The Persecution of Alex Jones Is a War Against Us All. By Darren Beattie.
Amidst all of the fanfare and controversy, it is easy to overlook just how weak the defamation case against Jones really was.
The Sandy Hook parents mentioned above based their defamation claim on a 2017 NBC interview where Heslin said he held his son’s body after he was murdered. In a contemporaneous Infowars segment, reporter Owen Shroyer said that, “according to a timeline of events and a coroner’s testimony, that is not possible,” and Jones responded by calling Heslin to “clarify” his statements.
Otherwise, all of Jones’s “defamatory” behavior is premised on him making wild but vague allegations of a Sandy Hook false flag by unknown forces. Virtually all of the damages, meanwhile, are based on blaming Jones for the actions of people he doesn’t even know.
That was worth $45 million? Really?
Based on the alleged trauma caused by Jones’s claims, and harassment from various people who are neither Jones himself nor acting on his orders, the plaintiffs sought a staggering $150 million in damages. The $4.1 million judgment is mercifully less than that, but after punitive damages come in Jones will still be paying a massive amount. Last week, Alex Jones put Free Speech Systems LLC, the parent company for his popular InfoWars show and website, into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time.
Insensitive, but…
To be clear, we cannot defend the wisdom and judiciousness of Jones’ coverage of Sandy Hook. Jones himself expressed regret regarding his coverage and acknowledged he should have treated the subject differently. There is no issue more sensitive than a parent grieving a child, and journalists must always strive to cover such topics with empathy, discernment, and caution.
At the same time, it is a very dangerous precedent to set when the feelings of grieving families can be used to silence reporting — even “conspiratorial and crazy” reporting — on tragedies of national significance.
The Sandy Hook tragedy was a very public and very politicized event from the beginning, and almost immediately became enveloped into a national debate about gun control. Just months after the Sandy Hook Tragedy, Connecticut passed a dramatic enhancement to its so-called “assault weapons ban.” New York and Maryland took similar action, while Senator Diane Feinstein proposed a severe assault weapons ban at the national level, which never passed. …
Under the Sandy Hook defamation precedent, any news story, no matter how large its national significance, could be tightly controlled so long as grieving families are present. … The Jones defamation case could further pave the way for more lawsuits against anyone with alternative theories about such incidents. …
It wasn’t about Sandy Hook, or even Alex Jones:
The trial’s purpose to stop Jones and others from speaking out in the future.
One of their attorneys, Wesley Ball, … said the jury had a chance to not only take away Jones’ platform but also ensure that he can not rebuild it.
“I am asking you to take the bullhorn away from Alex Jones and all of the others who believe they can profit off of fear and misinformation,” Ball said to the jury. “The gold rush of fear and misinformation must end, and it must end today.”
It’s all about the bullhorn — that is, all about making sure that the Regime is in exclusive possession of the megaphone, and any non-approved person who dares speak non-approved narratives to the public gets crushed.
The aggressive use of defamation law is just the latest tool in the Regime’s arsenal to silence dissent. …
First Alex Jones, then Donald Trump:
Alex Jones is something of a testing ground for new suppression tools, and was one of the very first to get massively deplatformed before the Big Tech censors came after everyone else.
Four years ago, CNN spearheaded a successful push to get Alex Jones and Infowars deplatformed from YouTube, Facebook, and other social media. Most on the right said little or nothing, because Jones was considered “extreme.” Yet it was obvious even then that Jones was only the first domino, and once he fell ever-more-important outlets and public figure would be treated the same way. Less than three years later, YouTube and Twitter successfully deplatformed the sitting U.S. president. …
It’s all about Trump, or more precisely, the class Trump champions:
Prior to Jones’ entanglement with Trump and the broader Trump phenomenon, the establishment largely viewed the radio host as an entertaining curiosity — if not entirely harmless than certainly not the enemy of the state that must be destroyed at all costs that the establishment now views him as. …
It is remarkable to revisit the once-viral CNN interview between Piers Morgan and Alex Jones … Besides the fact that CNN gave Jones a platform at all, which they certainly wouldn’t now, is what Jones’ interviewer/antagonist Piers Morgan neglects to say: nowhere does Morgan attack Jones for being a “conspiracy theorist” about Sandy Hook or call for his deplatforming (which would be odd given that CNN gave him a platform). Furthermore, in CNN’s write-up of the viral exchange, it does not attack Jones for Sandy Hook conspiracies or demand his de-platforming. Amazingly, the write up refers to Jones simply as a “radio host”; not “right wing extremist”, not “white supremacist”, and not not radical conspiracy theorist” …
Before Jones supported Trump, he was even allowed a friendly interview on The View, complete with applause in the beginning, where Jones defended Charlie Sheen. …
And so again, we see that it is not the alleged “conspiracy theories” that have made Jones a pariah, but rather his participation in the Trump phenomenon.
This is not to diminish Jones or even suggest that his so-called “conspiracies” were all false — it is simply to point out the utter disingenuousness of the establishment’s no holds barred effort to destroy this man.
Class warfare.
