The Elephant in the Room Quotes

“I consider it somewhat psychopathic to label someone from afar as a psychopath. We love nothing more than to declare other people insane, especially people we don’t like.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Glenn Beck did not fall into line. He told his listeners that Trump was a “dictator in the making.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Racists and conspiracy theorists are taking succor from Trump’s nomination. His fans are frequently caught on camera at his rallies yelling at protesters, “Go back to Africa” and “Allah is a whore” and “Go to fucking Auschwitz” and “Go make my fucking tortilla, motherfucker.” They hang effigies of Hillary Clinton from nooses. At a high school basketball game in Indiana in March, white students chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” at Latino students. Everyone knew what that meant: It was a new way to be racist.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“I put a video out,” Alex said, “a message to Trump. And then two days later he lays out the case. It’s like sending up the Bat Signal.” Was this true? It seemed unlikely, but when I got home I discovered that journalists had indeed spotted several occasions where Alex had said something on his show and Trump had said the same thing — right down to the peculiar phrasing — soon after.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“In these exciting times for people who thrive on chaos, Trump had emerged from the polluted waters of Twitter like a mutant fish, and the world could not believe its eyes.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“SPEAKING OF BURNING HUMANS — actual ones, as opposed to ones who existed only in Alex’s imagination — in the late 1970s, a left-wing Filipino journalist named Satur Ocampo was arrested in Manila by President Ferdinand Marcos’ soldiers. He was manacled, blindfolded and electrocuted, while soldiers poured cola on him (which apparently makes the electrocution more painful). His nipples and genitalia were burned. He survived, but thousands of Marcos’ other enemies were “salvaged,” Marcos’ term for torturing and mutilating them before dumping them on a roadside for public display. Ferdinand Marcos was a client of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone’s lobbying firm. He paid it an annual retainer of $950,000 to “tamp down concerns about [his] human rights record,” according to Politico magazine’s Kenneth P. Vogel. Anti-elitism was Alex’s thing, but all that seemed pretty elitist to me. Did Alex care about that?”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“They’ll be brought great distances,” Trump had said. “We’re not dropping them right across. They learned that. President Eisenhower. They’d drop them right across, and they’d come back. Then when they flew them to a long distance, all of a sudden that was the end.” Here, Trump was praising Operation Wetback — a 1954 endeavor in which Mexicans were rounded up and dumped in the wilderness, where they were stranded without food or possessions and 88 of them died in the heat.)”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Alex is basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met. He uses his powers to inflame paranoia. He boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda. Alex eschews facts and reason and he definitely should not have political sway.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“The world in which Alex is a leading voice — a loose collection of internet conspiracy theorists and nationalists and some racists — suddenly had a name: the “alt-right movement.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“The alt-right’s small gains in popularity will not be enough to win Trump the election. This is not Germany in the 1930s. All that’s changed is that one of Alex’s fans — one of those grumpy looking middle-aged men sitting in David Icke’s audience — is now the Republican nominee. But if some disaster unfolds — if Hillary’s health declines further, or she grows ever more off-puttingly secretive — and Trump gets elected, he could bring Alex and the others with him. The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying. THE”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Alex said this about Sandy Hook in January 2015: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are — that they clearly used actors.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“I had to remind myself that it’s good for journalists to feel demeaned. It means we’re onto a story.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“And then there were terrible things, like Alex’s assertion that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children was “completely fake … they clearly used actors.” Inspired by claims like this, Sandy Hook “truthers” had begun bombarding the parents of the murdered children with messages like: “You’re a fraud and an asshole. Rot in hell you fucking prick.” (That one had been sent to Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, died in the shooting.)”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“I AM BASICALLY ALEX JONES’S Simon Cowell. I star-spotted him in the late-1990s. He’d been a locally renowned radio talk show host in Austin, Texas, back then, but I gave him the idea that catapulted him to fame. My idea was for the two of us to sneak into a secretive summer camp in the forests of Northern California called Bohemian Grove, where powerful men like George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger were rumored to undertake an annual ritual in which a human effigy was thrown into the fiery belly of a giant stone owl.”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying. THE END”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Trump might have appointed a less-eerie chief to replace Manafort. But instead he doubled-down, choosing the even eerier Stephen Bannon. Bannon”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Trump was praising Operation Wetback — a 1954 endeavor in which Mexicans were rounded up and dumped in the wilderness, where they were stranded without food or possessions and 88 of them died in the heat.) These”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Scattered throughout the week were a surprising number of speeches about how we may be killed by undocumented immigrants driving drunk. I”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Stone announced in early April that if delegates at the Republican National Convention had the nerve to switch from Trump to another candidate, “we will disclose [their] hotels and room numbers.” Anderson”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“His name was Roger Stone. And he was the man who first introduced Alex Jones to his close friend Donald Trump. *”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Alex is basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met. He uses his powers to inflame paranoia. He boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda. Alex eschews facts and reason and he definitely should not have political sway. The”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“deciding that instant judgment was a more heroic stance than curiosity. When”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“brilliant and audacious as ever — a beat poet of paranoia. He”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“frightening person pretending to be normal. Things”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“partners in a lobbying firm with a client list that included a great many murderous dictators. Like”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Stone’s beliefs, I later discovered, were just as crazy as Alex’s. He”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“the Bush family’s proclivity for mock human sacrifice. What”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“Alex was growing in prominence. I noticed him trending on Twitter from time to time, for telling his now millions of fans that U.S. scientists were covertly creating “man-fish hybrids,” that atheists “worship Lucifer,” and that the government puts secret chemicals in juice boxes to turn Americans gay: “After you’re done drinking your little juices you’re ready to put makeup on, wear a short skirt, put together a garden of roses or something.” And”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”

“White supremacists were thrilled by Bannon’s appointment. One of them declared on a radio show hosted by David Duke, the former KKK leader, “Something astonishing has happened. We appear to have taken over the Republican Party.” How”
― Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”