I’m just not sure you can make the claim that this is an issue between the outlet and the establishment. It’s had hosts like Roger Stone doing 5 episodes a week. He’s the former campaign advisor for the sitting president of the United States, and advisor to Dole, Bush (both), and Reagan.
It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.
To people like that, random college students are "establishment" because they are lefty, and the literal President of the United States is "anti-establishment" because he uses slurs on social media.
If people want to get their "hard truths" out, they shouldn't contaminate them with 9/10 parts of lies, and they certainly shouldn't run a harassment campaign against the parents of murdered children.
He had every possible chance to argue his case, both against culpability and then against the specific damages, but both he and the lawyers he hired refused to do so. This 1.4b dollars was not a particularly harsh judgment coming down from the establishment (note that the establishment is the president Jones was a paid campaign member for), it was the result of his implicit acceptance of every claim the Snady Hook parents made.
You should read how this particularly huge settlement was achieved. It’s on Alex Jones for refusing to participate in the legal debate, contemning the court, refusing discovery, et cetera.
With better legal defence he may have to pay much and much less.
As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks;
The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite.
A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens.
( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )
It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. I don't agree with your reasoning but that is the point: we could discuss it, I could explain who Piker (a left-wing icon being pushed as a 'bro' by the party while he spouts utter tripe and nonsense, calling for murder of political opponents) and Owens (a right-wing podcaster who used to be part of the right-wing establishment until she went fully anti-Semite and general conspiracy theorist). I'm not American either but whatever happens there affects us directly or indirectly so I do keep check on the news from the west.
> It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button.
Ahhh, I read https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments feed and saw your "Can the down-voters for once let go of their pacifiers" which prompted me to look at context.
As a general rule I prefer to engage with things I disagree with rather than simply downvote or flag.
I note now (I'm GMT +8 and have been asleep since last here) that both your comments above are [flagged] and [dead].
The HN mods, dang and tomhow, really do like to push content, engagement, curious discussion, etc. over snark, partisan whiplash, cranky shit, etc.
Re: Piker .. the name came up again in some other context (some speculation about a recent interview in or with the NYT) and so I watched a recent (last 14 days IIRC) interview with him with someone from Mother Jones .. on the bases of that single exposure I personally wouldn't dot point summarise him as "spouting utter tripe and nonsense" - he is capable of debating his opinions, has a good grasp of the political landscape, and is clearly a devisive figure in the US political landscape that would get a lot of hot takes and slanting.
Again, I've only a 20 minute exposure, but he does have a good point that he has literally thousands of hours of live twitch streaming, discussion, and in the moment rambling through hypotheticals before landing on a position - ie. he's someone that anyone can build a rolltape of short clips of and easily misrepresent and take out of context.
Addendum: from your peer comment:
> just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'),
uhh, my take from a 20 minute discussion is that he's strongly against Israel "the aparthied state", the zionist attitude, the current holders of power in Israel.
Piker is the "progressive bro" version of Carlson: both can produce cohesive narratives based on faulty premises, in Piker's case it mostly revolves around "thirld-worldism", i.e. all the woes of the world are due to the "west" being bad while Carlson used to come from the opposite direction but has moved to a sort of arch-conservatism where authoritarian rules and rulers are preferable over that messy (small-D) democratic system. Piker and Carlson unite in their anti-Jewish rhetoric, where they differ is in their icons. Piker hails communist leaders as heroes, terrorist organisations like Hamas as 'freedom fighters' while Carlson sees autocrats like Putin, (Qatar's) al Thani and Xi Jinping as examples of "strong and steadfast leaders protecting their culture".
He's being pushed as the fresh face of "democrat resistance" with all the right attributes: young, "edgy", anti-west, pro-palestine, "anti-zionist" (which translates to anti-Jew). He travels in the "correct" circles, went on the pro-Cuban trip to the island where he stayed with an the other champagne socialists in a luxury hotel while professing the virtues of socialism versus the sins of the west, etcetera. He seems to have a number of skeletons in his closet related to his treatment of women, his 'fans' and his dog which can be used to ditch him once he has outlived his usefulness in more or less the same way as the party 'suddenly' realised Swalwell was a creep when his candidacy for the position of governor of California made it less likely for a "democrat" to win due to the open primaries in that state where too many "democrats" in the race make it harder for one of them to end up in the top 2 for the final round of voting.
The influence America and most things American have on us here in Europe. Also, the way our state media and state-sponsored media here in Sweden report on it which is anything but objective. If you want to know what really happens you need to go and look for it yourself.
Your comment was bad because you don't know the context of Jones' case and how the penalty was arrived at, and are thus extrapolating without any merit to other people.
Neither Hassan Piker nor Candace Owens, nor any other of the many inflammatory voices on the left or right of the new media ecosystem, have done anything remotely close to the type of harassment that Alex Jones exposed the Sandy Hook victims to. Directly accusing grieving parents and children of being completely fake paid "crisis actors", again and again, with images and "analysis" and so on, is beyond anything another media personality has had the poor taste and temerity to try - perhaps in history, certainly in America.
Even then, the only reason the judgement ended up at such a gigantic number is that Alex Jones and his lawyers refused to argue their case to any extent, and in fact directly attacked and antagonized the court and the judge. They lost the case through summary judgement after repeated refusals to follow the normal procedural rules or even to show up in court. Then, they repeated the same refusal to participate or argue their case during the damages settlement, again forcing the court to simply award the amount requested by the plaintiffs, which is always set to a huge number as a negotiating tactic.
So no, the fact that someone argues that Alex Jones deserved this punishment fully is not in any way in conflict with believing that Hassan or Candace Owens or any other new media personality deserves anything similar.
> If you weren't grayed out something would be serious wrong with this site.
If [a questioning or dissenting voice] is not suppressed something would be serious (sic) wrong with this site
Not where I come from. I prefer to discuss these issues, even with ideologues and their followers even though it often seems pointless.
To put this in perspective: Ales Jones is a conspiracy theorist just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'), Candace Owens (same as Piker, now also 'Erika Kirk is behind the murder of her husband'), Tucker Carlson (same as Piker), Nick Fuentes (...same as...) and many others.
