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Where the ‘Crisis Actor’ Conspiracy Theory Comes From

Victims of the Parkland shooting have been baselessly accused of being paid actors, thanks to a series of conspiracy theory bloggers after the Sandy Hook massacre.


Role players at a mass casualty training exercise at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland.

James Tracy, who was a professor of communications at Florida Atlantic University at the time, published a series of articles “analyzing the Newtown narrative” on his Memory Hole Blog. His first post on December 20, six days after the shooting, claimed to examine “emerging contradictions” between the official story and interviews with people on the scene.

In his first post about Newtown, Tracy does not specifically suggest that Newtown victims were “actors,” but a commenter on that post does: “To broadcast gunshots and mayhem over the intercom system would be a very effective and easy way of pulling off a false flag operation where there actually was no shooter, it adds a bit of zing to what is essentially a drill and allows the actors and children to actually relate what they heard and did with a bit more reality.”

By January 1, Tracy was espousing this theory in a post with the URL “sandy-hook-the-illusion-of-tragedy.” In that post, Tracy asked: “Was Sandy Hook a Relocated Emergency Drill” that was staffed by “Itinerant ‘Crisis Actors?’”

Before Newtown, conspiracy theorists had often said that events like the 9/11 attacks were inside government jobs or false flag operations, but I can find little evidence of anyone suggesting that national tragedies were outright faked.

“After such a harrowing event why are select would-be family members and students lingering in the area and repeatedly offering themselves for interviews? A possible reason is that they are trained actors working under the direction of state and federal authorities and in coordination with cable and broadcast network talent to provide tailor-made crisis acting that realistically drives home the event’s tragic features,” he wrote.


Crucially, Tracy specifically cites VisionBox’s Crisis Actors press release and suggests that maybe a government agency hired the company for the job. The group—and its “Crisis Actors” have become patient zero for the larger crisis acting conspiracy. Its old website, http://www.crisisactors.org and the photos posted there are often used by conspiracy theorists in memes created to “prove” a theory. The site no longer exists, but VisionBox is still an active theater troupe.

"We have not worked in this area for many years so have no information at all," a spokesperson for VisionBox responded to an email I sent asking the company to discuss the origins of the project and how it felt to have the project seen as part of a conspiracy.



While Tracy popularized the Sandy Hook crisis actors narrative, he did not invent it. On Christmas, someone calling themselves Travis J. Walker published a post called “The Newest Reality TV Hit Show: Sandy Hook” on a WordPress blog called The R.A.W.W. Scoop. The post notes that “the families seemed to be acting out of character for people who were supposed to be grieving a lost loved one. They seemed to be reciting a rehearsed script in these interviews.” The post goes on to outline the broad script that Tracy would later popularize, and also cites VisionBox’s Crisis Actors: “If an agency like this exists that almost guarantees realism, is it that far out of the realm of possibility to think that this could be staged?”

The plot was further suggested in a truly bizarre post December 29 called “Sandy Hook: AI, Sleeper Activations and Time Stream Manipulations” on a site called OffPlanetRadio (now OffPlanetMedia), which suggests both time manipulation at Aurora, Colorado massacre and Sandy Hook and a “triangulation of Sandy Hook in three separate, seemingly unrelated high profile events:” Aurora, Sandy Hook, and Hurricane Sandy. The post said that Sandy Hook was a drill alongside the suggestion that “the time stream aspect is more compelling given the interval of 7 days prior to the December 21, 2012 solstice. Ritual blood-letting is the cabal's method of intoning power prior to key time events, especially when coordinated to lunar and solar-based events.” The post ends with the suggestion that conspiracies are mapped using artificial intelligence and “time stream manipulations … such events are holographic in their execution, compartmentalized in commission, and thematically woven into dream time neuropathy.”

A follow up post on December 31 called “Behind the Scenes (literally) at Sandy Hook: Crisis Actors,” drops the time and hologram stuff to focus on VisionBox.

What Tracy did, then, was signal boost a theory being espoused alongside those of mind control and time manipulation. Because Tracy was a university professor and not a random person on the internet, his theories were discussed by Alex Jones on InfoWars and gained traction in conspiracy circles. Fort Lauderdale’s Sun Sentinel was the first mainstream outlet to cover Tracy’s posts, forever enshrining “crisis actors” in our mainstream national lexicon; Tracy’s posts ultimately became a national controversy that was discussed by Anderson Cooper on CNN.

SonicG » 27 Feb 2018 12:29 wrote:I just realized that I went to high school with Hogg's mom! Didn't know her well at all but...damn....

Trump: Protect Schools by Arming the Crisis Actors

What is Gateway Pundit, the conspiracy-hawking site at center of bogus Florida 'crisis actors' hype


Students across Florida gathered in Tallahassee on Feb. 21, 2018, to rally for gun legislation following the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.


