On 14 November, at a particularly bleak time for liberals and leftists, there seemed a rare glimpse of good news. The Onion, a popular satirical newspaper, had bought the hard-right news site, InfoWars, in a bankruptcy auction.
InfoWars, a misinformation juggernaut, was founded in 1999 by the far-right broadcaster Alex Jones. He quickly became notorious for airing conspiracy theories and fake stories – most notably, the unfounded claim that both 9/11 and the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting were false-flag operations executed by the US government. Jones rose to mainstream prominence in the mid-2010s as one of the most influential figures of the alt-right, famous for his red-faced tirades against the “mainstream media”, gaining popularity during the 2016 presidential election. He has since seen his cultural cachet plummet, having been successfully sued by the parents of the children murdered at the Sandy Hook school. Jones now owes them more than $1.5bn – a debt that has not begun to be paid and was the impetus for liquidating Jones’s assets, including InfoWars.
Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion’s parent company Global Tetrahedron, said the InfoWars site will function as a parody of itself from this January, with an additional aim of showing adverts that raise awareness about gun violence in the US. “We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” he said about the purchase, which was done with the permission of the Sandy Hook parents. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.” Global Tetrahedron didn’t disclose how much it paid for InfoWars, but Reuters has reported a figure of $1.75m (the Onion’s press release about its decision to buy the site said it cost “less than a trillion dollars”) – plus, many of the families promised to forgo some of the damages due to them to help beat the Onion’s competitor in the auction, First United American Companies (FUAC), which is affiliated to Jones. The response to the purchase from the left was gleeful: viral posts praised the move as “incredible”, “the universe feels like it came back into a bit of alignment”, and “THIS is how you fight”.
It’s understandable why many on the left find this development from the Onion characteristically funny and see it as a major win against a pillar of the online right. Jones will likely see the purchase as a blow to his legacy. He has called the auction “rigged” because the winning bid was lower than FUAC’s, and even claimed that Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, “is going to be very involved” in helping him halt the sale of the site to the Onion. To many, Jones’s downfall seems like karmic justice. But the giddy excitement misunderstands how the right operates – and, more importantly, what damages the left causes.
The approach taken by the Onion – which we might call “trolling” – comes from a very-online, mostly right-wing playbook for how to humiliate your opposition. But the real-world impacts of this strategy are extremely limited. “Trolling” – or deliberate provocation, intended to antagonise – has been a popular tool for the terminally online to feel like they’ve “defeated” their perceived enemies since the internet began. In the moment, trolling makes you feel powerful. But what does it achieve in the long term? There are certainly cases where someone has been so badly harassed or trolled by their political opponents online that they’ve been hounded out of public life, and the conflict has received substantial attention in wider media. But online rows and social media dogpiles typically direct all their attention towards a single individual or group, expelling huge amounts of energy for, at best, minor gains.
[See also: Led By Donkeys interview: “Liz Truss was fair game”]
While trolling as a political strategy has been characteristic of the right, the type of left-wing trolling deployed by the Onion has become increasingly familiar in the past few years. Attempts to use the right’s own tactics against them have been initiated in the UK by the anti-Brexit, anti-Conservative group Led By Donkeys. It has targeted figures such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the former prime minister Liz Truss, crashing their political events with humiliating projections and banners that emphasise their failings or point out their hypocrisies. This trolling is blithely celebrated by centrists and liberals for its cleverness and political efficiency. In October 2019, the group told the Guardian “there is a political power in laughing at these people”. But have these stunts achieved anything? That Guardian interview was given just weeks before Johnson’s Tory landslide victory in the 2019 general election; Led By Donkey’s stunt with Farage came just days before his first ever parliamentary win, in Clacton. Their targets may be justified, but the humiliation and humour are seemingly inconsequential to the result.
These tactics fail, and not just because they choose the wrong targets. (Jones is increasingly irrelevant – and his followers will move with him to a new platform anyway.) It’s also because of who they’re aimed at: not at those who are sympathetic to Jones’s politics, whether because of a wider backlash to social justice, or because they feel economically left behind by the Biden administration – but at those who already disdain these right-wing figures, who are primed to laugh at what is ultimately a prank.
The Onion, provided its purchase goes through, will be a more responsible owner of InfoWars than Jones ever was. Using the site to help campaign for gun control in America – even to stop Jones pushing potent disinformation there – is a worthy mission. Onion satire has had real political value, and well-executed barbs can cut through the jargon of politicians and talking heads. But we must not imagine this sale will have a greater impact than it can yield. If it achieves anything for left-wing causes, those gains will be specific and small. We obscure the political action desperately required, especially in this moment, by giving this development more credit than it’s due; by seeing anything more serious than a joke.
[See also: The truth about the Allison Pearson free-speech row]
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