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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31617 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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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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