Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who owes $1.5bn to the families of murdered children he defamed, is set to return to Twitter. The site's owner, Elon Musk, indicated Jones' return on Twitter earlier this week, then posted a public poll to wash his hands of the decision he had made.
Musk himself played a part in banishing Jones from the platform over Jones' claims that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax. Musk defended the ban, writing that "My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame." However, Justine Musk, his ex-wife and the mother of the child, wrote that Elon was lying about that [independent.co.uk]: "I was the one who held him."
On the poll—"Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk wrote, like a Rand-shop Pontius Pilate—Jones is prevailing overwhelmingly. Musk has nonetheless ignored such votes in the past [dailymail.co.uk] when they didn't go as expected.
Denuded as it is of major advertisers and loaded with reactionary sentiment, Twitter's last chance for profitability may be in replacing Fox News as the center of the right-wing media ecosystem. If it seems an unlikely proposition, consider the lack of options: Musk himself seems to be resigned to Twitter's likely failure to service the debts he incurred to buy it without risking his own wealth.
For his part, Alex Jones has enjoyed something of a rehabilitation among conservatives lately, themselves going all-in on conspiracy theories such as those Jones admits he lied about. Embedded below, the most deranged moments from a recent Tucker Carlson interview with him.
