Knowledge Fight: A Vaccination to Conspiracy

In an age of disinformation few people hold the line against those who make a living converting anxieties into hate (and cold hard cash). Knowledge Fight hosts Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes are two members of that vital guard, spending each episode of their thrice-weekly podcast investigating the latest grist to fall from Alex Jones’ conspiracy mill InfoWars.

As a note, this piece contains mentions of school shootings, death, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and racism.

For the uninitiated: Alex Jones is an unbelievably angry white man from Austin, Texas who grew a local-access talk show into the multi-million dollar InfoWars media network, his multi-hour talk show syndicated nationwide on conservative radio stations. His brand involves taking headlines of articles to inject bad-faith interpretations, followed by demonstrably false claims about either the topic discussed or the article itself. Usually whatever news item grabs his ire in a given moment is conveniently also evidence of an ever-evolving global conspiracy to kill the human race (don’t take a shot every time you spot an antisemetic trope in his ramblings; you’ll run dry within the first hour). 

Jones toed the line just a little too far in 2013 when accusing the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting of being crisis actors, leading to a years-long slide from grace. While still active, Jones has lost a significant portion of radio stations and permanent bans from major social media platforms. As of 2021 it seems his primary forms of funding are direct donations from his audience and products sold on his store, ranging from water filters to a line of shady supplements. “Quality products.” Products people “actually buy.” Don’t pay attention to the fact he’s constantly running huge sales to move old stock, it probably means nothing. 

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Using humor to (knowledge) fight back

Knowledge Fight host Friesen has a fascination with the world of right-wing grifters, much to the delight (and terror) of co-host Holmes. While the surface-level hook is Holmes knows nothing about Alex Jones outside of what Friesen tells him (which, four years into the show, is quite a lot), Holmes comes to the table with a unique qualification to contextualize the various grifts of far-right and religious flavor they encounter: he was born into a cult. 

That context is the first of many points at which Knowledge Fight diverges from your usual podcast about conspiracy theories and alt-right personalities, where the usual offerings at best devolve into dirtbag leftists punching down and at worst accidentally become recruitment tools. 

Knowledge Fight is unabashedly hilarious. Friesen and Holmes armed with little more than clips of InfoWars and their comedy chops, bring much-needed levity to the moments that allow it as an offset for the cesspool of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and every other ism folks like Jones wallow in. That said, it’s also absolutely not a podcast one can run to for hyucks whenever Jones ends up trending on Twitter. If anything, one can set their watch by how Friesen will open the next episode acknowledging Jones’s latest nonsense, but also pointing out the lack of substantive material to discuss. Whether he’s harassing someone on the street or bringing a llama into the studio, generally things from the InfoWars universe that get memed ultimately serve the end goal of driving engagement to his websites and shows. 

Using facts to (knowledge) fight back

A consistent throughline of Knowledge Fight that separates it from the pack is Friesen’s dedication to empathy and giving people the benefit of the doubt. Oftentimes this ends up damning people like Jones even further as their bigotry runs deeper than any good-faith argument can excuse, but even now with hundreds of hours of InfoWars viewing under his belt Friesen does his best to meet opponents on a level playing field. Content behind a paywall is off limits and Knowledge Fight has a show policy of not digging into information on the private lives of subjects. Generally their public personas are damning enough. 

Of course, whenever their public personas bring their own lives into the spotlight, Knowledge Fight is there with a stack of research as big as the stack of articles Alex Jones keeps on the InfoWars desk as set dressing under the false pretense he’ll, at some point, discuss vital news contained within. A recent notable example, episode #407: March 5-10, 2020, covers a span of episodes which include a night when Jones was arrested on a DUI charge. Friesen takes great care to present Jones’ account of the evening before pulling up what the police report and Jones’ wife said happened that evening. As with most instances of Jones’ attempts at spinning facts to suit his needs, the truth of what happened that night is as chilling as it is unsurprising. 

While the Knowledge Fight website has a good suggestion for a starting point, I highly recommend the massive episode covering the January 6th Capitol insurrection. The early footage of Jones stirring up Trump supporters at a rally and his stand-in host/alarmingly racist protégé Harrison Smith gleefully announcing “the Capitol has fallen” makes for some delicious backpedaling as soon as the InfoWars crew realize they’re in dicey legal territory. 

Beyond Alex Jones

Alex Jones, and to a lesser extent InfoWars, acts as the primary focus of Knowledge Fight, which then allows the show to cover the wider world of conspiracy and conservative con-artists. Like a Blank Check with Griffin and David of the crackpot world, Friesen and Holmes have become connoisseurs of context for some of the most horrific conspiracies people shout from the digital rooftops. Which is to say, the kind of bologna a person willing to go on InfoWars believes in. Nick Fuentes, Andy Ngo, Roger Stone, whether through direct contribution to InfoWars or tangential interaction with Jones during public appearances, you’ll learn (and quickly regret learning) a veritable who’s-who of people who believe the truth is more of a flexible tool to be used for personal gain.

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Through Knowledge Fight one quickly learns Jones lives in a fascinating middle-zone of the right-wing media world where he’s big enough to have a fleet of hangers-on demanding screentime while also being small enough he’s forever chomping at the bit to get back on The Joe Rogan Experience again. His current narrative involves him getting “downloads” from God that give him information to aid in his fight, as the Knowledge Fight hosts reiterate regularly: the literal Christian devil. Which makes things all the more hilarious when he also gets on a high horse about Qanon followers being misguided. The surface artifice of goofiness people with solid critical thought skills bounce off of is stripped away to reveal the ghastly underlying beliefs that drive a lot of the narratives people like Jones peddle. The kind of shit that leads to moments where Alex Jones, a grown man, spends several minutes screaming racist nonsense at a still image of Ilhan Omar as if she’s in the room directly insulting him. 

Friesen and Holmes do their best to be fair and find the humanity in the people they cover, but sometimes all one can do in the face of unimaginable hate is laugh. Each episode opens with Holmes asking what Friesen’s “bright spot” has been since they last recorded, ensuring each episode starts with lighthearted genuine celebration of the small stuff. A tradition has formed with onboarding new Patreon subscribers with using joke names. Recently Friesen pulled a hilarious soundbyte of Jones saying “giving someone life is giving someone death. [five second pause] You could say… life is death,” and has started using it as an intro to a segment of birthday announcements for Knowledge Fight fans. Every effort is made to use humor and genuine enjoyment of life to shore up against the tidal wave of hate they’ll be covering.

There’s also a subtle acknowledgement that they’re playing in the same waters Jones wants people to be playing in. Memes using clips of Jones shouting nonsense about Obama turning the frickin’ frogs gay are all well and good, but the image of someone like Jones being a harmless crank works in service of making him more palatable. Friesen’s deployment of soundbytes comes combined with vital context that strips one’s ability to argue he was taken out of context. Even the bombastic Knowledge Fight intro using heavily-edited clips of Jones and Trump presents a mini-narrative of the Alex Jones experience: shouting, random noises, creepy behavior, and begging for money.

Social media deplatforming does wonders, but Knowledge Fight is essential listening to begin a journey to understanding just how conspiracies created to profit folk like Jones can be refined down to something one might hear a relative say in passing after learning it on Facebook. There’s an ecosystem of hate online, and places like InfoWars act as a wellspring. 

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