Alex Jones is not a free speech hero. If you’re defending him, you need to think carefully about what you’re doing.

US laws make it difficult to actually win a defamation case. It also differentiates between private and public figures. If you want to bash Kamala Harris or Brad Pitt or Donald Trump, it’s close to impossible for them to sue you.

It’s different for private figures. We don’t want a world where the New York Times can say that Joe from Cleveland is engaging in child sacrifice without any evidence and get away with it. This is why Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic kid, was able to get a settlement from CNN after suing them for $275 million.

If you don’t think that the Sandmann settlement was a great outrage, then I don’t know why you would believe that Alex Jones should be able to get away with outrageous lies that lead to the harassment of the families of kids who were killed in a school shooting.

The decision against Jones was $1.5 billion, which means that each family got less than Nick Sandmann was seeking from CNN. Sandmann certainly got less than that, but it’s difficult to argue that what Jones did was not worse than what CNN did to Sandmann or that he wasn’t more reckless with the truth. Google the details about what these families went through. Very few of the people denouncing the Jones verdict would’ve been denouncing a court decision where Sandmann got the full $275 million.

I believe in free speech. I also don’t think media companies should be able to tell outrageous lies about private citizens and ruin their lives without consequences. This is true for CNN, and true for Infowars. Neither case involves political persecution. It’s the system working like it should.

Alex Jones shouldn’t have built an empire based on conspiracy theories and lies. He shouldn’t be able to get away with conduct that everyone would agree was outrageous if it was done by the NYT. You discredit the free speech movement when you tie it to a figure like him.