August 29, 2005: Knowledge Fight dissects Alex Jones’ return from vacation amid Hurricane Katrina’s early levee failures—despite his claim that New Orleans dodged disaster—while exposing his pattern of defending extremists like Holocaust denier Ernest Zundel (extradited to Germany in 2003) under free speech pretexts. His baseless attacks on Rush Limbaugh and Lance Armstrong reveal opportunistic pettiness, and a caller’s theater connection hints at Marshall Law’s pre-9/11 screening. The episode underscores Jones’ conspiracy-driven framing of crises, blending misinformation with ideological profit long before his peak. [Automatically generated summary]
My bright spot today, I guess, actually, it's kind of like a ha-ha bright spot, as opposed to a, I don't actually know if it's great or anything, but...
It's always nice to watch TV from other countries.
I appreciate it because there is a certain level of, like, with our American culture and how it is so oppressively pushed everywhere else, you can get the idea that people have a homogenized media landscape.
Whereas, you know, you find stuff in other countries that you can't find elsewhere.
Like, in Germany, there's a show where they, like, if you can cut this perfectly in half...
We've been in 2004, and we've been seeing the path that Alex is taking through the capture of Saddam Hussein, the insistence that there's going to be the bath parties being put back in power, and nothing was evolving.
For the present time, I'm going to put that part to bed where there may still be plenty more to learn deep in those hills to keep digging.
But I decided that our time, especially as we...
Shift focus off the present day is better used in another place.
And I think that a lot of the fertile lessons and things we can learn have come from going back to look at major events and stuff like the Boston bombing and Sandy Hook shooting.
And so I thought there's one thing that immediately popped to mind.
So, I feel like I wanted to find another event and something major that we haven't actually covered and we don't know exactly what Alex's actions were like.
Like, you know, I think a lot of people have a general sense of...
U.S. oil surges $4 to record price above $70 a barrel.
Because of the hurricane that has missed New Orleans predominantly.
There is some flooding going on, but no deaths, thank God, being reported.
There would have been a direct hit on the city.
We are looking at total flooding and billions of dollars of damage.
But just like the bullet they dodged last year, this...
Category 5 hurricane slowed down to Category 4 as it went on land, and the main force of the storm, the 145 mile-an-hour winds, missed most of the city of New Orleans down there in Sin City Central.
So, as Alex begins the show here on the 29th, you can tell he has the tone of a near miss in terms of how he's covering the hurricane, and he's not wildly wrong to be striking that posture.
At this point in time, with the information Alex could likely have access to, it feels like things could have been a lot worse, and that's the information that's being put forth.
So, like, it seems striking because we know what is happening and what ends up happening, but for him...
That's, he's not minimizing this in any kind of a...
So, on August 25th, Katrina had hit Florida as a Category 1 hurricane.
Though the hurricane killed nine people in this landfall, once it made it to the Gulf of Mexico and was headed towards Louisiana, it began to pick up steam and eventually grew to a Category 5 storm.
On the evening of the 27th, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin began encouraging voluntary evacuation, which would become mandatory the next morning.
Forecasts put it at almost even odds that the storm would make a direct hit on the city.
So when Alex discusses things like a bullet being dodged, he's operating from the place where that was the worst possible outcome.
And when Katrina didn't hit New Orleans directly, it felt like the worst case scenario didn't happen and there was some cause for relief.
And possibly unbeknownst to Alex in this moment, just prior to him going on air, multiple levees had failed along canals in the city, and much of New Orleans was under feet of water.
It's plausible to believe that Alex wouldn't have gotten this information by the time his show's starting, but as he's on air, this is a situation that is unfolding in real time, and the notion of a bullet being dodged will look more and more naively optimistic.
Oil prices did go up as a result of the hurricane, much of which was the natural consequence of damage being done to oil refineries and other facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Federal Trade Commission released a report on allegations of price gouging related to gasoline during the storm and found that there was no evidence of illegal market manipulations, but they also assessed financial information from a slew of refiners, wholesalers, and retailers.
and found that 15 such entities of 77 analyzed, quote, had higher average gasoline prices in September 2005 compared to August, aimed that these prices were not substantially attributable to either higher costs or to national or international market trends.
