Satirical information outlet The Onion has bought Infowars with the assistance of the households of Sandy Hook victims – and they’re hoping to make it “very humorous” and “very silly”.
Infowars is a right-wing media platform that was run by Alex Jones – a conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook college taking pictures in Connecticut was a hoax staged by disaster actors to spur extra gun management.
The taking pictures killed 20 first-graders and 6 educators, and following his feedback, Jones confronted a number of lawsuits from the households of the victims. He was ordered by courts to liquidate his private property to assist repay the $1.4billion sum (through AP Information).
Jones and his firm, Free Speech Methods, filed for chapter safety in 2022, and Infowars went to a chapter public sale, the place it was purchased by The Onion. The information of the acquisition was shared this morning (November 14) in each a video by Jones, and in a submit from the top of The Onion’s father or mother firm.
In line with the replace from the latter, The Onion is seeking to rebuild the location and have well-known humour writers and content material creators characteristic on it. It has additionally been confirmed that the sale was made attainable with assist from the Sandy Hook victims’ households.
Additionally, a part of the rationale we did purchased InfoWars is as a result of folks on Bluesky advised us it might be humorous to purchase InfoWars. And people folks have been proper. That is the funniest factor that has ever occurred.
— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T14:35:36.006Z
“The Onion, with the assistance of the Sandy Hook households, has bought InfoWars. We’re planning on making it a really humorous, very silly web site. We now have retained the providers of some Onion and Clickhole Corridor of Famers to tug this off,” the replace learn. “I can’t wait to point out you what we now have cooked up.”
In a separate submit on Bluesky, Ben Collins added: “A part of the rationale we did purchased InfoWars is as a result of folks on Bluesky advised us it might be humorous to purchase InfoWars” including: “these folks have been proper [this] is the funniest factor that has ever occurred”.
As highlighted by The Guardian, the acquisition consists of the corporate’s mental property, together with the web site, buyer lists, stock and sure social media accounts, and the manufacturing tools. The quantity that The Onion paid in its successful bid has not been publicly disclosed.
Responding to the information of the sale, Jones took to his X/Twitter web page for a livestream replace, the place he criticised the sale of Infowars. Emphasising that he was not advised that he couldn’t go dwell, he mentioned that it was “a definite honour to be right here in defiance of the tyrants”, earlier than discussing Donald Trump’s re-election as US President. “That is the battle. Should you suppose the deep state has given up, suppose once more,” he mentioned.
Reflecting on the sale of Infowars, New York Put up shared a quote from Robbie Parker, whose daughter was killed within the Sandy Hook taking pictures. “The dissolution of Alex Jones’ property and the demise of Infowars is the justice we now have lengthy awaited and fought for,” he mentioned in a press release supplied by his attorneys.
CNN additionally highlighted that, with a purpose to make the bid work, households of the victims “agreed to forgo a portion of their restoration to extend the general worth of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success”.
On the time that the lawsuits have been filed towards Jones, households of the Sandy Hook victims claimed that they have been left traumatised by Jones’ conspiracies, and had acquired threats by his followers.
Jones’ replace on X/Twitter comes two years after the platform’s proprietor, Elon Musk, dominated out any probability of the alt-right determine returning to the location. He and the Infowars account have been initially suspended from the platform in September 2018 for violating the platform’s abusive behaviour coverage.
When requested by a consumer whether or not Jones ought to be introduced again, Musk initially mentioned “no” earlier than he elaborated and mentioned he had misplaced a toddler – to sudden toddler demise syndrome in 2002 – and mentioned Jones used the demise of youngsters to push his personal agenda.
“My firstborn baby died in my arms. I felt his final heartbeat. I’ve no mercy for anybody who would use the deaths of youngsters for acquire, politics or fame,” Musk wrote on the time.
That very same yr, Jones made extra headlines for his controversial interview with Kanye West – during which the rapper shared his reward for Adolf Hitler. The feedback got here after West confronted backlash for making a sequence of anti-Semitic remarks, sporting a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, and expressing false claims in regards to the demise of George Floyd.
Elsewhere, that very same yr noticed M.I.A. on the receiving finish of criticism, after she in contrast Jones’s falsehoods in regards to the Sandy Hook taking pictures to celebrities “pushing” COVID-19 vaccines.
Final yr, Jones acquired a response from R.E.M.‘s Mike Mills, after he claimed that every one artists requested to “pledge themselves to Lucifer” earlier than signing report offers.
