By SUZANNE DOWNING

Let me first make it clear: I’m not an Alex Jones podcast listener or follower of his InfoWars website. And yet, this much I know: A court penalty of $49.3 million against the broadcaster is a bridge too far.

Defamation, in this case, has been given a new meaning, which should disturb all Americans who cherish their First Amendment rights to free expression.

Jones said many times that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax set up by the government to push for gun control laws. The parents of the dead children said that hurt their feelings and subjected them to ridicule. They have been doxed and harassed by Jones’ followers. Instead of arresting the harassers, the government is using this as an excuse to shut down Alex Jones.

Where Jones went wrong was in saying that the families of the dead were somehow complicit in the plot by the government. That is where Jones stepped on the hornet’s nest, although the claim does not presume the families did anything unlawful since the so-called actions were in imagined coordination with the government. Where he also went wrong is not producing documents the government demanded, and failing to appear for depositions. I’m simplifying the case components here because the basic premise of this commentary is that free speech is free speech.

Jones has offered other wild theories in the past. He called the 9-11 terrorist attack on America an inside job by the government, for example.

Critics say he is harmful and dangerous. Now, a court says he must pay $49.3 million for offering mistruths about Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., where a 20-year-old man shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children.

Let this be a warning: If you offer an alternative theory to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including theories about alternate gunmen, nations that may have been involved, or the killing of Jack Ruby, are you harmful and dangerous?

If you offer alternate theories about the Covid virus origins in China, Big Pharma-driven policies, and treatments, are you harmful and dangerous?

If you write or talk publicly about Area 51, where the U.S. government may or may not be involved in research on extraterrestrials, are you harmful and dangerous?

What about this: The climate change narrative that is promulgated by the current administration is a hoax. The reason the southern border is undefended is to change the electoral makeup of the border states of Arizona and Texas by bringing in new likely Democrat voters. Jan. 6 was not an insurrection. The election was stolen. Joe Biden has a body double. Uvalde, Texas police were cowardly.

Have I gone too far for the courts with my wild-eyed, unproven theories? Am I over the target of the hornet’s nest?

In Anchorage, there is a lot of name calling. There are any number of leftists who have called some conservatives in this city Nazis because they opposed vaccine mandates. Calling someone a Nazi used to be considered defamation, but these days, the Left regularly uses references to the Holocaust when it’s describing conservatives, and no penalty is ever pursued. This writer has been called a Nazi sympathizer by members of the Alaska Democratic Party or its subset socialist units. Think about what that actually means

During the past two years, Americans saw what happened to those who questioned the Covid narrative: Their avenues for expression were shut down by the major Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Doctors who disagreed with the government narrative were sanctioned by their professions. Anyone refusing a vaccine was called a nut, or worse.

Here in Alaska, a group of doctors signed a letter asking the State Medical Board to sanction doctors for supporting the use of off-label treatments for Covid to prevent hospitalization. Medical professionals who dared to question the mainstream narrative on forced vaccinations were driven underground or shunned by their colleagues. Some lost patients and some lost medical partners because of their viewpoints. Many nurses and medical assistants lost their jobs for refusing the Covid vaccine. The government had to bring in nurses from out of state, at great expense, because of this manmade disaster.

The chilling effect of the Jones verdicts and the penalties is real on freedom of expression and builds on what some of us have been saying about the encroachment into our constitutional rights. It makes Americans fear their government.

Meanwhile, Alex Jones, who may have some off-label brain wiring or could be a genius for all we know, has put his InfoWars organization into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization as a result of the lawsuits against him.

Where does this lead? The next conspiracy theory deemed legally false could be the very tenets of your religious faith: That Jesus died for your sins and came back from the dead to ascend and live in heaven forever. Another “conspiracy theory” may be the Hindu belief in karma and reincarnation, which some woke people may interpret as insensitive to those who are less fortunate.

This writer still doesn’t know much about the actual Sandy Hook Elementary School events of 2012. This writer presumes it was a mass murder by a disturbed young man; we’ve seen these events before and since. This writer doesn’t believe anything much that comes from the mouth of Alex Jones.

But this writer will, like the writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, defend to the death his right to say it, so long as it doesn’t commercially or otherwise actually hurt others, and so long as those tales do not rise to the level of falsely yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

The $49.3 million penalty cannot stand or the republic as we know it will fall into tyranny. If the government can put Americans on notice that what they say may subject them to a fine or jail, then that’s the death blow to the Constitution and the rights it says we are endowed by our creator.

Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska and has never heard an Alex Jones show.