However, much of this was able to be attributed to factors like regional or local market trends, so they didn't consider these to be instances of price gout.
So, like, in terms of, I mean, look, if you want to talk about, like, some local things.
Sure.
Then I'm sure there are examples that you can find.
Sure.
But when Alex is talking about the price of oil going up, there's a reason for that, and investigation has shown that there's reason to attribute that to national and international market forces.
I guess that is something that I wish I would have looked into that a little bit more to know exactly what their definition of legal and illegal market manipulation is.
George Bush cut the funding, the federal funding, which there shouldn't even be federal funding to begin with.
The government's going to be doling money out.
They cut the federal funding at record levels for trying to repair and strengthen the levies around the city, which is several feet.
Below sea level and sinking, what, three or four inches a year.
The city is sinking.
And the Houston Chronicle reported last year, and we pulled this article out, that thousands could die if there's ever a direct hit on New Orleans by a hurricane.
So more people could die by a direct hit by a hurricane than on 9-11, but is the government spending just a few paltry $100 million to protect that city, which they could do 100%?
So it is bad that Bush cut funding for the maintenance of the levees in New Orleans, but if you listen to this clip, Alex has absolutely no leg to stand on in the argument.
His position is that there should be no federal funds going to this at all, so Bush's actions are in service of getting us closer to the situation Alex wants to be the case.
Bush deserves criticism, but for it to come from Alex is incoherent.
His position doesn't make sense.
It's absolutely true that George W. Bush's administration had repeatedly underfunded requests from the Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Project, and you can extrapolate that this underfunding could have contributed to the disaster and how things played out.
Although there are levy breaches and flooding on this day, August 29th, it was the next morning when the additional breaches occur and approximately 80% of the city ends up flooded.
At this point, on the 29th, there's still a government posture that levies didn't break, or at least that the indications were that they hadn't, with the DHS releasing a statement to that effect at 6pm.
So there is that incongruence of information that exists at this point.
But at the same time, with the gift of hindsight, we can say that Alex's criticism of Bush here is good.
It's such an interesting dynamic because you have a correct point.
Bush was fucking irresponsible, and they did not follow the guidance of people who wanted and saw problems that were potential in advance, underfunded these things, and you have that criticism coming from Alex.
You have to ask yourself, what do you want to be the case?
And for Alex, he's only using this complaint as a prop.
Because, you know, short of a flood happening, he would say, give them no money.
Well, I mean, I think that one of the things that's interesting about Alex's past is you have this, like, it's more accurate than the present.
Granted, not like this, you know, trying to fearmonger about bird flu or swine flu or anything like that, but like, hey, there are patriots for profit that are going to try and sell you a magic cream like my colloidal silver wound gel.
You know, it's just, it makes me...
Very convinced that the shit that he does in the present is far more consciously manipulative than we may want to believe at times.
What I feel like I've learned over time in my life that I was completely wrong about, right, is that I thought for most of my life, like, political beliefs and religious beliefs were like the bedrock, you know, like, they are the same.
Always, you know?
But now, over time, I'm finding out that they are relative to what other people think about you at any given point in time.
And if you can get away with bullshit, then it doesn't matter what your religious or political beliefs are.
Because that's what your real religious or political beliefs are, what you can get away with.
And so it's just kind of being mad at whoever, you know, the other side.
Yep.
So I tuned in because this is the first day during Hurricane Katrina that Alex has a show, and I didn't find that much about Hurricane Katrina, honestly.
It's not a big issue for him.
Instead, he spends a fair amount of time talking about how he was on vacation, and he read some books about 1776.
And I wrote a bunch of notes, stuff I wanted to talk about, and of course I didn't bring them into the studio.
And, you know, my humble brain just cannot describe the eloquence and the intelligence and the courage and the honor.
