Monday, May 14, 2018 | 2 a.m.
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There was a time when the term “conspiracy theorist” brought to mind an image of an individual who, while odd and perhaps even deluded, was perfectly harmless.
That’s changed, especially when it comes to people who believe that mass shootings are being faked as part of an effort to take guns away from Americans.
These individuals are paranoid, dangerous and hurtful. They have attacked people they accuse of being “crisis actors” on social media, and have occasionally gone beyond internet trolling to act in person.
The Washington Post recently published a chilling story involving a 31-year-old New York woman who became targeted by conspiracists as an actor portraying Emma Gonzalez, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who has become a leading voice for gun-safety measures in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the school in Parkland, Fla.
The New York woman, also named Emma Gonzalez, began getting strange messages after the tragedy, such as, “You haven’t been in high school for a long time. Why are you posing as a bald student?” The comment referred to the younger Gonzalez’s close-cropped hair.
From there, things got scarier. Someone called one of the older Emma Gonzalez’s former employers to suggest she needed to be questioned by authorities, and soon she learned that people were finding and posting the addresses of homes where she had lived.
The most unsettling moment came when a man showed up at her current workplace, pointed his phone camera at her, called her name and said, “Emma, you’re real.” The entire ordeal left the older Gonzalez afraid to walk in her neighborhood, so much so that she had begun carrying her house key between her fingers so it would jab someone if she had to hit them in self-defense.
Searching usernames of people who’d tried to follow Gonzalez, the Post tracked down the man who gone to her workplace. He identified himself as a “false-flag researcher” who contends that the shooting in Florida, as well as the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, were faked.
Although the man indicated he wasn’t a gun-rights advocate, the deranged theory he’s promoting is rooted in irrational fears about gun control — a sickness that has been stoked by Fox News, Alex Jones and the like.
The irony of this is that those who are wrapped up in this behavior are exactly the people who shouldn’t be allowed to possess firearms, because of their paranoia and delusions. With their predatory, unhinged behavior, they invite themselves to be placed on law enforcement watch lists.
In Las Vegas and other communities where mass shootings have occurred, we know how damaging and profoundly disturbing it is to hear people saying that the tragedies were faked.
In the Oct. 1 shooting, theories that the tragedy was a sham orchestrated by the Deep State popped up within hours, while victims were still in surgery. How deranged would someone have to be to claim the shooting was a false flag?
If there’s any good news on this front, it’s that victims are fighting back. Jones has been sued by parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which Jones contended was “a giant hoax.”
Here’s hoping the parents prevail. Jones has his First Amendment rights, but when exercising those rights causes harm, that’s not acceptable.
And that’s what is going on here. These conspiracy theorists aren’t just oddballs contending that alien beings built the pyramids or the Apollo moon landings were filmed in a Hollywood studio, they’re disturbed individuals who are creating emotional distress for people, some of whom are already suffering unimaginable pain while others are completely uninvolved.
Those who are behind this awful phenomenon need help, and their tormenting needs to stop.
