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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   23886 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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It seems like the push finally came to shove for Alex Jones, as he will have to liquidate pretty much almost everything he has to pay the $1.5 billion dollar settlement after the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuit went the plaintiffs way. Via AssociatedPress:

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking court permission to convert his personal bankruptcy reorganization to a liquidation, which would lead to a sell-off of a large portion of his assets to help pay some of the $1.5 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Jones and his media company, Free Speech Systems, both filed for bankruptcy reorganization after the Sandy Hook families won lawsuits against him for his repeatedly calling the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, a hoax on his Infowars programs...

...Liquidation could mean that Jones would have to sell most of what he owns, including his company and its assets, but could keep his home and other personal belongings that are exempt from bankruptcy liquidation. Proceeds would go to his creditors, including the Sandy Hook families.

If Free Speech Systems’ case is withdrawn, the company would return to the same position it was in after the $1.5 billion was awarded in the lawsuits and it would send efforts to collect the damages back to the state courts in Texas and Connecticut where the verdicts were reached.

Jones already has moved to sell some of his personal assets to pay creditors, including his Texas ranch worth around $2.8 million.

But a liquidation of Jones’ and his company’s assets would raise only a fraction of what he owes the Sandy Hook families.

According to the most recent financial statements filed in the bankruptcy court, Jones personally has about $9 million in assets, including his $2.6 million Austin-area home in Texas and other real estate. He listed his living expenses at about $69,000 for April alone, including about $16,500 for expenses on his home, including maintenance, housekeeping and insurance.

Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, which employs 44 people, had nearly $4 million in cash on-hand at the end of April. The business made nearly $3.2 million in April, including from selling the dietary supplements, clothing and other items that Jones promotes on his show, while listing $1.9 million in expenses.

Considering $9 million is more than 100 times less than what he owes, I don't see any other way for this to end in his completely left in the dust, with no business media, no career in journalism (at least as a self-owned publication, though I doubt anyone wants to hire him, and I don't think him having a Rumble channel with no structure to back him is going to bring him that much money). His only hope involves a Hail Mary crowfunding moneybomb from his supporters and people annoyed by the veredict a la Trump, but even if he raises as much as Trump, he's still owing hundreds of millions left, and I doubt he could even reach that point; not only we're talking about somebody not as popular, but the specifics of the case do touch sensitive spots (nobody likes someone stating falsehoods about dead children)

Comment from ZeroHedge:

The $1.5 billion settlement for claiming an event didn’t happen the way it is popularly believed to have happened was always absurd and had nothing at all do to with justice delivered to the families who lost their kids in Sandy Hook and everything to do with silencing a voice long a thorn in the side of the establishment, which the lawyer essentially concedes in the above quote about the ruling not just being about money — lawfare waged via a weaponized legal system I wrote about in detail when the ruling came down from on high last year.

Please miss me with comments about how Alex Jones is an unhinged pseudo-evangelical lunatic with a drinking problem or whatever. The vast majority of Alex Jones haters, in fact, have never listened to a single hour of his broadcast. Their negative impression of him comes entirely secondhand from ten-second clips and the non-stop, orchestrated bleating of hostile corporate media — a consensus-forming propaganda campaign of, arguably, unprecedented scale targeted at a single individual in the 21st century.

But anyway, I’m not here to do apologia for Alex Jones or to sell him to anyone; I am aware of his flaws, as I am aware of my own. We all live in glass houses...

...The Alex Jones censorship sage is not about Alex Jones.

When Jones was universally banned overnight from all major social media platforms in 2018 in what was clearly an orchestrated move among the Big Tech giants, that was an allusion to things to come.

It was only two years later, if that, that the mass censorship regime came for all dissident media, including me when I got the banhammer from multiple platforms in 2020 for “COVID misinformation” and other alleged crimes of wrongthink.

It’s InfoWars today and the rest of us tomorrow.

Two things that come to my mind:

First, from what I understand, the final payment number came from Alex Jones not being willing to disclose his net worth, which allowed to the plaintiffs to imagine an infinite net worth if they wanted to. But once the books are finally displayed, does that make sense? And even if he hadn't, why isn't the level of damage caused to the plaintiffs part of equation to lower the number? Isn't this institutionalized debt slavery as punishment for what is at the end of the day an civil case? Don't get me wrong, as a libertarian I certainly don't oppose debt slavery for a sort of tort system where crimes are punished with payments; but it has to be equivalent to the crime and the criminal's means; $1.5 billion would be too much of a punishment for Adam Lanza, the actual sicko who murdered the children in Sandy Hook, let alone for the guy who espoused things that weren't true about the shooting. Is he even going to able to ever pay for it entirely?

Secondly, isn't this simply a completely disproportionate answer to Jones sins? Yes, he went on for too long with this charade and should had never started it in the first place, not to mention that his claims didn't went against the NWO or the globalist elites that he despises, but against parents of dead children, claiming that the most emotionally painful thing that had ever befallen them was something they were lying about on TV. However, is he responsible at all for the fact that his followers went too far and harassed those people? Are CNN or MSNBC liable for defamation since they broadcasted Jones making those same claims? Do we know that if the people that harassed the victims parents actually got their information directly from Jones himself?

It seems to me that defamation law is a two edged sword...a society that doesn't have it allows misinformation to be used to harm people, but a society that doesn't have it on a tight leash allows to weaponize claims of misinformation with far worse repercussions.

I find it interesting to compare the Sandy Hook judgments and settlements to those of Columbine High School. The police department in that case was sued for refusing to allow paramedics to treat a student until hours after the two shooters were dead, ultimately settling for $1.5 million. Thirty-some families of the victims split $2.5 million from the shooters’ families, another family received $366,000, and five other families received an undisclosed amount. In all, almost certainly less than $6 million changed hands as a result of the shooting, all from people who were arguably at least indirectly responsible for the deaths themselves.

In contrast, the Sandy Hook victims’ families received $73 million from Remington for their gun manufacturing and advertising, $450,000 from a college professor for defamation, and now $1 billion from Alex Jones, also for defamation. That’s quite an incredible shift.

