Alex Jones BBC Video: Sunday Politics Disruption Proves He's Ruining the Conservative Movement

Just because tin-foil hats are rightfully becoming a standard addition to the American wardrobe amidst the scandals, it does not mean that we need to divert attention to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

For those of you who have not encountered the infamous Alex Jones, he is a radio show host, filmmaker, author, and runs websites InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com with more than 250 million YouTube channel views.

The left can and has hijacked the conversation and made conservatives appear crazy by bringing Jones to the podium to supposedly speak for the rest of us on issues that concern the right. That does irreparable harm to libertarians, conservatives, and the overall cause.

If you’re in the media or sharing your views on PolicyMic, please do stop using him to voice certain perspectives. I see some more temptation for this due to debate about PRISM.

By virtue of the plague of scandals infecting the Obama administration, many members of the left-wing media will give Alex Jones the right’s microphone to voice his opinion on issues that many of us conservatives believe to be important. If you don’t believe me, check out what Media Matters does to lump anyone in favor gun rights into the same box of crazies like Alex Jones.

Not long after Sandy Hook, the left’s counterpart of Alex Jones, Piers Morgan, took a cheap shot (pun intended) at gun rights advocates by giving Jones a pedestal substantially larger than InfoWars.com to spew his conspiracy theory rants.

The College Republican National Committee released a report last week which has shown that many people view the leaders of the Republican Party to be “media personalities;” contrasted with leaders of the Democratic Party which tend to be elected officials (see page 80 in the report). While I think it would be a stretch to align Jones with the GOP, I do see cause for worry when many might falsely associate him with anyone right of center and consequently make many of seem crazy.

For the sake of the right and future of any possible Republican party, the right needs to stop allowing the media to use Alex Jones and others like him, as examples of right wing pundits. 

Conspiracy theorists like Jones are called conspiracy theorist, for good reason (well, maybe I’ll be proven wrong by this week’s upcoming scandal), because they hold fringe opinions and subscribe to far-fetched realities. Maybe they are correct about some things, but for the most part, we need to take their words with a grain of salt.

Let’s stop putting him in the lime light and start taking control of who we allow to speak for us. If Piers Morgan or others bring him up to address gun control issues, we should not be afraid to be loud and say, “He does not speak for me — he just happens to fall on a vaguely similar side of the left/right divide.”

In Jones’ defense, if I had heard of some mystery program called PRISM (which sounds way too much like some fictional movie plot focus than a real program), I probably would have said “yea, uh-huh … sure Jonesey.”

As fellow PolicyMic-er Mike Montafia has pointed out, some of the things discussed by Jones have panned out to be big stories. He spoke of a PRISM-like system, the problems with Monsanto, and raised plenty of objections to drone warfare long before Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster. 

A major problem facing InfoWars is that there are plenty of stories that never came to fruition … yet (who knows what Obama scandals will hit the front pages soon enough). He essentially cries wolf every chance he gets. This causes him to lose credibility amongst many circles.

On Sunday, BBC had Jones on their Sunday Politics show in which he exhibited yet another one of his emotional and nonsensical demonstrations. This most recent footage of his outrageous behavior is now one of my personal favorites. If you want to see what I’m talking about, take a look at the video below.

Come on everyone — let him do his thing, take note when he does something actually noteworthy, but don’t keep letting him speak on behalf of the right. He does not speak for me and as a conservative-libertarian; I don’t need to defend him.