When Alex Jones was a teenager, he got into an argument with his father in front of several of his high school pals. Jones then stormed into the family home and appeared on a second-floor balcony above the driveway, where his parents’ minivan was parked, remembers Bo Durham, who was friends with Jones at the time. Then, Durham says, Jones jumped. Jones grew up in an upper-middle-class family in the suburbs of Dallas, where his teenage years were marked by a violent streak that may have ultimately prompted his family’s move to Austin, former members of the high school he attended told CNN. That intense hunger for attention in those early years foreshadowed his persona of a conspiracy fabulist who would not only freely toss out violent rhetoric on his show, but also take kernels of truth about news events and spin them into fantasies with himself at the center — persecuted for fighting a system of corruption. Former classmates and a teacher told CNN that Jones could seem like a normal high school kid who had plenty of friends in the town of Rockwall. Supremely intelligent, he could recite long passages of the Bible from memory. But his mood could flip like a switch, and his behavior in the neighborhood called Lakeside Village beside a golf course was often bizarre, Durham said. On those days, he would stomp around the block wearing shorts and combat boots but no shirt, chanting “like a gorilla,” talking in tongues and muttering gibberish about the devil — often in front of golfers, Durham said. But the most disturbing story about Jones’ teen years involves a fight at Rockwall High School during his sophomore year, around 1990. It began when Jones traded words about a girl with a popular senior — a physically imposing football player named Jarrod “Bubba” Morrow. It ended with Jones — also a football player — picking Morrow up and pile-driving him headfirst into the floor of a classroom. Randy Talley, who was then a teacher and coach at Rockwall High, was there. Morrow was wheeled out of the school and rushed to a nearby hospital. He suffered nine skull fractures and a full concussion and lost 20% of his hearing in one ear. Morrow declined to be interviewed on camera, but confirmed that his hearing remains compromised, and he still suffers headaches. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/transcript">This American Life</a> first reported the incident. Jones and Morrow would soon face off again, at a party. This time, Morrow and a friend gave Jones a pounding, at one point slamming a rake into his head. Jones’ teeth were knocked loose or out, and Jones’ father — a dentist — had to repair the damage through extensive surgery, Morrow told CNN. Not long afterward, the Jones family moved to Austin. In <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/meet-alex-jones-175845/">media interviews</a> and on his show, Jones has said the family was run out of town because he saw cops selling “cocaine and ecstasy” at parties and spoke out against it at a school assembly. Jones on another occasion said, “Right after we left, the FBI busted them all.” It is true that the Rockwall County sheriff was convicted for conspiracy to sell marijuana, but he and a deputy were busted in 1989 — two years <em>before</em> the Joneses <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-is-about-to-explode/">left</a> town for Austin. Jones’ violent past brings added meaning to the hotheaded persona he has cultivated, and for the physical threats he has issued against individuals in his trademark ranting style. Jones’ taste for violence and extreme behavior extends to his conduct in the workplace, according to a former Infowars employee. Josh Owens, who worked as an Infowars video editor from 2013 to 2017, described a man who stalked around the office shirtless — sometimes he’d also remove his pants — and was prone to angry outbursts, though he could also be funny and entertaining. Owens said Jones would sometimes approach employees with a jarring request. “Just out of nowhere, he would say, ‘Hit me,’ ” Owens told CNN. “He wouldn't stop until they did it. But the thing about the hitting is that then it was his turn — and he could hit back.” Owens said he saw Jones punch a man in the arm so hard that it split open. “I mean, there was blood on his shirt.” Jones has also gotten into skirmishes out in the field, including with the stepfather of Jessica Ghawi, who was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado — a tragedy recklessly reduced to a “false flag” incident by Jones. In October 2013, Jones took a camera crew to a taco eatery in San Antonio, where a gun-control group called Moms Demand Action was hosting a kids event. Jones began asking women to comment for the camera, but none were interested, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/guns-bullying-open-carry-women-moms-texas/">Mother Jones</a>. Ghawi’s stepfather, Lonnie Phillips, was there and intervened, according to the progressive magazine. What happened next was partially captured on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-zzgjvMRA">video</a>. Jones and Phillips squared off, chest to chest. Phillips asked Jones to back up; Jones refused and edged in even closer. “You’re the one got in my