The anti-InfoWars jihad (read: anti-free speech jihad with Infowars as the outlier whipping boy to set the precedent that “conspiracy theory” is outside First Amendment protections) may finally be drawing to a conclusion.

Via Associated Press (emphasis added):

“Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking court permission to convert his personal bankruptcy reorganization to a liquidation, which would lead to a sell-off of a large portion of his assets to help pay some of the $1.5 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Jones and his media company, Free Speech Systems, both filed for bankruptcy reorganization after the Sandy Hook families won lawsuits against him for his repeatedly calling the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, a hoax on his Infowars programs.

But Jones and the Sandy Hook families have been unable to agree on how the resolve the cases, leading to Jones filing a motion Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston asking a judge to convert his personal case from a Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation…

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families, said in a statement that “Alex Jones has hurt so many people. The Connecticut families have fought for years to hold him responsible no matter the cost and at great personal peril. Their steadfast focus on meaningful accountability, and not just money, is what has now brought him to the brink of justice in the way that matters most.”

The Sandy Hook families, meanwhile, are asking the same judge to convert Free Speech Systems’ case from a reorganization to a liquidation…

Liquidation could mean that Jones would have to sell most of what he owns, including his company and its assets, but could keep his home and other personal belongings that are exempt from bankruptcy liquidation. Proceeds would go to his creditors, including the Sandy Hook families.”

The $1.5 billion settlement for claiming an event didn’t happen the way it is popularly believed to have happened was always absurd and had nothing at all do to with justice delivered to the families who lost their kids in Sandy Hook and everything to do with silencing a voice long a thorn in the side of the establishment, which the lawyer essentially concedes in the above quote about the ruling not just being about money — lawfare waged via a weaponized legal system I wrote about in detail when the ruling came down from on high last year.

Related: Today They Come For Alex Jones, Tomorrow For All of Us

Please miss me with comments about how Alex Jones is an unhinged pseudo-evangelical lunatic with a drinking problem or whatever. The vast majority of Alex Jones haters, in fact, have never listened to a single hour of his broadcast. Their negative impression of him comes entirely secondhand from ten-second clips and the non-stop, orchestrated bleating of hostile corporate media — a consensus-forming propaganda campaign of, arguably, unprecedented scale targeted at a single individual in the 21^st century.

But anyway, I’m not here to do apologia for Alex Jones or to sell him to anyone; I am aware of his flaws, as I am aware of my own. We all live in glass houses.

I take what comes out of InfoWars, at all turns, with a grain of salt, as anyone should with any information. Sometimes his claims don’t check out; other times they’re prophetic, like when he predicted in July 2001 that someone would fly planes into the World Trade Center and blame Osama bin Laden long before anyone outside of the Beltway and intelligence services even knew the name.

https://x.com/iluminatibot/status/1754082717707223255

But whatever. I’m not here to sell Alex Jones to anyone.

What I will say is that, as goes InfoWars, so goes the rest of independent media. His organization and he personally have time and again proven to be a bellwether of corporate state censorship to come.

The Alex Jones censorship saga is not about Alex Jones.

When Jones was universally banned overnight from all major social media platforms in 2018 in what was clearly an orchestrated move among the Big Tech giants, that was an allusion to things to come.

It was only two years later, if that, that the mass censorship regime came for all dissident media, including me when I got the banhammer from multiple platforms in 2020 for “COVID misinformation” and other alleged crimes of wrongthink.

It’s InfoWars today and the rest of us tomorrow.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

Follow his stuff via Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.