Infovictory / Overruled
Today: Lindsey Adler, writer of the Critical Thinking newsletter; and Trevor Alixopulos, who draws comics and illustrations and lives in sunny California.
Issue No. 548
Yes The Onion: Ben Collins Buys Infowars
Lindsey Adler
Empty Case
Trevor Alixopulos
Yes The Onion: Ben Collins Buys Infowars
by Lindsey Adler
Ben Collins is one of the most strategic do-gooders in America today: everything he says he plans to do sounds batshit insane—until he pulls it off. In 2024 he left serious political journalism to take over the satirical newspaper The Onion, an act of seeming lunacy that has since seen The Onion become one of the most respected and beloved news outlets in the U.S.
Ben is also an old friend from the New York media crowd, and I must have laughed out loud for five minutes straight, in public, when he first told me that The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, was attempting to acquire Infowars—the flagship site of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones—in the bankruptcy liquidation of Jones’s personal assets ordered by a judge in June 2024. (Jones went bust after the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting won a $1.5 billion defamation judgment against him for having spread conspiracy theories alleging that the massacre had been a “giant hoax.” 20 children and six school staff members were killed in the attack.)
The Onion’s first bid for Infowars was duly approved by the families of the victims, but failed in court in December 2024 when a judge ruled that the auction had not been properly competitive. Additional legal complications arose after that, but yesterday Global Tetrahedron announced that a licensing deal for Infowars content has been reached with the court-appointed administrator of the site, pending a judge’s approval, while the final legal disposition of the assets is settled. The deal could see the new Infowars begin publishing as soon as April 30.
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