UT professors analyze Alex Jones' Rand Pauls'

[Kowalski]

Matthew Hart

dailytexanonline.com

March 18, 2013

Randolph Lewis, associate professor in American Studies, works to understand the real vulnerabilities shaping the anti-surveillance bravado of political media figures such as Alex Jones and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

The department of anthropology presented a talk Monday afternoon at the Student Activities Center led by Lewis and anthropology assistant professor Craig Campbell, regarding Jones and Paul.

Part of Campbell’s research involves studying photography as surveillance, especially in Soviet archives where Russians photographed and documented the indigenous peoples of Siberia beginning in the late 1800s.

“Even though Soviet communism claimed to be anti-colonial, it was in many ways extending a colonial project in Siberia,” Campbell said. “Production of photographs in a socialist colonial context is part of a violent scopic regime that objectifies, scrutinizes and ultimately disempowers those people it photographs.”

Campbell said surveillance as an extension and articulation of state power has been central to most theories of ethnographic and expeditionary photography, especially in the colonial context.

Lewis said concerns about surveillance looking into our intimate sphere is coming from Texas where Paul, a first-term U.S. senator, grew up. Lewis said Paul is an ally of Jones, who is a kind of dystopian, anti-totalitarian and liberty extremist who has produced more than 30 DVDs on political topics and garnered nearly three million listeners at his peak on 60 different radio stations in the country.

“I see them as Texas-based, gun-toting, whole-foods warriors,” Lewis said. “There’s a lot of military bravado and luster. They’re very passionate about the second amendment and they see themselves as rugged individualists.”

For the whole article: http://www.infowars.com/ut-professors-analyze-alex-jones-rand-pauls-following/