In the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, survivors David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez have become faces of the fight for US gun control — and targets for far-right pundits and conspiracy theorists who paint the students as puppets of the political left.
In a polarized climate, the students had barely started calling for action to stop mass shootings when wild theories began swirling on the far-right Internet.
At the forefront were Web sites Infowars and The Gateway Pundit — known for relaying bogus theories including the notion that the shooting of 26 children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 was a hoax.
“Evidence mounts Florida attack is a giant false flag,” ran the title of one video on Infowars.
Gateway Pundit lashed out at “string-pullers” it said were manipulating the students, in support of a “vehemently anti-gun, anti-American and anti-Trump” agenda.
The site namely implicated organizers of the “Women’s March” — which has voiced support for a student-led gun control march on Washington on March 24.
Hogg, a student journalist and one of the movement’s most visible faces, and Gonzalez, who last week called out Trump over his links to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in an impassioned televised address, have been on the receiving end of particularly fierce attacks.
Infowars alleged the pair were coached by CNN — the cable network regularly assailed by the US right for its supposed liberal bias — interpreting their ease in front of the camera as evidence they were in reality “crisis actors” working on behalf of the far left.
Meanwhile, Hogg’s father’s status as a retired FBI agent served as further conspiracy fodder.
A YouTube video presenting the theory was the site’s most shared footage on Tuesday with about 200,000 views — before it was taken down. Similar allegations were circulating on social media, triggering immediate calls for the accounts to be blocked.
Still, another Parkland survivor, Cameron Kasky, who launched the movement’s rallying cry NeverAgain, on Wednesday said he was suspending his Facebook account after receiving death threats from radical supporters of the NRA.
Conservative anchor Bill O’Reilly, who broadcasts on his Web site and Twitter, also questioned the movement’s genesis.
“The national press believes it is their job to destroy the Trump administration by any means necessary. So if the media has to use kids to do that, they’ll use kids,” he wrote on his Web site.
The theories reached the president’s inner circle as his son, Donald Trump Jr, “liked” two tweets related to Gateway Pundit’s accusations against Hogg, according to the site Trump Alert which tracks the family’s activity on Twitter.
In Florida, US Republican lawmaker Shawn Harrison on Tuesday fired an aide who repeated the crisis actor allegations on his Twitter account.
Harrison said he was “appalled” by the comments.
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