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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31249 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Can we have a thread about Alex Jones? Apparently the "victims" of his actions are pushing for something like a trillion dollar award.

I get it, he spoke some really shitty things about some people that just lost their children in a horrendous event. I can't imagine what they're going through. But I can't get past this mental block of "Yeah he said some shitty things, but he never directed his followers to do harassment, and the parents essentially just got cyber bullied, like just walk away from the screen, seriously. There were like two incidents of real life harassment, which have been prosecuted, and also were inflicted upon the parents who chose to engage with the public media."

Am I missing something here? Why is he being destroyed so thoroughly?

I think it is understandable that people who lost their children are incredibly vindictive. The perpetrator is dead (and he wasn't even punished as he shot himself — so he died his own, most likely pre-planned way), so the next target of the revenge is Alex Jones. We talk here about "decoupling", but it's easy to do "decoupling" for those who didn't suffer through the horrible loss ("Didn't these parents read Milton? They are such morons!"). Also, why did you put the word "victims" in quotes? Jones doubling down doesn't help him: "The verdict, he said, was an attempt to 'scare us away from questioning Uvalde and what really happened there, or Parkland or any other event'". This behavior doesn't invite compassion.

Position of the judges or journalists on the subject is something else entirely (as they should have higher ability to "decouple"), but I wanted to address the apparent lack of empathy in your post.

I put "victims" in quotes because I do not believe them to be victims in the context of Alex Jones's actions. They are victims of a great deal of other grievances, namely the brutal murders of their children. But Alex Jones's actions do not seem to rise to the level to which I'd classify these parents as victims. And I do not believe they deserve the outrageous numbers ($) that are thrown around left and right in this context.

Leaving aside the issue of the amount of damages, surely, this was a textbook case of defamation; if these parents were not defamed, then no one can be a victim of defamation. Do you mean that most of their damages were not caused by him?

Only if you view Alex Jones as capable of defamation. He does not strike me as reliable or reasonable enough to cause reputational damage.

So that is an argument that he did not cause the damage. Because obviously the people who harassed the parents believed someone who made the same claims he did.

Unreasonable wackos will take unreasonable wacky actions.

If only the unreasonable believe the unreasonable claim have you suffered reputational damage?

These people suffered far more than reputational damage, right? Assuming that it was his statement that the wackos believed, then 1. He said a lie; a third party heard it; and 3) the third party acted in a way that caused the parents damage. That is the quintessence of an action for defamation.

Yes damage, but not necessarily to their reputation.

Their bakery business didn't experience a precipitous drop in trade as the result of a false accusation that was magnified by the administration of the nearby university.

They didn't experience a decline in work and sponsorships based on a false accusation that he was a wife / girlfriend beater.

Only individuals with an already tenuous grasp on reality seem to have been motivated by this 'conspiracy'. Any conspiracy would have likely done, a non-falsifiable one would preclude defamation.

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