A few classic pieces of Alex Jones’s performance art

Alex Jones was a powerful underground voice for the alternative conservative media, but he became a more mainstream figure in December 2015. (Video: Erin Patrick O'Connor, Manuel Roig-Franzia/The Washington Post)

“He’s playing a character. He is a performance artist.”
– Alex Jones’s attorney, Randall Wilhite

How could we ever have doubted this? Alex Jones was never a deranged conspiracy theorist. He was a great artist. Below are just a few highlights from Jones’s long and storied performance-art career, which, now that I understand it, I guess ranks up there with Andy Warhol and Marina Abramovic.

Broadcast
Jones screams for 30 minutes straight.

Hundreds of Muslims Cheered on Rooftops in New Jersey
Jones calls on his audience to stare into a screen and visualize something that frightens them.

Three Million to 6 Million Illegal Votes
Jones directs his listeners to imagine millions of votes cast illegally. With his encouragement they pass laws to correct this nonexistent problem.

Bilderberg
Over a period that spans years, Jones shouts into a microphone a convoluted story about a complex globalist conspiracy that, among other things, sprays sinister chemicals into the sky that make things go wrong in your life.

Untitled
Jones takes off his shirt.

The Artist Is Present
Jones shows up at the Republican National Convention.

Cabinet Voltaire
Thanks to the efforts of Jones’s loyal listeners, a president is elected and a Cabinet appointed. Every night something alarming and unexpected happens, and sometimes the people watching react with shock and rush out into the streets to protest.

InfoWars/Seedbed
Jones lies hidden underneath the surface of the Internet whispering alarming fantasies about everything that crosses his path. Everyone can hear him. Some people derive pleasure from it.

How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare
His face covered in honey and brass leaf, Jones tells an empty Easter Bunny suit about the size of President Trump’s inauguration crowds.

Chemtrails
An elaborate collaboration across different forms of media that seeks to explain everything that is wrong with the world, often paired with “Juicebox,” a moving performance in which Jones combines a child’s beverage and an erroneous theory of homosexuality and ends by foaming at the mouth.

Wall Floor Positions
The listener is invited to curl up in the fetal position forever after hearing Jones.

Interior Scroll
Jones pulls a manifesto out of somewhere.

Inside Job
Jones uses 9/11 to sell T-shirts.

False Flag
Over the course of decades, Jones painstakingly stages every mass tragedy that has befallen the United States using a crew of dedicated actors, both adults and children. He describes it as “my own personal ‘Synecdoche, New York.’ ”

Pizzagate
Jones spreads word of an absurd conspiracy involving an imaginary pedophile ring and a pizza parlor, inspiring one audience member to show up with a gun and endanger real lives. Alex Jones apologizes. Christ, this actually happened.

New World Order
Jones spontaneously creates a set of imaginary facts. He gives them to the president of the United States, who says, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Now the president must craft a policy around these facts. Jones invites the whole country to live in this new imaginative reality.