I am familiar with those lawsuits. Alex Jones did not promote harassment. He did not even factually conclude that Sandy Hook was a hoax, just floated the possibility.
He reported on anomalies, on the conspiracy, on using Sandy Hook as a pretext to take away guns, on Adam Lanza probably using big pharma drugs. He stated that he understands why people would see Sandy Hook as a hoax, because history shows other events have been staged to further a political agenda.
Alex Jones was himself a victim of the media, who put weeks long pressure on SV tech companies and made it look like Alex Jones was sending his followers to harass the victims, long after Alex concluded it was not a hoax, and that Adam Lanza was the killer. They purposely took his statements and unhinged rants out of context and painted him as a transphobic, violence instigator, and maker of death threats.
The trick to attack free speech that is opposed to yours, is to make it seem like violence instigation or racism, so then it does not deserve the protection of free speech. The other is to put pressure on advertisers and commercial platforms and make them guilty by association. We've seen both of those tricks and they are dangerous and spell trouble for the future.
> He did not even factually conclude that Sandy Hook was a hoax, just floated the possibility.
So on April 16, 2013 on his YouTube channel when he said “Sandy Hook was staged, and the evidence is overwhelming” he was just “floating the possibility?”
That’s an awfully definitive statement from someone who’s supposedly speaking of a hypothetical.
Edit: I also see you managed to sneak an edit into your first comment after I provided the citations. What originally read "Can you support your statements" now reads "Can you support your statements with direct quotes." A+ effort at moving the goal posts.
In the deposition he clarifies this out-of-context (it is not the full sentence and not even a correct quote) statement and puts it into context. At that time, he did not think the whole thing was staged, but that the way the media handled it, used it against gun owners, was synthetic. He says some reports about the incidents were covered up. He says he thinks there was a cover-up of some of the negligence in the town and of the school. He did think there was some cover-up, but it was not that the whole thing was staged. Specific areas were faked, not in a totality. He believes school shootings happen, and now believes that Sandy Hook happened.
Even if, it is a far cry from promoting harassment of victims.
Edit: I did that edit not in response to you (I had not read your response yet, just like I made this post without reading your edit), but because people cite news stories, instead of Alex Jones. I am sure you can find news stories stating that Alex Jones instigated harassment of victims, as it was one of the big justifications for deplatforming, but I never saw Alex Jones say anything to that effect. The direct quotes are just not there... Even for your "quote" that is attributed to Alex Jones, it is not a correct quote, nor is it the full sentence, it seems to be Chinese whispered from a reddit thread. I myself got tricked by taking news stories about Alex Jones as factual, but when I saw the actual direct quote/news clip, I saw how what was presented as fact, was the journalists' biased interpretation. I read a news article stating Alex Jones was transphobic and promoting transphobia, but then I saw he was talking about this: https://mediadc.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1179838/2147... and saying it looked demonic to him, and that he did not want this normalized. It was very much in the style of: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/forget-mr-rogers-drag-que...
About moving the goal post: The lawsuits are about making misleading statements, not about instigating harassment of the victims. Alex Jones did not instigate or promote harassing the victims of Sandy Hook. Some of his deluded followers took that upon themselves. You can find direct quotes where he says they should not do that and that it is wrong.
> About moving the goal post: The lawsuits are about making misleading statements, not about instigating harassment of the victims.
Also incorrect. All four seek damages for harassment induced and caused by Jones' comments. Two of the suits don't even allege defamation at all, only intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Why don't you read the petitions, affidavits, and the other documents filed with the court? I have to imagine it will be vastly more interesting than blindly repeating the lies you've been fed on InfoWars.
- Heslin v. Alex Jones et al. (D-1-GN-18-001835)
- Fontaine v. Alex Jones et al.(D-1-GN-18-001605)
- Scarlett Lewis vs. Alex Jones, InfoWars LLC et al. (D-1-GN-18-006623)