The Onion launches parody of Alex Jones' Infowars, with revenue going to Sandy Hook victims
Satirical news website The Onion" is launching a new parody of Alex Jones' controversial Infowars Thursday night.
More than a year after the Chicago-based company first tried to buy Infowars, The Onion is debting a send-up under its own website with plans to give some of the revenue to families of the victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
To kick off the spoof, the site is donating $100,000 to the Sandy Hook families, which have still received no money from Jones.
After the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones called it a hoax staged by "crisis actors" in an effort to increase gun control. Many relatives of the victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his company for defamation and infliction of emotional distress.
A jury and judge awarded the families and the FBI agent more than $1.4 billion in damages. In a similar lawsuit in Texas, the parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook were awarded nearly $50 million. Jones appealed both awards. He lost his challenges to the Connecticut judgment.
The parody will include a series of shows and other content under Infowars branding that spoof Jones' aggressive mashup of conspiracies linking major news events, dubious scientific claims, attacks on people suffering in tragedies and sales of supplements and survival gear.
