PROPAGANDA and disinformation are difficult to sift through in the growing digital age.
Conspiracy theories about the validity of paid actors staged during crises are rife across America — especially after horrific casualties such as mass shootings.
What is a crisis actor?
Crisis actors can be very useful in training first responders such as police, firefighters and ambulance personnel.
During emergency exercises, professional actors are often used to portray a disaster victim so that emergency services can practice their skills in a realistic scenario.
Crisis actors often add realism to emergency drills by pretending to be injured and bloodied on the spot.
Some actors may portray media personnel, relatives of victims and citizens to simulate a lifelike environment even during a crisis.
What is the crisis actors conspiracy theory?
‘Crisis actors’ are actors who are volunteered or paid to take on the role of victims in mock disasters and terrorist attacks staged as training exercises for emergency services.
However, conspiracy theorists have applied the name to survivors and witnesses of real atrocities.
They claim that people interviewed on TV news about mass shootings were actually paid to be on the scene by the shadowy forces of the “deep state” that orchestrated the horrors.
Believers of the theory have posted images online claiming that the same “crisis actors” have been present at multiple attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
There was a huge spike in online searches for crisis actors after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting killed 20 children and six teachers.
Conspiracy nuts label such massacres as “false flag” operations – referring to the fact that they are engineered by intelligence agents or other officials as a means to seize more power for the US federal government.
In shootings, the theory is that “deep state” agents are staging a fake massacre with fake victims or even a real shooting.
Conspirators are said to be involving the FBI and the Democratic party in an alleged effort to impose stricter gun laws across the country.
How has the conspiracy theory been used?
There are a number of examples where the crisis actor conspiracy theory has been used.
In April 2017, trolls claimed that the chemical weapons atrocity in Syria was a deep state false flag operation designed to drag Donald Trump into the war against President Assad.
In 2018, David Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, survived the Feb. 14 massacre of 14 youth and three staff members by troubled ex-student Nikolas Cruz, 19.
David is among the survivors who have appeared in the media passionately calling for action to prevent a repeat of the horrors at other American schools.
Since the incident, the 22-year-old has been the subject of baseless claims that he is a crisis actor who was briefed by the local FBI before the shooting.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is one of the leading proponents and propagators of the idea that certain atrocities, such as the Sandy Hook shooting, were staged.
According to APIn October 2022, the 48-year-old was ordered to pay “nearly $1 billion to the family members of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims and to an FBI agent, who said he could not describe their loss and trauma over years of torment by promoting the lie that the calamity was a hoax.
The $965 million verdict is the second major verdict against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history never happened and that the grieving families featured in the coverage , were actors hired as part of a plot to take people’s guns. .”
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