BY SOLE

About a week ago I released a new video called “Fuck Alex Jones.” Since the track has been released I’ve been bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of angry comments from the Infowars crowd, calling me a “faget,” a sheep, and a “New World Order shill.”

I can’t lie it’s been really amusing, but it’s also a really sad statement on our culture. Why do I even care? Why would I go after Alex Jones? Because I meet too many good people who are looking for answers in this insane, confusing world and are being spoon-fed dog shit disguised as “truth” by people like him.

I went after Jones specifically because almost all of his propaganda plays into the hands of the extreme right wing in the United States. He dismisses feminism and gay rights as part of a New Word Order plot to reduce the population. He dismisses climate change as a hoax, and backs it up by giving weather reports on Mars. He attacks non-existent, nameless, faceless organizations like the Illuminati but ignores the evils being done by right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers.

His supporters are certified experts on the Bilderberg Group, but they seem to know nothing about the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that literally writes laws for corporations and passes them into law. Who needs the Illuminati when you have people like that? What if we just do away with the word “Illuminati” and start talking about capitalism and the state?

You will never hear conspiracy theorists talk about class war; they are far more concerned with preserving their own status in this economic system. Like missionaries and populist demagogues of the past, they prey on the young and downtrodden, give them an all-encompassing worldview, call it “truth, and and label everyone who doesn’t believe it a “sheep” who needs to “wake up.”

I attack Infowars because it is not a revolutionary movement. It is chasing a mirage. It imagines the good ol’ days of ‘merica, when white slave-owners wrote a constitution for other property owners, before they pushed west, killed multitudes of Native Americans (historical estimates range between 30-100 million) and stole their land. Those are the glory days of 1776 that the right-wing conspiracy crowd holds up as an ideal that we need to return to.

Will someone please tell them that those days never left us? It’s not the Illuminati that are sending drones to kill children in Yemen or having the NSA spy on us; it’s the logical endgame to the “spirit of 1776.”

What just played out in Bundy Ranch is instructive in this light. According to the cult of Jones, we shouldn’t worry about homeless people in cities being pushed out of the common spaces; we should worry about a white rancher in Nevada having his “liberty” trampled by the federal government. Both lay concerns of how public space should be used, but the latter believes that rights of cows to encroach on protected habitats is more important than the right of a homeless people to cover their bodies when they sleep outside in the winter.

Many criticize Jones because he uses his Prison Planet ™ store to sell things like expensive water filters and male enhancement pills, but what he is really selling is fear. His show is a never-ending litany of new things to be afraid of: FEMA camps, cities stockpiling hundreds of thousands of body bags, a government that knows everything you’re gonna do before you do. Name your fear, and Alex is selling it!

Its been said that if Alex Jones didn’t exist, the FBI would have to create him; I think it goes the other way. If the police state didn’t exist, Alex Jones would have to create it. We have yet to be corralled into giant communist style re-education camps, but the fear of your name being on a list or of impending marshall law keeps many “infowarriors” locked indoors “spreading information” instead of engaging in their communities, improving lives, and fighting the powers that seek to destroy us.

Do conspiracies exist? Of course they do. History is the greatest conspiracy of all; it is a never-ending tale of power grabs, deceit, and mass killings. Banks conspire to steal homes. The U.S. government conspired to spy on its citizens, politicians conspire to retain power and riches, and Facebook conspires to sell ads. This is your beloved “free market” working its magic. This isn’t “crony capitalism;” it’s just plain capitalism in its late stages.

So why do we need the Illuminati? The Illuminati theory simplifies things of course, but offers no means of resistance. The Illuminati has no home address, no tax records to sort through, no lobbyist to call out. There are too many real enemies out there—Suncor, Exxon, BP, Halliburton—to make up a catch-all scapegoat.

Many of the responses to my video that are attacking me say I don’t provide any facts to back up my claims. How can I prove that 9/11 was probably carried out by terrorists? If I’m wrong does it change anything about the way I should engage with the power structures I wish to dismantle? And when you are dealing with zealots, for whom the answer is always “the New World Order,” do facts even matter?

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the discrepancy over the number of Native Americans killed following European arrival.

Sole is a rapper, activist, and cofounder of the influential record label, Anticon. His new album with DJ Pain 1, Death Drive, is available now for pre-order.

Photo by 911conspiracy/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed