Alex Jones is not the problem. Certainly, the man is a dangerous instigator, one can hardly do more reprehensible things than to mock the victims of a massacre, especially elementary school children: Jones had claimed that the dead of the killing spree at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, 20 of them students, are not dead, but lively. He had insulted the relatives just a few days later as an actor, hired by politicians who advocate stricter gun laws. And he had incited his followers to disrupt the funerals of victims and not only harass, but threaten, mourners.
Jones pays the price for his disrespectful, diabolical statements. After a court sentenced him to $45.2 million in fines, of which he will only have to pay a tenth due to Texas law, the Connecticut court’s verdict is now $965 million. There will be a third trial; it’s also just about the amount of the fine, which is likely to total more than a billion dollars.
That’s a lot of money, and Jones may have to file for personal bankruptcy. But: He is still a free man with a huge reach. He stylizes himself as a victim, calls processes against him politically motivated, initiated by people who want to take away his right to freedom of expression. He commented on the verdict live on his platform, and that’s where the problem begins.
Jones had asked the jury at the trial to do their own research; he said that he doesn’t trust anything or anyone, neither democratic processes like elections nor court decisions against him. These are dangerous statements, but in the end he was not accused of them, but only because he is said to have enriched himself with lies. He was convicted for refusing to hand over documents and testify in court. So he can still claim – as crude as that may sound – that he was never convicted of his lies. But it was a way to prosecute him at least somehow.
Jones still has a platform and a following, and that’s the real problem: he’s not a lonely lunatic. He is a role model for all fact-ignorant and opinion-trumpeting blusterers who believe that all nonsense is covered by the right to freedom of expression. Tarn the statements so that they just barely can be prosecuted legally – like the lawyers of Fox News fumigator Tucker Carlson, whose strategy in another case is to say that nobody would take anything at face value anyway Carlson say nightly. Just last week, Carlson joked with rapper Kanye West about his racist White Lives Matter shirt – and whether West, who calls himself “Ye”, had reached Alex Jones level with it.
The targets of these people cannot mourn the death of their six-year-old daughter, because they fear the supporters of the-it-is-it-may-be-put-to-say-it fanatics. For a long time, those involved in the Sandy Hook massacre took no action against Jones, fearing that things would only get worse and that Jones would invoke his right to freedom of expression and remain unmolested.
Some things are factually wrong – like Jones’ claim about the staging of the massacre. It doesn’t help to say that you question everything. It’s wrong, period. You don’t have to understand every piece of nonsense on the grounds that you allow all opinions or that you have to hear other views. Anyone who taunts the parents of elementary school children who have just been murdered and makes their lives hell doesn’t have to show a shred of sympathy. Each person can say what they want – but they must bear the consequences. Like Jones now.
The most important message of the verdicts against Jones is: You have to stand up to people who harm the world with the proven nonsense they spew out – with every means that a democracy puts at your disposal.