Hatewatch Releases Analysis
of the Alex Jones Texts
WASHINGTON — (SPLC) - 2/15/2023 — A new series of investigative reporting released this month by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Hatewatch offers a glimpse into the life of extremist entrepreneur Alex Jones and the destructive business he operates of selling bigotry and disinformation to people in America.
“Alex Jones portrays himself as someone who has all the answers. His text messages show him to be someone completely different. He's lost. He's completely paranoid. He goes to great lengths to try and control others as the walls close in on him,” said SPLC Senior Investigative Reporter Michael Edison Hayden, who co-authored the report. “We have produced a lot of investigative reporting over the years, but I don't recall coming across any source material that better shows how dark it is inside the radical right movement than Alex Jones' texts. I expect we will be referring back to these texts for many years to come.”
Read the introduction and Part 1 of the series here. Parts 2-5 will be released over the next two weeks and include the following exclusive reporting:
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Part 2: How close Alex Jones is to the neofascist Proud Boys and how he helped make them a national menace.
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Part 3: How much the Infowars host relied on Joe Rogan to amplify his platform and how he tried to get Rogan to elevate accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate.
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Part 4: How an Infowars employee warned Alex Jones against collaborating with Nick Fuentes, citing his antisemitism and suggesting he works with the FBI.
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Part 5: How Alex Jones slaps 900 percent markups on his products and uses an array of techniques to keep money flowing into the Infowars store.
SPLC’s Hatewatch obtained a first look at more than 22,000 text messages, which include more than 200 threads exchanged by Alex Jones and his contacts between August 19, 2019, and May 15, 2020.
