After being threatened with legal action, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones retracted his comments suggesting that the Greek yogurt company Chobani was “importing migrant rapists” as part of their plan to employ refugees resettled in the U.S.
Jones first resisted backing down after Chobani sued, claiming that the legal action was a George Soros-Islamist plot to destroy his InfoWars network.
“I’ve talked to my lawyers and this is a dream [case],” he said.
Today, however, Jones posted this perfunctory apology to the company and its employees:
He recently issued a similar apology to a Washington, D.C., pizzeria which physically came under attack after he and others pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, or the baseless claim that the restaurant hosted an underground child sex ring led by Hillary Clinton.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
The far-right conspiracy theorist agreed Wednesday to settle a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Greek yogurt manufacturer Chobani. The key component of the settlement agreement required him to retract inflammatory comments about refugees and the company he made on his Infowars broadcast last month.
“During the week of April 10, 2017, certain statements were made on the Infowars, Twitter feed and YouTube channel regarding Chobani, LLC that I now understand to be wrong. The Tweets and video have now been retracted, and will not be re-posted,” Jones said. “On behalf of Infowars, I regret that we mischaricaturized Chobani, its employees and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho the way we did.”
It marks the latest blow to Jones, who in March apologized and issued a retraction to a Washington DC-based pizzeria for his broadcast’s role in pushing a false story about a child sex ring that involved Hillary Clinton.
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Jones, whose YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, drew the ire of Chobani when in early April he published a video and promoted it on Twitter with a headline that read “Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists.”
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So Jones targeted Chobani when, last summer, three children assaulted a 5-year-old girl. The story spread through right-wing media that the attackers — 14, 10 and 7 — were from refugee families. The false narrative pushed by Jones included the involvement of Syrians, rape and urinating in the victim’s mouth. Jones linked it — along with some unrelated cases of tuberculosis — to Chobani. All of it was untrue.
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Just a few weeks ago, Jones had dug in his heels when Chobani filed the lawsuit.
“You just ran into a Texan,” Jone said. “So you get ready because we’re never backing down and our audience is never backing down.”
Until Jones did. Again.
