The Onion is launching a parody of Alex Jones' Infowars with an initial $100,000 payment to Sandy Hook families — a victory lap by the corporate press cartel that tells every independent voice what happens when you cross the establishment.
The satirical site, still fighting in court to seize Infowars' assets, will debut the send-up Thursday on its own website, CEO Ben Collins told the Associated Press. The move comes more than a year after The Onion first tried to buy Infowars.
The Sandy Hook families have received nothing from Jones despite court orders exceeding $1 billion for his false claims that the 2012 shooting — which killed 20 first graders and six adults — was a hoax. Jones' followers harassed victims' families, calling them "crisis actors" and issuing death threats, the AP reported.
Here's the stake: this isn't just about Jones. It's about what happens when institutional media acquires a competitor's brand for the purpose of desecrating it. NBC News and the AP covered the story with undisguised enthusiasm. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran only the bare facts, burying any context about what corporate seizure of independent media means for free expression.
Collins said The Onion will sell merchandise combining the Infowars brand with The Onion's logo in rainbow colors, with revenue going to the families. The parody will feature a fake "pro oxygen" supplement pill, a penis flattening device, and extended debates about how many Bozo the Clowns exist. "Don't give comedy writers a grudge for 18 months," Collins said.
Attorney Chris Mattei, representing nine Sandy Hook families, made the endgame clear: "Every dime Alex Jones makes from here until the end of eternity is going to be claimed by the families." Jones has been reduced to what Mattei called "an iPhone and a fancy microphone," having moved his show to a different website after $1.4 billion in defamation judgments forced Infowars into bankruptcy.
At its peak, Jones' operation drew 10 million monthly visitors and generated over $50 million in annual revenue, per company figures cited by the AP. The empire is broken. The judgment stands. The families are still owed.
But the establishment press wants more than Jones' ruin. They want the spectacle. Collins said he spoke with Sandy Hook families, who were briefly skeptical but came around to seeing how The Onion could "take the moral high ground and make fun of the people who not only caused them so much pain but they felt also poisoned society." The new content will mimic Infowars' method of getting people "addicted to outrage," Collins told the AP.
The Onion plans to keep pursuing Jones' Austin, Texas studio. Some families, per the AP, "can't wait for that day." Jones did not respond to interview requests.
The courts settled Jones' liability. What remains unsettled is what it means when the institutional press coordinates to turn a legal judgment into public desecration — and cheers while it happens.
