This has been a hell of a week in MAGA land. The movement’s leader is, once more, president-elect of the United States. Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz has been announced as Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Justice, the very agency that recently investigated Gaetz on allegations of sex trafficking. Democratic congresswoman turned MAGA loyalist Tulsi Gabbard has been nominated to be the new director of national intelligence; a Fox News host is a Senate confirmation away from leading the world’s most powerful military, while anti-vaccine crusader and former brain-worm haver Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Elon Musk is just kinda hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, sitting in on phone calls Trump is having with foreign leaders. And then, way off in the corner, sits Alex Jones, who—unlike most of his friends—is not having a very fun week.
Jones, the Austin-based founder of Infowars and an improbable nexus point for MAGA organizing and communications, was sued in 2018 by the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims after he claimed that the grieving parents were actors in a conspiracy to force Americans to surrender their guns. Four years later, he was found liable for defamation and ordered to pay damages of more than $1 billion in both Texas and Connecticut. His case has been winding its way through bankruptcy in the years since. On Thursday, that circuitous path ended in the unlikeliest of places: an auction that landed the Infowars brand, intellectual property, and physical assets in the hands of Global Tetrahedron, a company that was formed to buy the satirical newspaper The Onion. (That purchase was completed in April.)
As is fitting for an onion, all of this has layers (and also, like an onion, this probably made Jones cry). Global Tetrahedron CEO Ben Collins covered for years as a reporter for NBC News the sort of conspiracy theories and disinformation that Jones helped popularize. The company’s name is a nod to the very sort of conspiracies Jones trafficked in. (A tetrahedron is a type of pyramid—you know, like imagery used to depict the illuminati!) Collins has been reporting on Jones for years; in 2017, when he hosted the Daily Beast podcast Truther, I joined him to talk about the conspiracy theory that Jones was actually long-dead Houston comedian Bill Hicks in disguise (don’t ask). The idea of Infowars under the control of a humor website is funny; the company’s purchase by a longtime critic who is intimately familiar with its operation elevates it to art.
According to Collins, the new Infowars will be a “direct parody” of its previous incarnation. The Onion’s humor writers will be tasked with figuring out how, precisely, to satirize a media company whose prior hits include insisting that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are literal demons who smell of sulfur and declaring that the Pentagon has a “gay bomb” that causes anyone—human, amphibian, or otherwise—who drinks infected water to develop amorous affections for those of the same gender. The envelope of what readers expect to see on Infowars.com has been pushed pretty far already. The challenge for the new owner will be answering the question “Is Infowars beyond parody?”
Then, of course, there’s the question of what Alex Jones does next. The day before the sale became official, he announced a new media venture, the Alex Jones Network, where he’s begging for Bitcoin donations. The dietary supplement business that was long the most profitable part of Infowars, hawking concoctions with names like BrainForce Ultra and Survival Shield X-2, continues as Dr. Jones’ Naturals. (Alex isn’t a doctor, but his father, a longtime part of the business, practices dentistry in North Texas.)
During the final broadcast of Jones’s Infowars, the channel’s ruddy protagonist was characteristically frenetic. In one notable three-minute stretch, he compared himself to Lieutenant-Colonel William B. Travis at the Alamo, Tony Soprano, and Jesus. He blamed the deep state, by which he meant the families he defamed, for silencing the American people, by which he meant himself. He was by turn despondent and defiant; at the conclusion of the broadcast, he signed off with a two-minute clip from the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, in which the character portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio vows that he won’t take a deal that would keep him out of prison. (The real-life Jordan Belfort, whom DiCaprio depicted in the film, was subsequently convicted of securities fraud and money laundering.) For anyone else, signing off by personally identifying with a convicted fraudster would be a curious decision. For Jones, whose entire career has largely been defined by his willful disregard of context or reason, it made perfect sense.
It’s unclear whether Jones’s post-Infowars enterprise will prove sustainable. Certainly, he’s got some powerful friends these days who might help keep him afloat—top Trump adviser Steve Bannon appeared as one of the guests on today’s show—but in the end, it doesn’t really matter what happens to him, because while Jones may have lost his InfoBattle, his worldview seems to have won the InfoWar.
In the closing minutes of his broadcast, Jones acknowledged that regardless of whatever happens to him, the disinformation landscape he helped pioneer is stronger than ever. “It is impossible for me to quit, especially in our moment of victory,” Jones declared. “They thought shutting me down would work. But now you’ve got Elon Musk, who’s a smarter, better clone of my worldview. . . . You’ve got Joe Rogan, who’s totally awake, and Tucker Carlson. Now it’s up to you Paul Reveres.” This week may be a low one for Jones personally, but he’s right that the version of the world that he helped will into being is ascendant. The Onion’s version of Infowars will surely have good jokes, but in the end, it’s not really all that funny.
