How the Onion’s new Infowars creative director plans to get laughs out of conspiracies

In simply a few years, far-right confederacy theorizer Alex mother jones could be asking “Who’s cutting onions?” 

The answer will be comedian and musician Tim Heidecker.

Satirical newspaper the Onion submitted a new proposal last week to take over Infowars, the conspiracy-laden fake news website Jones founded in 1999. If a judge approves the deal, the Onion would be able to start publishing its own content on the Infowars site as soon as April 30. 

The plan is the latest step in the Onion’s years-long ambition to take control of the platform. Jones was forced to liquidate his assets, including Infowars, to pay more than $1.4 billion US in legal judgments to the families of 20 students and six staff members who were fatally shot in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Jones made several false claims about the shooting, including that it was a hoax, that no children had died and that the parents were paid crisis actors. 

But the Onion isn’t waiting for approval to get its Infowars team in place. 

The company announced last week that Heidecker, one half of the comedy duo Tim & Eric, would be creative director of the new Infowars — and his impressions of Jones have caught the conspiracy theorist's attention. Jones has vowed to fight the acquisition.

“Just'cause you’re wearing my shirt don’t mean you’re me,” Jones said in an Infowars livestream last Monday. €œThis is going to backfire big time, folks.”

On Friday, Heidecker told As It Happens host Nil Köksal how he plans to make readers laugh through a website that’s caused so much pain. Here's part of their conversation:

You’ve parodied Alex Jones before. I saw some of what you’ve put on Instagram, walking around the Onion offices. How are you feeling in this moment, knowing you’ve rattled him?

It’s just very surreal. It’s hard to process. I feel like it’s happening to somebody else.

But some of the way he’s connecting it to my previous work and comedy is quite entertaining.

When you’re fully in place as creative director, when people go to the Infowars site, what do you envision they will see and experience?

At first I think we’re going to have quite a bit of fun with the Infowars ecosystem, or the perception we have of Infowars, [and] goof on that for a little while. 

Then I think it’s going to take a little time, but we’re going to transition to providing some good, high-quality, outside-the-mainstream-style comedy that has kind of grown from the internet. It has been in the past several years dispersed around various social media platforms. And just really try to give an opportunity to up-and-comers, and some friends of mine, and just try to make some great stuff.

What is the power of that in this moment?

The power of that is we are in an environment where the media conglomerates are getting tighter and more restrictive of what they’re investing in, and we felt a gap in the market for this kind of comedy — this kind of culture, entertainment, whatever. 

The Onion is not quite there yet, but [it's] about to just have [Infowars], and the question is “What do you do with it?” And we want to do something positive with it — and also the meta joke of the second life of Infowars being something quite opposite of what it started as. 

This deal to sell Infowars to the Onion got this far because the Sandy Hook parents supported it. They’re still fighting to get paid. What could this new era of Infowars do for those families?

I think it literally starts getting them paid through the merch we sell, and through being in control of all the assets and managing that. 

And so it’s a start to getting them justice, or getting them more justice, getting [Jones] to actually have to account for his actions.

There were many people who objected to Alex Jones and Infowars. Court documents, though, revealed how big it was at its peak. There were times they were bringing in $800,000 US a day, millions of people visiting the site. You’re mocking it, but what’s your sense of what it meant to people who made them all that money?

I think we’re past the Infowars peak of maybe five years ago, or 2016. I think that there was a period of time where he held enormous sway in this country, as a voice and an influence to the way people voted.

Now, I feel like it’s kind of all falling apart. My gut is saying that his audience is probably largely made up of just rubberneckers, or people watching a trainwreck — watching it for entertainment purposes.   

There seems to be so much disillusion on the right. The Trump, MAGA crowd — I definitely feel we’re in a moment of them feeling used and abused. But they are starting to seemingly not really buy into some of the snake oil that they’ve been sold over the years.

Jones is still yelling about this and other things. There will still be pockets of people who listen to him, who follow him. Have fans of his reached out?

Not really. If you keep yourself away from Twitter [X], you won’t see any of it, but if you do look, there are people chiming in.

But what I did notice, and we all noticed, was that it’s quite the opposite. Even on the rancid Twitter site, there’s people thinking it’s hilarious.

My work is full of odd things that are confusing if you’re not in on the joke or if you don’t have the context. I did a whole show where I was convicted of killing 19 kids at a music festival, and in that show I was arrested, and there’s a mugshot. And Alex Jones is posting all this stuff as if it’s reality, and the fans are loving it. They’re having a field day with all of this.

There are many comedians who’ll say times like these, as difficult as they are, are ripe for comedy and creativity. There are others who might say reality is so over the top it cannot be parodied. How does that factor into what you’re doing?

I think our job is to, in various ways, reflect the world as we see it. What that does for people that share a similar outlook or view, [is] it gives them some sense of normalcy or reprieve from the chaos, to know that there are other like-minded people out there who find the same thing funny, find the same thing frustrating or insane. And I think that’s at the core [of] what satirical comedy provides.

How do you feel when you get into that character?

It’s a joy. It’s full id. I kind of enter a fugue state, and it’s quite enjoyable.

Do you think you’ll ever tire of it?

Yes. I think originally we said, listen, we’re going to goof on this for a while, and then it’s going to get stale. 

Another thing you may have seen about my career is I don’t stay put too often. So I imagine we’re going to just play with this dead mouse for a little while, like a cat would, and then move on to another ball of string.

Audio produced by Chris Trowbridge. Q&A edited for length and clarity

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