TGP misidentified the shooter at a Las Vegas concert in October in which 58 people were shot to death. The post, written by Hoft's twin brother, Joe, carried the headline, "Las Vegas Shooter Reportedly a Democrat Who Liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and Associated with Anti-Trump Army" - details gleaned from the Facebook page of a man whom, it turned out, had no connection to the shooting whatsoever. Hoft says the story was only on its site for a few minutes before it was removed, and that a liberal watchdog group "caught the mistake and spread it around to liberal media where it made headlines for days."

Gateway was also among a handful of right-leaning sites that incorrectly identified a Michigan man as the driver of the car that killed a woman who was protesting a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in August. Although Hoft pulled the story after only a few minutes, the man and his father have filed a defamation suit, naming Jim Hoft among the defendants.

When The Washington Post reported allegations in early November that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore had molested a 14-year-old girl in the late 1970s, Gateway Pundit quickly took up Moore's defense. It seized upon a single tweet from an obscure, unverified account that claimed, without evidence, that the newspaper had paid his accusers for their recollections. It hadn't.

What distinguishes Gateway from other right-leaning sites such as Breitbart.com is that "the bar for what they'll publish is just lower," said Will Sommer, an editor for the Hill newspaper who edits Right Richter, a blog about conservative media. Even so, he said, it is relatively more respectable than the conspiracy-peddling site Infowars, which increases TGP's influence among other conservative sites.

"By this point," Sommer said, "plenty of people know not to take an Infowars story at face value. But Gateway Pundit doesn't have that similar reputation for publishing bogus stories, even though they should."

How right wing conspiracy theories grow: Mainstream pundits give them power

Parkland conspiracy theories started on the internet, but they get life from pundits who wink at them on TV

AMANDA MARCOTTE
03.01.2018•5:00 AM

As happened after the Sandy Hook school shooting, conspiracy theories started to fly around online, suggesting that the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida was somehow faked. Paranoid gun nuts, unwilling to admit their preferred gun control policies lead to mass murder, flocked to online forums to swap claims that the teenaged survivors are "crisis actors" and the whole incident is a "false flag" being perpetrated by a shadowy cabal of "globalists."

Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell of The Washington Post published an interesting piece on Tuesday, tracking the rapid spread of these conspiracy theories through 8chan, YouTube, social media and sites like Infowars, arguing "the episode became the latest cautionary tale about how the Internet itself had become a potent tool of deception wielded by political extremists, disinformation warriors and conspiracy theorists."

It's all very true, but what their analysis fails to take into account is how these conspiracy theorists are empowered by more mainstream conservative figures, those who are on TV, radio and published in traditional newspapers — and by the president himself. The internet may be teeming with lurid claims, but conservatives working for media outlets that supposedly have vetting processes have developed a habit of hinting at conspiracy theories and winking at their proponents, a process which helps validate and perpetuate those conspiracy theories.

The Parkland shooting conspiracy theory machine is a crystalline example of this process. While pundits on Fox and CNN weren't about to utter the words "crisis actors," they got busy validating the idea that the young people on TV talking about their experience with gun violence were insincerely parroting lines written by others — which is to say, accusing them of being a kind of crisis actor. And while TV pundits won't quite say that the whole thing is a "false flag," they did wink at the idea that there is something not quite real about the shooting. And while you absolutely will never hear conservatives in more mainstream spaces outright claim an international conspiracy of Jews is running the whole thing, they will hint at this idea by invoking the name "George Soros" or dropping the word "globalist."

How Alex Jones has pushed the “crisis actor” conspiracy theory about Parkland students

NINA MAST



Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is reportedly one strike away from being totally banned from YouTube for spreading the conspiracy theory that survivors of the Parkland, FL, school shooting were “crisis actors.” In response to the threat, Jones is attacking YouTube for supposed censorship and defending himself by contending that he never “called the students crisis actors.”

However, Jones has been pushing conspiracy theories about the students since the shooting occurred, including saying that students speaking out against gun violence were paid or scripted. Jones repeatedly made comments over the past several weeks, up to and including his March 3 claim that they are “Democratic Party operatives” who have “been scripted for what they’re saying,” demonstrating his major role in spreading the conspiracy theory.

Jones repeatedly suggested Parkland students were “scripted” and “funded” “Democratic Party operatives”

Jones: Parkland students are “Democratic Party operatives” who have “been scripted for what they’re saying.”

ALEX JONES (HOST): Last Friday, CNN said, we are lobbying YouTube to take down Alex Jones. He says no kids died in Florida. He said they’re all crisis actors. And then they banned videos where I was saying they’re not crisis actors. It’s a real shooting. They've just been Democratic Party operatives and been scripted for what they're saying, the four they chose for media coverage out of 3,000. That's all come out. [Infowars Censored, 3/3/18]

Jones: The “anti-gun students” were “coached,” and the Democrats “admitted it.”

ALEX JONES: We don’t believe crisis actors were there, and we believe the shooting really happened. But they’re banning all that. Our headline, “The Truth About Crisis Actors,” let’s work with YouTube. Let’s talk about, were the anti-gun students coached? Which is now come out and admitted. The Democrats now admitted it in BuzzFeed. They banned it. [Infowars Censored, 3/3/18]

Jones: Parkland survivors are “being funded, they’re being given scripts.”

