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I really hate this lazy argument, that what happened to Alex Jones is another step on the slippery slope to fascism or something. He was sued for defamation and

I really hate this lazy argument, that what happened to Alex Jones is another step on the slippery slope to fascism or something. He was sued for defamation and lost. Defamation has been a tort in the US this entire time. Defamation as a concept goes back centuries before the US was even founded. There wasn’t some change to defamation laws that brought down Alex Jones, there wasn’t some novel interpretation of the statutes or jurisprudence. The facts aren’t even novel, this is clearly defamation of the families of Sandy Hook. Alex Jones losing his lawsuit is the system working the way it always has. This isn’t a step towards fascism; it isn’t a step at all!

quantadev 2y ago
Jones has been wrong about multiple things. So has every media outlet especially since someone came down some escalators. I don't personally think someone should lose their entire business for being wrong. CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. Do you think CNN should be sued out of existence? Personally I think CNN has every right to lie. They've now done it so much that they self-destructed over it, and no one watches CNN because it's well KNOWN that they lie. All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare.
- jjulius 2y ago
  >CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. This is a very disingenuous take. There's a litany of footage of Alex Jones saying everything he said about Sandy Hook being fake and speaking ill of those impacted family members - do you have a litany of footage of CNN anchors/staff calling all conservatives Nazis?
  - quantadev 2y ago
    Despite that MOST of the country voted #MAGA, the Democrat MSM has been calling MAGA every kind of slander they could think of including Nazi and Fascist. They really ramped it up during the election, but most Americans saw thru it and knew it was lies.
    - jjulius 2y ago
      Second request for proof.
      - quantadev 2y ago
        Sadly you're not alone. Around 47% of Americans (especially older folks) still believe CNN (MSM in general) tells mostly the truth, and should be believed, because they'd never dare to be politically motivated rather than objective.
        jjulius 2y ago
        Third request for proof that CNN badgered conservatives by calling them Nazis to the same degree that Alex Jones badgered Sandy Hook families under the auspices of "it's a hoax".
        quantadev 2y ago
        > to the same degree You just moved the goal post. That's why I never send people like you links. No matter what links you get you'll tap dance right out of it, and pretend it's proven nothing, dispute everything, adjusting goal posts as necessary along the way. lol.
        jjulius 2y ago
        No goal posts were moved - my first comment asked for the same level of proof regarding CNN's actions that we have for Jones' actions here. Perhaps it wasn't crystal clear or perfectly spelled out, but I did say, "There's a litany of footage" of Jones and asked for "a litany of footage" of CNN doing what you claimed. That was me essentially asking for the same level of proof. "To the same degree" is just a different way of saying that same thing. All you have provided is conjecture - "They're doing it!".
        quantadev 2y ago
  - nailer 2y ago
    CNN did participate in the Russiagate conspiracy which probably had wider effects on US democracy.
    - jjulius 2y ago
      You mean the conspiracy that everyone, CNN included, thought had teeth at first, but then realized it didn't and shifted their reporting accordingly? That one? Unless you can show me where, this year, CNN repeatedly said Trump shouldn't be elected because he explicitly colluded with Russia in 2016, you're trying to compare apples and oranges.
      - nailer 2y ago
        > Unless you can show me where, this year The fact they gave up on the Russiagate conspiracy after a while doesn't obviate them pursuing it because they "thought it had teeth" (it didn't) or because the conspiracy theory was believed by "everyone" (it wasn't).
        jjulius 2y ago
        CNN, and countless other outlets, thought there could be teeth there at the beginning. They reported as it went along, and as we found out via Mueller's investigation, there wasn't much to the claims at all, save for a couple of minor tidbits. As it happens, CNN, and countless other outlets, have since reported on the fact that most of it turned out to not be true. That's about standard for how most media organizations handle shit, right-wing outlets included.
        quantadev 2y ago
        The one fact that showed the entire Russigate investigation was purely a hoax was when Mueller testified before Congress, and someone asked him a question about "Fusion GPS" and Mueller literally claimed he had never heard of that organization before. It proved Mueller to be either 100% completely senile or lying, because that was the KEY organization involved in the KEY document for the ENTIRE case. lol. Unbelievalble. My gut instinct is that he'd sworn to the Clintons years before that he'd never publicly talk about that firm.
