Satirical website the Onion plans to turn rightwing commentator Alex Jones’s misinformation site Infowars into a parody of itself under a leasing agreement provisionally approved by a Texas court.
Under a proposed deal with court administrators, Infowars would be leased by Global Tetrahedron, a Chicago-based company that owns the Onion, for $81,000 a month for six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The sum that could be raised under the deal is a surface scratch on the big $1.4bn defamation judgment against Jones for claiming that the Sandy Hook school shooting, during which more than 20 children were killed, was a political hoax designed to further gun control efforts. Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, declared bankruptcy in 2022.
“With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars,” Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO, said in a social media post on Monday, adding that the comedian Tim Heidecker would take over as Infowars creative director.
To get the ball rolling, Collins posted a link to a statement by fake Global Tetrahedron owner, Bryce P Tetraeder, that read: “With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us.”
However, the deal must be signed off by Texas judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who oversaw one of the lawsuits against Jones. Gamble initially blocked the sale of Infowars to the Onion, saying he wasn’t convinced its bid had more value than one offered by bidders associated with Jones.
The proposed deal is the Onion’s second attempt to buy Infowars, which came to prominence on the back of challenging official interpretations of historical events to a large audience eager to receive them as shadowy government conspiracies.
But if Jones’s stock in trade is, in part, to adapt news information to an audience for whom nothing is as it seems, the Onion has an alternative spin: to turn news information into gen Z entertainment. Both approaches rely on the sale of branded products to raise revenue.
According to the New York Times, Gamble is likely to rule on the deal in the next two weeks. However, Jones could appeal any ruling. Meanwhile, Jones continues to operate Infowars and host its weekday program, The Alex Jones Show.
Heidecker told the outlet Monday that he plans to parody Jones’s “whole modus operandi”.
He said: “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity.”
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said the goal was to prevent Jones from doing harm and the Onion deal promised “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
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