The Onion Buys InfoWars and Plans to Turn It Into a Parody of Its Former Self

Satirical news website The Onion has won a bankruptcy auction for Alex Jones' InfoWars, and has plans to turn it into something of a parody of its former self.

The sale was confirmed both by Jones himself and The Onion leadership on Thursday. “I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said in a video posted to X/Twitter.

The news follows years of litigation surrounding defamation lawsuits filed against Jones by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. In 2022, a Connecticut jury came down with a stunning verdict that ordered Jones to pay nearly $965 million to 15 plantiffs — which was only the second trial Jones faced over his claims surrounding the tragedy. The first saw him ordered to pay nearly $50 million, putting his overall legal damages at just around $1 billion.

The Onion has won a bankruptcy auction for Alex Jones' InfoWars. (Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)

The sale was backed by families who sued Jones. Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting, told AP in a statement through his lawyers, "The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for."

The Onion has satirized Jones and his media empire countless times over the years and, in an appropriately satirical blog post about the sale on Thursday, it said that InfoWars "has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society — values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron."

"No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds," the blog post continued. "And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars."

As for what The Onion will do with Infowars moving forward, the blog post notes that it's "a live issue," but it's safe to say the website will look significantly different. Or, as CEO Ben Collins put it much more simply in an X/Twitter post: "We're planning on making a very stupid website."

On Bluesky, Collins said part of the reason they made the purchase is because people on the X/Twitter alternative said it would be funny to. "And those people were right," he added. "This is the funniest thing that has ever happened."

Ben Collins' post on Bluesky about the InfoWars purchase

Collins elaborated to The New York Times that he plans to relaunch InfoWars next year as a place to parody "weird internet personalities” like Jones himself and added, "We thought this would be a hilarious joke. This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane."

Financials of the sale were not disclosed, although Collins clarified on Bluesky that The Onion owns "everything" under the InfoWar umbrella — even its dietary supplement business. "We are still trying to figure out what to do with it," he said.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.