The Onion has bought Alex Jones’ Infowars: What does this mean for the controversial platform?

Yesterday, satirical news site The Onion was announced as the winning bidder of Alex Jones’ Infowars, following an auction triggered by the conspiracy theorist’s bankruptcy.

Jones, 50, rose to prominence as a far-right commentator who spread fake news and conspiracy theories through his radio shows since the 90s. Founded in 1999, Infowars grew into Jones’ premier platform with a peak annual turnover of close to $80 million (€75 million).

On Infowars, Jones gained a reputation for cosying up to far-right theories as well as promoting his own bizarre takes. Famously, Jones shouted once that the Obama administration was putting chemicals in the water to “turn the friggin’ frogs gay”.

Jones’ nonsense bit him back after he promoted the conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax perpetrated in part by the US government as part of an effort to expand gun control. He called the parents of slain children “crisis actors” on his show and said the shooting was “phoney as a three-dollar bill”.

After separate defamation lawsuits were filed in Connecticut and Texas by family members of victims, Jones acknowledged in 2022 that the shooting was “100% real” and said it was “absolutely irresponsible” to call it a hoax.

Victims’ families who sued Jones said they were subjected to years of torment, threats and abuse by people who believed the lies told on his show.

Courts in Texas and Connecticut found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax and awarded the families nearly $1.5 billion (€1.4 billion) in damages.

As a result of these court cases and the awarded damages, Jones filed for bankruptcy and has had to liquidate many of his assets to pay the judgement.

As part of this liquidation, Infowars was put up to auction, allowing The Onion to swoop in and make an offer. This has immediately turned over the platform from its conspiracy theorist founder to the satirical news company, known for its fictional parodies of contemporary news stories.

But the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case said on the day of the sale that he had concerns about how the auction was conducted and ordered a hearing for next week after complaints by lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a $3.5 million (€3.3 million) bid.

“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.

On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, calling the sale “a total attack on free speech.” He later announced his show was being shut down. Jones then resumed his broadcast from a new studio nearby and carried it live on his accounts on X.

After the hearing, Jones said on his show that he thought the auction was unfairly rigged and expressed optimism that the judge would nullify the sale. He has repeatedly told his listeners that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms but that he had set up a new studio, websites and social media accounts in case they were needed.

“This was an auction that didn’t happen, with a bid that was lower, with money that wasn’t real,” he said.

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said that it planned to relaunch the Infowars website in January with satire aimed at conspiracy theorists and right-wing personalities, as well as educational information about gun violence prevention from the group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Collins would not disclose the bid amount.

“We thought it would be a very funny joke if we bought this thing, probably one of the better jokes we’ve ever told,” Collins said. “The (Sandy Hook) families decided they would effectively join our bid, back our bid, to try to get us over the finish line. Because by the end of the day, it was us or Alex Jones, who could either continue this website unabated, basically unpunished, for what he’s done to these families over the years, or we could make a dumb, stupid website, and we decided to do the second thing.”