How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

[EvilEyeFleegle]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

 

[OldLady]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

 

[TNHarley]

Who cares if the retards that suck on detergent do rallies that beg the govt to take away freedoms?
Let the snowflakes do what they do.
Quit being assholes and unnecessarily bashing easily impressionable youth

 

[TNHarley]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

Yes one side bashes them unnecessarily
The other side looks at them like they are messiahs.
Normal people dont think twice about it.

 

[Correll]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.
....

I got this far.



Putting them forth to make political attacks and then whining about them being politically attacked BACK, is the act of a disingenuous ass.

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Let's see if I;'ve got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

Or..perhaps..someone posted something of interests and a complete partisan hack once again attacked the posters..and had nothing to say at all about the content...showing the world what an ass he is. I'm not a leftist...I just hate the Alt/right..and the mindless conspiracy tinfoil hats people who would lie about children trying to make a difference.

BTW..the post is from the WaPo....I posted most of the article because poofters like you never read the links..and respond in odd and off topic fashions--I see I was unsuccessful in my attempt.

 

[DrLove]

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

I'm embarrassed that any of us are still bothering to engage these mouth breathers.

It's honestly not very funny anymore.

 

[EverCurious]

Most of the folks who have "dismissed" these kid's (and the lefts) "call to action" have done so because these kids are too young to know what they're talking about - something that unfortunately can be said of the adults who bring them forward.

The only ones I really see calling these kids "villans" are the left frankly.

 

[martybegan]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

They have no gravitas, just the fact they were in a place where a tragedy happened. Most of them were probably left leaning anyway.

The left is using pure appeal to emotion in the hopes of rousing up the base. the problem is most of their base in in districts and States where they are already ahead.

I don't see how this helps them in districts they need to win, and States they need to win, that hold gun rights as something very serious.

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.
....

I got this far.



Putting them forth to make political attacks and then whining about them being politically attacked BACK, is the act of a disingenuous ass.

And there you have it..."I got this far"..refusing to even be informed...forming an opinion..without all the info..is the mark of a moron.
Has it occurred to you..that no one 'put them forward'? Not at first...this was their idea...yeah--everyone jumped on it....and the kids aren't 'messiahs"--but the level of hatred spewed upon them..by many posters here...is shameful.

 

[martybegan]

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

I'm embarrassed that any of us are still bothering to engage these mouth breathers.

It's honestly not very funny anymore.

You just aren't able to counter most of our points without regressing to emotional appeals and accusations of "ist/ic/ism"


And again, my IQ vs. yours any day of the week "Dr"

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Most of the folks who have "dismissed" these kid's (and the lefts) "call to action" have done so because these kids are too young to know what they're talking about - something that unfortunately can be said of the adults who bring them forward.

The only ones I really see calling these kids "villans" are the left frankly.

Did you read the article? There are a lot right here in this forum..just look at the thread titles. Are you saying that all these posters are leftists?

 

[martybegan]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.
....

I got this far.



Putting them forth to make political attacks and then whining about them being politically attacked BACK, is the act of a disingenuous ass.

Has it occurred to you..that no one 'put them forward'? Not at first...this was their idea...yeah--everyone jumped on it....and the kids aren't 'messiahs"--but the level of hatred spewed upon them..by many posters here...is shameful.

They are at rallies holding signs calling NRA members murderers and people are just supposed to give them a pass?

They own the rhetoric, they own the response.

People on the right have given up fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

Yes one side bashes them unnecessarily
The other side looks at them like they are messiahs.
Normal people dont think twice about it.

They are the flavor of the day as elevated into stardom by the media and groomed by people with an agenda to express all the de rigueur leftist orthodoxy.

As far as thinking about is concerned, what I find interesting is how few people even ask why they are now such media darlings.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.
....

I got this far.



Putting them forth to make political attacks and then whining about them being politically attacked BACK, is the act of a disingenuous ass.

Has it occurred to you..that no one 'put them forward'? Not at first...this was their idea...yeah--everyone jumped on it....and the kids aren't 'messiahs"--but the level of hatred spewed upon them..by many posters here...is shameful.

They are at rallies holding signs calling NRA members murderers and people are just supposed to give them a pass?

They own the rhetoric, they own the response.

People on the right have given up fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

Yeah....you put yourself out there and ya gotta expect blow back. Snot nose kids or not

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

They have no gravitas, just the fact they were in a place where a tragedy happened. Most of them were probably left leaning anyway.

The left is using pure appeal to emotion in the hopes of rousing up the base. the problem is most of their base in in districts and States where they are already ahead.

I don't see how this helps them in districts they need to win, and States they need to win, that hold gun rights as something very serious.

This has what to do with the topic? Have any comments on the lies and disinformation perpetrated by the Right-wing fruitcakes?

 

[OldLady]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Such is the reprehensible right; their fear is matched only by their hate.

 

[martybegan]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

They have no gravitas, just the fact they were in a place where a tragedy happened. Most of them were probably left leaning anyway.

The left is using pure appeal to emotion in the hopes of rousing up the base. the problem is most of their base in in districts and States where they are already ahead.

I don't see how this helps them in districts they need to win, and States they need to win, that hold gun rights as something very serious.

This has what to do with the topic? Have any comments on the lies and disinformation perpetrated by the Right-wing fruitcakes?

I am saying they are open to critique as they have decided to enter the political arena. Being at a tragedy does not make them immune.

You call it vilifying, I call it calling on their bullshit.