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"You’re not gonna believe this, but buying a website from the estate of the world's biggest psychopath has been a gigantic pain in the a**. What are the odds of that?" Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion, told Newsweek in an interview.
Since late 2024, satirical outlet The Onion has been trying to take control of the Infowars platform, after its founder, the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, was ordered to pay more than $1 billion to Sandy Hook victims' families for falsely calling the shooting a hoax.
The Onion was named as the winning bidder for Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, where Infowars’ website, social media accounts, Texas studio, video archive and trademark were up for sale.
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Why would an outlet, known for punchy satirical headlines, be interested in acquiring the website of a conspiracy theorist?
The goal is to help the Sandy Hook families recover money from the judgments against Jones, to turn Infowars into a satirical site and to symbolically repurpose the brand.
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"At the end of the day, he has to pay this all out," Collins said. "All this is delay tactics. All of this is a way for him to evade justice and really try to get one over on the families who he owes all this money."
The journey has not been easy, and The Onion does not yet own the InfoWars brand, as Texas courts will give Jones a final opportunity to make his case as to why it should not be sold off, as a part of his bankruptcy proceedings.
"We are in line to fully take it over," Collins said. "Until then, we are making fun of them as loudly as much as possible. And we’re having a really good time."
Newsweek has reached out to Jones and his attorneys via email and online contact forms for comment on this story.
The Onion’s Bid to Take Over Infowars
Jones established Infowars in 1999 and has been a fixture in conspiracist circles for decades. He has been publicly critical of Democrats and Republicans and was a supporter of President Donald Trump, having interviewed him on his show, before breaking with him over the Iran war.
Back in 2022, Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 billion to the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when a gunman shot and killed 20 children, between the ages of six and seven, and six adult staff members. The incident is the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.
Jones had long shared a conspiracy theory that the shooting was a hoax but conceded in 2022 that he now believes it was "100 percent real."
In August of 2025, a Texas judge ordered that Jones’ Infowars be sold to pay the families.
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The Onion sought temporary control of the platform through a licensing deal tied to the ongoing liquidation of Jones’ company, which would have given them a six-month license to Infowars’ intellectual property. But in May, that deal was paused by a Texas court.
"It's been a crazy ride," Collins told Newsweek. "It's been 2 years of just like mental testing and perseverance."
Complex legal proceedings are ongoing and amid those, Jones has pushed back on claims that The Onion controls Infowars, and his supporters have criticized him losing the platform he built.
Collins is optimistic though.
"For the first time, this truly dog s*** website now has a little bit of joy in it. And we’re very excited to show that off to people."
The Onion launched their parody of Infowars in early July, beginning with a video that proclaimed Jones’ death.
Leading the comic charge is Tim Heidecker, who serves as the new Infowars creative director and is hosting a new weekly Thursday night livestream as a fictional right-wing version of himself.
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"I think that these families deserve some money for what they went through," Collins said, adding, "There is a justice system that told them that."
The Sandy Hook families have been in support of the plan, with Chris Mattei, an attorney for nine of the Sandy Hook families, telling The Associated Press earlier this year, "The idea that it could be turned to some social good. I think it’s even better."
The Onion plans to send Sandy Hook families $100,000 from merchandise sales. That merchandise integrates a redone logo, where the word InfoWars is decked out in a pride-style rainbow, and the O is replaced with an onion.
But beyond that, Collins said, "Long term, what we want to do is build, um, a place for people who don't really have a leg up right now in this industry to go and go and get one."
He said his aim is to give a chance to comedians who "really deserve it," and in the meantime "lift the veil on conspiracy culture because it’s so stupid."
‘We Have a Sickness in this Country’
The Onion's battle to take over InfoWars is one that is intertwined with the issue of gun violence in America, and its continued impact.
"We have a sickness in this country," Collins told Newsweek. "We have more guns than people and we hold them more sacred than our f****** children. I don't understand it."
"It's a profound disgrace," he said.
In 2025, at least 40,000 people were shot—over 110 people a day, a figure that does not reflect gun suicides and was recorded in a year when shooting deaths and injuries dropped, according to the journalism nonprofit The Trace, which reports on gun violence.
Collins told Newsweek how he has been personally affected by gun violence.
In 2015, news reporter Alison Parker, the girlfriend of Collins’ college roommate, journalist Chris Hurst, was shot and killed, alongside photojournalist Adam Ward, while conducting a live television interview near Smith Mountain Lake in Moneta.
That led Collins to become an extremism reporter, and he began covering people who "denied that tragedy."
Collins said the process of denying shootings makes it so that there will "never be any sort of way we evade gun deaths in the United States."
"We've lost a lot of stuff in the last few years and a lot of dignity in this country," Collins said.
The Importance of Political Satire
A familiar refrain on social media over the past few years has been that it is hard to differentiate a headline from The Onion from a real-life news headline.
And, there have been some stories with an unreal quality, be it revelations about aliens, a headline that a Mississippi teacher gave her students dog treats, or the fact that a man in the United Kingdom is currently running for political office with a trash can on his head, making international headlines.
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In that political ecosystem, what is the value of political satire?
"It's incredibly important," Collins said. "People think it's harder and it is; it has some challenges. That’s why we have professionals doing it."
**"**And satirists throughout history have this, especially under oppressive regimes, have this ability to say stuff. Both legally protected and also just sort of like emotionally protected," Collins said.
He noted that it is harder in that everybody is making jokes.
"But it is also freeing," Collins said. "We can say stuff that other people can’t."
"And you know, we feel pretty liberated."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Toby Meyjes and Trevor Davies.
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