Satirical news site and self-described “corporate overlords” The Onion has bought right-wing conspiracy theory site Infowars.

The Onion’s chief executive, Ben Collins, revealed on Thursday (14 November) that the organisation had acquired the media site at a court-ordered auction.

“The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased Infowars,” Collins wrote. “We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.”

The site’s former owner, Alex Jones, shared a clip on X/Twitter just prior to the announcement, saying that “Connecticut Democrats” were trying to shut it down. Infowars is currently offline.

The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, a group of former writers who purchased the site in April, released a statement following news of their latest acquisition, The New York Times reported.

Chief executive Bryce P Tetraeder, a satirical depiction of multi-millionaire venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who proudly calls himself a “human trafficker” on his X page, celebrated the purchase by saying that the decision to acquire it was an “easy one”.

“Today, we celebrate a new addition to the Global Tetrahedron LLC family of brands. And let me say, I really do see it as a family,” he wrote. “Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market.

“And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.”

Founded by Jones in the late 90s, Infowars became notorious as one of the biggest conspiratorial misinformation sites in the US.

It gained prominence after Jones popularised a conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting had never occurred. In fact, 26 people – 20 of them children aged six and seven – were killed and two others were injured at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

It remains one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.

Jones was sued for $965 million (£759 million) by families of the victims. He lost the case and was also ordered to pay $473m (£372 million) in punitive damages.

Tetraeder said Infowars was an “invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses,” adding that, with what he described as a “shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks,” the site strived to “make life both scarier and longer for everyone”.

The purchase includes the acquisition of Jones’ company’s intellectual property, such as its website, customer lists, inventory and certain social media accounts, and the production equipment, according to CNN.

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