Sean P. Anderson from Dallas, TX, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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The Onion, America’s finest news source, has won the bankruptcy auction for InfoWars, the far-right website previously owned by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The amount of the bid was not released.
Jones, a Dallas native, was sued by the families of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. Twenty first-graders and six adults were murdered in the shooting, which Jones repeatedly called a hoax. The indefensible excuse for a human being was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages.
The funds generated by this sale to The Onion are meant to satisfy Jones’ creditors, and notably, the InfoWars website can now be used for something other than victimizing grieving families.
A lawyer for Jones says The Onion has done the world a “public service,” while others are less optimistic.
Joe Rogan, the Austin-based podcaster, says the day of the sale marks “a bad day for truth and accuracy in media.” Rogan, who has hosted Jones on his podcast multiple times, once praised the provocateur’s shrewd eye for insightful reportage. The former Fear Factor host is now set to take up the mantle of truth-telling found in Jones’ programming, though at press time, it was unclear whether Rogan will be hawking the same vitamins and supplements as his mentor.
Elsewhere, media industry leaders responded to The Onion‘s purchase with concern. Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, released a surprisingly candid statement that reads, in part, “While The Onion‘s expansion efforts are another clear indicator of a booming media industry, I sincerely hope their strategy doesn’t involve billionaire-friendly coverage, as that’s the direction in which I hope to take The Post.”
Other reactions soon followed.
President-elect Donald Trump, another Jones ally, bemoaned the loss of InfoWars, which he called “ONE OF THE LAST GREAT NEWS SOURCES THERE WAS.” Using his Truth Social platform, he told followers he was looking forward to the site’s coverage of his upcoming second term and will now have to find alternative sources to support his decision-making. The Truth Social missive also echoed Trump’s comments from a December 2015 episode of The Alex Jones Show, in which the once-and-future president told Jones, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You’ll be very, very impressed, I hope.”
Shortly after news of the sale broke, the Observer reached out to the New World Order for comment. The shadowy global cabal is a recurring foe of Jones, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that a spokesperson for the order literally breathed a sigh of relief when asked about The Onion‘s purchase.
“He was this close to nailing us,” the spokesman said from the order’s secret headquarters in Foggy Bottom. “Really, I can’t stress enough how relieved we are.”
This relief was not shared by the nation’s hordes of hungry conspiracy theorists, many of whom took to X, Truth Social and Pinterest to air their grievances. Locally, that includes Felicity Markham, a 44-year-old University Park resident and devoted Jones fan. Markham told the Observer she is weighing starting a subscription to one of the Rupert Murdoch-owned papers. “They seem to be the closest to InfoWars in terms of news value,” she said.
Sadly, lost among this post-sale hubbub is the intrigue of the auction itself. In addition to boatloads of those treasured Jones-endorsed supplements, auction attendees also bid on top secret files from Area 51 and the long-elusive evidence of voter fraud from the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
“It’s a treasure trove,” one attendee remarked. “But I don’t think the public can handle it right now.”
In case it’s unclear, and Lord knows it’s hard to tell the truth from jokes these days, this article was written as satire to congratulate The Onion on its purchase. That part really happened, as did the murders at Sandy Hook, despite what you might have heard.
