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‘I am not a crisis actor’: Florida teens fire back at right-wing conspiracy theorists - The Washington Post

From: "Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2018 12:18:48 -0500

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/21/i-am-not-a-crisis-actor-florida-teens-fire-back-at-right-wing-conspiracy-theorists/?undefined=&utm_term=.a42c647953cf&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

‘I am not a crisis actor’: Florida teens fire back at right-wing conspiracy theorists
By Travis M. Andrews and Samantha Schmidt
Florida students announce ‘March for Our Lives’

Students of the Florida school where 17 people died last week announced nationwide marches for gun control on March 24.
(Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)

Welcome, Parkland shooting survivors, to the ugly world of politics in 2018.

In the aftermath of last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., some of the most powerful testimonies have come from
the teenagers who survived the rampage. They have repeatedly detailed their harrowing experience to national news
networks, many calling for stricter gun control laws while decrying President Trump for not doing enough to protect
students. Others have wept with grief while telling their stories again and again.

The students have become a mobilizing force unlike any seen after previous mass shootings, planning marches and rallies
in Florida and Washington — all while mourning the friends they’ve so recently lost.

They have also become a target of right-wing smears and innuendo.

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Some prominent figures in the right-wing media are suggesting that the students are making it all up, or that the
children are paid actors or that their talking points have been manufactured by public relations experts on the left.

An aide to a Florida legislator was even fired Tuesday after claiming two survivors who spoke to CNN were not students,
but instead “actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

While these claims have no basis, they spread quickly in conservative circles on social media and among popular
right-wing commentators.

The students proved quite capable of defending themselves Tuesday.

“I am not a crisis actor. I’m somebody that had to witness this and live through this and I continue to have to do
that,” 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior David Hogg told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “The fact that
some of the students at Stoneman Douglas high school … are showing more maturity and political action than many of our
elected officials is a testament to how disgusting and broken our political system is right now in America. But we’re
trying to fix that.”

Parkland student David Hogg: 'Blood is being spilled on the floors of American classrooms.'

David Hogg survived the Florida shooting and is demanding that Congress take action to stop it from happening again.
(Whitney Shefte, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

He was quickly backed up by fellow students. Sarah Chadwick, for example, tweeted that Hogg “can’t act to save his
life,” adding that the fact some people think he is being paid “is hilarious.”

Hogg, the high school’s student news director, has been among the most vocal students. He interviewed his classmates
during the shooting and has spoken passionately to various news outlets in the days since.

But right-wing media websites, such as Infowars, have accused Hogg of becoming an “overnight celebrity” of the left.

Hogg has described his father as a retired FBI agent — a detail that right-wing commentators have jumped on. An
Infowars story called it a “peculiar coincidence” that his father is a retired FBI agent, as “the FBI has come under
fire for not preventing the Parkland massacre despite being warned about suspected killer Nikolas Cruz repeatedly
beforehand.”

The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. liked two tweets disseminating conspiracy theories about Hogg. One tweet linked to
a story in Gateway Pundit that accused Hogg’s father of coaching his son in peddling “anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun
legislation,” claiming the FBI is using Hogg as its pawn.

The other tweet linked to a story in True Pundit that described Hogg as “the kid who has been running his mouth” about
Trump and Republicans. “If Hogg knew the shooter would snap — as he and other students have professed — perhaps he
could have told his father about it,” the story charged.

These conspiracy theories attacking the FBI parallel similar rhetoric from right-wing groups — and Trump — who have
claimed the FBI is tainted with political, anti-Trump bias.

Gateway Pundit and Infowars both criticized Hogg and other students for smiling for a photograph on the set of a CBS
interview, claiming that instead of grieving, they are “acting and being feted like rock stars.”

Infowars’ attack was no surprise. Its founder, Alex Jones, claimed that the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, in
which 20 small children and six adults were killed, was a false flag operation perpetrated by the United States
government. “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured,” he said on his radio
show in January 2015.

Student Angelia Lazo holds up a sign on Sunday while standing near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Fla. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Some, such as conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, mocked the Florida teenagers. “How interesting to hear
students who can’t support themselves for one day giving us lectures about American social policy,” he tweeted early on
Tuesday. It was liked more than 22,000 times.

A few hours later, he tweeted a video interview with 17-year-old Delaney Tarr, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School who has emerged as one of the loudest voices calling for gun control in the wake of the shooting. In the
video, she directly addressed Trump and requested greater restrictions on the purchase of semiautomatic weapons, such
as mental health checks.

D’Souza said Tarr appeared “coached and also a bit deranged,” adding that Trump “should ignore these media-manufactured
theatrics.”

When the Florida House rejected a motion to consider a bill that would ban the sale of assault rifles, he tweeted,
“Adults 1, kids 0.”

He followed that with a photo of students reacting to the decision. The students are stone-faced in the photograph, and
one has a hand to her mouth, as if to hold in crying.

“Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” D’Souza tweeted. Hours later, he added: “Genuine grief I
can empathize with. But grief organized for the cameras — politically orchestrated grief — strikes me as phony &
inauthentic.”

Armond White, the National Review’s film critic, drummed up a Trumpian nickname for the students: “Parkland Puppets.”

“Why their ubiquitous presence on TV news shows? Who’s their publicist?” he tweeted, along with a photograph of Hogg
and 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez. “Obviously not just being picked up off the street, no 16-year-old has quick access to
network news producers. Clearly, some PR exec is handling these Alt-Left kids.” (Neither student pictured is 16 years
old.)

Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host disgraced by a sexual abuse scandal, criticized the media for broadcasting
interviews with teenagers “who are in an emotional state and facing extreme peer pressure.”

“The national press believes it is their job to destroy the Trump administration by any means necessary,” he wrote on
his website. “So if the media has to use kids to do that, they’ll use kids.”

Former congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) on Sunday tweeted a USA Today story about the student organizers helping lead
a nationwide student walkout in protest of America’s gun laws, adding the message: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a
nationwide rally? Not left wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy?”

Kingston then appeared on CNN’s “New Day” Tuesday and doubled down on his remarks.

“Do we really think — and I say this sincerely — do we really think that 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a
nationwide rally?” Kingston asked, adding, “They probably do not have the logistical ability to plan a nationwide rally
without it being hijacked by groups that already had the preexisting anti-gun agenda.”

The show’s co-host Alisyn Camerota fiercely disagreed.

“I talked to these kids before they knew the body count of how many of their friends had been killed. No one had talked
to them yet,” Camerota said. “They hadn’t been indoctrinated by some left-wing group. They were motivated from what
they saw and what they endured.”

Brandon Abzug, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior who survived the shooting, then appeared on CNN and said of the former
congressman’s comments, “I think it’s very despicable…. To say that just because we’re young we can’t make a difference
is not right, and he should apologize for that.”

Kingston began backtracking on Twitter. “Not only do I respect their right to protest & their resolve to look for
answers, I admire it,” he wrote. He added, “That’s why it’s sad local gun control activists would hijack the tragedy to
drive their own agenda.”

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‘I am not a crisis actor’: Florida teens fire back at right-wing conspiracy theorists - The Washington Post Dave Farber (Feb 21)