Did anyone do a deep dive of the Remington lawsuit? It seemed ludicrous on its face.

Remington settled, so there's really no deep dive to be had. From a litigator's perspective, 73 million divided by nine plaintiffs is about 8 million per, which is about in line with what I'd evaluate a case with a murdered child for, especially considering that the sympathy factor is high here, and especially since there have been a lot of ridiculously high verdicts lately in some jurisdictions (though I don't know about where the suit was filed). When you consider that a jury would have easily awarded at least 20 million per had the plaintiffs won, 8 million seems about in the ballpark for what I'd recommend if I were their attorney.

Did a bit more digging:

  • Remington was already bankrupt so this payout was the max that insurance could cover.
  • Would Remington have actually lost? The ads they put out were stupid, garden variety "man card" shit, and Adam didn't even buy the rifle - his mom did.
  • If the insurance company was already emptying their coffers for a settlement, why not gamble on a trial to reduce the total cost? A bigger jury payout would have been blood from a stone.

As a preliminary matter, trials aren't free, and as stingy as insurance companies can be, they'd much rather pay policy holders than attorneys, so the cost of litigation is always going to be a factor. To get to the central reason, though, we have to look at some more arcane details. Even though Remington was insolvent, they still had a duty to protect their creditors and thus a motivation to settle the suit within the policy limits. So they were obviously pushing for settlement. The Plaintiff's were obviously pushing for settlement, and there's a good chance that the judge was as well. As I said in my above post, their lawyers probably told them it was a reasonable settlement amount.That leaves the insurance companies, who may have had a good argument but not exactly a guaranteed defense verdict, especially given the highly sympathetic Plaintiffs and highly unsympathetic defendant. Remington spent several years trying to get the case thrown out but once those efforts failed and they knew the case would go to a jury, the jig was about up.

So what about the insurance companies? On paper their exposure was limited. In reality, the insurer has a duty to act in good faith. If everyone involved wants to settle and the insurers refuse, it's likely that they're going to be held responsible for the entire verdict, regardless of the policy limits (maybe not the entire verdict but you catch my drift). As soon as the jury delivers an eye watering verdict the insurers are going to be hit with a bad faith suit from Remington that they're going to have to spend even more money defending just so they can get the court to say they're only responsible for 70% of the excess rather than 100%.

There is also a federal law on the books that specifically precludes this exact sort of lawsuit.

When the court is already violating black-letter law to try the case, you aren't gambling on a trial any more.

Crazy that he’s making $35m a year (assuming the $3m rate is usual) with this grift, given the margin on the supplements and clothes that’s a huge profit. What he said is vulgar, but something reasonable like $200,000 per parent(s) and then any additional claims if they could prove in court that they suffered additional financial burden due to the allegations (paying for security, being fired by their Jones-fan boss etc) would be fair.

And it seems to me that the principles of the judgment are sound. A significant fraction of Jones’ debt comes from punitive, not compensatory, damages. This isn’t a novel legal theory. If justice were limited to compensation, we wouldn’t have jail time.

Let’s imagine Jones only had to pay compensation. If, hypothetically, he refused to do so, what would be the recourse? Should the state be allowed to add more penalties, even though they won’t go to the victims? The answer is obviously yes. A state which cannot punish is a state which doesn’t have a monopoly on force. It has a vacuum.

Lo and behold—between his endless appeals, procedural failures, and acts of creative accounting, Jones has avoided paying either category of damages so far. Meanwhile, he’s desperately kept spending money on his various businesses. This flies in the face of bankruptcy law. More importantly, it’s unjust, and he ought to see consequences for it. Even if that means adding numbers beyond the direct, personal compensation.

You're eliding the difference between civil and criminal law. Civil torts exist to settle disputes, criminal law to punish injustice. Refusing to pay a court-ordered judgment would eventually be a criminal offense.

Yes. Punitive damages are designed to discourage bad behavior. But we also have caps on punitive damages because it is protection against people who aren’t well liked. Do we think Sandman would’ve gotten a billion dollars from numerous news companies that in unison seemed to slander him?

Can’t believe there was ever a conspiracy about Sandy Hook. No opinion about if the legal process was correct here but ridiculous that this was even put forward as a possible conspiracy.

Why? While I think that it probably did happen as the official narrative depicts (mostly because I also think that if the conspiracy theory about using mass shootings to destroy the 2A were true, there would have at some point been a more consistent flood of them with shared characteristics exclusively targeting children to attempt to brute force the issue, instead of the more natural sporadic pattern they've actually happened in), because of emotional desires like "protecting the privacy of the families", etc., there's very little of an epistemologically complete case proving it, same as with most mass shootings (except for Columbine, which had an unnaturally high degree of transparency due to the (itself uproven) "Giving them publicity just encourages them!" meme not yet filtering much into the public consciousness).

For this reason, I was also somewhat skeptical of Sandy Hook for a while myself until, as mentioned, the follow-up that would have made it a likely conspiratorial act didn't materialize. Though that just means that in isolation it's a pretty questionable event, which it is.

With that said, I've never given much credence to Jones's formulation of a possible conspiracy with the parents as mere crisis actors and the kids as alive and well. That particular narrative makes no sense, as for one thing it postulates a conspiratorial entity trying to suppress the rights of all of society that would also bother picking some plan that avoids child casualties when it's far easier and more credible to just actually shoot them.

But if you consider a more realistic plot, like some shadowy interest-aligned ghoul shooting up an elementary school, forcibly dragging along some randomly-chosen isolated autist (who maybe looks a decent enough amount like the ghoul too, not that it matters tons as most mass shooters are relatively covered up) who could credibly be the culprit and executing him in a way that looks like a suicide, then leaving the body and having his fellows ensure that any evidence that places him at the scene is suppressed, while I don't think that is what happened, other than the aftermath I don't see any reason why it couldn't have been what happened. As far as I know, we don't even have publicly available footage of so much as Lanza shooting through the glass door to enter the school, even though it would be hard to argue that distributing such video naturally offends anyone's privacy rights or emotional concerns. (Nevertheless, given again that I am not actually a SH conspiracist, I just chalk this up to irrational normie emotionalism instead of anything conspiratorial.)

