If you enter www.infowars.com into your browser and hit return, you won’t see Alex Jones anywhere. The site’s longtime host and conspiracy theorist has been replaced by a vast expanse of white on the site’s landing page, along with five words in small type: “site unavailable till further notice.”
On Thursday, the site’s new owners, a company called Global Tetrahedron—parent company of the satirical news site The Onion—said Infowars will return in January, when the far-right site will be rebranded as, essentially, a parody of itself. “We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” said Ben Collins, chief executive of Global Tetrahedron in an interview with The New York Times. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.”
A $1.4 Billion Award Led To Infowars’ Collapse
Launched by Jones in 1999, Infowars grew into a giant, drawing 10 million visits every month — mostly people drawn to Jones, who argued that the 9/11 attack and the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut were “false flag” events carried out by the government and “crisis actors” posing as children.
It was Jones’ repeated lies about the shooting that led Sandy Hook families to sue Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. The families alleged defamation and won, and in 2022 were awarded $1.4 billion — leading Free Speech Systems to declare bankruptcy. An auction held to sell off the site’s assets led Collins to make a successful bid for the site, with the consent of the Sandy Hook families.
“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” said Robbie Parker, whose daughter was killed in the 2012 school shooting.
‘An Unswerving Commitment To Manufacturing Anger’
“Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic ‘panic’ and growing steadily ever since, Infowars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses,” says a satirical post about the purchase published at The Onion. “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. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.”
“Through it all, Infowars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.”
The purchase gives the company the Infowars website, product inventory, customer lists, social media accounts, and intellectual property.
$800,000 A Day As A Leading Source Of Fake News
The new owners say they will reintroduce the Infowars site in January as a kind of conspiracy theory satire site, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Jones and others who drive traffic to misinformation and lies, like saying the bombing at the Boston Marathon was staged by the FBI—or insisting that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
According to a forensic economist who testified in the Sandy Hook case against Jones, Infowars brought in $64 million in sales of supplements, survivalist gear and other products in 2021, and the plaintiffs presented evidence from Jones’ cell phone indicating Infowars was bringing in $800,000 a day.
A research study published by The University of California, Berkeley, found that Infowars was the third-largest fake-news domain, accounting for more than 17% of all fake news traffic online.