed human resources and talent, but may also give rise to social tensions”, and as such “effective international migration policies must therefore take into account the impact on both the host society and countries of origin”.

In short, the InfoWars article is *complete rubbish*, fear-mongering claptrap that demonizes migrants and the U.N. Now, Paul Joseph Watson quite obviously can read, and I know he can interpret things correctly when it suits his purposes. So he’s not ignorant: which makes articles like this even worse, because he obviously knows he is peddling bullshit to readers – but does it anyhow.

(It’s also a shame he turns this into an awful fear-mongering exercise against the UN and migrants, when the paper has a lot of points worth discussing about the serious issues we face in the near future related to a massive, ageing population.)

Actions Have Consequences

Why is this important? Because readers of websites trust you as an information source, and often don’t read the original documents. And a quick browse of the InfoWars comments section (*shudder*) makes clear that all those ‘woke’ folk didn’t read it, because there’s just a whole lotta racism and anti-U.N. talk.

Instead, Watson and InfoWars have simply used those three points I mentioned earlier, to reinforce people’s beliefs, set up an enemy, and employ misinformation to turn a sensible strategy paper into some grand conspiracy by the U.N. to flood America with brown people.

And it’s this latter part that is the most disturbing to me. There is no shortage of unethical websites using these techniques. But InfoWars headlines, and the Twitter feeds of Jones and Watson, have become a straight-up cascade of fear-porn, all about keeping their readers in a perpetual state of terror that everyone (though mostly ‘Globalists’, brown people, and liberals) is out to get them. And it has been pushing these agendas so hard that it has, in my eyes, now moved into the realm of hate speech and incitement to violence against others – we are not far off the moment when people might be killed by an InfoWars fan.

Just taking a look under the article I’ve referenced reveals comments such as “Violent civil war is coming. We are preparing in socal to fight the ((Globalists)) and the invaders.”, and “Gonna take a lot of ammo to reduce the number of immigrants to something sustainable…..like zero.”

How many of these people are willing to step beyond being just ‘keyboard warriors’? Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six men at a mosque in Quebec in 2017, reportedly checked the Twitter accounts of Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson regularly in the weeks before his shooting rampage. And there is the very real case of the ‘Pizzagate’ gunman who entered a pizza store and fired his weapon after becoming enraged by a conspiracy pushed by Alex Jones about an alleged pedophilia ring in Washington D.C. headed up by Hillary Clinton and John Podesta (I have seen no shortage of comments on various sites about finding Podesta and killing him, purely on the basis of this conspiracy theory.)

What you write has consequences, and the awful stream of hate-filled lies that is constantly being produced by InfoWars (why, simply for money?) is contemptible and dangerous. Unfortunately though, it is a website that now has huge reader numbers, and as such has introduced a pathological mind virus of racism, irrational conspiracism, and possible future violence into the population. I genuinely fear what the end result of their awfulness is going to be.

Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and everyone else at InfoWars should be ashamed of who they are and what they do. They are a disgrace.

Editor
  1. Thanks for this.

    Lack of critical thinking skills, media illiteracy and tribalism are perennial problems in the world. The “Information Age’ has put all three on steroids. Throw in the fact that a large segment of the American public are in real economic distress due to decades of stagnant wage growth, rising inequality and a weakening social safety net… we are flirting with a “perfect storm” for our Democratic free society.

    -Jimmy Breslin (Pulitzer Prize for being a “Champion of ordinary citizens”) had this to say about a NYC real estate developer way back in 1989-
    “Beware the loudmouth taking advantage of the situation and appealing to a crowd’s meanest nature.”

    Hopefully what we are witnessing is an “extinction burst event” for a trend in American Politics and not for our country at large.

  2. “One And Done” journalism
    https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/trump-the-ny-times-and-fake-news/

    “I thought I’d boil a few things down and simplify them for AG Sulzberger, the 37-year-old publisher of the Times.

    He and his paper are fake for several reasons—one is, they don’t follow up on their own best stories. It’s called continuing investigation—and they don’t do it. It’s their duty, and they are grossly derelict.

    Two examples, both from the spring of 2015. On April 23, the Times ran a story under the headline: “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” The piece made an excellent circumstantial case for Hillary and Bill as key players in a criminal scheme to sell 20% of US uranium to Putin.

    But…no serious follow up. No deeper investigation. No pressure on the players. Just one and done.”

  3. http://www.neonnettle.com/news/4663-hollywood-director-claims-obama-aided-child-traffickers

    “Entertainment industry executive Booyens, who also directed “8 Days,” which is a movie based on true stories of victims of sex trafficking, says former President Barack Obama refused to help fight the problem, effectively aiding child traffickers to continue unchallenged. According to Booyens, since Trump took office, the president has been “very active” in working with his organisation to tackle child trafficking, while Obama appeared to nurture the problem.