I suppose I just can’t picture a scenario where a “shadowy interest aligned ghoul” shoots up a US elementary school. Why would they ever have incentive to do that? The risk is also eye watering levels high. Makes zero sense to me and I can’t believe a single person buys it.

Why would they ever have incentive to do that?

If I may put on my (even more) schizo conspiracy hat on really quickly, it would be very easy to come up with an incentive. By the way, I don't actually believe in the following, but writing schizo fan fiction is fun for me: In order to better control the populace, "They" (the ominous "they" or "The Kabal", if you prefer some other name) need to disarm the populace. To do this from a top down perspective would be very difficult because there would be a lot of resistance. Therefore, "They" have to convince the populace to disarm itself. A way to do this would be to cause or make-believe an event such as SH. Have you been getting those Youtube pre-roll ads from SH Promise? There's a reason that they are being promoted now.

Why would they ever have incentive to do that?

...Because they're aligned with shadowy interests? Also given how little hard proof of exactly what happened the public was able to force to be released, it doesn't seem to me like the risk was that high. Plus I would imagine that for the guy going into the building, his understanding would be that if he screws up and fails to extract himself properly, he will be burned and his fellows will be forced to turn on him (with compensation to match that risk).

What is a “shadowy interest” that would benefit from the murder of a bunch of US 6 year olds? Also the risk seems pretty high to me, doesn’t seem like many people who are involved in 26 murders in broad daylight walk away clean.

I truly cannot believe there is a market for this nonsense. Also let’s not forget the main conspiracy being pushed was that the whole thing was fake to “get your guns”.

What is a “shadowy interest” that would benefit from the murder of a bunch of US 6 year olds?

Banning guns.

Like I said, I don't think it's what happened, because the follow-up wasn't there, but it's hardly infeasible in isolation. Some of these people have billions at their disposal, and it almost certainly wouldn't take even a single billion, or even half, to pull such an attack off scot-free.

Your substance-free proclamation that you "truly cannot believe there is a market for this nonsense" like some hysterically offended NYT commenter doesn't affect the facts here.

broad daylight

But it wasn't in broad daylight. It was in a closed building that was then further closed off to the public while whoever did whatever they wanted to any evidence of what happened in it.

We've already had proof of cases where the FBI groomed Islamic mass shooters and literally had agents observing their attack without intervening (the Texas Draw Mohammed attack).

There's been some others where the attacker was literally a paid informant, but there's no evidence (found) that he was ordered to do the attack.

So imo it's not an unreasonable jump to assume the state is directly involved in planning and carrying out mass shootings for political reasons. At best it's one of those things that exists in a quantum superposition of "duh, everyone knows that, it doesn't prove anything" and "that's a right wing conspiracy for which there's no evidence"

I've always understood that the objective with these kinds of high value settlements, is that while you can't get water out of a stone, you can take a portion of what it drinks for yourself.

Alex Jones is going to be on some kind of a payment plan to the plaintiffs for the rest of his life, and in that way, it brings closure to the matter.

Alex Jones is going to be on some kind of a payment plan to the plaintiffs for the rest of his life, and in that way, it brings closure to the matter.

Depends on the jurisdiction doesn't it? If he declares personal bankruptcy this is most likely very time limited and considers the creditors as a whole -- unless there's some carveout for legal settlements, which in most jurisdictions there is not.

Judgments for intentional torts aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Certainly you are much more qualified to comment on the US situation, but I had thought that there were at least some states more similar to Canada in this regard?

Debts not released by order of discharge

178 (1) An order of discharge does not release the bankrupt from

(a) any fine, penalty, restitution order or other order similar in nature to a fine, penalty or restitution order, imposed by a court in respect of an offence, or any debt arising out of a recognizance or bail;

(a.1) any award of damages by a court in civil proceedings in respect of

    (i) bodily harm intentionally inflicted, or sexual assault, or

    (ii) wrongful death resulting therefrom;

(b) any debt or liability for alimony or alimentary pension;

(c) any debt or liability arising under a judicial decision establishing affiliation or respecting support or maintenance, or under an agreement for maintenance and support of a spouse, former spouse, former common-law partner or child living apart from the bankrupt;

(d) any debt or liability arising out of fraud, embezzlement, misappropriation or defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity or, in the Province of Quebec, as a trustee or administrator of the property of others;

(e) any debt or liability resulting from obtaining property or services by false pretences or fraudulent misrepresentation, other than a debt or liability that arises from an equity claim;

(f) liability for the dividend that a creditor would have been entitled to receive on any provable claim not disclosed to the trustee, unless the creditor had notice or knowledge of the bankruptcy and failed to take reasonable action to prove his claim;

(g) any debt or obligation in respect of a loan made under the Canada Student Loans Act, the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act or any enactment of a province that provides for loans or guarantees of loans to students

The US bankruptcy code (it's all Federal, except for in a few specific areas) is similar but doesn't require "bodily harm", only "willful and malicious injury". Courts have said for a long time that this basically means all intentional torts.

Huh, that is rough -- so is it Jones that's on the hook for a billion bucks, or some combination of himself and his corp?

He's on the hook himself. The problem is that he owns his corp (at least in substantial proportion) so the company itself is fair game. The Plaintiff's are looking to settle in a manner that will keep the company operational but they rejected Jones's proposal and gave a counteroffer that Jones rejected.

Here’s the pickle: it seems obvious that the best way for Alex Jones to make money is to continue producing infowars content. I’m not sure that this is the closure that the plaintiffs had in mind.

Yeah, it's a difficult situation. Jones could quite literally stop making money all together, live off welfare, and the families would barely get any money from him. Or, Jones could continue making content or even get a day job and have his wages garnished and the families would still get very little money from him.

And even if he hadn't, why isn't the level of damage caused to the plaintiffs part of equation to lower the number?

