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Transcript:
Remember the year 2015? Technically it was only ten years ago, but because CERN accidentally created a very small black hole using the Large Hadron Collider in 2016, time dilation means that we have actually experienced 200 years in the decade since. So, it’s understandable if you don’t recall what happened that year. Allow me to remind you.
In 2015, Game of Thrones was still good television, Twitter was still fun, and Barack Obama was still president. The good ol’ days for you, perhaps, but not for conservatives, who were furious about all of that. Well, except for Game of Thrones. That was pretty bipartisan. Okay, it was mostly that they hated Barack Obama, less for his policies and more for the fact that he is a black man.
Thus, when the Obama administration announced that they would be launching a fairly substantial military training exercise to better prepare the nation’s troops for maneuvering around civilian populations overseas, people like Alex Jones lost their fucking minds.
“Jade Helm 15” involved about 1,200 Special Ops troops, mostly Green Berets, running exercises in low-population small towns around Texas, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Utah, and a few other states. Some troops played occupying forces and others were insurgents. The entire exercise ran for eight weeks over the summer.
Personally, I am not a big fan of the US military and I would be annoyed if they were coming to my town to LARP around in Hummers and hit each other with water balloon grenades or whatever, but that’s about the extent of my emotions. Conservatives, however, went insane. They insisted that this was NOT a training operation at all, but rather a nefarious takeover of red states by Obama, who they said would institute martial law as soon as the troops were in place. Alex Jones said that “Jade” meant “China” (bad) and “HELM” was an acronym for Homeland Eradication of Local Militants. Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the conspiracy theorists were RIGHT to worry and thus he ordered the Texas State Guard to closely monitor Jade Helm activities so “that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.”
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia Oathkeepers, said that the operation was designed to weed out politicians and military members who would refuse unconstitutional orders to use military force against US civilians. A violent extremist and former Marine named Pete Lanteri started a group called Counter Jade Helm that organized militias to identify, follow, and potentially fight troops. Three men were arrested before they could enact a plot to trap and murder soldiers in South Carolina. The far-right blog Before It’s News started a popular rumor that the takeover involved the Obama Administration taking over old Walmarts, building military bases under them, and connecting them all via a vast network of tunnels.
And most importantly, famous fighting man Chuck Norris weighed in with a fiery editorial on World Nut Daily decrying the operation as both “sad” and “bad.”
When Jade Helm ended at the end of August of 2015, of course, nothing happened. The special ops guys went back to their military bases, and the conspiracy theorists found newer, shinier conspiracies to dream about. But I remember, as do many of the people who study the seeming hypocrisy of these far-right lunatics, because we are currently, right now, in 2025, exactly ten years after Jade Helm, seeing the President of the United States invade cities with the US Military and order them to use force against civilians.
Trump started by sending first the National Guard and then 700 Marines into Los Angeles a few months back, ostensibly to “augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property,” whatever the fuck that means. He got relatively little pushback on the national stage, despite California governor Gavin Newsom suing over the obviously unconstitutional order. So, Trump escalated recently by declaring a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC and using that as an impetus to mobilize the National Guard there and taking over the city’s police force, an act that has never happened before because it is so wildly unconstitutional and fascistic. Also, not for nothing but violent crime in DC is down 26% from last year, which was down 35% from the previous year. Overall crime has increased, but that’s only if you include one specific address with a much higher than average output of criminal behavior. And address on Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s the White House, I’m talking about the White House, everyone else already made the joke but if I didn’t do it then that’s the only thing that would appear in the comments and I want to encourage you guys to mix it up down there. Come up with something fresh.
So, this is the thing! This is the exact thing that “Jade Helm 15” conspiracy theorists warned us about! But, where are they? I decided to have a look. Well, as far as I can tell, Governor Abbott has yet to comment on Trump’s invasion of DC because he’s too busy whining about Texas Democrats trying to stop him from destroying democracy in the state by gerrymandering the last few blue districts.
The Oathkeepers’ Stewart Rhodes has been similarly quiet, though it seems like he’s been laying low ever since Trump pardoned him from his 18-year sentence for sedition thanks to the insurrection he helped plan and enact on January 6th of 2021.
Pete Lanteri of Counter Jade Helm opened a gun range with a Facebook page where he’d post about murdering communists, but he’s been silent since Trump’s inauguration.
Chuck Norris has also been silent on the issue, and most other issues, but he IS still alive and does Cameos so feel free to ask him about it if you want to drop…holy shit, $450? No thanks.
Before It’s News deleted their 2015 article about the Jade Helm underground military Walmart tunnels. I was intrigued by one of their latest posts titled “Trump’s Military Executing Largest Military Op in History!” It’s a brutally boring 2.5 hour long livestream where three men start talking about Trump suggesting, once again, that he wants to suspend elections (in his appearance with Zelenskyy). I had to watch for way too long to confirm that, yes, they do think Trump is planning to become a dictator, they do understand that it’s unconstitutional for him to do many of the things he’s doing, they do think he’s mobilizing the US military to get his way, and they are very happy about all of this.
On the front page of InfoWars, I once again got a little optimistic to see a video in which Alex Jones says he’s “100% vindicated” by recent events but it turns out that’s just about how Russia was right to invade Ukraine or something.
But while my search was unable to turn up anything Alex Jones has said about Trump’s takeover of DC, I did happen upon one rightwing conspiracy theorist who ACTUALLY IS CONCERNED: a “comedian” named Tim Dillon, who I had never heard of before but who has previously yucked it up with JD Vance
“All of these things that Alex Jones, you know, and I’ve had Alex on, I like Alex, but all these things that Alex Jones was worried about when I listened to him in the late nineties, early two thousands are coming to fruition. And he does, you know, I don’t know where he is on all of that stuff, but I know he’s a big fan of Trump, but this is everything Alex Jones always talked about. Military in the street, the FEMA camp, the the tech company that monitors everything, the surveillance, this is all of that. I mean, not to sound like a fucking nut, this is everything of crackhead– and I don’t even mean a crack head like crack, but a guy smoking weed in a room with a fucking black light and a fucking, you know, insane clown posse tattoo on his arm. I’m thinking of a very specific guy I was friends with– but this is everything that that guy would’ve talked about. He’d be like, “bro, bro, there’s gonna be military in the street. They’re gonna put you in jail for fucking your fucking thoughts, man. If you just say them, bro, you’re gonna be in fucking jail. There’s gonna be a fucking company that monitors everything you do, bro.” Like this is literally the wet dream of every conspiracy theorist that has ever lived. And it’s happening now.”
Holy shit, we found one! A rightwing podcast bro comedian who is so close to getting it it’s stuck on the bottom of his shoe and he’s wondering what that smell is! Tim, let me help you out, here: the reason why Alex Jones is so quiet about this now is because Alex Jones was never worried about the US federal government becoming a dictatorship that crushes the rights and freedoms granted by the Constitution. Alex Jones was worried about Jews, Black people, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people holding positions of power and obtaining equality. THAT is why he wouldn’t shut up about government overreach while Barack Obama was in office, and THAT is why he is happy that Donald Trump is in office. It’s why he’s a “fan” of Donald Trump.
I truly think that the Epstein stuff has driven that first little wedge between conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump. Let’s hope that more of them wake the fuck up and realize that they are living through “Jade Helm 25” before it’s too late.
