Book explores Sandy Hook, Alex Jones, and why modern conspiracy theories have been so contagious

In late April, one week before a trial began that would decide how much Alex Jones should pay the families of first-graders murdered in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, the conspiracy theorist filed a motion in federal bankruptcy court. Jones, at the helm of a multi-million dollar right-wing media echo chamber, sought relief from the financial reckoning that was surely coming. Having spread lies that the shooting was a government fabrication and these grieving families (and even their dead children) were actually paid actors, having subsequently lost defamation suits filed by parents of 10 victims, Jones asked the court to approve a settlement fund of $10 million, to be paid to those families. Meaning, if successful, he would dictate their settlement, and likely never face those families.

He never has.

When Elizabeth Williamson first heard about the bankruptcy plea (which has yet to be decided), she thought back to when she interviewed Jones for her new book, “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth,” (without question the best thing I have read this year so far). A Chicago native and New York Times feature writer, she begins with an excruciating tick-tock of the shooting, then spirals outward, in ever-encompassing events, laying the groundwork for QAnon, Pizzagate, the Jan. 6 insurrection and the end of a shared American narrative.

But the meat of the book is a series of extraordinary portraits of online trolls who