Elon Musk restores the account of Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite conspiracy theorist repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.
Numerous Twitter accounts linked to Alex Jones were permanently suspended from Twitter in 2018 and he has not been on the platform since.
The X owner insisted in November last year that he would not let the conspiracist back on the platform citing his own sense of loss after the birth of his own child.
‘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,’ he wrote.
But he changed his mind, citing free speech, after nearly 2 million X users voted 70:30 to let the Infowars founder re-access his account.
‘The people have spoken and so it shall be,’ Musk posted.
Elon Musk restores the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax
Elon Musk restores the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax
Jones was ordered to pay damages to families of the 26 victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut after he promoted conspiracy theories about the tragedy on his Infowars show
Jones claimed for a decade that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, in which 20 children and six staff members were gunned down, was a hoax.
He finally admitted it was no hoax shortly before he was ordered to pay more than $1bn in compensation to the victims’ families after losing a pair of highly publicized court battles which he plans to appeal.
The decision to allow him back on the platform sparked fury from other users.
‘I hope everyone remembers that Elon Musk is letting a man who owes $1.1 BILLION to Sandy Hook parents, even after trying to weasel out of it through bankruptcy, for his lies back on social media,’ tweeted mental health campaigner Ryan Shead.
‘X is about to be filled with a lot more hate.’
‘Sandy Hook families should sue Musk for propping up the propagandist who terrorized their families,’ added singer Ricky Davila.
Musk’s first child, Nevada Alexander, was born in 2002, two years after Musk and his first wife Justine married. He died from sudden infant death syndrome aged 10 weeks, after he was put down for a nap.
Piers Morgan was among those who begged Musk not to change his mind.
‘Elon, you were right the first time about Alex Jones,’ he tweeted on Saturday.
‘Remember what he did to those poor Sandy Hook parents, purely to trade off their terrible grief with his vile lies…. and please don’t let him back.’
Jones’ account on X was re-instated within hours of Musk staging his poll on the platform
The 20 children who were killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Top row (L to R): Ana Marquez-Greene, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Emilie Parker, Noah Pozner. Second row: (L to R): Jesse Lewis, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Charlotte Bacon, Chase Kowalski. Third row (L to R): Daniel Barden, Jack Pinto, Catherine Hubbard, Dylan Hockley, Benjamin Wheeler. Bottom row (L to R): Grace McDonnell, James Mattioli, Avielle Richman, Madeleine Hsu, Allison Wyatt
The other three adult victims of the Sandy Hook shooting were (L to R): Teacher Victoria Soto, 27, school psychiatrist Mary Sherlach, 56, and principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47
The adult victims of the Sandy Hook shooting included (L to R): Teacher Rachel Davino, 29, para professional Anne Marie Murphy, 52, and permanent substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau, 30
Hours after 26 people were shot and killed at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, Jones began spouting false claims that the killings didn’t happen.
He claimed that Sandy Hooks was an ‘operation’ engineered by the government to take away Second Amendment rights and promote stricter gun control laws.
Relatives of the victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones´ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being ‘crisis actors’ whose children never existed.
Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones at a defamation trial last year in lawsuits over repeated promotion of the false theory.
But the families are yet to see a penny of the money that juries awarded them after Jones, 49, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December last year.
Jones has forked out more than $1.5 million on legal and professional fees and has been urging his fans to donate to him and shop on the Infowars website so he can keep doing his program and pay his legal costs.
The amount of money Jones owes Sandy Hook families could grow even larger.
Another lawsuit is pending in Texas, brought by the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the children slain in the attack. A trial date has not yet been set.
The conspiracy theorist and Infowars host (left) pictured his wife, Erika Wulff Jones (right), could owe even more in damages pending the outcome of a lawsuit brought by the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner
Jones’ personal spending has angered families who have yet to see any of the money they were awarded. The conspiracy theorist blew through $2.2 million in just eight months according to bankruptcy filings
Jones lists a $70k Dodge Charger and a $60k Chevy Tahoe on his assets in bankruptcy filings
Musk tweeted that he continues to ‘vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook’.
‘But we are a platform that believes in freedom of speech are we not?
‘If the people vote him back on, this will be bad for X financially, but principle matter more than money.’
After Musk announced the poll results Morgan tweeted ironically: ‘Great to have this calm rational human being back on here.’