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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?
In defense of wrecking Jones:
First, reports are that he was basically ignoring the court system. I think it is entirely justifiable that "ignoring the court system" gets turned into "the court system reminds you, and society in general, that the court system is not to be ignored".
Second, people are looking at the fine and saying that it seems excessive in absolute numbers. But I think there's a lot of value in fines that are relative to someone's net worth. And I think "promoting a harassment campaign against people who had their children murdered, all for the sake of selling merchandise" is reasonably responded to with "a fine of at least 100% of your net worth". Which is about what this is.
If we fine people absolute numbers, we're giving rich people effective permission to do whatever they want while ruining poor people's lives for small transgressions; if the goal is to make them stop, then relative numbers are what you've gotta do.
When did Alex Jones become the first trillionaire? I'm pretty sure he's not even a billionaire. Including him in the class of "rich people" even is questionable. Even before this judgment it wouldn't surprise me if he had debt up to his elbows that he continuously avoids through sovereign citizen-esque shenanigans (though I don't know how much public transparency there is about his finances to be fair).
I mean I know you're saying "at least", but isn't that still kind of misleading when it ends up being more like "at least 100% of your net worth, but actually more like 6000000%"?
Even then I don't see how anyone who cares about freedom of discourse at all, like a moderator of this previously de facto deplatformed community (though that's debatable given this place's moderation history), can endorse a fine anywhere close to 100% of someone's net worth for hurting people's feelings. (Everyone on this site will be begging on the streets in a day if that becomes a universal standard.)
"Promoting a harassment campaign against people who had their children murdered, all for the sake of selling merchandise" is a weakman against this site's rules too (or it least it would be if it were neutrally moderated; wishing I could put on a red hat right now to give you a cutesy warning over it). It's not like he just picked the random parents of a selection of wholly obscure child murder victims that week and decided to make them his target. He had a heterodox opinion about a highly-politicized event, child murder or not, that many of the parents most criticized chose to actively and enthusiastically participate in the politicization of, and you have absolutely no proof that he did it "all for the sake of selling merchandise". (I've not seen much evidence he encouraged any direct harassment of anyone either.) That is allowed in free societies without going broke. Obviously a free society is not what we have anymore.
After all, children died on 9/11, have died in Ukraine, have died in Syria, etc. Why not fine those with heterodox opinions about those matters billions too? If we allow the parents of muh murdered children to set the standards of discourse, then say goodbye to discourse beyond "thoughts and prayers! <3" entirely.
I've tried to really hammer this home, but most conspiracy theorists absolutely do not create a narrative which paints grieving families as conspirators. Look at 9/11 truthers as your meter stick; they said that it was an inside job or bush did 9/11. That Jet Fuel didn't melt steel beams. Most did not say 'you're fake, your loved ones never existed.' It's not just 'heterodox opinions bad' it's 'slanderous allegations against specific private citizens bad.'
In my experience, crisis actor theories regarding events with small(ish) numbers of victims are common (particularly in regards to mass shootings) and not just with Alex Jones. With stuff like 9/11 there's just so many victims that these theories become so increasingly implausible (not that they aren't already) that they're not used. I don't think it's a moral barrier.
As, for example, the treatment of Kyle Rittenhouse proves, the second only tends to apply nowadays in the context of the first.
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