It is. Generally civil trial damages are divided into compensatory and punitive components. One to compensate plaintiffs for the harm caused by the defendant. One to punish the defendant for the bad thing they did. According to the Wikipedia article most of the damages against Jones ($965M) were compensatory.

First, from what I understand, the final payment number came from Alex Jones not being willing to disclose his net worth, which allowed to the plaintiffs to imagine an infinite net worth if they wanted to. But once the books are finally displayed, does that make sense?

Why doesn't it? If you harm someone to the tune of $1M (say) it seems like justice requires you owe them $1M. Maybe they can't collect because you don't have the money but I don't see why we should pre-emptively do some injustice to the wronged party.

Isn't this institutionalized debt slavery as punishment for what is at the end of the day an civil case?

Yea, but so? If you fuck up other people's lives bad enough in a wrongful way your life might get fucked up in return. Seems fine. What's the alternative proposition? Should it be impossible for a court to order someone pay a judgemental beyond their means, no matter how bad the conduct is if it isn't criminal? That seems highly exploitable.

There is no world where there was almost a billion dollars in actual damages.

Why isn’t this an eighth amendment violation?

Think of it as the state’s interest in keeping people from being jackasses at trial.

The guy has been very consistent about 1) not cooperating, 2) not apologizing, and 3) continuing his business model. He keeps trying to make money off of slandering the people who have power over him. So he keeps racking up more punitive damages.

Does he? Ive heard him apologize for example on Joe Rogan. What also is wrong with Jones’ business model. It is part entertainment part conspiracy theorist. Both of those things are legal. He even sometimes is right!

Who is he slandering that has power over him?

You’re right, he occasionally apologizes. Or is forced into admissions/retractions. Or just claims he was psychotic.

For slandering—in the casual sense—I’m thinking of his statements about Heslin. Or about the cases in general. It’s probably legal, but mocking your jury and insisting they’re trying to “scare us away” is, in fact, a bad move.

I've heard him say he "got that one wrong" or something to that effect -- which to me implies that he no longer believes what he originally said. It was well before the lawsuit got rolling, and he did seem sincere.

Most of his business model looks very little like the S.H. stuff -- it's more like pro wrestling than anything else. And AFAIK this is the first time he's been sued?

Your three points seem mostly false; are you basing your opinion of Jones on something else? It's OK to just not like the guy, but a billion bucks seems a bit of a large penalty for that. He's not even very partisan; (again as I recall) he is pretty hard on GWB?

I’m going to stand by points 1 and 3, actually.

Failing to comply with discovery, shuffling the shell companies, still not paying the victims—those are all “not cooperating.” The more he does those things, the more penalties stack up, above and beyond the initial damages. And all the while he’s making money off the same kind of statements, except directed at the judge, jury, witnesses, anyone who isn’t on his side.

Is it unreasonable to look at these behaviors and think, hmm, that man doesn’t feel a shred of remorse?

As an aside—he was previously threatened with a lawsuit over Pizzagate, leading to a retraction. He settled another suit over the Charlottesville car video, as well as one for criticizing…uh…a yogurt company? These were all filed before any of the Sandy Hook suits, but hey, maybe they just smelled blood in the water.

Point is, he’s offended some people, and now he keeps offending them, even when they’re actively deliberating on his punishment. That’s bad strategy.

Failing to comply with discovery, shuffling the shell companies, still not paying the victims—those are all “not cooperating.” The more he does those things, the more penalties stack up, above and beyond the initial damages.

Those all seem pretty standard for litigants who are both naive and combative -- it does not 'stack up' to a billion dollars.

And all the while he’s making money off the same kind of statements, except directed at the judge, jury, witnesses, anyone who isn’t on his side.

He's claiming that the court is made up of crisis actors? I must confess I'm not really a watcher; what kind of things does he say? If it's stuff like 'this is a sham court designed to shut me up instead of seeking a just resolution' -- not only does that seeem like central 1A stuff, he's probably correct?

Is it unreasonable to look at these behaviors and think, hmm, that man doesn’t feel a shred of remorse?

Either that or he's upset about being targeted for destruction?

Point is, he’s offended some people, and now he keeps offending them, even when they’re actively deliberating on his punishment. That’s bad strategy.

He... does not seem like a really strategic guy? Again, I don't see how we get from 'Jones says crazy stuff and is bad at dealing with the legal system' to 'it's totally fair that he's on the hook for a billion dollars'.

More comments

Lessons in attempting to value things in the absence of an active market. What is the exchange rate between units of emotional distress and dollars? What even are the units of emotional distress?

I don’t know (which is one reason I’m skeptical of IIED torts) but it isn’t a billion dollars.

As far as I know there is no SCOTUS precedent capping compensatory damages in a civil case. I think partly this is for reasons I identify in my comment and partly because compensatory damages aren't supposed to be a "punishment" as such. There are, by contrast, SCOTUS cases that limit how much a jury can award in punitive damages.

Sure. I’m saying the compensatory damages are actually punitive damages in disguise because of course they are.

I agree that what he did is harassment but at a certain point a kind of vague gesturing to emotional damages for uncapped punishment has to look contrary to how the people who'd be comfortable with that level of punishment treat actual violent criminals.

I am not sure I agree. Criminal punishment penalties are categorically different (jail) than civil penalties. The worst that happens to Jones is he declares bankruptcy and pays pennies on the dollar of what he owes. There is not really a get-out-of-going-to-jail equivalent.

First, from what I understand, the final payment number came from Alex Jones not being willing to disclose his net worth, which allowed to the plaintiffs to imagine an infinite net worth if they wanted to.

Not really. It was more that the Judge and the plaintiffs refused to accept his financial statements and insisted he had secret money. It was a mix of hating Alex Jones and leftists needing to believe that Jones was a grifter in it for the money. Accepting that there wasn't much money would have damaged their world view.

The plaintiff's lawyers refused settle and now the plaintiffs won't get much of anything.

Infowars has creditors who have priority in the bankruptcy. The talent doesn't have exclusive contracts. The studio can only be sold for pennies on the dollar. Infowars generates no income if it's off the air.