    © Neon Nettle

  4. “Satanism” and all the other toy cults festooned over centers of power are essentially theatrical covers for control. This is not just Hollywood. Governments have become Hollywoods as well.

  5. Thanks very much for this. Reinforces certain things I’ve been noticing more and more. I’m becoming regularly disappointed by how narrow minded, sexist, racist, and cruel many of these “woke” folk are on a variety of forums and platforms… here’s another example: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13665918#13665918 While reading about the healing possibilities of psychedelics I came across this… it seems no matter how many mind expanding substances a person takes you can’t magic away prejudice! Made me feel truly ill. I’m glad I read the Daily Grail. The fringe news site by creators who seem to be not only decent human beings, but excellent ones!

  6. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that gravitate towards people like Jones and their nonsense. I’m just waiting for lawsuits to overwhelm Alex.

  7. “Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.”
    John W. Gardner

    “The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
    Alan Moore

    “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
    G.K. Chesterton

          1. If if doesn’t matter “whether I voted for him or not” then why did you make such an assumption and bring it up in the first place?

  8. Critical thinking and wide reading is the solution, not censorship that is every bit as fascist as the cretinous bloviation of Jones is claimed to be. Because its all about who decides and why. Just as soon as you say it’s okay to suppress some thought but not “preferred” ideas and views, I guarantee it will be used against you in a way you did not foresee and will not like.

  9. When I see a clown, I call it as I see it and move on.
    I just don’t see ‘danger’ here.
    To build an attack against oddities like this guy are a service TO him. Bad idea.
    There is danger in an organized scorched earth policy based on lies.
    Whatever you think of the commander in chief – he is no Adolph. Read history.
    What ever assault on freedom you think is happening it is nothing compared to Stalin, or Mao, or or the suspension of various rights in a time of war here in the the USA.
    People need to read and understand history and news organizations need to hire decent editors.

  10. I am simply doing what everyone else is doing here – they are either supporting the censorship of ideas with which they do not agree, or they are like me providing evidence of such pervasive censorship that goes way beyond “Alex Jones.”
    This is all within the bounds of the original topic. The very nature of the topic demands responses in kind.

  11. Do you mean that all messages here that aren’t “solicited” are annoying?
    Most of my messages are citations of what you would call “batshit crazy” Alex Jones type conspiracy theories but with more detail about the theory. I had to assume you weren’t expecting everyone in the reply section to be going along for the house ride without some objection – samples provided.

    I have been hanging around TDG for years and replying to posts promiscuously if the subject inspires. I have never in all that time been accused of “spamming.”

    1. No…that you post “promiscuously” as you put it. I’m trying to find the common ground in your posts but the noise to signal ratio is daunting. At any rate I find your claim interesting that you have been here for years. I don’t ever recall seeing your handle or any story with numerous posts as you have been sending recently. I have been here for over ten years.

      As far as Alex Jones goes….The right to speech is a government issue in that your right to free speech shall not be restricted by them. Nothing to say about private companies deciding they don’t like the speech he’s spewing. He has the right to the consequences of what he says and Apple, Spotify et al have spoken.

  12. Ask “Red Pill Junkie” how long I have been here and how much I used to post. Haven’t been posting recently because was disgruntled with site as it was reconfigured last year.

    I rarely read Alex Jones’ site by the way because his explications are tangled and just well…”loud.” Like a lot of mainstream news desks the clamor and clanging in the studio is just too damn childish, plus Jones always looks like he is about to have a heart attack. I don’t need to be looking at that. AJ is often cited as a typical espouser of certain conspiracies. I take great issue with that, but TDG has a habit of holding him up to ridicule as though he epitomizes the conspiracy research community which is just actually a community of real journalists doing their journalism. That’s why I opened with the Youtube journalist George Webb. He has rooted out in great detail some of the most hair-raising conspiracies of our day.
    https://www.youtube.com/user/georgwebb/videos

    And I regard as just plain silly the popular co-opting of the word “conspiracy” to ineluctably mean wacky. The now pejorative “conspiracy theorist” is one of those disingenuous conventions of thought peculiar to our times. An historian would find that debasement of definition and usage intolerable.

    “Conspiracy (civil), an agreement between people to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage
    Conspiracy (criminal), an agreement between people to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement
    Conspiracy (political), an agreement between people with the goal of gaining political power or meeting a political objective
    Hub-and-spoke conspiracy, a conspiracy in which one or more principal conspirators (the “hub”) enter into several similar agreements with others (the “spokes”) who know concerted action is contemplated, usually where the success of the concerted action depends on the participation of the other spokes

    1. Fair enough…My apologies as I appear to have misinterpreted your posts.

      I agree with your feelings on the word “conspiracy”. There are many real conspiracies throughout history that ended up being quite accurate. If there is one thing I’ve learned from my time on this planet so far is that authority always needs to be question as to its validity..and it will and has usurped that authority countless times.

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