Not Satire: The Onion Buys Infowars with Help from Sandy Hook Families
Alex Jones
Some headlines just write themselves…
The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday.
“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.
The sale price was not immediately disclosed.
Jones confirmed The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars in a social media video Thursday and said he planned to file legal challenges to stop it. An email message seeking comment was sent to Infowars.
It was not immediately clear what The Onion planned to do with the conspiracy theory platform, including its website, social media accounts, studio in Austin, Texas, trademarks and video archive. The Chicago-based Onion did not immediately return emails seeking comment Thursday.
it’s gonna be awesome when old InfoWars fans who don’t realize there’s new ownership log on and read what’s thereReport
They’ve now commented. Well, satirically. https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/Report
Bryce P. Tetraeder is no T. Herman Zweibel, but I’ll take what I can get.Report
Check out the info wars website now. It is a pretty sweet messageReport
In case anyone is wondering how that happened, The Onion had a slightly lower bid, but it was literally the only bidder who would promise to dismantle the thing.
Everyone else trying to buy it was not only trying to continue to ‘media outlet’, but would have almost certainly hired Alex Jones, which was exactly what the Sandy Hook parents were trying to avoid.
Someone probably will still hire him to spew his gibberish, but at least the platform and brand is gone.Report