Alex Jones doesn’t seem particularly happy that his Infowars website was just purchased by The Onion.
On Thursday morning, after the sale of the conspiracy-mongering website to the parody newspaper was announced, Jones took to X, formerly Twitter, to gripe about the injustice of it all.
“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said.
The Onion purchased Infowars on Wednesday in a private auction as part of a personal bankruptcy plan to pay the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
The families won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, in 2022 after he falsely claimed the shooting was fake and loved ones of the 20 children and six adults killed were only actors.
Ben Collins, chief executive at The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said on social media that the plan is to turn Infowars into a parody of itself and be “a very funny, very stupid website.”
The Onion announced the sale on its own website via an editorial written by fictional CEO Bryce P. Tetraeder, who praised Infowars for distinguishing itself as “an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses.”
With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Infowars website only shows a landing page with the words “site unavailable till further notice.”
Jones is obviously miffed by the sale of his website, but many people on social media had a different reaction.
CNN’s Bill Weir felt obliged to share the news with this caveat: “Not an Onion headline.”
Others expressed a feeling of schadenfreude, a German word that means finding joy in others’ suffering.
But Jones’ own fans aren’t taking the news well at all.
One person suggested getting even by having someone buy MSNBC and rename it Infowars.
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Another person suggested this is all part of a ― shocker! ― big conspiracy to make it so people don’t take Infowars seriously.
Another Jones fan predicted that The Onion’s plan would fail miserably because “nobodys going to watch InfoWars with some looney green haired leftist at the helm spewing nonsensical anti-Trump [trash].”