Folks, I read a history that was anti-American.
I like to read both sides, and it was talking about the incredible fortitude of the American forces.
And then to just look at us today, slovenly, stupid people who don't even know where their state capitals are, who don't have any idea about where major land masses or continents are, who don't know about the three branches of government, that don't know what the Fourth Amendment is, or the 10th, or the 9th, or the 7th, who don't have any inkling of anything, just...
Mindless idiots.
And I'm talking about the Democrats.
I'm talking about the Republicans.
We have just been domesticated.
We are the children of the children of the children of the children of spoiled brats.
We talk about the World War II generation being the greatest generation, and yeah, they were more moral and more informed and more intelligent and more brave.
In many cases than we are today, but compared to people in 1776, I'm telling you folks, the greatest generation, I'm sorry if you don't want to hear it, is not the World War II generation.
It's the generation of 1776 and that 12-year war for 1798.
Longer than that.
It just makes my head spin.
It just makes my head spin.
Oh, and to read what globalists in Europe were saying about how they would lose their empire of control over their slaves if we had this bad example in America.
Every time, once a year I go down there for a few days and there's always a hurricane forms.
Luckily, it was coming our direction after our little vacation was over.
Again, I haven't had a big vacation in five years, so I apologize for taking five days off, but it's been five years since I did that, and I did it.
In fact, I just said five years.
I've never taken a week off.
I have never taken a week off, but I did do it.
Side issue.
They re-air Rush Limbaugh here locally in Austin.
Now, remember, folks, I mean, I was back in college, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, I used to love Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, I bought his books.
I even wore a Rush Limbaugh t-shirt.
I bought my father the Limbaugh letter.
We're talking, you know, 12 years ago or longer.
But then my uncle said, you know, he's not a real conservative son.
And this is like, my uncle told me that about 15 years ago.
And I rolled my eyes at him and argued with him, and then he started explaining to me how the Republicans were controlled.
And this is back when George Bush was president, the first George Bush, Bush 41. And I still disagreed with him, but those seeds, five years later, when I myself had gotten into talk radio, It began to grow, and I began to see.
And let me tell you, if the Rush Limbaugh 15 years ago was bad, and a wolf in sheep's clothing, he's really bad today.
So I'm driving back from Galveston, Texas, listening to three hours of Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, I listened to him from the time I left Galveston until the time I got back to Austin, Texas.
And it was lie after lie after lie.
I mean, folks, it wasn't just twisting or spinning.
This is a couple years after Rush had had his opiate admission, and so, like, you know, there's a chance that maybe he is on some pills or something like that.
Every media figure, before you get a job in media, somebody shows up, black bags you, shows up, says, if you say whatever I want you to say, I'll give you $500 billion, right?
I heard him say that, well, it just came out that three weeks ago in Seattle, peace activists, you want to know about this anti-war movement, how peaceful they are, two peace activists with a crowd beat two troops, beat them, beat them at a restaurant, beat them almost, and I bet a lot of you heard this Friday, they were re-earing Friday's show Sunday on KLBJ 590.
So I'm listening to this, and the end...
And they beat them.
They beat them.
And they broke their jaws, and this is what peace activists do.
And I didn't hear him give a news report.
I didn't hear him give a source.
He wasn't giving any sources.
He'd cover like ten articles in an hour and maybe give one source.
He wasn't giving a source.
And I thought, this is really weird, as he normally does, and then just twist it.
And so I'm listening to this, and again, folks, this isn't about bashing Rush Limbaugh.
Okay?
It's just, this is an example of total deception.
Total lies.
And I went, wait a minute, I remember a month ago, three or four weeks ago, hearing about that, and it was just a brawl at a club.
And soldiers get in fights all the time.
And I thought, this is really, really weird.
You know what, I'm in a reserve judgment, but peace activists normally are...
What Neil Bortz calls them, they are the bedwetting type.
I mean, you know, the classic liberal is a groveling, simpering, pencil-necked, limp-wristed, bug-eyed weakling.
