NBA player Kyrie Irving recently posted a video by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from 2002 on his Instagram story.
The Thursday repost of the video ‘Never Forget – Alex Jones Tried To Warn Us,‘ which refers to a ‘New World Order‘ that would ‘release plagues,’ raised eyebrows for several fans and friends of the seven-time All-Star baller.
In the video, Jones said: “Yes, there have been corrupt empires. Yes, they manipulate. Yes, there are secret societies. Yes, there have been oligarchies throughout history.”
“And yes, today in 2002, there is a tyrannical organization calling itself the New World Order…by releasing diseases and viruses and plagues upon us, we then basically get shoved into their system,” he added.
The clip of Jones was one of several videos Irving shared on his IG story Thursday. Other posts mentioned “the saturation of the media with celebratory posts about the late Queen Elizabeth II” and decolonization.
However, it isn’t surprising to see Irving post conspiracies, as he’s previously discussed several theories, like the earth being flat or the moon landing being staged. At the end of last year, Irving began following and liking Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who claimed that ‘secret societies’ were implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for “a plan of Satan.”
The unvaccinated basketball player also sat out at Brooklyn home games last season because he did not meet a New York City vaccine mandate for indoor spaces.
In 2018, while apologizing for his prior endorsement of the Flat Earth “theory,” he admitted to being a conspiracy theorist.
“I was definitely at that time, ‘I’m a big conspiracy theorist. You can’t tell me anything.’ I’m sorry about all that,” Irving said. “Even if you believe in that, don’t come out and say that stuff. That’s for intimate conversations because perception and how you’re received, it changes. I’m actually a smart-ass individual,” he added, 18 months after he first told an interviewer that ‘The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. … It’s right in front of our faces.’
Still, the decision to post Jones’ clip was controversial because the InfoWars conspiracy theorist is currently on trial for spreading a Sandy Hook Elementary School hoax story that claimed the tragedy was staged by actors. Just last month, Jones was ordered to pay over $40 million in punitive damages and $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of the tragedy for spreading the lie.