- openasocket 2y ago
  What happened to Alex Jones is not some new phenomenon, it is the status quo. There are tons of carve outs and exceptions in defamation law, particularly to protect journalists being sued for "getting it wrong." Amon other things, plaintiffs had to demonstrate that Jones acted with "actual malice", which essentially means that Jones either knew what he was saying was false or acted with deliberate disregard for the truth. Despite that, he lost. He lost multiple times in multiple cases across multiple jurisdictions spanning a decade. He has appealed, and lost, multiple times. Multiple judges and multiple juries have found him liable for a litany of incidents of defamation. Hell, at one point he even lied under oath! Which, depending on the circumstances and the judgement of the prosecutor, could have turned into criminal charges! And CNN and other news outlets DO get sued for defamation. The most famous such case would probably be Richard Jewell, a security guard who was falsely accused by news outlets of planting a pipe bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics. A more recent example would be Nicholas Sandmann, falsely accused of racist and aggressive actions at a demonstration. Nothing is new about Alex Jones. You say "All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare". By your own words, you aren't calling for some return to the status quo, you are calling for a change. You think that existing defamation laws should be reformed, because without that you get totalitarianism. But then the burden is on you: if defamation laws are the road to totalitarianism, why haven't we slid into totalitarianism in the last few centuries?
  - quantadev 2y ago
    Alex Jones haters always fixate on that law suit, because it's a win for them. However in my view 99% of what Alex Jones says is important for people to hear, and about 90% of his claims (even the ones that sounded wild and crazy) ended up being proven true. So I think Alex Jones was a net/net benefit to America, by uncovering facts the Deep State Blob doesn't want people to know. Jones is very performative and an entertainer too, so he's not perfect. Nobody is. Regarding totalitarianism: Democrats have been fighting against Free Speech in countless ways, but thus far keep getting defeated in their efforts, by conservatives with more wise minds. Take Britain as an example. People over there are now being JAILED over non-violent political speech, and even speech that is merely "impolite" to protected groups. So to think totalitarianism can't happen to Western Countries is wrong. It can. It is. Currently in the USA however, the good guys have just won an election, and a clean sweep and a mandate to restore Freedom and Common Sense.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  He didn't lose his entire business for being wrong. He lost his entire business for being wrong, doubling down on being wrong in light of contradictory evidence, tripling down on the doubling down, being sued, ignoring the lawsuit, having a default judgment rendered against him, getting to a trial-based penalties phase, and performing so badly on the stand (along with a major error on the part of his lawyer, but one the law accounts for and has a process to ameliorate, which the lawyer did not follow) that a jury of his peers awarded a $1.5 billion dollar finding against him. If anything, the takeaway from this story is that the United States Court System is still a system of law and when they demand your attention, you ignore that demand at your peril. > Do you think CNN should be sued out of existence? Perhaps it should give us pause that nobody they are ostensibly calling Nazis can make a defamation case stick against them. And to corroborate your point: perhaps whether or not they lie, the public opinion already holds them accountable so no legal action is needed. But to properly answer the hypothetical: they retain a legal department in preparation for such lawsuits. Perhaps Jones should have done that, since he had quite a bit of spare money to spend on engaging with the law of the land he lives in. Instead, he chose to flout the authority of that legal system, to his loss.
  - brvsft 2y ago
    > Perhaps it should give us pause that nobody they are ostensibly calling Nazis can make a defamation case stick against them. Lol, you know that isn't what's happening.
    - jjulius 2y ago
      What is happening?
      - brvsft 2y ago
        They (CNN, etc.) brand a large group (roughly half the electorate) as Nazis / fascists or Nazi-and-fascist-adjacent without any real scrutiny. Generally, this doesn't target any specific person except maybe Trump. The consequence to society is that a lot of normal people start believing that someone who votes Republican is definitely some form of a Nazi or sympathetic to Nazism, which I imagine you don't really care about. An obvious example of this was comparing the fact that Trump had a rally in Madison Square Garden to the fact that Nazis also had a rally there in 1939 (basically this meme: https://preview.redd.it/7nyn7zkmi3351.png?auto=webp&s=c8ab8a82b081b356cc04d070231931da79bb30a6 https://preview.redd.it/7nyn7zkmi3351.png?auto=webp&s=c8ab8a...). For the most part, this was a talking point from the Harris campaign, but CNN's coverage of it put very little scrutiny over whether this was a fair comparison, rather just covering the premise of the comparison (i.e., repeating it ad nauseam with some level of deniability that 'they' believe it to be true). You can dig around for yourself and find some of their on-air personalities--who they pay money to--openly agreeing with the comparison. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2024-10-28/segment/18 https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2024-10-28/segment... > HOLMES: All right, let's bring in Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at the Atlantic. Good to see you, Ron. I mean, the Donald Trump rally was quite something. I mean, I watched it. I mean, a quote unquote comedian calling Puerto Rico a pile of garbage. Another speaker spoke about what said he spoke at what he called a Nazi rally. Kamala Harris being called the anti-Christ. And that was before Trump spoke. And we know what he said. > Who is the Trump campaign trying to appeal to literally days out from the election? > RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, you know, the two precedents of this kind of rally was George Wallace in 1968, which is what going in, I imagined it might be like. But of course, the darker, more distant precedent was the 1939 Nazi rally, pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, which it may have had more overlap with. Do you take this stuff seriously? Or is it all a joke to you, a competition to dunk on people on the internet by asking questions not in earnest? Will your response be to have some sort of backwards reasoning to suggest it is valid to compare a political party responsible for systematically killing millions of human beings to Republican voters or Trump supporters?

