Right Wing Frenzies, Deep in the Sewers of Texas
Conspiracist Alex Jones, CPAC Speakers Included in the Effluent
In Austin, Conspiracy impresario Alex Jones is finally getting payback for the frenzied fear he’s unleashed on ordinary Americans who’ve served as collateral damage along the way to earning him tens of millions of dollars.
And, as a bonus, the blabbermouth’s cell phone text messages were accidentally (ok, probably on purpose) released for the January 6 committee and any Justice Department investigators looking to document his role as an enabler for the seditious activities of domestic extremists.
In Dallas, the right wing circus, otherwise known as CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), got underway with a heroic welcome for Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The opening day lineup included Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Dear Leader Trump has been invited to give the assembled convention goers a sendoff this weekend, and I would not be surprised to see him tiptoe a lot closer to the act of declaring his candidacy for the 2024 presidential contest.
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Let’s start with Alex Jones, the low rent twenty-first century version of Rush Limbaugh.
Although he is banned on most media platforms, he has claimed that his InfoWars webcasts reach as many as 80 million people. His claims about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School are a big part of his rise, although there has been no major historical event dating back to the 1993 violent standoff at the Waco Texas Branch Davidian complex, where Jones hasn’t promulgated one or more conspiracy theories.
Telling lies about people has been a very profitable business, and this week saw a Texas jury award the parents of a child killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than $4 million in compensatory damages.
Here’s Oliver Darcy at CNN:
The decision to punish Jones in such terms also comes at a seismic moment in American society, where the lies and conspiracy theories have flourished in recent years.
The jury's decision, while far lower than what the plaintiffs' attorneys had asked for, sends a message to those who propel lies into the public conversation, whether for political power or financial gain, that there can be consequences for such behavior.
"Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for," the Sandy Hook family attorneys argued to the jury during their opening statements and closing arguments.
This is the first time Jones has been held financially liable for defaming the victims’ parents by spreading lies that they were complicit in a government plot to stage the shooting as a pretext for gun control. There are more damages to be awarded, including awarding punitive damages to the parents, Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin.
A total of 10 Sandy Hook have sued Jones with two suits in Texas, home base of Infowars, and one in Connecticut, where the shooting occurred. Although he finally admitted that the shooting was real in 2019, he has continued to spread misinformation about the parents.
Jones has already lost all three cases by default judgment; the trials are about determining how much money will be paid to the survivors.
The conspiracist has burned through ten lawyers, and it could be argued that lawyer number eleven was just getting even for all the antics Jones has forced him and his predecessors to endure. .
Here’s Aja Romano at Vox:
After spending years refusing to disclose documents, Jones’s lawyers last week inadvertently sent the prosecution the entire contents of Jones’s phone, including years of texts and emails. This led to a bombshell courtroom reveal from the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mark Bankston, on Wednesday, the final day of arguments in the case.
“Did you know that 12 days ago, your attorney messed up and sent me a digital copy of your entire cellphone with every text message you have sent for the past two years?” Bankston asked Jones. “That is how I know you lied to me.”
Bankston alleged that Jones’s lawyer, F. Andino Reynal — who is the 11th attorney Jones has had in the case thus far — had inadvertently sent Bankston the entire contents of Jones’s phone, apparently failed to realize he had done so, and thus did not place any protective measures around the disclosure of their contents. A stunned Jones in response called the revelation Bankston’s “Perry Mason moment.”
The phone records revealed evidence that Infowars, contrary to Jones’s repeated assertions, actually became more financially profitable after the company was permanently deplatformed from every major social media platform in 2018. During peak periods, Jones acknowledged, the Infowars merchandise outlet sometimes makes as much as $800,000 a day, which could add up to more than $300 million annually. (On cross-examination, Reynal asked Jones if he thought his lawyers were doing a good job. Jones said yes.)
The phone blunder may even have revealed information potentially relevant to the planning of the January 6 insurrection, and the January 6 committee reportedly plans to subpoena Jones’s phone now that the records have been made public. Jones has known ties to the ringleaders of several militia groups and others involved in the Capitol invasion, and the committee subpoenaed Jones as early as November 2021 for his role in the action.
Smacking down Alex Jones may have some benefit in that it amounts to a bully getting his just desserts. But I’m not sure any amount of money will compensate for Jones’s content validating individual paranoia at the root of the extremist right these days. It’s the same paranoia shared by a staggering number of Americans who’ve been captured by a false reality that includes increasingly elaborate theories of election hoaxes and pedophile rings.
