This question is arguably at the heart of Alex’s War, the sophomore offering from documentarian Alex Lee Moyer. The movie traces Jones’s career from Austin public access television to fringe superstar. Visually, it is well-assembled, if suffering from the too-glossy look that Netflix has made popular. The soundtrack is thoughtfully put together. The whole thing is maybe slightly too long, but what documentary isn’t? Such concerns pale against the fact that Alex’s War is that rarest of things, a journalistic investigation of its subject that aims to understand, rather than simply condemn.

Of course, that approach is why Alex’s War has gotten attention in this, the age where “platforming” is “violence.” Typical is the review published by Sightlines, an Austin culture mag. The reviewer appears to think that Moyer spends not enough time criticizing Jones’s claims that Sandy Hook was a hoax, nor his involvement in the Capitol riot. It is unthinkable to mention Jones’s name without condemning him as obviously evil.

And to be fair, it’s hard to watch Alex’s War without getting the impression that Jones is a bad person. It isn’t just the conspiracy theorizing or the compulsive urge to shock and offend. (When he was doing that about George Bush and 9/11, of course, the left loved him.) It’s that from his early days, depicted through archival footage, Jones has plainly been in it for the attention, for the cult following, and the rewards of charisma. Once you remember that you can’t trust anything Jones says—the man lies for a living—then his claims of victimhood start to sound like unintentional self-indictments.