space,” he said. “Listen, I don’t want to beat an old guy up, so don’t touch me, all right?” Ghawi’s mother, Sandy Phillips, told CNN she is infuriated that Jones is allowed to spread falsehoods about shooting victims like her daughter with impunity. “To tell me my daughter is not dead — and it’s all fake — when I am grieving and suffering the most significant loss of my life. It was truly sickening,” she said. “And knowing that he’s still out there, doing the same thing to others, and talking about conspiracies. He’s just making it all up. He doesn’t care about people and their feelings.” In the summer of 2017, Jones was doing man-on-the-street interviews in downtown Seattle pressing people on topics such as then-President Donald Trump and a recent terror attack in Spain, according to a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-in-seattle-pours-coffee-on-controversial-infowars-host-alex-jones/594792945/">local TV</a> station. When a man crossing the street gave him the finger, Jones gave chase. Even when he’s off air, living his life in Austin, Jones has a way of finding confrontation. In October 2020, a man and his daughter were going for a run with the man’s dog when they put on masks before crossing paths with Jones. The off-duty shock jock ridiculed them for jogging with masks on, prompting the 50-pound dog to bite Jones, who responded by punching it twice, according to a police report obtained by CNN. The man told police he’d felt threatened by Jones, but officers decided the incident didn’t warrant charges. Jones’ in-the-field behavior pales in comparison with the violent actions and plans carried out by some of his followers. And while such individuals are surely motivated by a multitude of factors and media sources, Jones stands out for the number of high-profile acts of violence on which he has been publicly mentioned as an influence. Chloe Colliver, the former head of digital policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an expert on online extremism, said Jones’ content can be deeply dangerous, as it targets vulnerable people and spreads group-based hatred. “He is helping to normalize hateful and extreme ways of thinking about whole sectors of the population to people who might be vulnerable to then going out and acting,” she said. Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who’s also an expert in online extremism, said Jones’ style can cause susceptible people to take matters into their own hands. “Alex has a way of speaking to his audience that puts a sense of urgency on them and a sense that they alone can help him solve this problem that is caused by X, Y, Z figure,” she said. “And so many of those folks — not many, but enough — will take action, and that is truly scary. He has the ability to command action without being specific about it.” The last dozen years are littered with examples of individuals who, after consuming Infowars content, committed acts of violence and other crimes. They include: In the summer of 2018, Facebook removed Infowars and other pages associated with Jones from its platform, saying he was “<a target="_blank" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community-standards/">glorifying violence</a>” and “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.” Jones was also <a target="_blank" href="https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/06/technology/facebook-infowars-alex-jones/index.html">booted</a> around that time from Apple and YouTube, where The Alex Jones Channel boasted 2.4 million subscribers and had amassed a whopping 1.5 billion views. Some commentators <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/the-end-finally-comes-for-alex-jones/569578/">declared</a> this to be the end for Jones. But he has a history of getting knocked down, only to reemerge from the ashes, bigger than before. In fact, Jones was canceled long before it became a culture-wars term — twice. Neither setback slowed him down. On the contrary — in a harbinger for how he would react to being deplatformed from social media much later — he doubled down and flourished. After moving to Austin in 1991 and finishing high school two years later, Jones enrolled in and dropped out of community college. Around this time he also discovered Austin’s public access TV. This was a better fit. Austin public access TV in the ‘90s was a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-is-about-to-explode/">thriving hub</a> for the city’s counterculture, the kind of milieu that gave rise to the motto “Keep Austin Weird.” Russell Dowden, who was part of the scene and has worked with Jones, called it an early version of YouTube. The programming featured quirky skits, personalities and shows, such as an Elvira-esque <a target="_blank" href="https://www.austinfilm.org/sponsored/when-we-were-live/">call-in host</a> and a young man who tried to make a local version of MTV. One show was called “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2021-02-26/austin-on-tv-the-bizarre-story-of-cable-access/">Clown Time</a>.” “All of us gravitated to anti-establishment ideology here in Austin,” said Dowden, who had his own show about UFOs. Out of the experimental soup came some <a