Grumet: Alex Jones plays the victim as Sandy Hook parents — and the truth — prevail

Other people were smeared. Other people were yelled at, shot at, stalked and traumatized. Other people had their lives turned upside down, and yet somehow, Alex Jones cast himself as the victim.

Testifying this past week in the defamation case against Jones brought by two parents of a child slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School — a very real tragedy that Jones, for years, had asserted was fake — the InfoWars founder tried on the part of the persecuted one. He had medical problems. He’d gone through a divorce. His unreliable sources turned out to be … unreliable. And reporters had twisted his words, said Jones, who now acknowledges the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Conn., was “100% real.”

“They could just say whatever they want about you, and cobble things together, and then you can't respond,” lamented the gravelly voiced provocateur, apparently forgetting his hours of unfiltered conspiracy theory programming, recorded almost daily, appear on a website that draws millions of views per month.

More: Jurors hit Alex Jones with a new $45.2 million penalty in Sandy Hook case

But there was no mistaking the truly wronged parties in this Austin courtroom. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis lost their beaming little boy, Jesse Lewis, to the Sandy Hook massacre. Then they lost their privacy, their security and their space to grieve as conspiracy theorists infiltrated their lives — harassment fueled by Jones’ accusations that the Sandy Hook parents were “crisis actors” and that the mass shooting was “a false flag operation” meant to undermine gun owners’ rights.

Heslin and Lewis told jurors they receive death threats. Strangers come by their homes, sometimes taking pictures or yelling things. At least one person shot at Heslin’s house.

Lewis sleeps with weapons at the ready. She doesn’t run her air conditioner, for fear the noise will prevent her from hearing an intruder she’ll need to stop. She still has another son to protect.

How unconscionable that this is the life of terror inflicted on parents who have suffered the worst kind of tragedy.

This defamation trial, the first of three involving Sandy Hook families, brings a long-overdue reckoning over Jones’ inflammatory broadcasts. The damages the jury awarded Heslin and Lewis this week — $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages — send a clear message Jones' lies should carry a hefty price. (I should note that a number of factors, from the bankruptcy proceedings of Jones' company to Texas laws limiting lawsuit damages, could affect the ultimate payout.)

You could argue the unraveling began in 2018 when Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify began removing Jones’ content from their platforms, citing violations of their policies on hate speech. Even those moves came woefully late.

More: Legal fight erupts over Alex Jones texts after Jan. 6 committee seeks copy

By then, Sandy Hook parents had suffered years of harassment.

By then, a man had opened fire in 2016 in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria — thankfully injuring no one, but still terrifying a neighborhood, after Jones pushed false claims that the restaurant was somehow connected to a child-sex trafficking ring.

By then, three men had gone to prison for stockpiling weapons, building bombs and scheming to ambush U.S. soldiers in the Carolinas, after Jones launched the Jade Helm conspiracy theory that the 2015 military training exercises were part of “the US Army’s plan to wage war on the American people.”

And, of course, Jones hasn’t mellowed. Last year, he was part of the paranoid echo chamber that fired up the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, wrongly believing the presidential election had been stolen. About 140 police officers were injured in the riot and several died in the aftermath. Jones falsely blamed the violence on members of the left-wing antifa movement.

This is Jones’ brand. He churns out explosive accusations, uninhibited by decency or facts. He caters to the grievances harbored by his viewers. He gives them villains to focus their anger upon. He gives them the thrill of secret knowledge that’s like a drug for conspiracy theorists, that feeling that they’re smarter than everyone else because they know what’s really going on.

He tells his viewers that they’re the victims of some sinister, dangerous force. He gets them riled up to do something about it. Too often, people get hurt.

Addressing the jury last week in the Sandy Hook case, Jones’ attorney Andino Reynal invoked the slippery-slope argument: If we start punishing Jones’ speech here, what kind of speech gets curbed next?

But we should also consider the other side of the slope. If we let Jones’ reckless lies hurt people without consequence, what other damage are we inviting?

Lewis spent the past decade being targeted and tormented. But she’s not playing the victim. On the witness stand this past week, she was a champion for common sense.

Alex Jones trial: Parent says hoax portrayal turned life into a 'living hell'

“Truth is so vital to our world,” she said. “Truth is what we base our reality on, and you have to agree on that to have a civil society.”

We cannot afford for truth to become a casualty.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Grumet: Alex Jones plays the victim as Sandy Hook parents prevail