Alex Jones has been a really prominent, and surprisingly popular, figure in the United States for several decades. He is like the most stereotypical loud-mouthed angry extreme American conspiracy theorist you can think of, spouting the craziest and silliest conspiracy theories, and always doing it very angrily, loudly and obnoxiously.
It's not completely clear how much he actually believes what he's saying, and how much of it is just play-acting. (In a recent lawsuit he, or some of his representatives, claimed that he's just playing a character, that he isn't actually that kind of person in his private life. It's completely unclear whether that's true or whether it was just a desperate defense.)
Anyway, pretty much everybody, on all sides, who aren't his fans, have always considered him an asshat clown at best, and a dangerous lunatic at worst. Nobody, besides his fans, has ever considered him a pleasant person of any repute or worth. Even the most charitable opinion has always been that he's a loudmouthed but mostly harmless clown. Most people haven't paid much attention to him.
However, things have changed recently. The tech giants of Silicon Valley have, perhaps inadvertently, made him into a martyr for free speech. In a rather strange move, all the major social media corporations, including Facebook, YouTube and Apple, banned him from their platforms within the same day (clearly demonstrating coordination and collusion between them.) The only big social media platform that refused to collude with the others was Twitter, but a few days ago even they caved in, and finally banned him as well, perhaps due to social pressure.
As a sort of Streisand effect, Alex Jones has now become a sort of symbol for free speech and censorship, both among the anti-SJW liberals and conservatives, who previously didn't care much about him. Of course everybody still considers his conspiracy theories and other antics as silly, and most of them still consider him an asshat clown... but now in a much more endearing manner than before. Yeah, he may be an asshat clown and crazy conspiracy theorist... but that's his right! If he wants to spout how "they are making frogs gay" (which has become even more of a meme now than it was before), that's his prerogative, and trying to silence and censor him is a sign of where the modern society, driven by giant tech corporations, is going.
Alex Jones has become a symbol of what happens when these social media corporations and providers collude to censor people for political reasons. He may be silly (whether he's seriously so, or just acting, doesn't really make a difference), but he has the same right to express himself as everybody else, to whoever wants to listen to him. Big corporations taking that right away is unacceptable. Big corporations colluding among themselves to do so is even less acceptable.
It's not completely clear how much he actually believes what he's saying, and how much of it is just play-acting. (In a recent lawsuit he, or some of his representatives, claimed that he's just playing a character, that he isn't actually that kind of person in his private life. It's completely unclear whether that's true or whether it was just a desperate defense.)
Anyway, pretty much everybody, on all sides, who aren't his fans, have always considered him an asshat clown at best, and a dangerous lunatic at worst. Nobody, besides his fans, has ever considered him a pleasant person of any repute or worth. Even the most charitable opinion has always been that he's a loudmouthed but mostly harmless clown. Most people haven't paid much attention to him.
However, things have changed recently. The tech giants of Silicon Valley have, perhaps inadvertently, made him into a martyr for free speech. In a rather strange move, all the major social media corporations, including Facebook, YouTube and Apple, banned him from their platforms within the same day (clearly demonstrating coordination and collusion between them.) The only big social media platform that refused to collude with the others was Twitter, but a few days ago even they caved in, and finally banned him as well, perhaps due to social pressure.
As a sort of Streisand effect, Alex Jones has now become a sort of symbol for free speech and censorship, both among the anti-SJW liberals and conservatives, who previously didn't care much about him. Of course everybody still considers his conspiracy theories and other antics as silly, and most of them still consider him an asshat clown... but now in a much more endearing manner than before. Yeah, he may be an asshat clown and crazy conspiracy theorist... but that's his right! If he wants to spout how "they are making frogs gay" (which has become even more of a meme now than it was before), that's his prerogative, and trying to silence and censor him is a sign of where the modern society, driven by giant tech corporations, is going.
Alex Jones has become a symbol of what happens when these social media corporations and providers collude to censor people for political reasons. He may be silly (whether he's seriously so, or just acting, doesn't really make a difference), but he has the same right to express himself as everybody else, to whoever wants to listen to him. Big corporations taking that right away is unacceptable. Big corporations colluding among themselves to do so is even less acceptable.
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