Brilliant plans for the future:

https://theonion.info/?p=1

> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.

The Onion is satire, so ... But Alex Jones is currently busy with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and others to bitterly criticize Trump for the Iran war.

Trump retaliated by calling all of them "low IQ".

Given that Carlson's media company has an investment from the ubiquitous 1789 Capital (Thiel and Trump Jr.), we don't know if this is theater to keep the isolationist MAGA in the fold.

It could also be that they sacrifice Trump in order to accelerate Thiel's and Vance's technocracy.

Anyway, these influencers are still useful for their masters.

> radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society

Oh, I am all ears! Who are the "most vulnerable members of society" according to them? And why do they think it is cool to patronize 'em? Seriously, I wanna know. Are we talking about women? children? people with disabilities? immigrants? Foreigners?

Pretty lame to use such sweeping statements.

The context is that Jones blew up the court process every chance he got, setting a new record for contempt fining. The most important piece was refusing to comply with discovery (his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension). As a result Jones received a default judgement, i.e. the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case. This also means the plaintiffs get everything they were asking for. And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.

Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit.

Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up.

The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.

We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges.

If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions.

He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.

It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.

The idea was never to apply a reasonable punishment, it's just an excuse to destroy and silence a voice that, for better or worse, is uncontrollable by the establishment. Out of every 10 things you read on a place like Infowars, 5 will be crazy cucko insane shit, 4 will be common sense american conservative talking points, but one will be some hard truth that no side of the power scale wants to be said out loud. Infowars delenda est.

Not sure if it even matters since Alex Jones is just going to keep doing what he's doing.

Judgements demanding he pay billions keep coming out and he just says he's not paying, and nobody has forced him to either. Even if infowars' brand changes hands, that's the extent of it.

I'm concerned they won't know what to do without Alex. Already going back over shows from 2006...

> It feels personal at this point.

Of course it's personal. Alex Jones is an arsehole manufacturing outrage for profit. Being made fun of is the least of his problems

Tim heidecker summarised their thinking wonderfully.

"I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity”.

Not to mention Alex Jones is still up and running elsewhere spreading his nonsense and hawking his merch. So it's a cute gag, I guess, and gets the Sandy Hook families some money, but doesn't really change the status quo.

Think of it as a million dollar ad buy.

> It feels personal at this point.

It is openly and proudly personal. It is also political, also openly.

It's funny

Because it's funny that The Onion will be taking over InfoWars.

> It feels personal at this point.

Fucking hell that's a funny line.

First amendment prevents the federal government from preventing speech or punishing for speech (subject to a few exceptions).

This was not that.

This was a civil defamation case; the parents bought a case of actual material harm and harrassment of epic proportions before two seperate judges in two seperate states and both courts made the finding that Jones had indeed caused harm and harrassment .. and continued to do so over years.

This is not a case about Sandy Hook the event - it is a defamation case by the victims of that event, that Alex Jones directly attacked.

This is the biggest difference - no one is claiming that all of the people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks were actually actors paid to pretend that they were grieving for their parents and children and friends. No one was encouraged to personally attack said victims and survivors to "expose their lies" because of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Furthermore, defamation law works very differently for claims against public personalities ("Bush did 9/11!") compared to claims against private persons ("this random child shown crying in news reports after her classmates were supposedly killed is actually pretending!"). Also, vague accusations of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy / cover up are far harder to litigate than very clear claims of massive fraud. Finally, the Sandy Hook victims were generally able to show specific damages they suffered, attacks against them by people in their community, because of Jones' actions; Dick Cheney may have been more generally hated because of claims about 9/11 conspiracies, but was not directly harasses in the same way.

There was an interview with Barry Jennings, Deputy Director of Emergency Services, who said he was trapped in Building 7 before the main towers collapsed. That is a literal statement from an eyewitness. A NIST study refuted him later, but that's a lot more fuel for theories than Sandy Hook had.

It does not help that Epstein friends Lutnick, Silverstein, Michael Jackson and Sarah Ferguson all had appointments in the WTC on that day and cancelled last minute. That doesn't mean an inside job of course, but several agencies knew something was going to happen even if not the exact date:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_intelligence_befo...

Note that Putin warned on 9/9. He also warned of the Boston marathon bomber:

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/boston-bombing-anniversary...

In short, there is a lot more material for speculation than for Sandy Hook.