Texas has fairly generous bankruptcy protections. Jones will get to keep his home, his retirement savings, and a vehicle for each adult in his home. He'll be able to start up a new video stream hauking supplements fairly easy. Production values will be lower at first.

Obviously it's a huge blow but it won't destroy him.

Yes, he went on for too long with this charade and should had never started it in the first place, not to mention that his claims didn't went against the NWO or the globalist elites that he despises, but against parents of dead children, claiming that the most emotionally painful thing that had ever befallen them was something they were lying about on TV.

One of the reasons that the Judge needed to do a default judgement is that Jones isn't nearly as guilty as people think. People mentally lump him together with "Alex Jones types" but he wasn't the primary driver of the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. The defence was doing mock trials and found that some of the time they could win, even with an Austin jury.

An Austin jury would be one of the most anti-Jones juries you can get. The level of performative progresivism and Alex Jones hate here in Austin is hard to describe.

How do you know it's performative progressiveness and not the genuine beliefs of the people which act that way? Is there any way to test for this?

Does whether it is performative or not impact anything about a jury selected from Austinites?

Yes, genuinely held beliefs probably have some philosophical or moral reasoning that has led to a broadly consistent set, rather than ones which are sharply contradictory or inconsistent.

How exactly would you propose distinguishing between "genuine" beliefs and performative ones? Why wouldn't they lead to similar kinds of behavior? Is there a chance that performative beliefs may result in even more extreme actions than genuine ones?

And I'll point that even and maybe especially "genuine" beliefs are not free of contradiction or inconsistency and are not necessarily rooted in philosophical or moral reasoning.

I appreciate the dozen different irrelevant counter claims or suggestions that the opposite may be true, but I think this all demonstrates why accusing random strangers' actions of being performative is just a boo-outgroup exercise.

They aren't irrelevant at all. You're hung up on my use of the word "performative" and I'm pointing out that it doesn't matter if it's true in the sense that you've interpreterd it or that this interpretaion may even make my point stronger. There's not even necessarily a reason to think that performativity precludes sincerity, so your perception of this as "booing" is really just your own built in assumption, as I tried to point out.

More comments

Can they come after the new entity once he starts that one up?

It'll be a lot harder if it's outside of Austin and there's some sort of vesting structure.

They aren't supposed to be able to shut down new companies since they are supposed to be limited to recouping damages. They don't have any right to try to silence future speech or prevent Jones from making a living.

When you hear that 5 shell companies are declaring bankruptcy, you should think that the person running those companies is winning, not losing. Alex Jones is a bona fide criminal con-man and we should expect him to pull tricks that make madoff, ponzi, sbf, and al capone look like saints. He's been embezzling all of the money out of his companies and accounts into hard-to-reach places, to the point that right now his paper net worth is in the negative.

Now you have Jones' creditors asking for money, the Texas plaintiffs asking for 50,000,000, and the Connecticut plaintiffs asking for 1,500,000,000, and they all have to fight it out in Texas court for the crumbs. The fact that the CT plaintiffs are supposed to get 30x more than the TX plaintiffs doesn't mean they're going to get a 30x bigger portion of the pie in TX court, and we don't know how much Jones' existing creditors are asking for.

When the dust settles, Jones is shooting to keep his house, the only remaining thing of value under his name, and to have the important IP of his media companies in the hands of that supplement company, which may be independent, but are definitely Jones aligned. I see Jones coming out of this intact, though for all the wrong reasons, and the plaintiffs getting a pittance, also for all the wrong reasons.

Jones deserves to be shut down, for being a fraud and a con-man, not for defaming some liberal agitators. And the plaintiffs deserve to get nothing, because their claims are baseless drivel, not because the defendant will successfully doge the judgement by any means.

  • -14

I’ll buy that Jones won’t live in poverty, might have an account in the caimans, and that the plaintiffs won’t get much at the end of the day.

That he’s a master money manipulator? I doubt it. He’s a true believer crank, a group which has a long history of making dumb legal mistakes and hanging themselves. This is another case thereof, and more than likely he will actually lose everything except his house and car.

He’s a true believer crank, a group which has a long history of making dumb legal mistakes and hanging themselves.

I also doubt he's a money manipulator type, but I'd be cautious about dismissing him as dumb or incompetent. I've heard some throwaway comments from media people that he was running a tight ship with his company.

Running a business of that size is not difficult as an intellectual exercise, it is difficult effort wise. There are three difficult things to do:

  1. Be a boss to employees. You can't run the business hoping to make friends. Labor is always one of the largest expenses, you need to hire people, expect them to treat it like a job, and enforce that expectation. You'll have to fire people if they aren't providing value to the business. This can range from the fun yet lazy employees to sob stories where someone is down on their luck and producing inferior work for some time period. Jones is probably used to being hated so this might be easier for him.
  2. Be willing to dive into the details. Sometimes the difference between being profitable and not is just one area of the business being sloppy. Small business owners have to be willing to get involved in all of these little areas, and it will be frustrating. For media and merchandising that is going to involve a myriad of deals/contracts with online companies and shipping companies. Jones seems to be willing to dive in and read things deeply, and he is capable of making connections between disparate pieces of small details. He is probably great at this.
  3. Be willing to run the numbers. I separate this out from merely the "details" because it seems to be a different muscle and skillset. Making sure you get your money and your employees get paid is very important. The fact that Jones has not been taken down by the feds for some business related reason makes me think he is great at this. My brother makes a living helping small businesses in his area handle the money side of things.

I've known people who can do all these things, and they are still total cranks. One of them that springs to mind was probably a fan of Jones, there is video of him online being dragged out of a city council meeting screaming about his constitutional rights. (he was going on a rant about a culture war issue that the city had little control over and had run over his time limit). I'd estimate the construction business that guy ran was also in the millions, and possibly in the tens of millions. He was building a few dozen houses a year.

