Milton William Cooper was basically doing the anti-government/conspiracy radio format before Alex Jones was nationally relevant. *Behold a Pale Horse*, *Hour of the Time*, federal government conspiracies, intelligence agencies, secret elites, the whole ecosystem. He built a cult audience around it and died in 2001 after a confrontation with police.Jones didn't invent that audience or worldview, but he became the vastly more commercial and successful version of the same general model after Cooper was gone.That's why the Fuentes relationship is interesting.> Jones has aging audience> Nick has young highly-online audience> platform Nick repeatedly> normalize audience overlap> make Infowars their secondary media habit> Nick dies/quits/otherwise disappears> Jones is already thereJones doesn't need to convert Nick's audience now. He just needs to establish himself as their nearest acceptable alternative.And Nick himself clearly treats personal security as a serious issue. If or when he eventually dies, quits, or otherwise disappears from politics, who is already positioned to catch the audience?Jones.Then the movement gets absorbed rather than inherited.> retain rhetoric/aesthetics> remove liabilities> broaden message> monetize> ideology becomes consumer demographicThe leader disappears and the politics get converted into a market segment.Is Jones consciously positioning himself for succession or did he just stumble into the obvious incentive structure?
Alex Jones lied about Cooper coming in his show drunk and cussing and throwing him off the air. Go to archive.org and look up Cooper HOTT and look for one of his later shows about Alex Jones.
