132 Citizens
his discussions of the birth certificate and “death panels” as part of proposals for Obamacare.
22
With stories such as “Obama Signs Executive
Order Barring Release of His Birth Certificate” and “New Obama Birth
Certificate is a Forgery”, according to Infowars, Obama was now completely implicated in the deep state plot to subvert American freedoms by
any means necessary. Prior to his second term as the President, another
US citizen was beginning to share similar concerns: as Donald Trump
told Good Morning America, he was himself “sceptical” about Obama’s
citizenship.
23
The combination of birtherism and greater hostility to Islam with
the rise of Islamic State seems to have resulted in a shift towards rhetoric that was increasingly sympathetic to sectors of the white supremacy
movement in the United States, but it was with his broadcasts on the
Sandy Hook shooting that Jones demonstrated the true toxicity of his
brand of conspiracy theory. The murder of 20 children between the
ages of six and seven years, and six adults at the elementary school in
Newton, Connecticut, by Adam Lanza on December 14, 2012, was
the largest mass school shooting at the time. The event led to renewed
calls for gun control, and Jones and Infowars entered the debate with
what would prove to be a particularly potent conspiracy theory: that
there was no shooting at the school, but that instead the whole event
had been performed by “crisis actors” to push through gun control
legislation. From early 2013 onwards, the site began publishing stories with titles such as “Sandy Hook AR-15 hoax? Still no school surveillance footage released”
24
and “FBI says no one killed at Sandy
Hook”.
25
In 2015, the site included a bizarre and grotesque conversation between contributor Rob Drew and his uncle, “a former FBI
agent famous for investigating the Mafia”, who demonstrated the alleged inconsistencies in the story that were pored over by conspiracy
theorists.
26
A decade earlier, Jones had regularly hosted stories that
argued 9-11 was an inside job; yet, the reaction to Sandy Hook was
much more extreme, including harassment of the parents of children
killed at Sandy Hook who were forced to move repeatedly because of
threats against them, which they alleged were caused by stories carried
on Infowars. Certainly, the site had gained a considerable following
in the intervening years: by 2015, Donald Trump appeared on The
Alex Jones Show in which the presidential candidate told his host that
he had an “amazing reputation”.
27
That Infowars stories also seemed
to inspire the audience to direct action seemed confirmed in the case
of Edgar Maddison Welch, a regular watcher of Jones’s show who,
in December 2016, entered the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in
Washington, D.C. with an AR-15, determined to release victims of
the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which it was claimed
that the pizzeria was the site of a child-sex trafficking ring run by senior Democrats. “Pizzagate” was discredited easily, but the fact that
his discussions of the birth certificate and “death panels” as part of proposals for Obamacare.
22
With stories such as “Obama Signs Executive
Order Barring Release of His Birth Certificate” and “New Obama Birth
Certificate is a Forgery”, according to Infowars, Obama was now completely implicated in the deep state plot to subvert American freedoms by
any means necessary. Prior to his second term as the President, another
US citizen was beginning to share similar concerns: as Donald Trump
told Good Morning America, he was himself “sceptical” about Obama’s
citizenship.
23
The combination of birtherism and greater hostility to Islam with
the rise of Islamic State seems to have resulted in a shift towards rhetoric that was increasingly sympathetic to sectors of the white supremacy
movement in the United States, but it was with his broadcasts on the
Sandy Hook shooting that Jones demonstrated the true toxicity of his
brand of conspiracy theory. The murder of 20 children between the
ages of six and seven years, and six adults at the elementary school in
Newton, Connecticut, by Adam Lanza on December 14, 2012, was
the largest mass school shooting at the time. The event led to renewed
calls for gun control, and Jones and Infowars entered the debate with
what would prove to be a particularly potent conspiracy theory: that
there was no shooting at the school, but that instead the whole event
had been performed by “crisis actors” to push through gun control
legislation. From early 2013 onwards, the site began publishing stories with titles such as “Sandy Hook AR-15 hoax? Still no school surveillance footage released”
24
and “FBI says no one killed at Sandy
Hook”.
25
In 2015, the site included a bizarre and grotesque conversation between contributor Rob Drew and his uncle, “a former FBI
agent famous for investigating the Mafia”, who demonstrated the alleged inconsistencies in the story that were pored over by conspiracy
theorists.
26
A decade earlier, Jones had regularly hosted stories that
argued 9-11 was an inside job; yet, the reaction to Sandy Hook was
much more extreme, including harassment of the parents of children
killed at Sandy Hook who were forced to move repeatedly because of
threats against them, which they alleged were caused by stories carried
on Infowars. Certainly, the site had gained a considerable following
in the intervening years: by 2015, Donald Trump appeared on The
Alex Jones Show in which the presidential candidate told his host that
he had an “amazing reputation”.
27
That Infowars stories also seemed
to inspire the audience to direct action seemed confirmed in the case
of Edgar Maddison Welch, a regular watcher of Jones’s show who,
in December 2016, entered the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in
Washington, D.C. with an AR-15, determined to release victims of
the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which it was claimed
that the pizzeria was the site of a child-sex trafficking ring run by senior Democrats. “Pizzagate” was discredited easily, but the fact that