The Onion Proclaims New Deal That Gives Satirical Website Control of Far-Right Infowars

The satirical news powerhouse, The Onion, has officially launched a highly publicized rebrand of InfoWars, the controversial right-wing media platform founded by anti-government conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.The surprising turn of events comes under a newly structured licensing deal that The Onion recently negotiated with the court-appointed administrator currently overseeing the InfoWars estate.The administrator of the estate, Gregory Milligan, has formally petitioned a Texas district judge to approve the terms of the unusual agreement. According to reports first published by The New York Times, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would be required to pay $81,000 per month to license both the Infowars.com domain and the overarching InfoWars brand. The initial agreement spans six months, with a built-in option to renew for an additional six-month period.Wasting no time, The Onion initiated its satirical takeover on Monday afternoon. The publication released a short clip across various social media platforms that prominently featured its famous onion logo trademark cleverly superimposed inside the “o” of the traditional InfoWars logo. Accompanying the video was a sharply penned, satirical op-ed credited to Global Tetrahedron’s fictional founder, Bryce Tetraeder. Furthermore, the creative direction for the sweeping rebrand is being spearheaded by acclaimed comedian and writer Tim Heidecker, signaling a heavy lean into absurdist humor.“The InfoWars of tomorrow will converge into a swirling vortex of content about content, talent acquiring talent, rings of concentric media mergers processing all human artistry into one endlessly digestible slurry. This will be a dank, sunless place, one where panic and capital feed on each other like twins in the womb of a hulking, unknowable monster—a monster known by many names, but which I like to call modern-day America,” the op-ed says.Onion CEO Ben Collins confirmed the acquisition efforts in a public statement on Monday, writing in a post on Bluesky: “With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars.”However, despite the aggressive rollout by the comedy publication, the deal is not yet completely official. It requires final approval from the presiding Texas judge, and Mr. Jones retains the legal right to appeal any ruling that favors The Onion’s parent company.The Infowars founder took to social media to deny the reports. “The Onion Has Fraudulently Claimed AGAIN That It Owns Infowars!!! The Democrat Party Disinformation Publication Is Publicly Bragging About Its Plan To Silence Alex Jones’ Infowars And Then Steal & Misrepresent His Identity! This Takes The Term ‘Frame Job’ To The Next Level!” he wrote in a post on X.He quickly followed up with another fiery statement regarding the ongoing legal battles:“Breaking: President Trump is publicly supporting the Democrat Party-backed takeover of Infowars by The Onion! In 2024 the Bloomberg-funded Onion fraudulently claimed that they had won a bankruptcy bid to take over Infowars. Now they are doing it again with the backing of Trump’s DOJ. The REAL Infowars is set to close May 1st. I am being punished for exposing the Epstein files…”Mr. Jones originally launched InfoWars in 1999, eventually transforming it into one of the most visible alternative media empires on the internet. However, the platform became infamous for disseminating false and bizarre claims surrounding grand conspiracies and government wrongdoing. The media empire began to crumble when Mr. Jones faced massive legal repercussions for falsely claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting—which resulted in the deaths of 20 young students and six adults—was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by crisis actors.The fate of InfoWars has been suspended in legal limbo since 2022, when Mr. Jones formally declared bankruptcy following a jury awarding $50 million to the parents of a Sandy Hook victim. A subsequent defamation suit resulted in a staggering $1.4 billion financial penalty, the largest ever recorded in a case of its kind.In 2024, a bankruptcy judge ordered an auction of the InfoWars site and its associated assets, drawing only two bidders: a company allied with Mr. Jones and Global Tetrahedron. Although the bankruptcy trustee and the affected families initially favored The Onion’s bid despite a potentially lower valuation, disputes from Mr. Jones’ legal team over the valuation process prompted the trustee to shift the legal proceedings back to Texas, where the original defamation trials took place.

The Onion Proclaims New Deal That Gives Satirical Website Control of Far-Right Infowars

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