I talk about a LOT of depressing topics on this channel, so I think it’s important to occasionally step back and appreciate big wins when they happen. With that in mind, today I want to celebrate the fact that the satirical newspaper, The Onion, now owns Alex Jones’ website and media empire, Infowars, and that is fucking awesome and hilarious.
Unfortunately, to give the backstory I’m going to have to talk about some depressing stuff including mass shootings and suicide. But I assure you, the ending is in sight and it’s joyous and wonderful.
On December 14th of 2012, a gunman murdered 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. As noted by many people since, this was the moment that it seemed America decided that we just will not ever care about gun violence. Twenty precious, innocent babies were gunned down for absolutely no reason, and the US did not have the political will to stop it from happening again.
Two years later, following another mass shooting in California, “The Onion” satirical newspaper published an article titled “’No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” for the first time. I say “for the first time” because this became a running “joke” that they reposted, only changing the details like the name of the city, 38 more times by the end of last year.
That wasn’t the first time they delved into politics, of course. It’s satire, and satire is best when it reveals and attacks those in power. In The Onion’s first book, Our Dumb Century, published in 1999, they describe the attack on Pearl Harbor as “an attack on a “colonially-occupied US non-state” and say Americans should join World War II in order to “make the world safe for corporate oligarchy.” They also chart the rise of a monstrous corporation called “Global Tetrahedron” as commentary on what they correctly identified as the rise of corporate control of our government.
Make a mental note of that corporation’s name: Global Tetrahedron. But back to Sandy Hook. As I discussed in this video from 2019, the years following that mass shooting were horrific for the parents of the murdered children. Longtime conspiracy theorist Alex Jones decided to declare that the shooting never even happened–that it was all just made up by the “deep state” to push for gun control (a push that, obviously, never even happened). And so an important part of that conspiracy theory is that the parents of these dead children must be lying, because those kids never even existed. And so Jones not only sent his audience of millions to harass them, but he started a cottage industry of other conspiracy theorists, like Mike Adams the “Health Ranger,” calling EVERY mass shooting a “false flag.” Thus, possibly the most horrific, most American tragedy ever became an accepted fact: children will continue to be gunned down in schools, and the survivors will be harassed and threatened relentlessly for years to come, all so a few grifters can get richer.
If you’ve never been targeted by a mob of violent reactionaries, it’s kind of hard to describe. You can’t use your own social media any more, or open your own emails, but someone needs to because one of the messages you get might be a real threat to your life that needs to be forwarded to the police or FBI, who generally will do nothing except make a little file so they have a good lead when you’re murdered later.
In the case of the Sandy Hook parents, many of them had to abandon their homes, change their phone numbers, and spend time and money trying to keep their personal information off the internet. The purpose of that 2019 video I made was to point out that following the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead, two more people died the next year due to suicide, even as Mike Adams was running “Hoggwatch,” his website targeting other survivors.
And around that same time, tragically, a parent of a child murdered at Sandy Hook also took his own life. Jeremy Richman was a neuroscientist who dealt with the grief of losing his six-year old daughter to gun violence by creating a foundation in her name dedicated to researching the brain pathologies that lead to violence. He also joined other parents in launching a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones, who continued to insist that they were government plants who deserved to be harassed by his audience.
Richman’s mental health couldn’t withstand the onslaught of hatred, death threats, and grief, and he died at the age of just 49.
Despite this tragic loss, the families prevailed in their lawsuits against Jones, winning judgments that combined to a record-setting $1.5 billion in 2022. Of course, winning a judgment is never the end, because collecting is a whole new battle. Jones declared bankruptcy, and Infowars needed to be sold off. Through years of delays, Jones was allowed to continue operating the media empire, because if he stopped, well, it wouldn’t be worth anything anymore. And he couldn’t just sell it to anyone for any amount of money because then nothing would prevent him from setting up a shell company and selling it to that company for peanuts, allowing him to keep it. Which, obviously, is what he tried to do.
And so who else would want to buy a brand built upon conspiracy theories about dead children? There truly is only one: Global Tetrahedron. That’s right, the evil corporation from Our Dumb Century, suddenly made real by a small group of investors, who bought The Onion and put former NBC reporter Ben Collins in charge. Collins, who was friends with someone who was murdered and then declared a “false flag” by Jones, saw the news about the pending sale of Infowars and immediately got in touch with the Sandy Hook families to see if they would give their blessing to the satire site taking over the conspiracy theory site. They agreed, and The Onion placed a bid that was better than that of Jones’ shell company.
Jones didn’t back down, of course, sending his rabid fans after everyone involved: Collins, obviously, but also the judges and other officials involved in finalizing the sale. This dragged on for nearly two years, but Collins refused to back down, and last week it appears that he finally won, pending one final approval from a judge: The Onion now owns Infowars. They’ve hired Tim Heidecker as Creative Director, and he has gone on the record to say that he’s going to make it a hub for comedy by trans comedians.
Not only is this fucking awesome, but it gets better, because all of this has led to Alex Jones experiencing a complete and utter mental and physical breakdown, which he has graciously allowed all of us to witness in real time. For instance, one of the first recent signs that Collins saw to suggest that he was maybe about to win was a month ago, when Jones joined Tim Pool’s livestream completely fucking wrecked. I know it’s hard to understand what he’s trying to say, but at some point he announces that it’s fucking over for him and that’s why he’s shitfaced in the middle of the day on a livestream being viewed by a quarter of a million people.
Now that we’re even closer to the end, Jones is taking off his shirt and screaming on his own show, and the best of all? He’s playing clips of Tim & Eric and claiming that they’re proof that Satanic pedophiles have destroyed his empire.
So, there we are! For a very long time, Alex Jones and his cronies were so over-the-top ridiculous that many of us watched and enjoyed them, like the way it used to be fun to read about the adventures of Bat Boy in the Weekly World News. There was even a healthy debate on whether Jones really believed what he was saying or if he himself was doing satire. That was unfortunately proved to not be the case, but now we’ve come full circle: satire has won over hatred and violence.
I really believed (and still believe, to an extent) in the idea that Sandy Hook proved that the US would never take gun violence, and misinformation, and rightwing extremism, seriously. Our politicians failed us. But The Onion fighting this fight and possibly winning should give us all hope and inspiration. There are many ways to fight back that don’t include voting. That’s something to celebrate.
If you want to show your support for The Onion, they are offering a yearlong subscription for $99. They ship for free around the world, and if you are in the US you’ll now get a special edition rainbow InfoWars totebag, which is fucking hilarious, plus a nice certificate you can print out and display on your wall proudly. Congrats to the Sandy Hook families and everyone at The Onion for this huge win.