I've known people who can do all these things, and they are still total cranks

Yeah, but I'm arguing cranks are not (necessarily) dumb / incompetent. You're making it sound like having a business like that is like losing weight (easy, but requires constant effort, which is why most people flake out), I'm saying it's the exact opposite. Most people won't pull it off regardless of the effort they put in.

The person you responded to didn't say "dumb / incompetent" they said "dumb legal mistakes". Smart competent people can make dumb mistakes in areas where they are not competent.

You're making it sound like having a business like that is like losing weight (easy, but requires constant effort, which is why most people flake out), I'm saying it's the exact opposite. Most people won't pull it off regardless of the effort they put in.

I think losing weight is harder effort wise than running a business. Plenty of successful fat business owners.

There are about 400,000 small businesses in the US with 20-49 employees. https://www.naics.com/business-lists/counts-by-company-size/

That size of business sucks to run. Its large enough to fill 80-100 hours of time in your week to run. Usually too small to run on its own (a single key employee quitting might turn a self operating business back into a full time job for an owner). The salary / profit will probably make it well paying, but on an hourly basis your pay is still mediocre. It is very stressful.

I'd actually say running a business is one of the few ways that someone with an insane work ethic and not many highly paid skills can earn good take home pay. It really does not require advanced intellect. I'd guess that anyone capable of reading and passing highschool algebra has the mental capability to run a business of that size. Not everyone does that because again, it sucks, its a lot of work, and for the first few years it will suck even harder. Talk with some owners of lawn companies, construction companies, small shops, etc. Many of them will straight up tell you they are idiots, and even if some of that is modesty they have lots of anecdotal evidence to back it up. They will also tell you that it is a ton of work to start the business and keep it afloat.

Hiding money is a different skill set from running a business, that’s why successful shady business owners hire accountants and lawyers.

I'm not convinced he was doing anything shady

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I think losing weight is harder effort wise than running a business. Plenty of successful fat business owners.

And plenty of fit people (I know you Yanks are all are fat, but there has to be more than 400K of you in decent shape) who can't run a business.

I'd actually say running a business is one of the few ways that someone with an insane work ethic and not many highly paid skills can earn good take home pay.

On one hand - sure, I've seen that happen too. But it seems like black magic to me, and I was able to lose weight.

More to the point - from what I can tell media people (mainstream news anchors, successful journalists, etc) have to have a pretty insane work ethic too, and they're the ones that were impressed with Jones' operation when they rubbed shoulders with him. Wish I could name names, but it's something I heard like 10 years ago.

My brother is half-owner of a small business. Most of his workers are temporary contracts rather than full time. But he regularly employees a few dozen of these contract workers at a time. So I guess I've seen it up close and its lost all the magic to me. My brother is good at details and finance, he isn't great at the "being a boss" thing so he sticks to contractors when he can.

Most industries like to think they work hard. I think some of them are objectively wrong when they think this. Media seems like one of the objectively wrong ones. You need certain knacks to succeed and get by in media, and that limits the playing field. Its a bit like basketball. Since extreme height is such a glaring requirement, there is more differentiation on other traits. Like if anyone could be made into a 7ft giant, would the current crop of NBA players remain? I doubt it. Almost all of them would be out-competed by harder working more conscientious guys. MJ is like a god to the NBA, but he wasn't anything impressive at baseball where height is not as strict of a requirement.

I listed a few reasons above why I think Alex Jones would be a good businessman for that size company. I fully believe you when he say he runs a tight ship and a successful business. I just also fully believe that such skills do not prevent you at all from making dumb legal mistakes, dumb mistakes about who to marry, or dumb lifestyle choice. Most of the guys I've seen that have tanked their businesses did so for one of those reasons, not because they messed up on the business side. My brother made a dumb mistake about who to marry, and when they get around to having a divorce she will destroy his business.

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Totally possible, but he likely has incorrect beliefs about things that are relevant to hiding money even if he tries to manipulate his assets.

What is your evidence for Jones being some sort of master money-manipulator, one even better than the likes of the rich people you mention who almost got away with it?

However, is he responsible at all for the fact that his followers went too far and harassed those people?

I have only kind of paid attention to this case so I will not claim deep legal knowledge here, but I suspect this case is, like so many others, one in which the deep legal details matter, and are mostly ignored by partisans in favor of "He's being punished by the Elites for offending the NWO" or "He's an evil monster who mocked dead children."

A number like $1.5 billion is basically saying "We're taking everything you have (except your home)." Is that a fair judgment? Eh. I don't feel sorry for him, and not just because he's a crank.

My understanding is that the huge judgment was not so much because he claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax and told parents their children didn't really die (vile and obnoxious and possibly cause for a defamation suit, but not $1.5 billion), but because of all those followers of his who harassed and threatened the parents for years. So as to whether he is responsible at all: having some crazy followers who do things without your knowledge or instigation is one thing, but if you keep beating the "crisis actor" drums for years, until you know darn well what your followers are doing to those parents, then at some point yeah, I think you become responsible for continuing to egg them on. That and his legal fuckery with the court makes me think he FAAFO.

And if someone assassinates Trump, can Trump Jr bankrupt Maddow?

It is a very slippery slope to apply an “egging on” standard.

All laws are slippery slopes. I never understand this argument: "If you took this principle to an unreasonable extreme, terrible things will happen." Well, yes.

Trump Jr. suing Maddow on the premise that her bashing of Trump directly and intentionally or recklessly instigated an assassination would have to prove a lot of things beyond "Maddow said Trump bad."

Maybe things like calling him a threat to democracy or a Russian plant etc etc. not that dissimilar to what Jones did to be honest.

Law is supposed to have procedures that protect the defendant as much as it provides vindication to the plaintiff. For example, there is a limitation on unreasonable fines. This seems like a paradigmatic unreasonable fine.

Maybe things like calling him a threat to democracy or a Russian plant etc etc. not that dissimilar to what Jones did to be honest.

If hordes of Maddow's followers started physically harassing Trump and she seemed to be egging it on (or at least conspicuously silent about it), he might have a case. But as others have pointed out, Jones's legal troubles were not just because of what he said, but because when sued he tried to play shell games with his finances.

