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The Alex Jones Effect

(This is a hastily written analysis of the somewhat recent banning and deplatforming of Alex Jones.  Please excuse possible grammatical and spelling errors. Thank you!) Over the past few days I have listened to literally hours upon hours of commentary about the deplatrofming of Alex Jones, from the kneejerk reactions of the alt-right, to the occasionally lucid accounts by the old left all the way to the ridiculous overcompensating reactionaries of the supposed radical left.   As the technosphere was busy puking over itself as a result of the Jones affair, there was very little in terms of real analysis of what transpired.   Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone came closest, but he somewhat conspicuously left out his analysis of the system that allows for the type of action taken by media conglomerates, Ben Shapiro had some interesting points, though he himself fell into the trap of self-preservation as the rest of the vlogo-bloggosphere, ‘if they came for Jones now, tomorrow they may

Popeye Trumpism and the Pitfalls of Authenticity

As disconcerting as the election of Trump was, nothing is more telling than the fact that authenticity is coming back into the lexicon of everyday use, courtesy of the populist right and the crypto-rightism of figures like Alex Jones.   When Hillary said she was two different people in public and in private she might in fact have been sincere, pointing out a simple truth.   In fact most of us act differently in front of different people. We are a different person in front of our friends or in front of our parents.   The same goes for the public and private spheres.   We not only act differently, we speak differently without realizing that we do so.   That Trump is seen as authentic because he seems to be the same person everywhere he appears, only shows how perfectly he plays his part in public.   Are we to assume that President Trump will be the same person as Apprentice Trump, the boardroom Trump, and the bedroom Trump? I can only surmise that Trump’s election is taking humanity b