quantadev 2y ago

Jones has been wrong about multiple things. So has every media outlet especially since someone came down some escalators. I don't personally think someone should lose their entire business for being wrong. CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. Do you think CNN should be sued out of existence? Personally I think CNN has every right to lie. They've now done it so much that they self-destructed over it, and no one watches CNN because it's well KNOWN that they lie. All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare.

jjulius 2y ago
>CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. This is a very disingenuous take. There's a litany of footage of Alex Jones saying everything he said about Sandy Hook being fake and speaking ill of those impacted family members - do you have a litany of footage of CNN anchors/staff calling all conservatives Nazis?
- quantadev 2y ago
  Despite that MOST of the country voted #MAGA, the Democrat MSM has been calling MAGA every kind of slander they could think of including Nazi and Fascist. They really ramped it up during the election, but most Americans saw thru it and knew it was lies.
  - jjulius 2y ago
    Second request for proof.
    - quantadev 2y ago
      Sadly you're not alone. Around 47% of Americans (especially older folks) still believe CNN (MSM in general) tells mostly the truth, and should be believed, because they'd never dare to be politically motivated rather than objective.
      - jjulius 2y ago
        Third request for proof that CNN badgered conservatives by calling them Nazis to the same degree that Alex Jones badgered Sandy Hook families under the auspices of "it's a hoax".
        quantadev 2y ago
        > to the same degree You just moved the goal post. That's why I never send people like you links. No matter what links you get you'll tap dance right out of it, and pretend it's proven nothing, dispute everything, adjusting goal posts as necessary along the way. lol.
        jjulius 2y ago
        No goal posts were moved - my first comment asked for the same level of proof regarding CNN's actions that we have for Jones' actions here. Perhaps it wasn't crystal clear or perfectly spelled out, but I did say, "There's a litany of footage" of Jones and asked for "a litany of footage" of CNN doing what you claimed. That was me essentially asking for the same level of proof. "To the same degree" is just a different way of saying that same thing. All you have provided is conjecture - "They're doing it!".
        quantadev 2y ago
- nailer 2y ago
  CNN did participate in the Russiagate conspiracy which probably had wider effects on US democracy.
  - jjulius 2y ago
    You mean the conspiracy that everyone, CNN included, thought had teeth at first, but then realized it didn't and shifted their reporting accordingly? That one? Unless you can show me where, this year, CNN repeatedly said Trump shouldn't be elected because he explicitly colluded with Russia in 2016, you're trying to compare apples and oranges.
    - nailer 2y ago
      > Unless you can show me where, this year The fact they gave up on the Russiagate conspiracy after a while doesn't obviate them pursuing it because they "thought it had teeth" (it didn't) or because the conspiracy theory was believed by "everyone" (it wasn't).
      - jjulius 2y ago
        CNN, and countless other outlets, thought there could be teeth there at the beginning. They reported as it went along, and as we found out via Mueller's investigation, there wasn't much to the claims at all, save for a couple of minor tidbits. As it happens, CNN, and countless other outlets, have since reported on the fact that most of it turned out to not be true. That's about standard for how most media organizations handle shit, right-wing outlets included.
      - quantadev 2y ago
        The one fact that showed the entire Russigate investigation was purely a hoax was when Mueller testified before Congress, and someone asked him a question about "Fusion GPS" and Mueller literally claimed he had never heard of that organization before. It proved Mueller to be either 100% completely senile or lying, because that was the KEY organization involved in the KEY document for the ENTIRE case. lol. Unbelievalble. My gut instinct is that he'd sworn to the Clintons years before that he'd never publicly talk about that firm.
openasocket 2y ago
What happened to Alex Jones is not some new phenomenon, it is the status quo. There are tons of carve outs and exceptions in defamation law, particularly to protect journalists being sued for "getting it wrong." Amon other things, plaintiffs had to demonstrate that Jones acted with "actual malice", which essentially means that Jones either knew what he was saying was false or acted with deliberate disregard for the truth. Despite that, he lost. He lost multiple times in multiple cases across multiple jurisdictions spanning a decade. He has appealed, and lost, multiple times. Multiple judges and multiple juries have found him liable for a litany of incidents of defamation. Hell, at one point he even lied under oath! Which, depending on the circumstances and the judgement of the prosecutor, could have turned into criminal charges! And CNN and other news outlets DO get sued for defamation. The most famous such case would probably be Richard Jewell, a security guard who was falsely accused by news outlets of planting a pipe bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics. A more recent example would be Nicholas Sandmann, falsely accused of racist and aggressive actions at a demonstration. Nothing is new about Alex Jones. You say "All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare". By your own words, you aren't calling for some return to the status quo, you are calling for a change. You think that existing defamation laws should be reformed, because without that you get totalitarianism. But then the burden is on you: if defamation laws are the road to totalitarianism, why haven't we slid into totalitarianism in the last few centuries?