This narrative some of you are swallowing where Alex Jones got sued to oblivion for the crime of wrongthink and offending liberals just doesn't hold up. The judgment may be absurd, but not for the reasons you are claiming.

Hmmmmm, what about a situation where a literal designated terrorist organization posted lists of people to harass, and the followers of that designated terrorist organization repeatedly committed criminal violence against those people?

But somehow I'm not seeing them being fined eleventy billion dollars, because they're just terrorists rather than political opponents of the regime.

Are you talking about Hamas? How do you imagine this equivalence works, since we can't sue Hamas?

I don't know, maybe they could actually investigate them for admitting to firebombing a federal building?

But hey, the libs who run the security state have more important targets, like kids leaving scooter tire marks on rainbow crosswalks and parents at school board meetings complaining about their kids being forced to read gay porn

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If hordes of Maddow's followers started physically harassing Trump and she seemed to be egging it on (or at least conspicuously silent about it), he might have a case.

Isn't Trump the victim of a nearly decade long harassment campaign that was initially started (in part) by very spurious claims and outright lies, which has now cost him millions of dollars and resulted in outright harassment from his political enemies via the legal system?

Not to mention that the default judgment happened not once, but twice, in both Connecticut and Austin, after some of the most hilariously incompetent lawyering by his defense counsel. They accidentally emailed Jones’s unculled phone data to plaintiffs’ counsel, which included texts showing that Jones was refusing to produce relevant information, all after years of dilatory tactics and abuse. They data dumped on the plaintiffs in the Connecticut case, including child porn that should have been culled. If you are an unsympathetic defendant, maybe don’t fuck around with testing the limits of the rules of civil procedure.

Jones is definitely an enemy of the cathedral, but he’s also a scumbag and an idiot who deserved to lose his cases. He will get out of this relatively intact after discharging the judgment debt in bankruptcy and go back to being a convenient weakman for the left to meme on.

What’s the standard here? If people tried to break into his home whilst burning historic churches next to where he then lived would that count?

Can you show that that was done by Rachel Maddow followers as a result of things she said? Can you show that it was happening for months or years? Can you show that she knew (or should have known) that it was happening, and did nothing about it?

No but we also can’t prove it was done as a result of Jones’ followers. Causation is really hard (people hear a lot of stuff and do random things all of the time).

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I haven't followed this case at all closely, but my impression was that he didn't comply with his discovery obligations and so the court said that the worst possible inference should be drawn from his lack of disclosure, and that's why the judgement was so astronomical?

That was two of the cases.

Sort of. The default judgments meant he had to be treated as if he’d “admitted all allegations.” Then juries went wild.

It still only covers about $50M of his debts.

I don’t buy that as a theory simply because it makes it too easy to shut up dissent. Under this theory, my repeating of a statement that I believe is true makes me liable for any actions taken by people who listen to what I’m saying even if I never tell anyone to harass or harm others, and even if I’m not giving out personal information. And thus it’s now easy to shut down dissent by suggesting that a speaker has total control over all of those who listen to his show.

No, under this theory, if I repeatedly use my public platform to say "@MaiqTheTrue is murdering children in his basement," and I continue making this claim for years, even knowing that some of my followers are now harassing you (and the Sandy Hook parents weren't just having mean things said about them on the Internet, they were being followed and harassed and physically threatened in meat-space), you can hold me responsible. There is a difference between having total control over your followers and knowing what your followers are doing and not only saying nothing to discourage them, but continuing to do what you know is encouraging them.

Sort of. If you’re telling people I’m killing kids in my basement, then, sure, it’s possibly inflammatory. But it’s also something that, charitably you believe to be true. And as far as I’m concerned, this is something that should be protected unless the person is trying to provoke the response. To do otherwise can easily be abused into silencing those who hold dissident views. And even if the fans of a given dissident are mostly behaving themselves, there are always agents provocateur who would gladly make trouble for those fans, especially if the prize was that the dissident was forced into bankruptcy and silenced forever.

Now the question of whether Jones either knew or intended harassment is rather open. He would certainly know based on metrics who is listening, but I don’t think that he’s reading every comment on his articles or videos. Most people here have blogs, how much do you know about your subscribers? If your subscribers would decide to come after me, how would you even find out? Creators tend to live in a bubble, the audience isn’t really known to them unless they do a lot of public speaking. Thus I don’t think it’s clear that Jones necessarily was aware of his fans’ behavior. As far as I’m aware from dipping into old podcasts of his show, he doesn’t encourage anyone to do anything beyond buying supplements and gold coins. He doesn’t say things advocating harm or writing letters or anything like that. He just reports what (assuming charity here) he believes to be true.

Legally, I don't know how much of Jones's defense did or could rely on him claiming not to know people were being harassed. But as to your first point, I think it requires a lot of charity to assume Alex Jones sincerely believed everything he was saying (IIRC, he at one point actually made some sort of "I'm Just Asking Questions" disclaimer), and me sincerely believing you are murdering children in your basement wouldn't absolve me of responsibility if I'm causing people to show up at your house trying to free the children.

I find the argument that is setting some precedent that will "silence dissent" unconvincing; most people objecting seem to just hate the people who hate Alex Jones, and therefore him losing means the wrong people won. I suspect if an unhinged follower of Rachel Maddow really did attack Trump and he sued her and won, the same people defending Alex Jones would say she deserves it.

I think we’ve had a full eye full of what can happen when the state decides what ideas are simply too dangerous to be considered. And taking away a person’s livelihood for having said things that those in power don’t like is a huge danger to the ability to have free exchange of ideas. I think Jones is at best wrong and at worst a grifter shilling stupid products that don’t work. But there are lots of other people with ideas that they believe to be true that would absolutely be bothersome to the elites. Dissent on trans issues being a big one. The idea that someone can be induced to believe they are trans is something I think is worth taking seriously. But at the same time, a person who’s listening to that might get upset by it, or if it’s connected to things going on in their kids school, then they might harass teachers. Is that the fault of someone just stating a theory? I don’t think so, unless that person is telling people to take action. My personal bias is strongly towards not shutting down speech unless the person is clearly trying to incite criminal action. If Maddow says “Trump wants to be a dictator, somebody should stop him” that’s pretty open and close incitement. If she just says “Trump wants to be a dictator,” that’s not her trying to get a response from her viewers, it’s simply her opinion on the facts.

