Alex Jones Got Owned by America's Biggest Yogurt Company

Alex Jones is no stranger to controversy. The Infowars host is the most famous far-right conspiracy theorist in America, and generally seems to get away with making head-scratching if not outright offensive assertions, such as that the US government can create and control tornadoes as a "weather" weapon, that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and of course, the Pizzagate maelstrom, which propagated a baseless claim that Hillary Clinton and other high-ranking Democrats were running a child sex ring out of a Washington, DC pizzeria.

Although his theories are largely debunked and are generally too ludicrous for the mainstream to believe, Jones still has a massive following, including more than 2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. But occasionally, Jones has had to admit that the sensationalist fodder that keeps his clicks coming is, well, totally fucking made up—such as in the case of Pizzagate, which Jones apologized for in March.

Now, Jones has been forced to admit defeat to America's most popular Greek yogurt company.

Last month, Infowars published and promoted a video about New York-based yogurt company Chobani, which proudly hires refugees, including those from Muslim-majority countries, and recently built a $450 million plant in Twin Falls, Idaho as part of its expansion.

The headline for Jones' story, which received more than 22,000 views as well as hundreds of retweets on Twitter, according to the Los Angeles Times, was "Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists," and it offered a fabricated narrative about how the children of refugees had raped and urinated on a local five-year-old girl in Twin Falls. (Ed. note: While a sexual assault did actually take place in Twin Falls, many of the details of Jones' account were falsified.) There was also some stuff about Syria and tuberculosis, but it's not that important because, to reiterate, it had no factual basis.

Chobani responded by Jones, seeking $10,000 in damages and removal of the posts and arguing that his statements "have caused and continue to cause harm to Idaho residents, including Chobani employees, their families and other members of the Twin Falls community." Civic officials in Twin Falls were also angered by the story, as the city has a reputation of being welcoming to refugees.

Chobani won the defamation lawsuit, and Jones was forced to remove the video and corresponding social media posts, as well as issue an apology.

This wasn't the first time that Chobani has been under fire for its hiring policies; it has previously been subject to criticism and hate speech from a number of alt-right and anti-immigrant groups, and is frequently hit with threats of boycott by #MAGA-happy trolls.

But the company stands by its practices. "They got here legally, they've gone through a most dangerous journey, they lost their family members, they lost everything they had. And here they are," Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, who is a Turkish immigrant, told 60 Minutes in an interview in April. "The number one thing that you can do is provide them jobs. The minute you give them a job is the minute they stop being a refugee."

Here's the video of Alex Jones begrudgingly admitting that he got owned by a yogurt company founded by a Turkish immigrant.

Waaaaah.

This seems like a great time to revisit the greatest Alex Jones tweet of all time:

With a legal victory under its belt, Chobani can continue its mission of hiring refugee workers—and coming up with new yogurt flavors. Maybe the next one should be "Alex Jones' Tears."