Alex Jones Illustration by João Fazenda

On March 6th, government officials in Austin, Texas, cancelled South by Southwest, because of COVID-19. Although the cancellation would surely save lives, it would also, the festival’s organizers said in a statement, take a toll on “hundreds of small businesses.” But at least one small business in Austin did not let the crisis go to waste. Infowars is a group of Web sites—a “news” blog, audio and video feeds, an online store—founded by Alex Jones, the nation’s most prolific disinformation agent who does not hold elective office. (One of Jones’s most prominent fans, Donald Trump, once told him, on air, “Your reputation is amazing.”) In a video broadcast the day after South by Southwest was called off, Jones and a guest speculated that the reason was not concern for public safety but rather a “psy-op”—a psychological operation to sow panic and consolidate government power. “Controlling people is a stopgap,” Jones said. “But having antivirals, getting your immune system healthy—that is the answer. And, yes, folks, we sell great antivirals.”

Jones is best known for his paranoid rants, which have brought him some revenue in the form of online ads, but he makes most of his income as a snake-oil salesman. The Infowars store sells hundreds of products, from “nutraceuticals” to “tactical pens” to “survival food” (dried beans and the like, perfect for stocking a bunker). For the past few weeks, nearly every food item has been sold out. A note on the site read, “Our expanded team is focusing on and will deliver the tens of thousands of orders already in our queue as we work diligently through this national emergency together.”

Many of Jones’s “health and wellness” products contain colloidal silver: SuperSilver Whitening Toothpaste, SuperSilver Wound Dressing Gel, ABL Nano Silver Gargle. Colloidal silver has only one known effect on the body—if you take too much of it, your skin might turn blue. Still, disaster-prepper types have long touted it as a cure for viral ailments, from H.I.V. to the common cold. “This stuff kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range,” Jones said in a live stream on March 10th. “It kills every virus.” This is not true. On March 6th, the F.D.A. had issued an open letter, warning, “There currently are no vaccines, pills, potions, lotions, lozenges or other prescription or over-the-counter products available to treat or cure coronavirus disease.” Jones was only one of many opportunists advertising bogus coronavirus cures. Jim Bakker, the televangelist, was also selling a colloidal-silver gel; on Facebook, Vivify Holistic Clinic advertised a “very strong boneset tea.”

Although the Infowars studio is in Texas, none of that state’s officials did anything to derail Jones’s sales pitch. But since Infowars content is viewable wherever people have Internet, including New York, this state’s consumer-protection laws apply. “Whenever there’s heightened fear and hysteria, we start to see scammers,” Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said recently. “We see stores around Brooklyn selling hand sanitizer for eighty dollars a bottle. We see people setting up fake charities—phishing attempts, essentially. We see medical scams—Web sites that have a magic cure. We have a responsibility to take action against anything that is putting New Yorkers in danger.”

James instructed Lisa Landau, the chief of her office’s health-care bureau, to send Jones a cease-and-desist letter. In a footnote, Landau acknowledged that the Infowars site did include some vague verbiage disclaiming liability, but that its “miniscule font size makes it unlikely that potential customers will read or even see the disclaimer.”

Days later, a new disclaimer appeared, this one in a non-minuscule font: “The products sold on this site are not intended for use in the cure, treatment, prevention, or mitigation of any disease, including the novel coronavirus.” Near the disclaimer, however, was a link to products such as a “Build the Wall, Protect Texas” T-shirt, George Washington socks (“We need to broadcast true Americana everywhere we go to shut down globalist censorship”), and bottles of ABL Nano Silver Gargle (sold out, wait list available). “This is the plan, folks,” Jones said. “They plan on, if they’ve fluoridated you and vaccinated you and stunned you and mesmerized you with the TV and put you in a trance, on killing you.” Meanwhile, “they” were determined “to make sure you don’t learn about the known antivirals that are in the environment.”

“He has added a new disclaimer, but he hasn’t stopped selling the products,” James said. “We are still in contact with his lawyers, and, at a certain point, if they refuse to comply with our order, then enough is enough.” Meaning what? “Meaning we hit them with an array of violations, we issue subpoenas, and we could haul them to court,” she said. “My advice to Mr. Jones and any other scammers out there would be to heed our warnings, because, when we go to court, we have a pretty high success rate.” ♦

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