Alex Jones

Andrea Austria / Media Matters

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Right-wing religious warfare is a staple of Alex Jones and Infowars’ rhetoric

Claims of demonic invasion, “spiritual war,” and “satanic 5G” have been common on Jones’ broadcast and in his media appearances this year

Written by Noah Dowe

Published

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars media network have built on years of accusations that their opponents are “demon-possessed” and “committed to occult ideology of the New World Order,” embracing a fusion of fringe, right-wing conspiracy theories with evangelical rhetoric as an important piece of Infowars’ far-right appeal in the past year.

Christian nationalism, an extreme belief system seeking to impose right-wing Christian values on society, has risen in prominence across conservative politics and media. In the last several years, Jones has not only attended Christian nationalist events like the “ReAwaken America” tour and Jericho March, but also repeatedly used his broadcast to further elements of the Christian nationalist ideology, platforming calls for an explicitly “Christian government” and declarations of “spiritual war” led by religious figures willing to “turn the pulpit into a political tool against Satan.” 

Jones has continued to weave this inflammatory religious rhetoric into his show, rallying his listeners to dehumanize their political opposition as literal demons. 

 

  • Christian nationalism, which seeks to impose right-wing Christian values on society, is increasingly influential in the Republican Party and right-wing media

    • Christian nationalism seeks to impose right-wing Christian values on society and generally “blurs distinctions between Christian identity and American identity.” The movement also frequently advocates the notion that humanity is engaged in “spiritual warfare.” [The Washington Post, 1/6/23]
    • Christian nationalist ideology and broader rhetoric around “spiritual warfare” have become popular in right-wing politics “as some voters and politicians blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon ideology, gun rights and lingering anger over Covid-related restrictions.” Recent polling suggests “more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).” [The New Republic, 1/23/23; The New York Times, 7/8/22; NPR, 2/14/23]
    • A number of right-wing media personalities have also recently embraced Christian nationalism and related rhetoric that warns about the influence of demons. Prominent personalities on Fox News have labeled progressive causes “demonic.” Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has increasingly prioritized right-wing Christian fundamentalism through the TPUSA Faith initiative, an effort to “restore America’s Biblical values.” Additionally, the far-right outlet One America News Network endorsed Christian nationalist ideology as the network was dropped by several carriers, with one host calling the Christian nationalist label “a badge of honor.” [Media Matters, 7/5/23, 4/27/23, 1/10/23]

  • Jones and his broadcast have repeatedly pushed extreme Christian nationalist rhetoric or principles, warning of a modern “Sodom and Gomorrah,” “human sacrifice,” and “satanic 5G” in the last few months alone

    • Jones claimed that Seattle was “a city totally controlled by the devil” under a “satanic bandwidth or communication system.” Speaking to Louder with Crowder CEO Gerald Morgan, Jones said he was “literally attacked everywhere” during a visit to the city by people who were “talking like demons,” adding: “You could feel like it was a domain, like the Bible says, like that was under its control, like a satanic 5G or something.” [Twitter/X, 8/18/23] 
    • Jones asked God to “vaporize the Earth” to prevent the “pure satanism, pedophilia, animal-human clones, them playing God, a psychotic mad scientist situation” of globalism. Jones explained that while he still wished to “fix things,” he felt that with the wrong choices by humanity, “God should not allow the Earth to continue on to produce children for this thing to feed on.” [Newsweek, 7/10/23]
    • QAnon enthusiast Roseanne Barr described Christians as fighting a “spiritual war” against “Cainites” who “sacrifice other people and drink their blood.” “Cain killed Abel and it says in the Bible that he drank his blood,” Barr told Jones. “So that is the war we’re fighting right now, against people who sacrifice other people and drink their blood.” Jones agreed that Barr was “100% right” and further argued that the COVID-19 vaccines represented “a holocaust against our medical rights, a holocaust against our medical freedom, and a holocaust of our immune system.”” [Media Matters, 9/21/22; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/30/23]

