PROPAGANDA and misinformation are difficult to sift through during the growing digital age.
Conspiracy theories regarding the validity of paid actors staged during crises have run rampant throughout America – especially following horrific casualties such as mass shootings.
What is a crisis actor?
Crisis actors can be quite helpful in training first responders such as police, firefighters, and EMS personnel.
Professional actors are often used to portray a disaster victim during emergency drills so that emergency services can properly practice their skills in a realistic scenario.
Crisis actors often add realism to emergency exercises by pretending to be wounded and bloodied on the scene.
Some actors may actually portray media personnel, relatives of victims, and citizens to also simulate a life-like environment during a crisis.
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What is the crisis actor conspiracy theory?
'Crisis actors' are actors who volunteer or are paid to take the roles of victims in mock disasters and terror attacks staged as training drills for emergency services.
Conspiracy theorists, however, have applied the name to survivors and witnesses of genuine atrocities.
They claim people interviewed on TV news about mass shootings have actually been paid to be on the scene by the shadowy forces of the "deep state" that orchestrated the horror.
Believers of the theory have posted images online claiming to show the same "crisis actors" have been present at multiple attacks such as the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
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There was a huge spike in online searches about crisis actors after the Sandy Hook shooting left 20 kids and six teachers dead in 2012.
Conspiracy nuts label such massacres as "false flag" operations – alluding to the fact that they were cooked up by intelligence agents or other officials as a means to grab more power for the US federal government.
With shootings, the theory goes that "deep state" agents stage a bogus massacre with fake victims or even a real shooting.
Plotters are variously said to include the FBI and the Democratic party in an alleged attempt to impose tougher gun laws across the nation.
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 a chemical weapons atrocity in Syria was a deep state false flag operation designed to drag Donald Trump into war against President Assad.
In 2018, David Hogg, a pupil at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, survived the massacre of 14 youngsters and three staff by troubled ex-student Nikolas Cruz, 19, on February 14.
David is one of a number of survivors who have appeared in the media passionately calling for action to prevent a repeat of the horror at other US schools.
Since the incident, the 22-year-old has been the subject of unfounded claims that he is a crisis actor who was briefed before the shooting by the local FBI.
Conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, is one of the biggest believers and propagators of the idea that certain atrocities, like the Sandy Hook shooting, were staged.
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According to AP, in October 2022, the 48-year-old was ordered "to pay nearly $1 billion to Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims’ relatives and an FBI agent, who said he turned their loss and trauma into years of torment by promoting the lie that the rampage was a hoax.
The $965 million verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns."
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