Alex Jones Is About To Explode

Photograph by Dan Winters

The Austin radio host’s wild conspiracy theories—The swine flu vaccine will lead to martial law! 9/11 was an inside job! An evil global network is preparing to institute a New World Order!—have already earned him dedicated fans across the country. But as the tea parties and Obama hatred go mainstream, he may be ready to give Glenn Beck a run for his money.

by Nate Blakeslee

It was the fourth and final hour of The Alex Jones Show, the most popular conspiracy talk radio program in the country, and everybody in the Austin studio was getting a little weary. As they do six days a week, Jones and his four young producers were simultaneously turning out a nationally syndicated live radio show, a streaming webcast, and a Web television broadcast. Jones sat behind a large desk covered with stacks of articles, which he and his researchers cull daily from mainstream American and foreign newspapers, alternative publications, and obscure journals. A monitor over his left shoulder showed a constant loop of images: a fighter plane, a vial of vaccine, shots of an ominous-looking President Barack Obama. The “document cam” above his head periodically zoomed in on whatever piece of paper he was reading from, to establish its provenance. Jones was talking about climate change, which he ...