Infowars and Alex Jones: How Conspiracies Corrupt Trust

This article examines the evolution of Infowars from a media fringe to the center of public debate during Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. The author describes the mechanism of "conspiracy performance," in which Alex Jones transformed social fears and resentments into a profitable business model, dubbed the "apocalypse factory." The text sheds light on Roger Stone's role as a liaison between the world of conspiracy theories and the political mainstream. The analysis demonstrates how the instrumentalization of emotions and images displaced substantive discussion, replacing it with political soteriology. As a result, democratic processes were subordinated to the attention economy, leading to a profound erosion of trust in public institutions and the media.