Hunter S Thompson, though I like him, was responsible for embuing journalists w/ the idea that anger, taking drugs, & giving your viewpoint is journalism. Few people can execute this well. Thompson was right, of course, that journalists are c!nts. I speak as a former journalist.
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Despite many imitators who try to copy Hunter S. Thompson, the man in the contemporary media world most like him is Alex Jones. People don’t like to admit this because HST fans tend to be overly liberal. But Jones has the anarchy & subjectivity, completely true to his worldview.
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HST was distinctive because he was basically faithful to his view no matter the cost. Alex Jones is the same, and he has the same fire and outrage as HST—southern blood, perhaps. His language is also inventinve. I just keep seeing him tearing off his shirt...pure energy.
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Alex Jones is ultimately an artist, and this is why what he says—though bonkers—is intuitively true. He first appeared in the Welsh journalist Jon Ronson’s book “Them” (2000) (maybe in a Guardian article before). He was already tracking the “elites” then.
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Other US conservative media figures always give the impression of intellectualising, sort of delivering a pale imitation of a pale imitation of think tank report or lecture at university—even Glenn Beck is like this. Jones, however, channels pure daemonic energy.
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The girls (SE Cupp, Malkin, Coulter) are there, of course, primarily so you look at their tits while they tell you that taxes should be lower.
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I could see Alex Jones as one of those snake wrangling preachers out a Southern Gothic novel. Could you imagine being in his congregation? The pure force, you’d talk about it for weeks back in your shack. Probably impregnate half the women there by sheer force of personality. ,
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There’s an odd connection to Jordan Peterson here. Peterson is basically running a digital Chautauqua, complete with Bible instruction and life improvement tips. Alex Jones is heading up what would have been the Pentecostal oddity sector in the 19th Century.
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These are elements of American culture (in the continental sense) that were never really commodified by Hollywood or the mass media (considered too high brow and too vulgar respectively). But the Internet is allowing a kind of second-wave globalisation of American folk culture.
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