target="_blank" href="https://www.kut.org/austin/2013-07-04/channel-austin-celebrates-four-decades-of-public-access-tv">big names</a> in film, such as Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez. Dowden told CNN that while there were “20 other guys talking conspiracies,” Alex Jones stood out. “He was a hell-raiser.” Even then, Jones specialized in conspiratorial rants about recent events, such as the deadly fire at a cult compound in Waco, Texas, after a standoff with federal authorities in 1993 or the terrorist bombing of an Oklahoma City federal office building in 1995. The feds, he said, were to blame for both. By the late 1990s, Jones was hosting an FM talk radio show in Austin; in 1999 — the year he launched the Infowars website — he tied for the city’s best talk radio host in an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/best-of-austin/year:1999/poll:readers/category:media/">annual poll</a>. Nonetheless, later that year, Jones was fired from his show for his obsessions with Waco and Clinton-bashing, he told <a target="_blank" href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/1999-12-10/75039/">The Austin Chronicle</a> at the time. (The paper reported that the station’s operation manager said Jones’ material was turning off advertisers.) Undeterred, he set up a home studio and began broadcasting with Genesis Communications Network to radio stations across the country. Before long, Jones’ show was airing on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/alex-jones">100</a> stations. All the while, Jones kept his <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-is-about-to-explode/">cable-access show</a> and went into the TV studio several times a week. On one of his shows in the summer of 2001, Jones went on a freewheeling rant that would include an uncanny nugget of prophecy. In the same video, Jones named Osama bin Laden as a potential scapegoat. On 9/11, as New York City erupted into chaos, Jones went on air and blamed the federal government, calling the attack an inside job. He <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/meet-alex-jones-175845/">claims</a> he lost about 70% of his stations overnight. Unfazed, Jones kept hammering at the false-flag theory. By 2007, he was on a roll. That year, he received an executive producer credit on the third edition of “Loose Change” — a massively popular series of conspiracy theory movies about the September 11 attacks. At a conference that year for 9/11 skeptics in Los Angeles, actor <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-is-about-to-explode/">Charlie Sheen</a> introduced Jones as a “great American patriot.” Jones <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-is-about-to-explode/">bought</a> an $800,000 home near Austin and married his girlfriend, Kelly Nichols, with whom he would have three children before the couple divorced in 2015. The 9/11 truther formula had proved a success and, for years, Jones saw no reason to deviate from it for subsequent terrorist attacks and mass shootings: <a target="_blank" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130513045213/https:/www.infowars.com/colorado-batman-shooting-shows-obvious-signs-of-being-staged/">Aurora</a>, Colorado; Sandy Hook, Connecticut; the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-xpm-2013-apr-19-la-na-tt-alex-jones-20130418-story.html">Boston</a> bombings; <a target="_blank" href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/oct/02/hoaxes-fake-news-about-las-vegas-massacre/">Las Vegas</a>; Parkland, <a target="_blank" href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/23/us/infowars-youtube-videos-trnd/">Florida</a>. Jones called each of those attacks either a false-flag operation carried out by the feds or a staged event that involved crisis actors. These reckless screeds have often had dire and direct consequences. James Alefantis, the owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, told CNN that December 4, 2016, “was really like the worst day of my life.” That’s when Welch fired his gun inside the establishment while looking for a nonexistent pedophile ring. Alefantis said it’s clear Welch’s actions were directly influenced by Infowars. Welch’s online and cell phone activity revealed that he had not only seen an Infowars video calling on followers to investigate, he’d also sent a link to a friend, according to court documents. “He said, You know, ‘Watch this. Come with me. We're going to raid this place,’” Alefantis remembers. The friend did not take part in the attack. Even though Jones apologized on air after receiving a letter from Alefantis, the restaurant owner said the repercussions of the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory remain acute for him. “Still, to this day, I receive a few instant messages every day threatening my life or, you know, calling something out,” he told CNN. “Every day I get an instant message saying that I should, you know, die or kill myself.” But the most notable group to incur the wrath of Infowars and its followers are parents of the 20 first-graders who were <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy-hook/index.html">murdered</a> by gunman Adam Lanza nearly a decade ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Lanza