  • From the June 30, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

    • Jones hosted a two-hour question and answer session at the church of far-right conspiracy pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, during which Jones proclaimed that “evil’s real. I’ve studied the ruling class — what they do, they’re devil worshippers.” Howard-Browne, who co-authored a novel warning of the “New World Order,” is a frequent Infowars guest and one of Jones' “favorite pastors.” [Infowars.com, 6/25/23; Tampa Bay Times, 4/16/20]
    • In an edition of Jones’ show broadcast from Howard-Browne’s studio in June, the pastor read out of his Bible and warned that schools have taken children and “indoctrinated them away from God’s purpose and plan for their life.” “Man, this guy’s like preaching, talking about God constantly,” Jones mused about his personal shift to “intense” Christian rhetoric, “Well, look at the satanism everywhere.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/22/23]
    • On Jones’ show, Howard-Browne has also alleged “Luciferian” forces were plotting against Trump and called abortion “human sacrifice.” In June, Jones told Howard-Browne that “Satan’s main push” was to push LGBTQ awareness in order to “destroy families, atomize us, and literally sexualize children.” Howard-Browne responded that without God, societies “sacrifice children, which we see there taking place with abortion,” and alleged “hundreds of thousands of older people have been put to death. It’s also human sacrifice, whichever way you look at it.” [Right Wing Watch, 7/28/17; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/8/23]
    • Timcast contributor and Infowars guest Shane Cashman called abortion “human sacrifice,” and Jones said of some people who have abortions: “You are literally becoming a slave of Satan.” Cashman claimed that people are regularly “haunted by the fetuses they aborted.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/8/23]
    • Jones told his audience that demons were coming into the Earth “like paratroopers.” “CERN has definitely opened up a gate,” he said, referring to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, adding that “they do satanic rituals at CERN.” Jones also remarked that “there’s a reason Tucker Carlson’s talking about God. There’s a reason Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s talking about God.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/6/23]

  • From the June 6, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

    • Jones validated a caller’s desire for homosexuality to be recriminalized. Jones said that “they found Sodom and Gomorrah. It really happened,” and claimed, “There's a reason it's been banned in civilization, because every time it starts, it takes over.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/6/23]

  • Other Infowars personalities and guests have echoed or even escalated this rhetoric, calling for “spiritual war” against an alleged “satanic new Babylon system”

    • White nationalist Nick Fuentes told Jones he admires Hitler “in some ways” and called for a “Christian government,” attacking “Jewish gangsters that run our Christian country.” Fuentes argued that “God runs the world, we should have a government in accordance with that.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 12/13/22] 
    • After Jones decried the “big leftist lie that this wasn’t a Christian nation,” far-right pastor Dave Scarlett called for a return to “the original pastors” who “had a musket in one hand and the Bible in the other.” Scarlett cited the myth of the Black Robe Regiment, which alleges that “groups of Christian ministers … took up arms against the British and led their congregants” in the American Revolution, a claim, according to Vice, “based on thinly sourced and misinterpreted stories.” A number of right-wing pastors claim membership of a modern Black Robe Regiment, seeking to “inflame and incite their congregations to be prepared for a coming civil war, a battle of good versus evil where they fight back against what they see as the tyranny of the left.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/12/23; Vice, 10/25/21]
    • Then-Turning Point USA host Drew Hernandez claimed while guest-hosting for Infowars that trans activists “hate Christ” and “just love blood — it’s their satanic ritual.” While guest hosting The Alex Jones Show, Hernandez reacted to the Covenant School shooting by claiming trans activists “love that these Christian little babies got murdered in cold blood. … They just love blood — it’s their satanic ritual.” Hernandez added that these alleged rituals were fueled by “Baphomet,” “Moloch,” and “the New World Order, the antichrist, and Satan that empowers it.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 3/30/23]

  • From the March 30, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show 

    • While interviewing Scarlett, Infowars host Owen Shroyer attacked religious leaders who refuse to “turn the pulpit into a political tool against Satan” and “the trans kid agenda” out of fear of losing their tax-exempt statuses. Scarlett encouraged pastors to abandon their fear of “them stripping your 501(c) or whatever tax status or coming after you. … It’s prison ministry.” Shroyer also praised Greg Locke, adherent of the modern Black Robe Regiment, and encouraged other pastors to follow Locke’s example, claiming, “Those are going to be the churches of the future.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 5/23/23; CNN, 1/3/21]
    • Shroyer said he would “turn my head” if a “Christian activist wants to go take down a Pride display for kids and smash it on the ground” at Target. While guest-hosting The Alex Jones Show, Shroyer suggested that “we stop going after Christian activists that smash a Pride for kids display,” claiming the left “literally burns Targets to the ground” as justification. [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 5/24/23]
    • Shroyer argued pastors “should all be sounding like” Christian nationalist Jack Hibbs, whose sermons, aired on Fox Business, have invoked “spiritual war” and called trans people “satanic.” Shroyer said that “If your pastor doesn't sound like that, I'm not sure you have a pastor. … They should all be sounding like that, in my opinion." [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 5/25/23; Media Matters, 5/25/23]
    • Podcast host Shemane Nugent told Jones that “this is a spiritual war” and claimed “we are commissioned by God to stand up for Christian beliefs, for what this country is founded upon.” Nugent further warned that “Satan is here to kill, steal, and destroy” and would “divide this country” through use of the LGBTQ community. [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/27/23]
    • Guest host Maria Zeee claimed multinational organizations “seek to enslave you into their satanic new Babylon system” because “they want your soul.” Zeee told the audience that “your enemy worships Satan. Your enemy conducts child sacrifice. Your enemy feeds on the blood of children.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 8/8/23]

