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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31618 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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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.

That still doesn't answer the question asked. Why is Alex Jones the one getting slapped with a trillion dollar bill? This question isn't being asked in a vacuum. The question arises from the context of other cases and events. There are families who have had their loved ones killed, and then watched the court system be as lenient as it can be on the killer. Where is their trillion dollars? Why, if its about empathy for other peoples grief and vengeance, do we not slap every deserving criminal with a trillion dollar bill?

This is one of half a dozen comments in this thread where the boring but absolutely correct answer is "One of these things meets the legal standard for defamation and the other, transparently and obviously, does not."

That answer is obviously lacking considering no other defamation cases end up with a trillion dollar tagline.

Then by all means make a comparison with something that actually does meet the legal standard for defamation!

Take any defamation case that did not result in a trillion dollar fine and compare it with this one.

Why is Alex Jones the one getting slapped with a trillion dollar bill?

Why indeed are they picking on poor Alex? Good question with several possible answers.

1/ Normie answer: This is incorruptible justice system of the most free country at work. Justice is served, mission accomplished.

2/ Conspirational answer A: TPTB are afraid of Alex Jones and want to silence him because he is speaking the truth. They chose this convoluted way, instead of, for example, sudden accident or heart attack, to frighten and intimidate all brave truth seeking dissidents.

3/ Conspirational answer B: Alex Jones was doing his work - shitcoating and derailing people who are asking questions with barrage of nonsense, first, after 9/11 from the "left", now from the "right" - excellently and is going to be promoted further. For this purpose, it is necessary burnish his dissident credentials by publicly persecuting him and turning him into martyr, ideally in such way that will not harm him in the slightest.

If we are of conspirational, tinfoil hat mindset, how to find out whether A or B is true?

We will see whether Alex Jones will be indeed silenced, whether he will be completely ruined by the judgement and end homeless on the street, or whether he will continue broadcasting louder than ever before. his miraculous soy pill business will prosper as before and his lifestyle and living standards will not diminish.

Have patience.

Islamic Republic of Iran was, for each person killed in 9/11, ordered to pay upto 12.5M USD. If this rate was applied to Sandy Hook and Jones was the killer and not a defamer, he would be on the hook for only 338M USD, and not more than 1B USD.

This behavior doesn't invite compassion.

Doubting and even suppressing massacres on an even larger scale, such as Katyn, was the official policy of the Western Allies, yet the majority position today is one of support for their general cause.

On the other hand, punishing lying "journalists", such as Streicher Julius, was also part of the Allies MO. So WW2 doesn't definitive precedent.

Islamic Republic of Iran was, for each person killed in 9/11, ordered

By a federal judge in New York.

Alex Jones lost in Connecticut.

Can we leave some room for regional variation as a thesis?

Because, tbh, this feels like the comparisons that Leftists do whenever one black person gets a lower sentence (or is harmed more) than some white person somewhere else. It's a large country with lots of laws, all sorts of reasons people could behave differently in different cases.

Islamic Republic of Iran was, for each person killed in 9/11, ordered to pay upto 12.5M USD.

Wait, why was Iran (a Shia country) ordered to pay for an attack commited by a Salafist (Sunni fundamentalism) terrorist organization?

I'm not sure why you find "lets help random terrorists/revolutionaries who oppose our regional (Saudi Arabia) and global rival (USA)" an implausible motivation for Iran's helping Al Quaeda.

Next up, why would a Democracy help Wahhabi Jihadis in Afghanistan (against the Soviet Union)? Why would a Woke nation help literal Nazis in Ukraine (against Russia)? Why would a Communist country help Nationalists in Puerto Rico or Ireland (against the USA)?

I don't think the IRA were really all that interested in America; if anything, Irish-Americans were probably already sympathetic. Now, Britain, on the other hand...

My point is that the Soviet Union (a communist, and therefore anti-nationalist) country supported the IRA. It wasn't because they agreed with Irish nationalism, it was because causing trouble for Britain was fun and in their interest. Same reason Iran might help AQ or other Sunni militant groups whose primary focus is on overthrowing MBS.

because they got sued, and they didnt show up the court, so they lost by default.

The same reason Iraq got invaded.

Well maybe they should have thought of that before they chose to join the Axis of Evil!

It's funny how hard it is to remember now how ridiculous everything was after 9/11; the broader narrative got swept under the rug, and there's only these tiny unremembered historical anecdotes left, only collected by the former webmaster of antiwar dot com who was laid off in Jan 2009.

But, why would anyone apply that rate? The damages are completely different; this wasn't a wrongful death action.

Note also that the award in the Iran case was set by a judge, and the judge in the Jones case is free to reduce the damages awarded by the jury. So, your comparison is at best premature.

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!

Only if you view Alex Jones as capable of defamation. He does not strike me as reliable or reasonable enough to cause reputational damage.

So that is an argument that he did not cause the damage. Because obviously the people who harassed the parents believed someone who made the same claims he did.

Unreasonable wackos will take unreasonable wacky actions.

If only the unreasonable believe the unreasonable claim have you suffered reputational damage?

If Alex Jones defamed the parents, and harassment by unreasonable whackos was foreseeable and transpired as a result, then yes: they have suffered clear harm that was clearly the result of clear defamation.

We could imagine an alternate universe where the conspiracy theory was the parents were at fault for sending their kids to globohomo public school with gay frog sex books in the library, where one of the failed experiments comes back and shoots up the place.

The wackos still harass the parents for sending the kids to globohomo school.

The unreasonable wackos will be themselves regardless of the specifics of the claim.

Did the court proceedings make it to the 'merits'?

That question would come down to whether the claims constituted defamation -- a standard which was unambiguously met by his actual claims.

That interpretation is not really concordant with the First Amendment; it holds every speaker hostage to their nuttiest listener.

Only if the speakers commit defamation.

Only if they engage in defamation.

These people suffered far more than reputational damage, right? Assuming that it was his statement that the wackos believed, then 1. He said a lie; a third party heard it; and 3) the third party acted in a way that caused the parents damage. That is the quintessence of an action for defamation.

Yes damage, but not necessarily to their reputation.

Their bakery business didn't experience a precipitous drop in trade as the result of a false accusation that was magnified by the administration of the nearby university.

They didn't experience a decline in work and sponsorships based on a false accusation that he was a wife / girlfriend beater.

Only individuals with an already tenuous grasp on reality seem to have been motivated by this 'conspiracy'. Any conspiracy would have likely done, a non-falsifiable one would preclude defamation.

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