Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.
He made very specific defamatory statements accusing fellow citizens / parents of murdered children of participating in a government conspiracy and those people were able to prove they experienced harm as a consequence of his words.
The plaintiffs also had enough financial backing from (understandably horrified) strangers, and a high enough chance of winning for lawyers to want to represent them. Those factors allowed the plaintiffs to survive the legal system long enough to get a ruling, and the severity of the situation maintained their motivation to keep pushing for it instead of accepting settlement so they could somewhat move on with their lives.
Sometimes, the planets align to create the trifecta of enough energy, money, and evidence to force the justice system into enforcing justice. And I am grateful that can sometimes still happen, as rare as it feels.
I prefer to think thusly:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
But I can certainly understand people’s pessimism, looking at the world around us…
That’s fair, I’m not a flat-bow conspiracy theorist, even if the curve looks real flat right now from down here.
I wonder if MLK ever read Hegel. I know he got a doctorate so it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Nothing’s been enforced though. Jones is proceeding with his life pretty much unchanged.
Because it’s still in process. This stuff goes slow but he will lose everything.
Jones isn’t important enough to the machine that they’ll expend any energy or resources sheltering him. I bet this does get him in the end.
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