Behold a Gay Frog

Alex Jones was recently banned from several important internet platforms. The stated reason was “hate speech”. I’m pretty sure that Alex Jones was not in violation of “hate speech” policies, although he might have violated other policies. “Hate speech” is just a conveniently vague justification. So, what was the actual reason? Why did they ban Alex Jones?

One possibility is that they genuinely perceive Alex Jones to be an ideological threat: that they think he is propagating dangerous ideas, and that he is an important propagandist of the new right, and thus a threat to leftist cultural hegemony and the “New World Order” of mega-corporations and mega-bureaucracies. If so, they are fools. Alex Jones is not taken seriously by most people on the right, and his conspiracy-theorizing is more harmful to the right than helpful. Also, by banning Alex Jones, they draw attention to him and expose new people to his ideas. However, I wouldn’t entirely dismiss this possibility, simply because the left and the establishment are highly ignorant and delusional about the new right, as they are about many other things.

Another possibility is that the big platforms are making an example of Alex Jones as part of a crackdown on “fake news”. Although the left/establishment’s condemnation of right-wing propaganda and misinformation is highly hypocritical and often fake news itself, Alex Jones really is a purveyor of “fake news”. This could just be an effort to placate powerful political figures who believe (or pretend to believe) that the alternative media and “fake news” is “ruining our democracy”.

Or it could be that they are testing the waters for a more general ban of big-name alternative media sources, as part of a larger effort to control public discourse and the minds of the masses. That is the most probable explanation. If so, we will see a broader crackdown on free speech in the near future. This is not an isolated incident. It is part of an ongoing “info war”, so to speak.

Whatever the actual reason is, the banning of Alex Jones is yet another example of corporate power being used to shut down freedom of speech. For that reason, it is concerning but not surprising. I don’t agree with Alex Jones being deplatformed without a valid justification, and I don’t think a vague accusation of “hate speech” is a valid justification.

However, the deplatforming of Alex Jones is not a huge loss for the right. In many ways, it is good for the right. Conspiracy-theorizing is a distraction from the real issues. While there are real conspiracies, most conspiracy theories are false or at least highly speculative, and not persuasive to most ordinary people.

Conspiracy theories are like ideologies. They give people a sense of belonging to a special community: the community of believers. They also provide their believers with a claim to intellectual and moral superiority: that the believers have special knowledge of the evil conspiracy, and they are bravely resisting it, just by talking about it. Like ideologies, conspiracy theories appeal to people who are socially alienated and low status. Both provide people with a community and a claim to status.

All cults plug into the same social instincts, but different cults appeal to different people. Feminism appeals to low-status women. MGTOW appeals to low-status single men. Alex Jones style conspiracies, such as “The New World Order”, appeal to low-status middle-aged men, generally speaking. For any given cult, it will be very compelling to some people, but not to most. No cult can be compelling to everyone, and most will never have broad appeal.

Like religions and most ideologies, conspiracy theories explain the world in terms of agency: things happen because agents make them happen, and bad things happen because bad people (or bad reptiloid aliens) make them happen. Agency explanations are easy to understand and emotionally engaging. We evolved to fight (and fear) enemies and monsters. So, every mythos explains evil in terms of agency.

Conspiracy theorists are the modern-day version of witch-doctors. They provide a focus for our vague feelings of alienation, anxiety and anger. They give us a target for those feelings and a post hoc rationalization of them. And, like witch-doctors, they do not provide us with a basis for effective action in the real world.

I am not denying the existence of conspiracies. There are powerful people who cooperate in secret to control aspects of our lives. However, most conspiracies are mundane, and most agency is not hidden, or at least not hidden very well. For example, the collusion of the big tech companies to control speech and manipulate public opinion is pretty blatant. And, although it involves a certain amount of coordinated action, I think it is mostly due to a shared ideology. The people involved believe that they are fighting against evil.

Also, real conspiracies are best fought with cautious reasoning and rhetoric, not with crazed rants. Conspiracy theories are not helpful in fighting against real conspiracies.

Unfortunately, what helps to promote right-wing ideas to the general public is often not what people on the right want to hear. Group-think and purity-spiraling cause most political discourse spaces to degenerate into delusional echo chambers. Right-wing discourse spaces tend to slide down a slippery slope from rational critiques of leftism and modernity to conspiracy theories and Nazi larping.

Like religions and ideologies, conspiracy theories are usually self-justifying and immune to empirical falsification. An important aspect of every conspiracy theory is that the real causes of events are hidden from view. Evidence that contradicts the theory is dismissed as deliberate misinformation, while evidence that fits the theory is uncritically accepted. Dubious sources of evidence are considered necessary to get access to the hidden truth. Selecting data to fit the theory, rather than vice versa, is typical of ideologies, religions and conspiracy theories. All three can be lumped together in the general category of myths.

At this point in history, conspiracy-theorizing is a harmful distraction. There are serious problems in the West that are well-supported with evidence and argument. The leftist/establishment narrative is full of contradictions and blatant denial of reality. We should focus our efforts on attacking that mythos, not on creating another mythos that is equally detached from reality.

Having said all that, I will give Alex Jones some credit. He did call attention to some important issues. Chemicals in the water are turning the frigging frogs gay.