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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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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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