died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Jones was not only <a target="_blank" href="https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/what-infowars-alex-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook-massacre">relentless</a> in his tirades that called the massacre a “giant hoax” and a “staged” event for the purpose of strengthening gun-control laws, he also seemed to sic his followers on the families, who he said were “actors.” Infowars provided a platform to Wolfgang Halbig, a retired public school security administrator, who tormented Sandy Hook parents by regularly <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/sandy-hook-hoaxer-arrest.html">appearing</a> on Infowars as a pseudo-expert and saying the shooting appeared to be a hoax. Halbig, who sometimes showed up in town with an Infowars camera crew, even posted a background report that included the home address of Leonard Pozner, who lost a 6-year-old son in the shooting. Halbig, who also repeatedly sent mass emails to news organizations and other recipients that included Pozner’s date of birth and Social Security number, was <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/us/sandy-hook-denier-wolfgang-halbig-arrest/index.html">arrested</a> in early 2020 for unlawfully possessing personal identification information. The charges against him were eventually dropped. He did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. Pozner was also harassed by Lucy Richards, a Florida woman who was sentenced to five months in prison in 2017 for issuing death threats to him. Richards, then 57, was convinced the shooting was a hoax, and made threats to Pozner — an outspoken <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/us/sandy-hook-father-defamation-suit-award/index.html">critic</a> of the conspiracy theories — over voice mail and via email with statements such as “death is coming to you real soon” and “LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH.” Richards, who apologized to the family and said she suffered from mental illness, pleaded guilty in the case. As part of her sentence, she was ordered to refrain from accessing websites maintained by Jones and Infowars, as well as a couple of other Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists. Richards did not respond to an email requesting comment. Another Sandy Hook parent, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/alex-jones-has-profited-lies-he-told-about-me-he-ncna867976">Neil Heslin</a> — who also lost a 6-year-old son in the rampage –- publicly pleaded with Jones to stop. An Infowars episode in 2017 questioned Heslin’s account of holding his son “with a bullet hole through his head,” essentially casting the grieving father as a liar. Heslin said he, too, has faced harassment over the years as a result of Infowars. In late September 2021, a Texas judge <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/us/alex-jones-loses-sandy-hook-cases/index.html">found Jones liable</a> by default in two defamation suits filed by Heslin and the parents of another deceased child after the Infowars host failed to provide documents. (That November, a Connecticut judge sided with another group of parents who had filed a similar <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/15/media/alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-legal-victory/index.html">suit</a>, because Jones did not turn over documents.) Mark Bankston, an attorney for the families in the Texas defamation cases, said his clients aren’t aiming to destroy Infowars — and doubts they could even if they wanted to. Even long after Jones — who has since acknowledged the shooting was real — publicly tormented the Sandy Hook parents, his appeal — and messaging — continued to seep into the mainstream. He has appeared at least three times on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which recently became the <a target="_blank" href="https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/joe-rogan-experience-most-popular-podcast-news-roundup-1235123361/">most popular</a> podcast on Spotify. Such appearances may help Jones in his efforts to expand his audience. Total visits to Infowars.com declined after he was deplatformed by several Big Tech companies but still averaged about 11 million a month in 2020 and about 10 million a month in 2021, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform that tracks website data. Rogan and Jones have a history, having met as early as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bitchute.com/video/WFZTNdZOfe0E/">2004</a>, and their rapport is familial. In a show from October 2020 that has racked up nearly 22 million views, Rogan scolded Jones for Sandy Hook — calling it his “biggest f**k up” — but he was mostly sympathetic, launching into polemics about what the mainstream supposedly gets wrong about Jones. For instance, Rogan noted, there was a time when Jones would go after top Republicans. But for Jones, the Bush era was the “before times” — that is, before he picked a side, joining forces with Donald Trump in a symbiotic relationship that would help take the influence of both men to a new level.
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