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If you’ve tuned in to Infowars over the years, you might have heard a very angry man screaming about the 2020 election being stolen for “reanimated corpse” Joe Biden, or chemicals in the water turning frogs gay, or the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being faked. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a platform for toxic conspiracy theories with real-life consequences, in addition to weird dietary supplements. But if the Onion has its way, the InfoWars of the future will have a very different impact.

The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid legal battles over Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Pending a Texas court’s approval, the platform could soon be in the hands of the Onion and a newly installed creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal sketches and mockery of the far right. The result would be the transformation of a dangerous political weapon into a comedy hub that undermines everything Infowars once stood for.

“One of my first thoughts is just what a great joke it would be, over time, if we could change the meaning and understanding of the site itself,” Heidecker says, “and that’s [Jones’s] legacy.”

The path to the Onion’s takeover has been twisty. In 2022, a court ordered Jones to pay $1.4bn – a record defamation award – to the families of children killed in the school shooting. Jones had long falsely claimed that the attack was a hoax, which led to conspiracists’ vicious harassment of the families. In order to pay the debt, Infowars’ parent company was ordered to sell off assets.

That’s when the Onion swooped in. After its initial bid to buy the site was blocked in 2024, the Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, reached a potential six-month deal this week to lease the site from a court-appointed administrator for $81,000 a month, with an option to renew. Eventually, the Onion plans to buy all the site’s assets, Ben Collins, Global Tetrahedron’s CEO, told CNN.

But first, it must face yet another legal curveball. Late on Wednesday, a Texas court temporarily halted the proposed deal after an emergency motion from Jones’s legal team. A new hearing is set for 28 May.

Collins remained confident. “This newly insane, unprecedented legal stalling does nothing but delay our deal with the receiver to take control of InfoWars,” he wrote on social media.

If all goes to plan for the Onion, that new InfoWars – which features a charming rainbow logo, after Jones’s claims that government chemicals make people (and amphibians) gay – will begin as a parody of the original. Heidecker will embody a Jones-inspired role, with a scratchy voice – perhaps hoarse from yelling about the new world order – emanating from deep within his throat. The comedian, whose past work includes the Adult Swim show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and the podcast Office Hours Live, has already toured the Onion offices and appeared outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia in character.

“I’m not somebody that likes to beat a joke into the ground, but I think for a little while it’s going to be fun to play with [Jones] and just keep reminding people of what an oaf he is, what a clown he is, and not be very nice about it,” Heidecker says. “He did something truly, truly awful. It’s hard to really state how destructive he’s been here in this country.”

Jones is not taking all this lying down; in fact, he’s been taking it standing up and shirtless, as he appeared on a recent Infowars broadcast to condemn the Onion takeover. Reacting with typical restraint to the plan, Jones also posted on X that Heidecker “produced pro-pedophile / child torture & murder shows for Adult Swim” and linked him to “Satanic rituals”.

Asked to respond to the allegations, Heidecker said: “I’m happy to confirm all of that with you,” noting that he had recently “pledged my allegiance to the Lord of Darkness” on his podcast.

Jokes aside, Jones was apparently confusing old Tim and Eric comedy sketches with real life. “He went full-on literal with a lot of this stuff,” Heidecker said. “I think his audience was kind of like, ‘Alex, come on, man, this is a comedian, you’re falling for it.’” (The top reply to one X post reads: “Sorry Alex, I hate the libs too, but I’m always on the side of comedy and free expression.”)

To Heidecker, that broader reaction is an indication that Jones’s followers may be drifting away from him. “People are worried about filling up their gas tanks over here, and these culture wars that they got themselves into feel maybe less vital,” he says. He hopes the show “chips away there” and helps people realize that “maybe they’ve been following along with a snake oil salesman”.

Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, hopes the same. “If their programming can be of interest to Jones’s former audience, and help bring them out of the dark, that would be wonderful,” he told the New York Times last week.

Much like the site it is parodying, the new InfoWars will feature writing, video and advertisements for supplements. A preview of the site shows an ad promising to “turn your gold into piss” and teach you to float in midair.

Another character joining Heidecker, Jim Haggerty, is a former host of the Onion’s morning-show-styled series Today Now – but he’s been redpilled. “For 35 years, I was part of the problem, a mouthpiece for the mainstream media, spewing their lies,” he says in a trailer of sorts for the new InfoWars. “But now I’m free of my corporate shackles, and my only business is freedom.” Haggerty, played by the actor Brad Holbrook, will be a Tucker Carlson type on the platform, Heidecker says. Others on the small initial team include Mia DiPasquale as head of programming; Jamie Brew, a writer from the Onion; and Matt Carlin, producer of Office Hours Live.

In addition to leasing the site, the new InfoWars will help the Sandy Hook families financially through merchandise sales. “It’s been eight years and three days since the Sandy Hook families initially filed this lawsuit, and they have not received a fucking penny,” Collins told CNN. “So, we’re excited to get them immediate pennies with some merch sales – but also longer-term pennies once we do wind up eventually straight up buying this thing.”

Eventually, perhaps in the autumn, Heidecker plans to shift InfoWars from a direct parody to a wider-ranging comedy hub. “We have to spend some time doing what I think everyone expects” in reflecting “the insanity of that site – play with it and mock it”, he says. But that’s going to have “a relatively short shelf life”. One thing that drew him to the project – his involvement began with a cold call to the Onion – was the possibility of creating a larger home for “interesting outsider, nonmainstream, culturally diverse” comedy online.

“The landscape is so different now than it was when I was starting out” in the early 2000s, Heidecker says. The days of Funny or Die, Adult Swim and early YouTube dominating a rich comedy media ecosystem are over. Social media offers opportunities, but those platforms are “not very well curated, not well funded. Everybody’s just in the wilderness. And I thought, well, if the Onion has some money and some interest in growth, that it would be a great opportunity.”

Jones has told followers he’ll continue his “exact same show” on another platform. (The original Infowars did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Meanwhile, the detoxified InfoWars can provide a counterweight.

“We are undoubtedly living in a confusing, scary and maddening world where everything you see and hear is crazy,” Heidecker says. But comedy can make us feel that we are “not so alone any more: you feel this way, I’ve been feeling this way … and I see you saying: ‘Yes, you’re not crazy. This is crazy.’”