The Onion is starting a weekly livestream parody of Infowars even though it still does not control Alex Jones’ media operation, according to WIRED. The show, also called Infowars, is scheduled for Thursdays at 8 pm ET and will run on platforms including Twitch, YouTube and Instagram under the handle @realinfowars.
Tim Heidecker is serving as creative director and performing a Jones-style host role for the project, WIRED reported. The pitch is not subtle: The Onion is using the format, name and visual grammar of conspiracy media to mock the internet’s loudest monetized paranoia merchants while the actual Infowars assets remain tied up in bankruptcy litigation.
The legal backdrop is the less funny part. The Onion won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars in late 2024 with support from families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, NPR reported at the time. Those families won more than $1 billion in judgments against Jones after suing him over his repeated false claims that the massacre was staged. A federal judge later rejected that sale because of a problem in the auction process, according to Courthouse News.
In April, The Onion announced a new arrangement to acquire Infowars assets and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees to the Sandy Hook families, NPR reported. Jones appealed, and a Texas appeals court paused the sale days later, according to Courthouse News. While that fight grinds on, The Onion is using its own distribution channels rather than Infowars.com.
Ben Collins, The Onion’s CEO, told WIRED that the company has to describe the new streams as a parody of Jones until it is allowed to take over the assets. Jones’ lawyers did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, and messages to Infowars email accounts bounced back as undeliverable, WIRED reported.
The first episode goes straight for the avatar. Jeff Lawson, owner of The Onion parent company Global Tetrahedron, told WIRED that the show quickly kills off its Alex Jones figure. Collins said the episode depicts Jones exploding in his car after eating too much Whataburger, then turns into a mock Infowars-style emergency broadcast debating whether he is dead, alive, or represented by a body double.
The cast extends beyond Heidecker. WIRED reported that Tim Robinson appears in the premiere as “Tim from Ohio,” calling into a segment that somehow ends up arguing about whether Bozo the Clown was played by multiple people. Brad Holbrook’s fictional anchor Jim Haggerty also returns, now recast as a conspiracy broadcaster pitching products including “Hog Water.” Comedian and musician Nick Lutsko supplies the opening theme, including a rejected cartoon “Infowars Elf” mascot that keeps intruding anyway.
The Onion is also trying to attach the stunt to the Sandy Hook case in material terms. Collins told the Associated Press that the company plans to send an initial $100,000 from merchandise sales directly to the families. Lawson told WIRED that the families have not received settlement money from Jones.
Collins told WIRED that keeping public attention on the Infowars brand may help preserve its value while the sale remains contested. He said The Onion still expects to get Infowars.com and the studio eventually. That is an executive’s forecast, not a court order. For now, the parody is live, the assets are not transferred, and Jones is still fighting to keep the thing he built from becoming the joke aimed back at him.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
