Inside the Conspiracy Machine: A Former Infowars Insider Speaks Out
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Below, Josh Owens shares five key insights from his new book, The Madness of Believing: A Memoir from Inside Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Machine.
In 2013, in his early twenties, Josh dropped out of film school and moved halfway across the country to take a job at what was then a fringe media company called Infowars. After nearly four years there, he quit and began speaking out against conspiratorial thinking. He has since written about his experiences for The New York Times Magazine and CNN, been interviewed in dozens of media outlets, including Vice News and PBS, as well as appeared in the HBO documentary The Truth Vs. Alex Jones.
What’s the big idea?
Conspiracy culture seduces people through storytelling, certainty, and belonging. Escaping it requires learning to live with ambiguity instead of comforting fictional narratives.
1. When the world starts to feel like a movie.
From the first time I heard Alex Jones’ name to the first time I met him in person, and even the first time we traveled together, movies were always part of the story. They provided the narrative structure for his ideology, the centerpiece his conspiracy theories revolved around. Without them, I’m not sure Jones would exist in his current form or that I ever would have found my way into his world.
For me, it all began with Stanley Kubrick. In 2008, a television in my friend’s apartment flickered with the black and white images of Dr. Strangelove, a fictional Cold War era story of paranoia and catastrophic misjudgment. When we reached the scene where Sterling Hayden’s character launches into a manic tirade about the dangers of water fluoridation, my friend grabbed the remote and hit pause. He turned to me, his face lit by the frozen frame on screen and asked a question that would change the trajectory of my life. He asked if I’d ever heard of Alex Jones.
Five years later, after dropping out of film school and moving to Austin for a job at Infowars, I met Jones in person for the first time. Minutes after we were introduced, he began quoting that same film. But the most surreal moment came six months into my job as one of Jones’s camera operators and video editors.
We had traveled to Dallas to crash the 50th anniversary ceremony of JFK’s assassination when we ran into Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian, and ended up spending the evening with her. She told stories about creating the score for Full Metal Jacket, building sets on A Clockwork Orange, and spending time with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall during the filming of The Shining. I remember saying how strange it was that I had ended up at this event. Jones leaned in and told me that none of it was an accident, that everything was connected, and that all the decisions we make in life guide us to these moments. In that moment, I couldn’t help but believe him. Looking back, what stands out is how often coincidence was used as proof in that world. Chance encounters and stray connections were rarely allowed to remain accidents. Instead, they became evidence.
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