The damage Alex Jones has done is unforgivable. It’s also irreversible.
The biggest story in conspiracy theory news this week — or, perhaps, this decade — is that Alex Jones was ordered to pay almost $1 billion in damages to the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago in a mass shooting.
Jones was found liable for defamation after he claimed the attacks were a “government operation,” an elaborate hoax with no real victims that was intended to deprive Americans of their guns. The exchanges during the months-long trial were barely believable, with parents telling Jones that their children really did exist.
“Jesse was real,” said Sandy Hook parent Scarlett Lewis in the courtroom in August. “I am a real mom.” Lewis, alongside other Sandy Hook parents, said she had been threatened repeatedly by Jones’s followers who told her that her child didn’t die in any shooting. The damage done by Jones, however, goes far beyond the horrific pain and trauma he has inflicted on Sandy Hook families. Jones’s distinctive style has been mimicked and exported the world over. Remember back in March, when the Russian Embassy in the U.K. accused victims of the Mariupol Maternity Hospital attack of being “actors?” Those claims were straight out of Jones’s playbook. “An official embassy blue-check account has gone full Alex Jones with crisis actor allegations,” Stanford disinformation expert Renee DiResta tweeted at the time.
Jones’s devout followers — of which there are millions — continue to stand by the conspiracy theorist. One prominent Jones devotee is “Paper Planes” singer M.I.A., who during the pandemic became a vocal conspiracy theorist herself. “If Alex Jones pays for lying, shouldn’t every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too?” she tweeted, to the tune of 150,000 likes.