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CPAC gatherings are the granddaddy of the current wave of right wing events, which have evolved from intellectuals debating policy while keeping extremists at arm’s length, to a hi-tech multimedia circus with those same extremists occupying the center ring.
Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones has been on this beat longer than most::
When I first started covering conservative conferences, in 2009, the options consisted mainly of the annual Values Voter Summit, sponsored by the evangelical Family Research Council, and the then-annual CPAC. Now there are dozens of events, and they reflect how the GOP marketplace incentivizes and rewards the worst actors the party has on offer, and distills it to a roux of disinformation and commercial opportunity for all who participate.
Just a small sampling of the summer ’22 offerings: In June, AMPFest held a new extravaganza in California, branded as a MAGA Coachella. That same weekend, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Lara Trump were lighting up 2,500 conservative students in Dallas at the Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summit. Two weeks later, Ralph Reed, one of the original whiz kids of the religious right, hosted his Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference at the Opryland Resort in Nashville, starring Donald Trump, with a roster of special guests that commingled Republican members of Congress with anti-vaccine activists such as Stella Immanuel (the Texas doctor who believes some gynecological problems are caused by having sex with demons), and, yet again, McEnany. In late July, Trump appeared at TPUSA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, with Don Jr., Gaetz, and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). McEnany was there too.
The September lineup offers the Truth & Liberty Coalition Conference in Colorado, starring Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and the Family Research Council’s new Pray Vote Stand event. Taking into account the various anti-vaccine conventions, Trump’s American Freedom Tour, and Flynn’s ReAwaken America tour—held at megachurches and showcasing conspiracy theorists, QAnon devotees, and MyPillow’s Mike Lindell—a partisan could attend a spectacle every other weekend.
Minor league events, like those featuring Trumpanistas Gen. Mike Flynn and Pillow Guy Mike Lindell, have become increasingly popular, involving evangelical churches (like San Diego’s Awaken congregations) and serving as recruiting grounds for militant extremists.
The Washington Post reporters covering the CPAC event described it as “a Trump rally with a Hungarian accent.”
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has consolidated autocratic power with hard-right opposition to immigration and liberal democracy, addressed a crowd of thousands of American admirers in Dallas on Thursday with a red-meat speech that could have easily been delivered by any Republican candidate on the campaign trail this year.
Orban presented the two countries as twin fronts in a struggle against common enemies he described as globalists, progressives, communists and “fake news.”
“The West is at war with itself,” Orban said. “The globalist can all go to hell. I have come to Texas,” he added, stumbling over a famous slogan attributed to Texas legend Davy Crockett.
The speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) went ahead despite Orban’s latest controversy: a speech in which he railed against Europe becoming “mixed race,” saying that Europeans did not want to live with people from outside the continent. One of his own close advisers resigned in protest, calling the speech “pure Nazi.”
Here’s a snip from Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic:
Many American conservatives, particularly those aligned with Donald Trump, admire Orbán for how flippantly he treats his opposition, the media, and other “globalists” and “cosmopolitans.” The Orbán style of politics involves pissing off the right people—elites, liberal city folks—to appeal to his base. (Sound familiar?)
Orbán’s American fans also appreciate his rhetoric about protecting Western civilization, and they see him as a champion for social conservatism. “If Trumpism is a political religion, Budapest is their new Rome,” William Galston, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank the Brookings Institution, told me. “Viktor Orbán really is their beau ideal of a national conservative leader.”
Earlier this year, CPAC leaders actually held a conference in Budapest. Tucker Carlson hosted his Fox show from there for a week. And today, Orbán gave CPAC’s keynote speech in America. “This war is a culture war,” he said, kicking off the event. “The only thing we Hungarians can do is show you how to fight back by our own rules.” Orbán went on to describe how Hungary prevents migrants from entering illegally, upholds traditional gender norms and heterosexual marriage, and stays true to “Judeo-Christian values.”
America and Hungary are not the same. We have two different systems of government and two different constitutions. (Hungary’s constitution, crucially, is easier to change.) But Orbán’s American fans are attempting to learn from his leadership and implement its lessons here. Experts watching this unfold already see parallels in how Republicans have attempted to replace election officials with party loyalists, submit fake slates of electors, and tweak election rules.
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And, now, let’s look at where those values on the right come from:
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com