I feel like we are going in circles. I completely agree that no ideas should be censored and people should not be sued or persecuted by the state for expressing them, and I completely disagree that this is what happened to Alex Jones.

Legally, I don't know how much of Jones's defense did or could rely on him claiming not to know people were being harassed.

Once again, there was no trial on the merits.

So I have an obligation to censor myself if I know my fans are doing bad stuff? Even when they are doing it against my wishes?

If I repeatedly say that abortion clinics are mass murdering babies, am I liable if an unhinged follower blows up a clinic?

So I have an obligation to censor myself if I know my fans are doing bad stuff? Even when they are doing it against my wishes?

If what they are doing is disconnected from what you're saying, no. I don't think Taylor Swift is responsible for her insane fans harassing her ex-boyfriends, even though she sings songs dunking on them.

If what you are saying is "A specific group of people are vile, evil liars," and as a result, your fans begins harassing that group of people, to the point that those people are legitimately in fear for their lives, then yes, I think you have an obligation to, at the very least, publicly state "Don't do that, I do not endorse this."

To extend the Taylor Swift example, if her fans started physically threatening her exes while she kept composing pop melodies like "My Ex is a Dirtbag Who Totally Deserves to Die," I think her exes might have a legitimate civil case.

(Did Alex Jones ever, in any way, indicate that the harassment of the Sandy Hook parents was something he disapproved of?)

If I repeatedly say that abortion clinics are mass murdering babies, am I liable if an unhinged follower blows up a clinic?

If they are unconnected to you or your words, no, but if your followers start doing this on the regular, and you keep talking about how abortion clinics are mass murdering babies oh look another one got blown up today, then at some point it becomes a turbulent priest scenario.

To extend the Taylor Swift example, if her fans started physically threatening her exes while she kept composing pop melodies like "My Ex is a Dirtbag Who Totally Deserves to Die," I think her exes might have a legitimate civil case.

It would have to be a false statement of fact, whereas this is opinion, so no defamation liability. "My Ex kicks puppies and is a dirtbag who deserves to die" would potentially be actionable if Joe Alwyn does not, if fact, kick puppies. In the US, Swift might get away with "I was obviously joking", so not really a statement of fact, so no liability (Elon Musk successfully ran this defence after falsely accusing Vernon Unsworth of being a paedophile). But Alwyn is British and Swift's albums are published in the UK, so an English court would have jurisdiction and "I was obviously joking" is not a defence in the UK.

Again what about Maddow? What about say Tucker?

Claims about Trump being a "threat to democracy" aren't specific enough to constitute defamation. Russian agent claims could plausibly be specific enough, but it would come down to specific statements. There's also the issue that public figures such as Trump have to meet a higher standard when proving defamation claims than private citizens like the Sandy Hook parents do.

I'd also add that,. while it seems counterintuitive, wrongful death claims are almost always worth less than cases where the plaintiff is living, even when the plaintiff is in decent shape. Your hypothetical of an assassination is geared toward rock bottom damages because the relatively minimal amount of pain and suffering combined with the inability of the plaintiff to testify about that pain and suffering means you're not getting much in the way of non-economic damages. In most cases like this you'd be looking at maybe a million for the decedent, a couple hundred thousand for the widow, and maybe 50 grand for each of the kids. Maybe up that to three million because it's Trump, but these damages aren't unique and you'd have a hard time justifying more than that. Compare that with unassuming people who suffered an unimaginable loss and then had to contend with years of harassment from people who claimed they were faking it, and they're all available to testify about how much of a nightmare it was and there's little the defense can do on cross to counter. It's not a typical scenario and there aren't any clear guidelines on how to value something like that.

The bigger factor in damages in a hypothetical Trump assassination would be economic damages far in excess of what a normal person has, but this would rest on the testimony of various economic experts who would have to contend with the tendency of his companies to show a net loss for tax purposes. I'm actually working on a case right now where a guy is claiming excessive economic damages based on a speculative business venture that was derailed by the Plaintiff's death, and this shit gets messy.

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However, is he responsible at all for the fact that his followers went too far and harassed those people? Are CNN or MSNBC liable for defamation since they broadcasted Jones making those same claims? Do we know that if the people that harassed the victims parents actually got their information directly from Jones himself?

None of this was ever litigated, because they used procedural tricks to obtain a default judgement against him, then slap him with the largest civil judgement in history. Having not been litigated though, it now becomes effective "precedent" that indeed if you are not in good odor with the establishment, you ARE responsible for pretty much anything someone can come up with a legal theory for. And insurance companies will refuse to insure people who refuse to act according to these new "precedents", and if you go to a lawyer they will advise you not to do things which might result in this sort of liability for you... so everyone will behave as if this is the law, which means it is the law.

You don't get a default judgement against you because of the Plaintiff's "procedural tricks". You end up with a default judgement because of monumental incompetence where you don't respond to repeated requests, miss critical deadlines, and ignore court orders. These things aren't optional.

You don't get a default judgement against you because of the Plaintiff's "procedural tricks".

No, the court's procedural tricks.

It isn't a procedural trick; it's an essential part of the system. You don't get to dodge litigation by failing to cooperate, and after 2 years the judge is backed into a corner.

because they used procedural tricks to obtain a default judgement against him

From my understanding Alex and his lawyer also worked hard on beating Alex with procedural tricks. If everyone involved is against you then you will end "I guess we are taking anything not protected by bankruptcy laws". And AFAIK they are fairly generous in this case, he is not going to be evicted and starving.

slap him with the largest civil judgement in history

This is the crux to me of this just being almost entirely motivated by spite. I think that what he did was reprehensible, but plenty of other civil judgements for worse cases have not been 'let us completely financially annihilate this man teehee'

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