Paul Joseph Watson is a British conspiracy theorist who first came to prominence as a contributor to Alex Jones’s notorious website Infowars, a key platform in the promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories on the American right whichand influenced the future MAGA movement of Donald Trump. Watson has cited Jones and fellow British conspiracy influencer David Icke as being the two key influences in shaping his worldview in his late teens, leading him to set up his own conspiracy blog in 2001.

He soon attracted the attention of Alex Jones, and the pair would collaborate heavily for the next two decades on producing content for Infowars’s extensive network of websites and video platforms. While Watson’s early content consisted of material promoting a huge range of conspiracy beliefs, including 9/11 Trutherism, chemtrails and the New World Order superconspiracy, over the past ten years his conspiracy theorising has increasingly aligned with the values and political targets of the US and European far right, demonising Muslims and migrants and spreading false news about liberal and left-wing politicians.

Having built his own large social media following, in particular through his videos on YouTube (a platform on which he has 1.95 million subscribers), Watson has distanced himself from Infowars in recent years. Documents released as part of the Sandy Hook defamation case against Jones – which resulted in the latter being ordered to pay $1bn dollars to the parents of the victims – painted an embarrassing case for both parties, highlighting the huge markups and profits of their supplements business and also Watson’s private criticisms of Jones’s conduct in relation to Sandy Hook.