It is surely wise to be on guard when preparing for an interview with an organization that perfected fake news decades before fake news was a thing.
It is not crazy — is it? — to be suspicious when you arrive on time at the publication’s River North offices, ring the buzzer four times, and no one answers.
And should you trust Jordan LaFlure, the man who finally comes to the door, when he says with far-too-serious delivery that such-and-such a room is where the “real magic” happens?
Here’s something you absolutely can trust, barring some last-minute legal roadblock: the Chicago-based satirical newspaper, The Onion, is set to launch InfoWars on July 2, a year and seven months after it won the initial auction to take over the website founded by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“The idea that The Onion would be purchasing InfoWars sounds laughable, but we have in fact been pursuing it for 18 months with real rigor, with real resourcing behind it and I think people are interested in that level of doggedness,” said LaFlure, The Onion’s executive editor, chatting with the Sun-Times at its office, located on the top floor of a sprawling loft space.
For weeks now, a rainbow-hued InfoWars logo has been up on The Onion website, accompanying a video of comedian Tim Heidecker, employing Jones’ gravelly voiced indignation, announcing plans for the new website.
“Alex and his gang of liars and scoundrels have been cast out into the street. … Make no mistake, we will be the new InfoWars,” Heidecker growls.
In response, a shirtless Jones recently appeared online, saying of The Onion’s Infowars grab (the “w” was lowercase when Jones ran it): “They are body snatchers, they are skin walkers. They literally take your skin. This is going to backfire bigtime!”
The Onion staff consider this just more bluster from the man who claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, a lie that led relatives of the victims to sue and ultimately win $1.4 billion in defamation judgments.
After a protracted legal battle, InfoWars relaunches this week under the creative auspices of the nation’s unrivaled satirists. The early focus is Jones and his fear-mongering, hate-spewing, supplement-hawking universe. But that joke has a limited shelf life, said LaFlure and the woman joining him for the chat with the Sun-Times, Leila Brillson, The Onion’s chief marketing officer.
“The idea that The Onion would be purchasing InfoWars sounds laughable, but we have in fact been pursuing it for 18 months with real rigor, with real resourcing behind it and I think people are interested in that level of doggedness,” said LaFlure (right), The Onion’s executive editor, sitting with Leila Brillson, the company’s chief marketing officer.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
“As quick as humanly possible, we want to bring independent creators to the fore,” LaFlure said. “Whereas The Onion has long been a commentary on institutional media and a top down narrative, the InfoWars will be an opportunity for us to rely on individual voices and satirize more modern modes of media.”
Or as Brillson put it: “The fact that you get so much of your news now from folks who have completely unverified sources or zero sources at all and are just speaking into a vertical video — and that’s very funny and very much worth examining and parodying.”
The underlying goal, the impetus for this entire venture, is to help in some small way, the Sandy Hook families.
“We are starting with $100,000,” LaFlure said. Then, “some significant amount of merchandise sales will be sent to the Sandy Hook families in perpetuity.”
From supplement sales?
“Certainly not real supplements,” Brillson said. “You can’t imagine the number of people who came crawling out of the woodwork, [contacting The Onion and] saying, ‘You need help with your supplements? I’m your supplement guy.’”
If they aren’t selling, say, “Lung Cleanse Spray” or “Super Male Vitality” drops, how does The Onion plan to generate revenue from InfoWars?
LaFlure and Brillson pointed to what they’re doing already, including an in-house ad agency that provides Onion-esque humor for other companies’ campaigns.
“We get to make Onion jokes for them and they take the credit for it, in exchange for money, and we’ve had a pretty successful year,” Brillson said.
The Onion’s share of Jones’ liquidated empire doesn’t include supplements, although at one point they thought they might be getting his custom-built armored vehicle. There’s the lease to Jones’ Austin, Texas, offices, and most importantly for The Onion, the domain for Jones’ website.
InfoWars and The Onion will operate under the umbrella of the parent company Global Tetrahedron LLC, but will be editorially independent, LaFlure said. For now, it will exist on TheOnion.info, The Onion’s YouTube channel, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook and BlueSky.
“We want it to be up to the editorial standards of The Onion, which are quite high,” Brillson said.
She was perhaps referring to one of these headlines in the June-July edition of The Onion: “Dalai Lama Announces One-Year Residency Inside Body of Bruno Mars” or “Health Speculations Swirl After Trump Slumps Over in Saddle of Runaway Horse.”
Brillson doubled down on the point: “These guys walk away from some of the funniest headlines you’ve ever read in your life every day in a pile on the floor. The things that are on the cutting room floor are things that sitcom rooms wish that they had.”
Given Jones’ talent for rabble-rousing, are The Onion folks concerned that he might yet be planning to rally his supporters and bring them to Chicago?
“He very much tried to harness his army. Unless we were on Twitter, now X, there was very little army harnessing in our direction,” Brillson said.
Still, it’s notable that The Onion’s offices are not easy to find. There’s no backlit Onion logo on the outside of their building. And you almost need to squint to read the publication’s name on a directory in the lobby.
“It’s very difficult to find the real people behind The Onion, minus our CEO [Ben Collins],” Brillson said.
Which is kind of a shame because The Onion staff are, as you would imagine, a fun bunch. Stroll through the newsroom and you might come across a bottle with red liquid inside labeled, “Dog Blood;” a book titled “How to Swear: An Illustrated Guide;” or a mannequin head with a blonde wig, a sky-blue headscarf and dark sunglasses with a sticky note reading “Use Disguise to Escape.”
The conversation shifted to how the Sandy Hook families are reacting to the InfoWars relaunch. A few weeks ago, a group of Onion and InfoWars staffers had an online call with some of the Sandy Hook relatives.
“It was a very moving call. It was a great reminder of the purpose of it all,” LaFlure said.
But might all this good will somehow dilute The Onion’s (and InfoWars’) acerbic wit?
“As much as that might not jibe with our public persona, we’ve long been caring and engaged people,” Brillson said.
The headline for the lead story in the June-July edition of The Onion reads: “CDC Successfully Eradicates Children; World’s No. 1 Vector Of Disease Eliminated From Nation.”
And a frequent Onion headline whenever there is another U.S. school shooting: “’No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
LaFlure and Brillson said the Sandy Hook connection won’t change the way The Onion or InfoWars handles the death of children and other sensitive issues. They think the repeated use of the “No Way to Prevent This” headline is likely what gave The Onion credibility with the Sandy Hook families.
“That headline is crushing but very good,” Brillson said.