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SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-09-24
This page last modified: 2021-09-30 18:09:19 -0700 (PST)
Paul Joseph Watson (born 24 May 1982) is an alt-right, English YouTuber, radio host, writer, anti-feminist, conspiracy theorist and political extremist. Up until July 2016, Watson concurred with his alt-right label, but has since dropped the label and now self-identifies as being part of the new right. Despite the change, Paul Joseph Watson is still understood to be a far-right individual by multiple sources. In May 2019, Facebook and Instagram permanently banned Watson for violation of hate speech policies. Watson's blatant Islamophobia has resulted in Youtube sanctioning him to the point that he considered quitting, but ultimately decided against.
Paul Joseph Watson's career emerged through his work for conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones. As editor-at-large of Jones' website InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson helped promote fake news and advocated for 9/11, chemtrail and New World Order conspiracy theories. Subsequently, reaching a significant audience, both Watson and Jones altered their focus. Presently their commentary is mainly focused on criticizing feminism, Islam, and left-wing politics. Watson also contributes to InfoWars' talk radio program The Alex Jones Show, where Paul Joseph Watson occasionally either hosts or co-hosts. Watson has been working on InfoWars since October 2002.
Since 2011, Watson has hosted his own YouTube channel, "prisonplanetlive", from which he expresses his views on topics such as contemporary society, politics, and modern liberalism in an often mocking manner. Paul Joseph Watson describes his channel as "Culture, controversy, contrarianism" and often lampoons celebrities and politicians. As of January 2020, his channel has over 1.78 million subscribers.
Paul Joseph Watson described his formative moment as when, at the age of 18, he watched The Secret Rulers of the World, a documentary in which journalist Jon Ronson accompanied Alex Jones in infiltrating Bohemian Grove in California, a location where some conspiracy theorists believe that global elites plot the New World Order. Paul Joseph Watson has described British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who he [David Icke] first read as a teenager, as the person who woke him up.
Paul Joseph Watson, along with Jones and InfoWars as a whole, has shifted from mainly commenting on conspiracy theories such as chemtrails, the New World Order and the Illuminati, to increasingly commenting against feminism, Islam, and left-wing politics. Watson has been described as a member of "the new far-right" by The New York Times, which wrote in August 2017 that his "videos are straightforward nativist polemics, with a particular focus on Europe" and also noted his opposition to modernist architecture and modern art. Iman Abou Atta, the director of the anti-Islamophobia group Tell MAMA, has said that "Paul Joseph Watson has become 'the' nexus for anti-Muslim accounts that we have mapped... Paul Joseph Watson has become an influencer in promoting information -- much of it bizarre and untrue -- which has been regurgitated by anti-Muslim and anti-migrant accounts time and time again."
Paul Joseph Watson previously described himself as a "libertarian" and supported Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election. In a 2016 tweet, Paul Joseph Watson said he no longer considered himself a "libertarian" because Gary Johnson "made the term an embarrassment." Watson has also referred to himself as a "conservative" and he considers modern-day conservatism to be a countercultural movement. In a post on Facebook in November 2016, Watson differentiated between being a member of the New Right, which he considers to be distinct from the alt-right. Paul Joseph Watson claimed that the alt-right "likes to fester in dark corners of subreddits and obsess about Jews, racial superiority and Adolf Hitler."
Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich have feuded with figures such as Richard B. Spencer and David Duke who see white nationalism as necessary for the alt-right.
Although Paul Joseph Watson endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Watson declared in a tweet on 6 April 2017 he was "officially OFF the Trump train" following the president's decision to launch missile strikes on Syria in response to a gas attack several days earlier, believing Trump had reneged on his promise to not intervene in Syria. Paul Joseph Watson said the president was "just another deep state/Neo-con puppet." After a decrease in Twitter followers occurred, Paul Joseph Watson denied he had "turned on Trump," saying he was only "off the Trump train in terms of Syria" and blamed the media for "fake news." Paul Joseph Watson declared in a separate tweet he would shift his focus on ensuring French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Front would be elected in the 2017 election, in which she was ultimately defeated. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Watson's reference to French celebrities leaving France if Le Pen was elected and referred dismissively to similar reputed claims in the US before Trump Sr. was elected.
On 16 June 2018, Watson announced that he had joined the UK Independence Party along with Mark Meechan and Carl Benjamin.
In 2016, Paul Joseph Watson was an early proponent of the health allegations that Hillary Clinton suffers from numerous serious medical conditions, although Paul Joseph Watson was unable to provide any evidence. Watson's part in the manufacture and dissemination of the rumour was taken up by the National Enquirer and mentioned in the mainstream media as part of a discussion of the role of rumour and conspiracy theory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In February 2017, Paul Joseph Watson tweeted an offer to pay for a journalist to visit Sweden and stay in the "crime ridden migrant suburbs" of Malmö, if they think it would be safe. Many journalists took him up on the offer, and Watson chose New York journalist and videographer Tim Pool, who was already planning a similar investigation. Watson provided US$2,000 to Pool for the trip. Tim Pool also ran a fundraiser to fund an investigation into other 'no-go zones' in other areas of Sweden and Europe.
At a White House press briefing in November 2018, persistent questioning of President Trump led to an intern attempting to take a microphone from the hand of CNN's Jim Acosta. Acosta's White House press credentials were subsequently revoked, allegedly for having "put his hands" on the intern.
Paul Joseph Watson uploaded an edited version of the original footage in support of this claim. In this version, zoom and frame rate changes create the misleading impression that Acosta had behaved aggressively towards the intern. Watson confirmed that he had applied a zoom and denied making any other alterations, though expert analysis confirmed that "the clip repeats several frames that do not appear in the original footage" and that it had been speeded up. The video has generally been described as 'doctored', though some experts concluded that the changes do not necessarily represent deliberate manipulation but could be the result of artefacts resulting from accidental degradation during processing. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed to the video that Watson posted as clearly documenting Acosta's "inappropriate behaviour." The White House was criticised for sharing a doctored video and thereby spreading "actual fake news" rather than using the original footage. A subsequent court ruling found that the action against Acosta was unconstitutional on due process grounds.
On May 2, 2019, Watson and several other people considered to be extremists, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as well as Alex Jones and right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, were permanently banned from Facebook, which called them "dangerous." "We've always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology," a Facebook spokesperson said. "The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today." Watson stated on Twitter that he had broken "none of their rules" and complained of "an authoritarian society controlled by a handful of Silicon Valley giants" in which "all dissent must be purged." President Trump retweeted Watson mocking the "dangerous" epithet.
Paul Joseph Watson is anti-immigration. Paul Joseph Watson has claimed that "Malmö is known as 'Sweden's Chicago'" due to mass immigration into Nordic countries. According to Salon magazine, the claim is false, an assessment which is supported by a study published in Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Paul Joseph Watson is anti-Islam. Paul Joseph Watson has labelled Muslim culture as "horrific" and declared that it produces mass rape, "Islamic ghettos" and the destruction of Western culture. Watson has said that the western world needs "Islam control" rather than gun control. Watson wrote in an InfoWars
Paul Joseph Watson has criticised perceived racial tokenism. In 2017, Paul Joseph Watson criticised the BBC for "portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse," after the broadcaster included a black Roman centurion in an educational cartoon. Paul Joseph Watson's assertions were contradicted by Mary Beard and Cambridge's Faculty of Classics, citing "overwhelming" evidence that Roman Britain was a "multi ethnic society," but noting that this would have been more noticeable in a military or urban setting than a rural one and the "significant gaps" in historians' understanding of the topic.
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