Also, it seems like Alex is a great friend of the anti-war movement.
I think he definitely is somebody who you'd want.
If you're out there doing a protest against the Iraq war, it seems like the kind of guy who really respects what you do and who you are and what you're about.
unidentified
My main problem with pacifists is they won't fucking beat the shit out of these guys.
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, like, he has like this, okay, I hate the neocons and the people who are hawks for the war, but I also think that the people who are protesting the war are soft and weak.
So I get home last night, and I sit down, and I go watch the video, and I go read the articles, and these were believed to be two gang member types with some other gang members at a predominantly black gangbanger bar, and a black soldier and a white soldier go in there.
And some people hit on their girlfriends and pat on them and stuff, and folks, that's what goes on with these hip-hop bars.
Black, white, it doesn't matter.
I mean, it's a bunch of gyrating, pumping, you know, basically being reduced to the level of animals here in America.
So, I think that Alex has firmly established that the story he's talking about has to do with some Iraq War veterans being attacked in the context of a bar fight.
I'm comfortable saying that he has done his work on that front.
However, there's still another aspect to this, which is the fact that he's not played a clip of Rush Limbaugh's claims.
He's only repeated his own characterization of them.
I'm willing to believe that Rush did lie about this incident in order to smear antiwar activists, but Alex hasn't shown anything that demonstrates this.
There's almost like a reliance on knowing your audience may have probably listened to Rush.
Took a little bit of digging, but I was able to find a story on Media Matters about this.
And Alex's version is kind of fair.
Rush reads from a KOMU Seattle story about this attack and talks about how it was a bar fight and all that.
But he starts the story saying, quote, for those of you who still have an open mind about the anti-war left in this country, this story is out of Seattle.
And then he closes his remark saying, quote, so once again, the anti-war left claiming to be a peace movement illustrates itself to be anything but.
I'm going to go ahead and give Alex the points on this one.
He's accurately pointed out that Rush has fabricated an anti-war motive for the attack, and though Alex isn't totally accurate in conveying what Rush said, his point is fair.
The irony is that what Rush is doing is exactly what Alex's show thrives on in the present day.
A huge chunk of his content is just adding layers and imagined motives onto stories that don't exist in the real world, and seeing Alex be able to call this out in the past really does indicate to me how much of his behavior in the present is a willful strategy.
I don't imagine he doesn't understand this, if he's able to call it out, so I would say...
I mean, just that, like, it's so clear, you know, being the person who plays clips and criticizes Rush Limbaugh is far less lucrative than being Rush Limbaugh.
Several times he was making me music tracks and videos, which you'll see listed in the credits.
I would have the enjoyment of going into one of these establishments, and I assure you after that I would have him bring me the CD outside during a song just because I don't wish to be around it.
But I have been in these establishments.
And let me just tell you, it is amazing.
Sodom and Gomorrah is the way to describe it.
And this is how our children are now being taught to behave.
But again, all that is a side issue.
How does this, and I know a lot of you heard this last Friday.
I heard it rebroadcast yesterday.
How does this transfer into?
This is very important.
How does this transfer into peace activists beating up troops?
I feel like there are things that he said that you could go back and, like, in this clip, you could go back to us five years ago and hear me say something almost identical to, like, how do they let him be on air?
I was wondering if you were – actually, I just want your take on something.
Colin Powell, I read, was supposed to be signing a UN charter for a Palestinian state with – It was supposed to be at 10 a.m., and it was thwarted by the attack, obviously.
So we get another caller, and this fella, he's got some poof.
This guy's interesting.
unidentified
Because this is what made me call when you're covering George Washington.
I'm right in that area.
He's been up and down my backyard.
I live in the most historical place of the country where it all started.
And we covered all the great stuff with Washington.
Are you familiar with who they called the mysterious professor?
That appeared in the balcony in that inn when they were trying to determine on the draft of the Declaration of Independence whether or not that was the final draft.
They were arguing.
The war was imminently going to break out.
