Right-Wing Media Uses Parkland Shooting as Conspiracy Fodder
Source: MSN/NY Times
The teenagers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who a week ago lost 17 of their classmates and school staff members in a mass shooting, have emerged as passionate advocates for reform, speaking openly of their anger in the hope of forcing a reckoning on guns.
But in certain right-wing corners of the web — and, increasingly, from more mainstream voices like Rush Limbaugh and a commentator on CNN — the students are being portrayed not as grief-ridden survivors but as pawns and conspiracists intent on exploiting a tragedy to undermine the nation’s laws.
In these baseless accounts, which by Tuesday had spread rapidly on social media, the students are described as “crisis actors,” who travel to the sites of shootings to instigate fury against guns. Or they are called F.B.I. plants, defending the bureau for its failure to catch the shooter. They have been portrayed as puppets being coached and manipulated by the Democratic Party, gun control activists, the so-called antifa movement and the left-wing billionaire George Soros.
The theories are far-fetched. But they are finding a broad and prominent audience online. On Tuesday, the president’s son Donald J. Trump Jr. liked a pair of tweets that accused David Hogg, a 17-year-old who is among the most outspoken of the Parkland students, of criticizing the Trump administration in an effort to protect his father, whom Mr. Hogg has described as a retired F.B.I. agent.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-media-uses-parkland-shooting-as-conspiracy-fodder/ar-BBJo3TH?li=BBnbcA1
While I think that the paid social media trolls and sock puppets have been around prior to the 2016 election, I think the big change is the brazen willingness of Republicans and most notably Trump to embrace and amplify what was once considered fringe conspiracy theories. The way it worked in the past was that the establishment Republican maintained plausible deniability while the Sean Hannity's, Rush Limbaughs and Alex Jones of the world did the dirty work of pushing racism and conspiracy theories. Indeed, even they would hide their racism with the use of code words and racially charged language.
However, with Trump, you have this feedback loop where Trump himself enthusiastically regurgitates the crazyiest fringe conspiracies. Indeed, as was shown during the 2016 election, Trump's campaign often seemed to be prescient in their ability to anticipate conspiracies or leaks of documents on Wikileaks. Today, Fox will push a RW lie or talking point, then Trump will happily repeat it, which Trump will then cite as validation of his statements.
Compare this to 2008 when John McCain would at least go through the motions of admonishing his supporters not to say that President Obama was a terrorist even as the RW media pushed such conspiracies and lies. Likewise, Romney would play along with the establishment model of letting the RW media apparatus do the dirty work.
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