Paul Joseph Watson is a British far-right conspiracy theorist and influencer with an enormous social media following. Watson first came to prominence as a contributor to Alex Jones’s Infowars, a major American far-right conspiracy media outlet. 

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 start his own conspiracy blog in 2001. He soon attracted the attention of 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 promoted a huge range of conspiracy beliefs, including 9/11 Trutherism, chemtrails and the New World Order, over the past ten years his output has increasingly aligned with the US and European far right, demonising Muslims and migrants and spreading false news about liberal and left-wing public figures. Watson, and InfoWars more broadly, have been prominent supporters of Donald Trump since his first run for presidency.

Hitting on a simple but effective format for his videos, Watson built his own large social media following, in particular on YouTube (2.4m subscribers across two channels), and X/Twitter (1.4m followers). Now less dependent on InfoWars, he has distanced himself from the outlet in recent years. Documents released in the Sandy Hook defamation case against Jones – which resulted in him being ordered to pay $1bn dollars to the parents of the victims – was embarrassing, 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.

In 2019, Watson launched his own website, Summit News, through which he churns out his brand of inflammatory, conspiratorial culture war politics, including  a members area with paid access to exclusive content.

In 2020, Watson did his best to exploit fears about the COVID-19 pandemic, and continually slammed the UK government’s lockdown measures from his parents’ home in Spain. During this period, he also suffered a number of bizarre public meltdowns, engaging in long, abusive Twitter rants against various public figures and former allies. 

Watson has also dabbled in UK party politics. In 2018, he joined UKIP alongside several other far-right social media influencers who became close to then-leader Gerard Batten, a move he described as a “soft coup”. However, this did little to pull UKIP out of its spiral into oblivion, and Watson soon jumped ship to support Reform UK.

While still an influential figure online, Watson has become increasingly isolated on the far right following a series of allegations and controversies. In 2022, Byline Times released a recording of Watson made at a party in which he says: “I really think you should press the button to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth.” He also used a long list of racist and homophobic slurs, saying “I don’t give a shit about Israel and Palestine. I care about white people. Not sand n****r Jew P**i f****t c**ns.”

Watson now runs a new website called Modernity through which he posts his videos, and links to his wide range of social media accounts and written articles. The website also has a members area with paid access to exclusive content.