Here’s the type of headline you might see in The Onion:
The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars.
And then what would follow would be a smart-alecky story about the satirical site taking down the crackpot conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, scooping up his site from auction, and how a gun safety advocacy group would advertise on the revamped site that will make fun of other knuckleheads and bad actors.
It would be hilarious.
Now here’s the deal. Everything above is true!
And, it is hilarious.
The Onion did end up with InfoWars on Thursday, winning a bankruptcy auction to take over the site.
The Associated Press’ Dave Collins reported that The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, to whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the 2012 massacre a hoax.
The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence that was founded in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, will advertise on a relaunched version of the site under The Onion. The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking ‘weird internet personalities’ like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.”
Ben Collins told Mullin, “We thought this would be a hilarious joke. This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.”
Of course The Onion had a story on its site about it from fake CEO Bryce P. Tetraeder, who wrote, “No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars. Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.”
In his AP story, Dave Collins wrote, “On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale and auction process in court. He later announced his show was being shut down. Jones, who had told listeners for days that he had a new studio set up nearby, then resumed his broadcast from the new location, carrying them live on his accounts on X.”
Jones told his listeners, “This is a total attack on free speech, the deep state is completely out of control. This is the tyranny of the New World Order, desperate to silence the American people.”
Maybe if Jones hadn’t been found liable for saying the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax, his site wouldn’t be in the position he is now.
Mullin wrote, “Mr. Collins said The Onion began contemplating a bid for Infowars this summer, when he read online that it was going to be auctioned off. The publication’s leadership team saw an opportunity to play a very funny, very public joke on Mr. Jones if things broke their way.
In early fall, Mr. Collins reached out to the lawyers for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, whom he knew from his days as a reporter covering misinformation at NBC News. The families expressed support for The Onion’s bid, Mr. Collins said.”
Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, said in a statement, “The dissolution of Alex Jones’s assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for.”
