Alex Jones Doesn't Deserve Your Concern

From Esquire

The most surreal part of Alex Jones' show is the rapid-fire volley of whacked-out theories he no longer feels it's necessary to explain or justify. The InfoWars canon has so many layers of conspiratorial nonsense that claims like the government put fluoride in tap water to "turn the friggin' frogs gay" or that Hillary Clinton is suffering from seemingly every disease in the medical textbooks and also is operating a high-level pedophile ring are considered settled fact. There's no time for evidence: the globalists are trying to establish a New World Order!

But it appears Jones' methods have finally hit a snag. Apple banned five InfoWars podcasts from its platform Sunday, and other tech giants quickly followed suit.

It's intriguing that the platforms cited hate speech, not misinformation and propaganda, as reason to ban Jones' programming. While consistently peddling false information with no regard for evidence or fact is a public menace, it's also the purview of the current US president. (Donald Trump has appeared on InfoWars and praised Jones' "amazing" reputation.) Plus, it's a tougher case than these platforms simply saying Jones is using them to spread conspiratorial hate that leads to real-world harassment.

After all, while we've often laughed at Jones' gorilla-on-speed antics, his conspiracy-mongering has led to some of the ugliest incidents in recent American history. That's at least according to the families of Sandy Hook victims, who have filed a lawsuit against Jones. They've accused him of defamation for his years-long crusade suggesting the mass shooting was a "false flag" operation the government carried out to seize Americans' guns. The implication is that the six-year-old child these parents had to bury did not actually die-that these people enduring the worst pain imaginable are actors, and that their pain is not real.

Even worse: Jones has attracted a predictably unstable following. Some of these followers have brought it upon themselves to travel to Newtown, Connecticut, to harass victims' families in person. They have been calling them and harassing them online for longer and more often. The plight of one victim's parents was detailed in The New York Times:

They cannot visit their son's grave. They have moved seven times. This is happening to them because Jones will not stop telling his supporters that the death of their six-year-old, who was shot to death in his school with a military-grade weapon, is a hoax.

Oh, and Jones, who's made a fortune peddling snake-oil supplements and other products that conveniently cure ailments conjured up by Jones' own conspiracies, is trying to get $100,000 from Pozner's parents. Jones considers himself a man of God.

While even speech as ugly as Jones' is protected under the First Amendment, this is not a First Amendment issue. The government cannot curtail Jones' free speech, but companies like Google or Facebook can ban him from using their platforms. Catherine Padhi at the Lawfare blog explained why Facebook likely has, based on prior case law, protected power to moderate speech on its platform based on the content of that speech. An unmoderated Facebook would likely devolve into an unconscionable cesspool, which would pose a threat to the core functions of the enterprise.

Now, there are legitimate questions about when companies as big as these should exercise their power to ban voices from their platforms. But it's clear that some speech-ISIS recruitment materials, for instance, or accounts linked to the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer-has long been verboten. The question is where's the line.

These companies decided this week that it lies before the territory where you continually spark harassment of bereaved parents, or regularly declare-with no shortage of glee-that we are on the brink of civil war, or push a pedophilia conspiracy theory that a deranged fan cites after firing a gun in a Washington, D.C. pizza parlour. (Or, in a more cynical reading, they decided the political cost of putting up with InfoWars had outweighed the financial benefits. After all, it wasn't long ago they were making principled arguments for keeping Jones around.)

There are already a number of slippery slope arguments popping up, with some suggesting the future of all conservative media is now in doubt. But it's a very long slope indeed from InfoWars to anything resembling a legitimate news organisation. When The Wall Street Journal editorial page starts spouting conspiracies that its readers cite when storming restaurants with a gun, we'll have grave problems indeed.

Meanwhile, Jones and InfoWars have access to their audience through an app that's still available in the Apple store, as well as through their home website. Jones was live there today. They're also still on Twitter, which has long been criticised for failing to tamp down on harassment and hate speech. More to the point, there are a seemingly endless array of outlets that traffic in the same kind of conspiracy-mongering, misinformation, propaganda, and worse. The US First Amendment does not guarantee everyone a megaphone with which to spout their free speech, and that is what the tech big boys have seized from Jones. Considering the same Alex Jones has advocated for the military to arrest people who protest against the president-an actual First Amendment catastrophe-and occasionally admitted his whole act is "performance art" anyway, perhaps our concern might be better directed elsewhere.

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