  • From the August 8, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

  • Jones and Infowars' history reveals a pattern of appearances at far-right religious gatherings, accusations of demonic possession, and declarations of spiritual war

    • Jones accused fellow conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck of being a “power-mad satanist” controlled by “spiritual slave masters.” Jones claimed Beck was part of a “false opposition” needed by globalists to institute “hell on Earth.” [Right Wing Watch, 5/23/16]
    • Jones claimed that Hillary Clinton and then-President Barack Obama “smell like sulfur” and could therefore be “demon-possessed.” Before the 2016 election, Jones warned that Clinton was “an abject, psychopathic, demon from hell that as soon as she gets into power is going to try to destroy the planet.” [Media Matters, 10/10/16]
    • Jones called Trump an “imperfect messenger of God” and “a King David of our time.” Near the end of the former president’s administration, Jones also pushed a claim by right-wing commentator and Qanon influencer Michael Flynn that communists were trying to “overthrow the United States under the command of Satan.” [Right Wing Watch, 10/18/16; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 8/7/20]
    • Jones spoke at Jericho March’s December 2020 “Let the Church ROAR” rally, part of a series of right-wing events in Washington, D.C., that set the stage for the January 6 insurrection with Christian nationalist rhetoric, including calls for “spiritual warfare.” During his speech, which faith-based nonprofit Baptist Joint Committee described as “highly religious and full of Christian nationalist ideology,” Jones yelled that Biden “will be removed one way or another” and told the audience to “never back down to the satanic pedophile, globalist New World Order and their walking-dead reanimated corpse Joe Biden.” [Baptist Joint Committee, 2/9/22; Newsweek, 12/12/20]
    • Gab CEO Andrew Torba argued that Christians must “continue pressing forward in this spiritual war,” adding that “people need to wake up and realize … do they want to be on the side of darkness and evil and use these platforms that allow this wickedness.” On Infowars, Torba, who co-authored Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, a book advocating for the creation of a “parallel Christian society … which will fill the vacuum of the secular state when it falls,” claimed in the interview that the left was “projecting their sin and their evil” on those “spreading truth and goodness into this world of darkness.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 3/25/21; Business Insider, 10/23/22]
    • Jones appeared at Christian nationalist Clay Clark’s “ReAwaken America” tour, where Jones proclaimed that the right-wing political movement’s opponents had “made a covenant with death just like the Bible tells us, and they are the children of death.” During his speech at the tour, which has drawn attention for its fusion of Christian nationalism, antisemitism, and fringe right-wing conspiracy theories, Jones alleged that “we are literally seeing the Book of Revelations begin to come true” and decried “the devil” and his “pathetic minions like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.” [Media Matters, 5/8/23; Banned.Video, 11/13/21]

  • From a November 13, 2021, event shared on Banned.Video

    • Conservative radio host Michael Petro told Jones the COVID-19 vaccine “could be the mark of the beast” and was “changing our DNA” like “nephilim.” “This is about a genetic mark on us and basically Satan marking us,” Jones argued in their interview, to which Petro added, “This could be the mark of the beast.” The two also made predictions of a coming apocalypse, with Jones characterizing “all of this” as “Satan attempting to maintain control and trying to bring in total enslavement. … All of this is bullying, trying to keep us on the plantation.” [The Voice of Healing Radio, posted on Rumble on 11/19/21]
    • In his trial for defamation of the families of the Sandy Hook massacre, Jones attacked the judge and plaintiffs’ lawyers as “demonically possessed.” Jones also claimed that they were “committed to occult ideology of the New World Order.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 8/2/22]
    • Two days after a shooter killed five people in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ club, Shroyer ran footage of drag queens and questioned whether “these people are even human.” Shroyer ranted that “demon possession is real. Satanic agendas are real. I don’t know how else to describe any of this.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 11/22/22]