A Look At A Guest's Real Agenda

Regardless of how farcical things may seem at times, this is not all fun and games

In the time that I’ve been following Infowars coverage, there are two recurring guests who really elevate themselves above the rest in terms of their ambition and creativity. One is the “Illuminati insider” and “guy who did 9/11” as well as “the Real Jesus Christ,” Leo Zagami. The disconnect between his real life and his fantasy life is fascinating and it’s hard not to admire his commitment to the bit.

The other guest that is above the rest is undoubtedly Steve Pieczenik, the former State Department official who has steered Alex Jones’ career in the wrong direction for over twenty years.

While it is true that Pieczenik did work at the State Department for a few years in the 1970’s, and he was intimately involved in the botched hostage negotiation that led to the assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Steve has a magical way of overplaying his credentials. If you listen to him, and take him at all seriously, then he is the single most important figure in world history.

He has claimed to have single-handedly taken down the Soviet Union, he killed Yitzhak Rabin, he secretly arrested Pope Francis at some point in the last year; and this is just scratching the surface of his big brags.

It’s all bullshit, but Alex eats it up, and his audience is encouraged to do so as well, elevating Steve to the level of some kind of Infowars folk hero. The reason that Alex does this is because Steve has the veneer of real credibility from his definite time working at the State Department, and that credibility is very valuable when it can be attached to the conspiracy narratives that Alex is seeking to promote.

For instance, Steve was instrumental in Alex’s coverage of Sandy Hook, and in fact, Steve was the first person to say that the shooting was faked on Alex’s show. His involvement in that coverage elevated it from being “just some guy” saying that the shooting was fake; now this was a former State Department official. Attaching that authority to Alex’s nonsense makes for a potent mixture.

Over the years, I’ve marveled at Steve’s gumption, because I don’t really take him too seriously. He manipulates Alex and builds up a grandiose mythology around himself, but it’s usually pretty funny. Alex looks like a fool because he never calls bullshit on it, and Steve seems like a chaotic Loki type figure, sowing mischief in the information war.

But it’s important to understand that this isn’t something Steve is doing for fun. He is hell-bent on accruing power, and Alex’s show has been the best avenue to that end at his disposal.

Leaving aside how inaccurate that personal resume is, it is super clear that Steve is showing his cards a little bit here. He wants to use the presence and the position of credibility that he’s built up on Infowars to catapult him into Trump’s cabinet. And Steve wants to do that sneakily.

There’s a really clear charade being proposed here. Steve is setting up a quid-pro-quo. Alex’s role is to galvanize the public support, creating the image of a groundswell of support for Steve in a senior role in government. If this works, Alex and Infowars get to be the only media outlet that Steve gives access to, and he will bring Infowars reporters with him on trips.

This is painfully shady stuff, and you can see why Steve put PERSONAL SENSATIVE in the subject line. What he is proposing is almost certainly an illegal arrangement, and at very best, it’s a betrayal of what the freedom of the press is supposed to be about. Very counter to the first amendment.

In this email, you get a real sense of one element that made a Trump presidency so attractive to these fringe, extreme figures like Steve. In the real, sane world of politics, he would absolutely have no chance of being taken seriously. But in a Trump administration? They may be foolish enough to choose officials this way, and that is something people like Steve can exploit.

The reason that this is so scary is that, in the chaotic world that we currently inhabit, I don’t think it would have been impossible for Steve’s plan to have worked. Thankfully it didn’t, but it seems like it could have.

And the danger there is that Steve is a deeply undemocratic person. At various points in the past, on air, Steve has declared himself to be in open rebellion against the government. He’s called for the stripping of various constitutional rights from certain groups of citizens. He’s stated an opposition to due process rights. The idea of what his political agenda could be, should he ever actually be near the levers of power, is terrifying.

This is an important reminder to hold onto. Though many of the guests on Infowars may be silly and very deserving of mockery, behind the scenes, they may be plotting to use the clout they accrue from being on the show to accumulate personal power which would be used in very oppressive ways.