Far right claims shooting victims are “Fake Crisis Actors”

[Crossroads Inc.]

In a bizzare yet not unexpecteded move, several far right blogs have begun passing around a conspiracy theory that many of the “victims” appearing on TV are fake and actors paid for by CNN. Naturally the attack itself is apparently a “false flag” stunt perpetrated by liberals to further their anti gun agenda... Because... reasons?

On 20 February 2018, as a group of students from the Parkland, Florida mass shooting attack traveled to their state capitol to lobby for tighter gun safety measures, far right conspiracy blogs pushed increasingly hysterical claims that at least one of the survivors of the massacre was a “deep state” pawn.

For example, TheGatewayPundit.com posted a story calling it a “red flag” that David Hogg, a senior who survived the Valentine’s Day attack at the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, volunteered during a CNN interview that his father is a retired agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as he criticized the Trump administration. President Donald Trump had accused the bureau of “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign” and thus failing to follow up on warnings concerning the suspect, Nikolas Cruz.

Hogg, who has become a high-profile advocate for tighter gun safety legislation since the attack, said during the interview that: “I think it’s disgusting, personally. My father’s a retired FBI agent and the FBI are some of the hardest working individuals I have ever seen in my life.”

But according to the Gateway Pundit:

Anyone who has been following the news could tell you that many in the FBI have been working against the president from the start, with the most notable case involving collusion between the FBI, Obama Administration, and the Clinton campaign to push the false ‘verification’ of the junk Steele Dossier. It has also been widely reported that the FBI received tips well in advance of the Florida school shooting and decided, for whatever reason, not to act.

The fault for this tragedy lies squarely on the shoulder’s of the FBI, who could have prevented this back in January.
The site also accused Hogg of “not remembering his lines” while posting a video of him making statements and stumbling over his words prior to a pre-taped interview.

The Gateway Pundit is one of several blogs that was named in a federal defamation lawsuit filed in Michigan earlier in February 2018, accusing them of falsely identifying a teen as the driver that killed Heather Heyer during a counter-protest against white nationalists in Charlotesville, Virginia in August 2017.

Another blog published a story calling into question that Hogg would be interviewed by CBS News less than a year after his footage of a friend’s contentious encounter with a lifeguard was covered by the network’s affiliate in Los Angeles — although despite new rumors about the viral video, no guns were involved. Conspiracy theorists and trolls alike heavily implied that a months-old video (despite the facts that he readily identified himself with the same name, that people occasionally travel across the United States, and that his family moved to Florida from Los Angeles) is somehow “proof” that he is a trained “crisis actor,” a baseless rumor that is inevitably pushed after horrific mass shootings:

Conspiracy!!
Fake news fake news!!!

[U.P. Cinnabar]

It's official. We, the People, have no fucking shame.

[TheFeniX]

There were people like this after Columbine as well. Though not as vocal since The Interwebs wasn't what it is now. A big "Sandy Hook didn't happen" whackjob who was big shit in the "conspiracy insano-sphere" met with one of the parents of the victims and came to see reason. He was immediately harangued by his one-time allies as either being bought off or brain-washed. Or Both.

Of course these people have no shame: they're extremists with a persecution complex and Internet access.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Bottom feeders who missed out on Gamergate, more like.

[The Romulan Republic]

There are no depths to which the Alt. Reich will not sink.

[Wicked Pilot]

Even before Sandy Hook there were the 9/11 conspiracies, and before that Pearl Harbor conspiracies, and before that probably many more that have been lost to obscurity. People are and have always been stupid. And a lot of them own guns.

[Simon_Jester]

I see this as a great opportunity for the evil 5% of the population to divorce itself as far as possible from the fundamentally decent 70-80%.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I see this as a great opportunity for the evil 5% of the population to divorce itself as far as possible from the fundamentally decent 70-80%.

You mean the "fundamentaly decent" 70-80% who cheer on the 5% as they do their evil? Then blame them and them alone, when the 70-80% see too much of their...fundamental decency...in that 5%?

Same as when the the fundamentally decent 70-80% cheered on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam until those wars stopped being one-sided red,white and blue curbstomps, then decided war was bad, and our soldiers were at fault?

[Simon_Jester]

If you lie convincingly enough to the majority of the people, you can get them to support something which is wrong whether they are, at the foundation level, decent people or not. At least for a while.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time..."

The point here is that there is an event horizon in ethics beyond which one cannot go without deliberately casting aside the consensus principles of what values are. Where one is not merely applauding those one has been told are defending truth, justice and the Oursidean Way, but actively saying "yes, bayonet their babies, THAT is what we want!"

...

The tragedy of American politics is how easy it has become to lie to the majority until they defend that which ought not be defended.

For this reason, I am glad when the truly evil fringe, the worse-than-imagined, take an opportunity to express some truly heinous and unusual evil or insane notion. Because it lets us separate out those who have long since abandoned values, from those who still have them and are merely clueless, tricked, or stupid.

[PainRack]

There's already pictures claiming that one lady was seen in Sandy Hook, Florida and the Las Vegas shooting.

[The Romulan Republic]

If you lie convincingly enough to the majority of the people, you can get them to support something which is wrong whether they are, at the foundation level, decent people or not. At least for a while.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time..."

The point here is that there is an event horizon in ethics beyond which one cannot go without deliberately casting aside the consensus principles of what values are. Where one is not merely applauding those one has been told are defending truth, justice and the Oursidean Way, but actively saying "yes, bayonet their babies, THAT is what we want!"

...

The tragedy of American politics is how easy it has become to lie to the majority until they defend that which ought not be defended.

For this reason, I am glad when the truly evil fringe, the worse-than-imagined, take an opportunity to express some truly heinous and unusual evil or insane notion. Because it lets us separate out those who have long since abandoned values, from those who still have them and are merely clueless, tricked, or stupid.

The problem with that is if the really heinous things get said often enough, they can become normalized. The far Right in America has actively been working to shift the centre further and further Right for decades. And we saw the effects over the last few years, in which a man who has literally dozens if not hundreds of scandals that would probably sink any other candidate became President, and a pedophile came within a few percent of winning a Senate seat, while many on the Right actively defended him.

I repeat- we have reached a point where white supremacy and defense of child molestation have become semi-normalized, borderline mainstream aspects of politics.