Morning Briefing: Alex Jones on Trial
Morning Briefing: Alex Jones on Trial
The parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting are seeking $150 million in damages from Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster.
Morning Briefing: The jury was selected in a civil trial that “will determine for the first time how much Infowars host Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook Elementary School parents for falsely telling his audience that the deadliest classroom shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.”
The parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting are seeking $150 million in damages from Jones for “claiming that they were complicit in a government plot to fake the shooting as a pretext for gun control efforts.”
Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and radio show host, was reportedly “defiant and cited free speech rights during a lawsuit deposition in April when questioned about calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax and the effect the statement had on families who lost loved ones.”
Viktor Orbán, the right-wing authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary scheduled to speak at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, said during a speech in Romania that Hungarians “are not a mixed race… and we do not want to become a mixed race.”
U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins is reportedly planning to “launch a hotline soon, that will allow citizens to report white supremacist activity.”
Christ Community Church, an evangelical Christian church in Lower Allen Township, Pennsylvania, is in “hot water after it premiered a right-wing propaganda film promoting Republican political candidates, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, earlier this month.”
Democratic Party organizations and candidates “have together spent millions to elevate the most extreme positions of far-right candidates in races in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland, and it’s a strategy that’s divided party operatives.”
Must Reads
Charles Homans writes that it is “possible to see the path from Harrisburg to Washington as a small part of a much longer arc: one that began before Trump and will outlive his presidency, whether or not he tries to reclaim the office in 2024. This has become clear in the past year, as the particulars of his final perilous months in office have emerged amid the wash of reporting, documentary evidence and testimonies to the House committee investigating the events around Jan. 6. Clearer, too, is the view of what became of Stop the Steal after its climactic battle was lost.” [The New York Times Magazine]
Mike Lofgren writes that “what unites all these seemingly disparate ideological groupings is an authoritarian outlook that inevitably tends towards fascism. Almost 30 years ago, the Italian author Umberto Eco wrote an essay called Ur-Fascism in which he described the salient characteristics of fascism. It was, he said, a difficult subject to pin down because fascism is so mutable according to time and place. Some of the tendencies of historical examples of fascism seem irrelevant or even contradictory to other tendencies. But he explained this by saying that fascism's power derives from being syncretic: it gathers together pretty much every retrograde belief, even when they are inconsistent with one another, and molds them into an action-oriented movement to every kind of authoritarian person in a society.” [Common Dreams]
Steven Monacelli writes that “North Texas continues to be an epicenter of Bircherism and the variety of far-right movements that have digested its ideas—some of which have more violent or extreme tendencies. Consider that North Texas is also home to a significant number of participants in the January 6 insurrection, and has been a site and center of activity for extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Patriot Front, and far-right militias like This Is Texas Freedom Force (TITFF). Other parallels include the deliberate move by right-wing activists to take over school boards, a trend that has played out over the past two years across Texas.” [Texas Observer]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right; Field Notes delivers research on key organizations and analysis of the strategies and tactics of the Radical Right.
