Times are tough for Alex Jones, his media operation Infowars, and his businesses and associates facing legal headaches and financial blows alongside the conspiracy theory mogul.
Several defamation lawsuits—filed by people whom Jones and his network have targeted with alleged falsehoods, harassment, and conspiracy theories—are leaving a mark on his disinformation empire. And both Jones and Infowars have faced widespread social media bans.
But Jones is a wily one, having also invested in online infrastructure that’s enabling his proteges to grow with their own audiences. Through the creation and fostering of his independent video hosting platform, Banned Video, Jones is shepherding the careers of employees and outside contributors, as they build a repository of far-right digital content.
Many of those personalities have storied histories of their own, and to some degree mirror the trajectory of Jones’ own career: appealing to some of the wackiest conspiracy theories the internet has to offer, laundering far-right extremism, and espousing an abundance of hateful rhetoric.
Though Jones and Infowars have been ejected from most mainstream internet services, Banned Video has provided a vehicle for far-right creators to side-step some of those restrictions. In a sense, Jones has found a way to keep his legacy (and businesses) thriving, even after having been “canceled” by “Big Tech.”
Because other personalities hosted on Banned Video lack the outsized national profile of Jones, many have been able to produce content for Infowars—while enjoying access to mainstream internet services and platforms that have given their platform’s owner the boot. It has enabled those creators to rack up millions of views, collectively, and to leverage things like online payment processors, enabling their content to become profitable. And through the implementation of redirecting URLs—with names like Free News and Battle Plan News—Jones and his crew have been able to veil Infowars content as links are posted to mainstream social media sites.
Greg Reese
Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/GettyInfowars editor and producer Greg Reese is one such figure. On Banned Video, Reese produces edited and scripted segments that delve into the fantastical tendencies of online conspiracy communities, often racking up hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of views. Some videos contain verbatim Russian propaganda about alleged corruption of Western nations. One such video on the platform blends baseless accusations that Ukraine is overridden with Nazi sympathies, along with an antisemitic bent. In that video, Reese echoes historical distortions to allege that Zionist political forces shared alliances with Nazis because both wanted “their own ethnically pure state.”
“The word ‘Nazi’ is a made-up slur,” Reese says in the video, before alleging that world leaders in politics and business are seeking to enact fascist control over the globe.
Some of Reese’s highest-trafficking content on Banned Video contains conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines. In one of his videos for the platform, he claims that the Pfizer vaccine contains “nano-tech” activated by 5G broadband signals to build an “internal electronic system with an endless potential for bio-manipulation” in people who are vaccinated. It has more than a million views.
Another asserts that the same world elite leading the response to the pandemic are plotting a “false flag” attack on the world using smallpox. Reese earned nearly a million views claiming that vaccines are bioweapons, and hundreds of thousands of views arguing that vaccines are killing people to usher in an era of transhumanism.
In one video, Reese goes through a list of the ten stages of genocide to argue that the U.S. is conducting one against “patriotic Americans.” Another regurgitates flat-earth conspiracy theories. And one video alleges that QAnon conspiracy theories are meant to brainwash their followers to “religiously ‘trust the plan’ without question” and be submissive to a New World Order take over of the world.
“Is it the great awakening, or is it the New World Order making its final move?” Reese rhetorically asks in the video. “Who is to say this ‘hidden army’ is not controlled opposition posing as the American patriot movement? A great final lie to trick us all into a deeper state of tyranny while they sacrifice pawns and reshuffle the deck for another round of their sick control game?”
Harrison Smith
Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/GettyHarrison Smith broadcasts on Infowars’ airwaves and uploads content on Banned Video. Though Twitter suspended Smith from its platform in 2020, the Infowars host has managed to evade the suspension and to share his Banned Video content on the platform. With access to the Twitter ether, Smith has managed to send content viral to the point of reaching Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s primetime program and former President Donald Trump. (Reached by email by The Daily Beast, Smith said he had been “temporarily suspended a few times” from Twitter but that his current account was created in 2017. After The Daily Beast inquired with Twitter, Smith’s account was permanently suspended.)
Smith embodies Jones’ habit of allying with and glazing over far-right extremist movements and believers, seen clearly in his cozying up to the sub-sect of the modern white nationalist movement led by racist and antisemite Nick Fuentes. On a promotional poster for Fuentes’ most recent American First Political Action Conference event, Smith was listed as a special guest. (Smith has also admitted to attending the event in past years.) Smith has interviewed other extremists for Infowars, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, and has attended events hosted by far-right figures like podcast host Ethan Ralph. Smith told The Daily Beast he has attended events hosted by Fuentes and Ralph “in a personal capacity, not as a representative for my employer.”
Smith has his own history of espousing far-right rhetoric. He once ranted about killing officials in President Joe Biden’s administration and promoted “white genocide” conspiracy theories. Smith has invoked the “great replacement” white supremacist conspiracy theory by name—and that particular conspiracy theory has driven several racist mass murders. He has advanced anti-immigrant talking points about the 1965 Immigration Act, which revoked explicit racial quotas from U.S. immigration policy, saying that it made the U.S. into a “dumping ground for the Third World.” During the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, Smith praised the attackers, calling them “patriots.” And in a conversation on-air with an antisemitic caller, Smith once faulted the FBI for supposedly being “directed” by “Jewish organizations” like the Anti-Defamation League.
After the Christchurch masacre, in which a white supremacist murdered Muslim worshipers in New Zealand, Smith combed through the shooters’ manifesto on air for Infowars, initially condemning the manifesto before finding points where he thought the mass killer was “kind of right.”
