The “nation's leading conspiracy theorist” Alex Jones has given alt-right troll Mike Cernovich a regular hosting gig at Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show.
As reported by CNN on May 3, Cernovich will take over “the fourth hour of Jones' show once a week” effective immediately. Jones has praised Cernovich on his show as “a total patriot” for having President Donald Trump’s “sons, especially Donald Jr.” as sources and for creating a commotion after a White House press briefing he was granted access to earlier this week. Jones also claimed Infowars was granted a “weekly” pass to the White House press briefing.
Cernovich gained notoriety online as a rape-promoting, misogynist alt-right troll who pushes the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, and is currently attempting to rebrand himself as “new right.” By granting him a press pass, the White House allowed him to undermine the press corps with the same inflammatory techniques he uses to disrupt discourse online. The partnership between Jones and Cernovich provides more evidence of the incestuous alternative-media “new right” echo chamber which disseminates misleading and offensive content across multiple media platforms with extreme efficiency.
As explained by CNN, the alliance between these internet personalities is “a perfect fit” as they “both represent a brand of journalism” that mixes sensationalism and misleading narratives with “a smattering of items that appear to hold some water.” From CNNMoney’s May 3 article:
Mike Cernovich, a self-described “New Right” Internet personality, will begin regularly hosting part of “The Alex Jones Show” on InfoWars, a far-right media organization known for peddling unfounded conspiracy theories.
Cernovich, a 39-year-old lawyer from California, who guest hosted some segments on InfoWars last month, will host the fourth hour of Jones' show once a week, starting today, but moving to Friday afternoons the following week, a representative for InfoWars told CNN.
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And now he's one of the first online right-wing trolls of the 2016 election cycle to take his act professional, if not quite mainstream. InfoWars and its founder Alex Jones spread conspiracy theories, but are also carried by 200 radio stations across the country, and visited by millions of readers online each month.
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While Cernovich may break some news, he certainly does not do so in the traditional sense. In the stories he's authored that have checked out, he's played loose with the facts and applied a partisan spin to advance a narrative. In others, he's made wild claims without sufficient evidence to support them.
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In many ways, the marriage between Cernovich and InfoWars is a perfect fit. Both represent a brand of journalism perhaps best comparable to the National Enquirer. Each hawks sensational and often wildly inaccurate or misleading stories to their audiences, but mixes them in with a smattering of items that appear to hold some water.
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It also signals a splintering from the more traditional conservative media industrial complex. While Cernovich and other right-wing provocateurs share viewers with outlets like Fox News, they've drawn on an entirely different infrastructure to get their messages out — one which appears to be growing larger and stronger by the day.
In an interview with Jones prior to his first hosting appearance on May 3, Cernovich argued that Jones’ “integrity” in his Pizzagate coverage is what led Chobani owner Hamdi Ulukaya to sue him, claiming “ultimately Islam means submission, and he wants -- under his religion he has to make you, and infidel, submit to him.” Cernovich also used his new platform to brag about how he “triggered” reporters in the White House press briefing room, claiming that MSNBC’s Kristen Welker “is not a healthy person,” has “a satanic look,” and “you can look at that person and just tell that is a sociopath.”