In a bizarre twist on Thursday, the progressive satirical site The Onion announced it had won control of the far-right site InfoWars through a bankruptcy auction with the help of the families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The Onion, known for its humorous fake news stories on politics, sports and culture, will reintroduce the site as a parody of itself and mock "weird Internet personalities" like Alex Jones – InfoWars' founder who lost a $1.4 billion defamation suit to Sandy Hook families – according to the New York Times.
The gun control organization Everytown for Gun Safety will advertise on the new site. Jones' site, which he founded in 1999 and is known to be a hotbed of conspiracy theories, was auctioned off after a judge ruled in September the assets could be used to pay off the massive defamation suit.
The families are unlikely to get more than a fraction of the awarded monies in the suit due to its huge amount. Jones and his media company, Free Speech Systems, both filed for bankruptcy reorganization after the Sandy Hook families won lawsuits against him for his repeatedly calling the 2012 shooting in Connecticut that killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children, a hoax on his Infowars programs.
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"The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars. We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website," The Onion CEO Ben Collins wrote on Bluesky, the social media platform rapidly gaining popularity with progressives.
It's unclear how much The Onion paid for InfoWars and its assets, the Times reported, which also includes its diet supplement business. Collins said the Sandy Hook families supported the takeover and would be glad to see Jones off the air and InfoWars in its current form out of business.
Jones called the move a "total attack on free speech" in a video posted to X and said the deep state was "completely out of control," vowing to continue to broadcast until he was shut down.
The Onion blasted out the announcement on its front page with a joke letter from its fictitious parent company CEO.
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"Part of the reason we did bought InfoWars is because people on Bluesky told us it would be funny to buy InfoWars," Collins wrote. "And those people were right. This is the funniest thing that has ever happened."
Collins, a former NBC News "disinformation" reporter, also mocked Jones' promoting of dietary supplements and added, "You better f---ing subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money. It allowed us to buy InfoWars. Now help us staff it."
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The Associated Press and Fox News Digital's Kristine Parks contributed to this report.
