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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?
I was under the impression that the problem here was not that someone believes something to be untrue about these peoples lives, but that there were people calling their homes and, in the true meaning of the word, otherwise harassing them.
I am not sure how things work legally in the US, but it seems odd to me to run some causal chain of events in attempting to deduce what the primary cause was and then piling all them blame on that cause. If it's not illegal to believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax, then why is it illegal to say it? I mean, I can easily understand why it's illegal to phone someones house multiple times. The other things seem much more muddied to a point where I doubt the consistency of the support for this sort of prosecution.
It is not illegal in the US to say that Sandy Hook was a hoax. Heck, in the US, it is not illegal to say that the Holocaust was a hoax. Nor can saying that subject you to civil liability. But Jones did far more than that. He made false statements about specific individuals.
Depending on whether they're public figures I believe this affects the evidentiary burden.
But I don't know whether the Sandy Hook parents count (or counted at the time). The surviving kids definitely put themselves out there.
It doesn't change the evidentiary burden, but rather it changes the standard. If they are public figures -- and they probably are -- they must show that Jones acted with "actual malice" - i.e. that he either knew his statements were false, or he acted with reckless disregard of whether they were true. That standard seems easily met in this case.
That's more correct, thanks!
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