Despite these prior remarks, Smith told The Daily Beast he advocates for “self-governance, freedom, individuality, and the continued existence of all people, regardless of race or ethnicity.”
Harrison has lauded the extreme rhetoric of Patrick Howley, a writer for the conspiracy clickbait blog National File, and a newer addition to the invite-only Banned Video platform. Though Howley does not work at Infowars, he has been a regular guest on the network. Infowars and National File have had a close relationship since the latter’s earliest days, once co-hosting an event coinciding with the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
On Banned Video, Howley has uploaded gobs of hateful and conspiratorial content targeting racial minorities and Jews. In one video, he alleged that national media was pushing an agenda of violence against white people in America, and in another he responded to criticisms of author Alice Walker’s antisemitic beliefs by doing a crude impression of a Jewish affect and yelling, “The goyim are going to notice!”—a common antisemitic catchphrase online. Howley regularly deploys his bigoted Jewish affectation in antisemitic rants that depict Jews as sinister plotters of the downfall of Western society. In one video, he remarks that it's “almost as though a dreidel has been spun to see who gets genocided first, and white males, it turns out, are first on the list.”
Patrick Howley
Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/GettyHowley is still active on Twitter, where he has nearly 75,000 followers. On his profile, he has accused the musical artist Lizzo of advancing “hostile agitation against White males on behalf of jewish interests” because the record label she is signed to is led by a Jewish male. He has advanced white genocide conspiracy theories, writing to white Twitter followers that a “genocidal racialist system is determined to destroy you and wants you dead.” Howley has written that “Zionist and Chinese institutions are genociding white people.” He has faulted conservatives for not stating that “the Fake News media” is “run by Jews.” Howley has posted that “Everything blacks hate about white people they are really just talking about Jews.” He has also claimed that the mainstream conservative movement “is run by leftists and owned by the Zionist foreign lobby to advance the goals of white demographic replacement through mass ‘legal’ immigration.” He tweeted, “Stop blaming Whitey for your problems. Realize Jewish people own everything.” He has also claimed that it is “just obvious” that Israel did the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In February, Howley authored an article for National File, which he promoted on Twitter, praising the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Club. He has asserted that recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was “a product of the modern environment in which privileged minorities earn long-run shekels for ganging up on white men who are being genocided.”
Howley has managed to evade moderation from Twitter despite posting antisemitic messages to his account and promoting links to Infowars websites. (Twitter did not provide a statement to The Daily Beast on Howley’s use of Twitter prior to publication.) And along with Reese, Howley’s host publication National File has used content on Banned Video to promote links soliciting funds via PayPal, enjoying access to a platform otherwise off limits to Jones and Infowars. National File utilizes Revv to process credit card payments for its site, another online function which Infowars faces limited access to.
When reached via email, Howley sent The Daily Beast a comment deriding “racially divisive propaganda” and “New World Order stooge puppets who dance for the cannibalistic pedo Cabal.” Howley later said that response was “satire” and he did not respond to further questions.
A representative from PayPal did not directly respond to an inquiry about Reese and National File’s PayPal accounts, but wrote back, “We regularly assess activity against our Acceptable Use Policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.” The Daily Beast attempted to contact Revv via a web form on the company’s website for media requests, but did not receive a response.
Dan Friesen, co-host of the podcast Knowledge Fight, which recounts and reviews Infowars programming with a critical eye, told The Daily Beast that he doubted whether the lesser-tier personalities currently hosted on Banned Video possessed the charisma, audience networks, or enterprising drive that enabled Jones to ascend as a behemoth in political media, pointing to the relative fades into obscurity experienced by Infowars personalities David Knight and Millie Weaver after they left Jones’ ranks. However, Friesen said that current personalities’ appeals to extremist communities using the Banned Video platform could provide chances to network and potentially carry on should Jones actually crumble under the weight of lawsuits.
Even in the hypothetical case that lawsuit turmoil prompted Jones to retire from his seat at the Infowars broadcast desk, Friesen said that the driving philosophy of Jones is likely to last, with or without the conspiracy theory kingmaker. Whether it’s seeding chaos in the news cycle or whitewashing extreme ideas for a devout audience, the model of media exemplified by Jones already exists elsewhere today and for much larger and mainstream audiences. Even if this trio of far-right protégés fail to fill Jones’ shoes entirely, Jones’ model has been replicated by others enough to persist even in a world without Jones on air.
“The main goal of Infowars is to obscure and confuse reality, to make people sort of believe in alternative sets of facts. I think there are a lot of folks doing that, with or without Alex, now,” Friesen said. “In a grim sense, the damage was done a while ago.”
For those currently suing Alex Jones for defamation, including the parents of Sandy Hook mass shooting victims, and the countless others caught in Infowars’ scope throughout time, that harm has been gravely serious. The wider project of weaponized misinformation and conspiracy theories that Jones has built his business on has alarming consequences for the greater stability and health of the societies they inhabit.
Jones’ launch and curating of his Banned Video platform has enabled Infowars content to salvage some of its viral potential online under new presentation styles, and it has empowered a crop of far-right personalities to produce their own content under the larger Infowars brand.
Tech platforms interested in keeping Jones and his cronies off their services must realize that moderating a figure like Jones brings with it a constantly shifting game of whack-a-mole, requiring adaptability and a close, constant eye.
(Attempts to reach Reese via an Instagram direct message were unsuccessful. Inquiries sent to an email address listed on Infowars’ website for media interview requests went unanswered.)
