chilling article on Slate on school shooting truthers. THIS is what the US is up against. [View all]

[NewHendoLib]

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/06/shooting-school-texas-uvalde-sandy-hook-conspiracy.html

“Prove to the World You’ve Lost Your Son”

How a Tulsa grandmother became a vicious Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist—in her own words.

BY ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
JUNE 13, 20223:02 PM

Hours after the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead, it began. “I’m sorry but I have to say it,” one poster wrote on a far-right message board. “We have to have another false flag shooting, killing small children.”

“Those directing false flags know the emotional response from the Buffalo shooting is wearing down for the sheep,” another person posted online. “So they did another one in Uvalde Texas to reinforce the response. Don’t be fooled. False Flag season is here.”

This script could have come from 10 years ago—and in fact, some of the same people spreading lies about Uvalde have been doing it for a decade. I have spent the past four years tracking the rise and spread of misinformation about a tragedy heartbreakingly similar to Uvalde: the Sandy Hook massacre. The haunting echoes between the two shootings don’t stop at the young victims.

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The story of Lenny Pozner shows how these misinformation campaigns proceed. Two years after his son, Noah, 6, was murdered at Sandy Hook, Pozner started to receive chilling messages online. “I want to hear the ‘slaughter,’ and I won’t be satisfied until the caskets are opened,” one message read. “Prove to the world you’ve lost your son,” another demanded.

The missives in this case arrived from a woman with the online handle “gr8mom.” They were not the first, and wouldn’t be the last. After Sandy Hook, Infowars broadcaster Alex Jones had spread the same bogus theory that the shooting was a staged pretext for federal gun control, with the families of the victims in on the plot. The families fought back. In 2018, 10 of them, including Pozner’s, sued Jones for defamation. They won late last year, and soon, juries will decide how much Jones must pay them in damages.

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A long, but excellent and depressing read. This could apply to election truthers (the big lie folks and the cult that follow them). No idea how we will be able to deal with all of this - and it seems to be getting worse.