Apparently Alex Jones is no longer claiming to be a performance artist. In a deposition for the lawsuit filed by Sandy Hook parents, he's now claiming that he suffered from "almost like a form of psychosis" when he presented the "Sandy Hook Truthers" and their ridiculous ideas seriously. Jones, of course, has never been diagnosed with psychosis. Because let me tell you, if he had, he would be riding it for all it's worth. He's doing everything he can to wriggle out of paying damages for which, as far as I can tell, he obviously is liable for.
The fact that Jones seriously cannot understand how a parent who has been hounded and threatened for years by the "Sandy Hook Truthers" - a group that had no significant media platform to speak of before Jones gave them one - and has been told over and over again that their murdered child never existed might develop depression that could lead to suicide should tell you everything you need to know about Jones' character. It's even more insulting for him to claim that he had "psychosis" or "like a form of psychosis" when he has never been diagnosed with actual schizophrenia. The guy isn't mentally ill, for all that I have in the past described the stuff he peddles on his show as "crazy." He's a crude opportunist who knows how to get attention by flogging the most outrageous stuff he can find.
Of course, Jones is whipping out this angle because he's basically toast. Free speech rights do not include inciting speech, and Jones' program incited people to commit real crimes, so he somehow has to prove that his speech was not inciting even though it incited. Maybe the only card he has left to play is arguing that he was not in his right mind at the time.
In a deposition stemming from a lawsuit filed by parents of Sandy Hook victims, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones claimed an imbalanced mental state caused him to claim the Newtown, Conn. massacre of elementary school children was a government-led conspiracy.
In the video released on Friday, Jones said he reached this alleged mental state where he “almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I’m now learning a lot of times things aren’t staged,” the Austin Statesman reported. He went on to say this was caused by “the trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins — you don’t trust anything anymore, kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don’t know what reality is.”
The admission came toward the end of a three-hour deposition where lawyers representing Sandy Hook families confronted Jones with videos from his show where he said the shootings were fake. Jones appeared much more calm than he does on his show and admitted to peddling the theory but kept blaming his state of mind: “So long before these lawsuits I said that in the past I thought everything was a conspiracy, and I would kind of get into that mass group think of the communities that were out there saying that,” Jones said. “And so now I see that it’s more in the middle. All right? So that’s where I stand.”
But, on his show this past Monday, Jones was unapologetically back on his bullshit. At the news that Sandy Hook parent Jeremy Richman was killed in an apparent suicide, Jones began questioning whether the suicide had been faked.
“I mean, how do I get a fair trial with stuff like this?,” Jones said on InfoWars. “I’ve never said this guy’s name. Never said his name, until now. And obviously first, it’s we don’t know, he’s got gunshot wounds or whatever. Now it’s, well, apparent suicide. I mean, is there going to be a police investigation? Are they going to look at the surveillance cameras? I mean, what happened to this guy? This whole Sandy Hook thing is, like, really getting even crazier.”
The fact that Jones seriously cannot understand how a parent who has been hounded and threatened for years by the "Sandy Hook Truthers" - a group that had no significant media platform to speak of before Jones gave them one - and has been told over and over again that their murdered child never existed might develop depression that could lead to suicide should tell you everything you need to know about Jones' character. It's even more insulting for him to claim that he had "psychosis" or "like a form of psychosis" when he has never been diagnosed with actual schizophrenia. The guy isn't mentally ill, for all that I have in the past described the stuff he peddles on his show as "crazy." He's a crude opportunist who knows how to get attention by flogging the most outrageous stuff he can find.
Of course, Jones is whipping out this angle because he's basically toast. Free speech rights do not include inciting speech, and Jones' program incited people to commit real crimes, so he somehow has to prove that his speech was not inciting even though it incited. Maybe the only card he has left to play is arguing that he was not in his right mind at the time.
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