And in heated debate, all of a sudden, a man, a mysterious figure, appears in the balcony, and he makes a big oratory, and at the end of it he says, God has decreed America to be free.
If I had to guess, it's probably because he knows it's bullshit, but he doesn't like to do things that work against American exceptionalism, patriot lore, those kinds of...
Anything that's like that, he doesn't want to disrupt or stop you from believing nonsense if it feeds into that.
Hall was a real esoteric weirdo, and a lot of his shit is not that credible.
But in his book, he claims that he visited a theosophical colony in Ojai, California, where he was introduced to a secret tome of early American political speeches.
This tome included a tale of the night of July 4th, 1776, when all the...
The delegates turned to express their gratitude to the unknown speaker for his eloquent words.
He was not there.
Who was this strange man who seemed to speak with divine authority, whose solemn words gave courage to the doubters and sealed the destiny of the new nation?
Unfortunately, no one knows.
Hall goes on to suggest that the guy was an angel who appeared to make sure everything is right.
This is a lot of fun, but Hall hadn't actually found a secret book of speeches in Ojai.
This entire story is just cribbed from a book called Washington and His Generals, as illustrated in The Legends of the Revolution by a guy named George Lippard.
Lippard is a dude who would take ideas of moments in history and then fictionalize them and add fantastic elements to spice them up a little bit so they'd sell.
This was a fake story that appeared in Lippard's 1847 book, which was then repackaged by Manly P. Hall in his 1944 book, and I guess this caller believes it's a real thing that happened.
Six years ago, I saw stuff where a white supremacist said that six million Jews didn't die.
Now, whether ten million Jews died or a million Jews died, whether I agree with that or not...
People should have a right to say what they want.
But no, under German law, the FBI arrested him and flew an American citizen to Germany where he is still in jail.
unidentified
Oh yeah, that's happening right now up here to a guy named Ernest Zundel, who by all means, I don't agree with the guy, but this is like what happened to Galileo.
Galileo just happened to be right.
This guy just happens to be wrong.
But it's the same thing.
You know, you charge a person with heresy for disagreeing with what the church has said is, you know, sun revolves around the earth.
That's the way it goes.
If you disagree with that, we're going to hang you.
I don't know if it's inconsequential or pointless, but it's very specific.
So, Alex, I get that he wants to defend Ernst Zondel on some free speech grounds, but it is absurd to call him mild.
Zondel founded Semistat Publishers, which the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum called, quote, A significant focal point in revisionist propaganda.
He wrote books that were not only denying the Holocaust, but he co-authored a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, and he published a slew of other Hitler and Nazi promoting trash.
He wrote for the newsletter The White Power Report, and is a critically important piece of the spread of neo-Nazi ideas.
For all of the shit he did, all of the hate he disseminated, and all of the Holocaust denial, he was ultimately sentenced to five years in jail.
It's not...
You know, he's like, call her saying, well, hang you.
He's been to jail for five years.
Alex can play whatever games he wants with pretending that he just likes to defend unpopular speech, but it's an entirely different thing for him to pretend that Ernst Zundel is mild.
That's crazy.
That's like how he's, these days, he says the AFD party in Germany is a milquetoast conservative party.
He runs cover for extremists like this, probably because he has a pretty heavy overlap with them in terms of policy preferences.
So, Alex and Paul, they sort of complain a little bit about some media like Rush and stuff, and I think that this is another moment where the time space has torn.
I mean, on Limbaugh's part, he does that kind of thing every day.
He came out with absolutely no evidence, no follow-up, no retraction, said that the Downing Street memos were leaked by somebody connected to the CBS Rathergate scandal because he remembered the same name being connected to the Rathergate scandal.
The name was Michael Smith.
You really remember that name.
It's very different.
And then, with Cindy Sheehan, I mean, take this, for example.
Cindy Sheehan says, when I get up to heaven, he's going to say, good job, Mom.
Talking about her son, Casey Sheehan.
So, Will NetDaily write an article which says that Cindy Sheehan channels the dead.
How obvious is that as a quite pathetic smear attempt?