Background and career
Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist. Since at least 2000, he has hosted The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas, originally broadcast by the Genesis Communications Network across the United States via AM radio syndication and internet. He is the founder of Infowars and Banned.Video, websites that promote conspiracy theories and fake news. Jones is regarded as one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists in the U.S. Among many other conspiracy theories, Jones has alleged that the United States government either concealed information about or outright falsified the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Parkland high school shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the September 11 attacks. He has also claimed that several governments and large businesses have colluded to create a globalist "New World Order" through "manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria". Jones has provided a platform for white nationalists and neo-Nazis on his website Banned.Video, as well as providing an "entry point" to their ideology. A longtime critic of Republican and Democratic foreign and security policy, Jones supported Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid and continued to support him as a savior from an alleged criminal bipartisan cabal controlling the federal government, despite also falling out with Trump over several of his policies, including airstrikes against the Assad regime. A staunch supporter of Trump's re-election, Jones also supported the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. On January 6, 2021, Jones was a speaker at the rally in Lafayette Square Park supporting Trump that preceded the latter's supporters' attack on the US Capitol. In 2026, Jones once again fell out with Trump over his disagreements with the Iran war, criticizing the intervention as contrary to the "America First" message. In October 2022, for Jones's defamatory falsehoods about the Sandy Hook shooting, juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded a total of $1.487 billion in damages from Jones to a first responder and families of victims; the plaintiffs alleged that Jones's lies led to them being threatened and harassed for years. On December 2, 2022, Jones filed for personal bankruptcy. After three years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Jones's appeal without comment.
Alexander Emerick Jones was born on February 11, 1974, in Dallas, Texas, and was raised in Rockwall, 25 miles (40 km) east of Dallas. His father was a dentist from Austin and his mother was a homemaker. He says he has English, German, Scottish, and Irish descent. The family moved to Austin in Jones's second year of high school. He attended Anderson High School, where he played football and graduated in 1993. After graduating, Jones briefly attended Austin Community College before dropping out. As a teenager, he read None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a book by John Birch Society conspiracy theorist Gary Allen, which alleged global bankers, rather than elected officials, controlled American politics. It had a profound influence on him, and Jones has described Allen's work as "the easiest-to-read primer on The New World Order".
The Waco siege at the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas, had an impact on Jones. It ended in April 1993, near the end of Jones's senior year of high school, with a substantial fire and a significant number of fatalities. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these events "only confirmed his belief in the inexorable progress of unseen, malevolent forces". It was at this time he started to host a call-in show on public access television (PACT/ACTV) in Austin. The Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, was intended by perpetrator Timothy McVeigh as a response to the federal involvement in the botched resolution of the Waco siege on its second anniversary. Jones began accusing the federal government of having caused it: "I understood there's a kleptocracy working with psychopathic governments—clutches of evil that know the tricks of control". He did not believe the bombing had been the responsibility of McVeigh and his associate Terry Nichols. In 1998, Jones organized a successful campaign to build a new Branch Davidian church as a memorial to those who died during the 1993 fire. He often discussed the project on his public-access television program. He claimed that David Koresh and his followers were peaceful people who were murdered by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during the siege.
Jones began his career in Austin working on a live, call-in format public-access cable television program. In 1996, Jones switched to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9 FM). Influenced by radio host William Cooper, who phoned in to Jones's early shows, Jones began to broadcast about the New World Order conspiracy theory at this time. While running for Congress, Ron Paul was a guest on his show several times. In 1999, Jones tied with Shannon Burke for that year's poll of "Best Austin Talk Radio Host", as voted by readers of The Austin Chronicle. Later that year, he was fired from KJFK-FM for refusing to broaden his topics. The station's operations manager said that Jones's views made it difficult for the station to sell advertising. Jones said:
It was purely political, and it came down from on high ... I was told 11 weeks ago to lay off Bill Clinton, to lay off all these politicians, to not talk about rebuilding the church, to stop bashing the Marines, A to Z.
In 1999, Jones founded with his wife, Kelly Jones, the website InfoWars, initially as a mail-order outlet for the sale of their conspiracy-oriented videos. Jones used the company to release films, such as America Destroyed by Design and America Wake Up Or Waco. Over time, InfoWars, with Jones as its publisher and director, became a prominent fake news website centered on promoting conspiracy theories. In November 2016, the InfoWars website received approximately 10 million visits, making its reach more extensive than mainstream news websites such as The Economist and Newsweek. Jones's used to run PrisonPlanet.com, which is now owned by an online casino.