ALEX JONES (HOST): And, again, you saw how David Hogg, the number one individual picked out of the school of three thousand to now lead the national anti-gun movement funded by George Soros -- oh, guys, I left it in the podcast studio last night. BuzzFeed came out and admitted that the Democrats run the entire anti-gun children's movement -- young people movement, but said it was a great thing. While they ban our videos for saying it. We're saying they're being funded, they're being given scripts. Not that they're crisis actors, not that the shooting didn't happen.

[...]

This is the deep state's children, they're high school seniors, coming out, meeting with Democrats, meeting with Bernie Sanders, meeting with everybody, and saying, "We are going to abolish the Second Amendment." So that's where we're at here. And the levels of lies are so intense. [Genesis Communications Network, The Alex Jones Show, 2/28/18]

Jones: There’s a “cover-up going on” with Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg regarding his involvement with his school’s drama department and his father’s former position in the FBI.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: You have been digging deep into the Florida crisis situation. I think what most people are interested in is internet ablaze with rumors that there’s something off about these kids. There’s something off about the reporting in general.

[...]

ALEX JONES: There's so much evidence that it gives me a headache. And I think you just alluded to the beginning of it. What we do know is there's a cover-up going on. They are pulling videos of this young man, a David Hogg, whose father is an FBI agent, whose mother is a big Democrat and big anti-gun person, who is an anti-gun activist and has been in a bunch of anti-gun videos and reports already. They are pulling these videos everywhere and pulling videos, off Facebook, Instagram, you name it, from their own sites of him in some type of CNN visit, internship, VIP thing. Then they're pulling photos of them in the drama department with the other three students. So, A, there's a cover-up going on. B, when you pull back from this, they are demonizing anyone that even asks questions. [Genesis Communications Network, The Alex Jones Show, 2/21/18]

Jones: The Parkland shooting was “the perfect false flag.”

ALEX JONES (HOST): Wow, we said the perfect false flag would be a white nationalist attacking a multicultural school as a way to make the leftists all look like victims and bring in gun control and a war on America’s recovery and now right on time what we’ve been warning of, their main card, the thing we said was imminent, appears with all the evidence. [Genesis Communications Network, The Alex Jones Show, 2/15/18]

CNN: The Alex Jones YouTube Channel “received one strike” for a video called “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview.”

InfoWars, a far-right media organization run by Alex Jones and known for peddling unfounded conspiracy theories, is on thin ice with YouTube after it posted a video that portrayed the survivors of the Parkland school shooting as actors.

The Alex Jones Channel, Infowar's (sic) biggest YouTube account, received one strike for that video, a source with knowledge of the account told CNN. YouTube's community guidelines say if an account receives three strikes in three months, the account is terminated.

That video focused on David Hogg, a strong voice among survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The attention has given him a powerful platform -- but it has also made him the subject of demonstrably false conspiracy theories that claim he's so skilled as a public speaker that he must be a paid actor.

On Wednesday, YouTube removed the video from InfoWars' page for violating its policies on harassment and bullying. The video was titled, "David Hogg Can't Remember His Lines In TV Interview." [CNN, 2/23/18]

BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel: Jones posted a YouTube video “suggesting that the students have ulterior motives” and stressing “that Hogg and his peers are ‘drama’ kids and all very interested in journalism.”

According to a CNN report, Jones' Infowars channel earned its first strike after posting a video with the title "David Hogg Can't Remember His Lines In TV Interview," suggesting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg was a crisis actor. The second strike came from a similar Parkland video. So far, it feels consistent. So for fun, I took a cursory glance at Jones’ Infowars account on Wednesday. Took about 90 seconds to find this:

The video — while it doesn’t explicitly say Hogg and other students are crisis actors — digs through old photos of Hogg. I paused the video with closed captioning to show here where Jones stresses that Hogg and his peers are “drama” kids and all very interested in journalism, suggesting that the students have ulterior motives.

One interpretation of this is that YouTube is being very careful and diligent. It’s sticking only to extreme forms of harassment when it comes to assigning strikes (a wide strike zone, so to speak). Another interpretation is that YouTube doesn’t want to deal with the fallout from banning Jones, and is allowing America’s best known conspiracy theorist to impugn the motives of child shooting survivors because of a few syntax technicalities. [Infowarzel newsletter, 3/4/18]

Infowars.com: Hogg "denies being a crisis actor," but his “credibility was thrown into question” because he did an interview with CBS six months before the shooting.

Hogg’s credibility was thrown into question after a video surfaced of him giving an interview with CBS six months ago on a story unrelated to last week’s school shooting.

The student, who works at the school paper, also interviewed school shooting survivors hiding in a closet as the massacre was unfolding at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. [Infowars.com, 2/21/18]

American Dream » Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:03 pm wrote:I think Alex Jones is a crisis actor in an evil, evil drama.