- quantadev 2y ago
  Alex Jones haters always fixate on that law suit, because it's a win for them. However in my view 99% of what Alex Jones says is important for people to hear, and about 90% of his claims (even the ones that sounded wild and crazy) ended up being proven true. So I think Alex Jones was a net/net benefit to America, by uncovering facts the Deep State Blob doesn't want people to know. Jones is very performative and an entertainer too, so he's not perfect. Nobody is. Regarding totalitarianism: Democrats have been fighting against Free Speech in countless ways, but thus far keep getting defeated in their efforts, by conservatives with more wise minds. Take Britain as an example. People over there are now being JAILED over non-violent political speech, and even speech that is merely "impolite" to protected groups. So to think totalitarianism can't happen to Western Countries is wrong. It can. It is. Currently in the USA however, the good guys have just won an election, and a clean sweep and a mandate to restore Freedom and Common Sense.
shadowgovt 2y ago
He didn't lose his entire business for being wrong. He lost his entire business for being wrong, doubling down on being wrong in light of contradictory evidence, tripling down on the doubling down, being sued, ignoring the lawsuit, having a default judgment rendered against him, getting to a trial-based penalties phase, and performing so badly on the stand (along with a major error on the part of his lawyer, but one the law accounts for and has a process to ameliorate, which the lawyer did not follow) that a jury of his peers awarded a $1.5 billion dollar finding against him. If anything, the takeaway from this story is that the United States Court System is still a system of law and when they demand your attention, you ignore that demand at your peril. > Do you think CNN should be sued out of existence? Perhaps it should give us pause that nobody they are ostensibly calling Nazis can make a defamation case stick against them. And to corroborate your point: perhaps whether or not they lie, the public opinion already holds them accountable so no legal action is needed. But to properly answer the hypothetical: they retain a legal department in preparation for such lawsuits. Perhaps Jones should have done that, since he had quite a bit of spare money to spend on engaging with the law of the land he lives in. Instead, he chose to flout the authority of that legal system, to his loss.
- brvsft 2y ago
  > Perhaps it should give us pause that nobody they are ostensibly calling Nazis can make a defamation case stick against them. Lol, you know that isn't what's happening.
  - jjulius 2y ago
    What is happening?
    - brvsft 2y ago
      They (CNN, etc.) brand a large group (roughly half the electorate) as Nazis / fascists or Nazi-and-fascist-adjacent without any real scrutiny. Generally, this doesn't target any specific person except maybe Trump. The consequence to society is that a lot of normal people start believing that someone who votes Republican is definitely some form of a Nazi or sympathetic to Nazism, which I imagine you don't really care about. An obvious example of this was comparing the fact that Trump had a rally in Madison Square Garden to the fact that Nazis also had a rally there in 1939 (basically this meme: https://preview.redd.it/7nyn7zkmi3351.png?auto=webp&s=c8ab8a82b081b356cc04d070231931da79bb30a6 https://preview.redd.it/7nyn7zkmi3351.png?auto=webp&s=c8ab8a...). For the most part, this was a talking point from the Harris campaign, but CNN's coverage of it put very little scrutiny over whether this was a fair comparison, rather just covering the premise of the comparison (i.e., repeating it ad nauseam with some level of deniability that 'they' believe it to be true). You can dig around for yourself and find some of their on-air personalities--who they pay money to--openly agreeing with the comparison. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2024-10-28/segment/18 https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2024-10-28/segment... > HOLMES: All right, let's bring in Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at the Atlantic. Good to see you, Ron. I mean, the Donald Trump rally was quite something. I mean, I watched it. I mean, a quote unquote comedian calling Puerto Rico a pile of garbage. Another speaker spoke about what said he spoke at what he called a Nazi rally. Kamala Harris being called the anti-Christ. And that was before Trump spoke. And we know what he said. > Who is the Trump campaign trying to appeal to literally days out from the election? > RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, you know, the two precedents of this kind of rally was George Wallace in 1968, which is what going in, I imagined it might be like. But of course, the darker, more distant precedent was the 1939 Nazi rally, pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, which it may have had more overlap with. Do you take this stuff seriously? Or is it all a joke to you, a competition to dunk on people on the internet by asking questions not in earnest? Will your response be to have some sort of backwards reasoning to suggest it is valid to compare a political party responsible for systematically killing millions of human beings to Republican voters or Trump supporters?