The rightwing conspiracy theories

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Surely this counts as one of the most unbelievable acts to discredit CNN, by a school shooting survivor, no less.

The family of Colton Haab, a student at the Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last week, provided a doctored email between Haab's father, Glenn Haab, and a CNN producer to media outlets.

Parkland shooting survivor's family shops doctored CNN emails to media - Business Insider

They left out something crucial, which changed the whole significance of the exchange and now it looked like CNN was dictating questions, but it wasn't.

And of course, Fox News ran away with it..

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And of course, a week or so later...

The father of a survivor of a mass shooting at a Florida high school admitted Tuesday that he altered an email exchange between him and CNN before sending it to other news outlets. The Associated Press reported that Glenn Haab acknowledged omitting some words from an email conversation with a CNN producer, but said he did not do it on purpose.  The exchange stirred controversy after Haab’s son, Colton, said on Fox News that CNN scripted a question for him to ask at a town hall event on school safety and gun laws last week.

Shooting survivor's father admits he altered email exchanges with CNN | TheHill

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Here is a guy who filmed a murder..

When Foreign Service officer Brennan Gilmore learned that there was going to be an alt-right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, he decided to attend as a counterprotester. What he didn’t realize is that his now-infamous video of a car driving into the crowd of counterprotesters would capture an American tragedy — and set him up as a target for death threats, hate mail, and doxxing.

“I am the center of these conspiracy theories that I’m behind the attacks in Charlottesville,” Gilmore told Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram. “The general outline of the conspiracy theory is there is a deep state that is trying to overthrow Donald Trump and I am an operative of it. Alex Jones and his conspiracy theory says I was paid $320,000 by George Soros to come to Charlottesville to orchestrate the event, and then to get on mainstream media and lie about what happened — which would undermine Trump’s administration.”

Alex Jones perpetuated conspiracy theories. Now he’s being sued. - Vox

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It would be comical, if it isn't so tragic..

Actress Roseanne Barr faced heavy criticism on social media this weekend after posting a tweet apparently indicating support for an online conspiracy theory claiming President Trump is involved in combating a global trafficking ring tied to the "deep state." In a tweet posted Friday night, the "Roseanne" star alleged that Trump was breaking up human trafficking rings and freeing "hundreds" of children in sex slavery around the world every month.

"President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over this world. Hundreds each month. He has broken up trafficking rings in high places everywhere. notice that. I disagree on some things, but give him benefit of doubt-4 now," the actress wrote. Barr's tweet was initially met with widespread confusion, with New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeting simply, "What?" Journalists quickly noted that Barr's claim appeared to indicate her support for a conspiracy theory that alleges the existence of a massive child-trafficking ring linked to rogue elements in the government tied to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

The conspiracy has been traced to an anonymous user identified as "Q" or "QAnon" on the online message board 4Chan. Twitter users noted that Barr has mentioned Q in past tweets as recently as November. The conspiracy theory is similar to the "Pizzagate" theory that led to a man firing shots inside a Washington, D.C., pizzeria in 2016 in an attempt to "investigate" the claims.

Roseanne Barr faces backlash over Trump conspiracy theory tweet | TheHill

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A woman named Emma Gonzalez was targeted by conspiracy theorists after she was mistaken for the Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor with the same name, The Washington Post reported Monday. The New York City resident told the Post that after the shooting she began to be flooded with messages from people accusing Emma González, the student, of being a “crisis actor.” González quickly became one of the most visible and active students advocating for gun control after the shooting. A Brooklyn-based chef, the Emma Gonzalez interviewed by the Post said people took images of her from an old cooking show she had shot with her friends and compared them to photos of the Parkland student, claiming they were the same person and the student had undergone plastic surgery.

Woman targeted by conspiracy theorists after being mistaken for Parkland survivor | TheHill

Amazing stuff, once again..

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Meanwhile, Fox News host Sean Hannity quickly pivoted to finding someone to blame for the multiple fatalities, and he decided on Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). According to Hannity, the “hateful rhetoric” Waters espoused, in the form of calling on voters to “push back” when they see White House officials in public, was responsible for the shooting.

“I’ve always said, I mean honestly,” Hannity said. “I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really Maxine? You want people to create — ‘call your friends, get in their faces, and Obama said that too.”

Hannity’s accusations were echoed by far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who recently filed charges for “assault” against Waters. “I wonder if the shooter in Annapolis today is a supporter of @RepMaxineWaters,” Loomer tweeted..

Fox News runs ideological purity test on newsroom that just experienced a mass shooting – ThinkProgress

They don't even wait for the facts to come out, that eager they are to blame 'the other side'..  Meanwhile, they 'forgot' this guy..

Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Thursday insisted that he "wasn't being serious" when he recently told two reporters that he “can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists.” Yiannopoulos's comments Thursday came shortly after a gunman opened fire in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Md., leaving at least five people dead and several others seriously injured. Authorities have taken a suspect into custody, but have not yet released an identity or motive. “You’re about to see a raft of news stories claiming that I am responsible for inspiring the deaths of journalists,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a Facebook post. “The truth, as always, is the opposite of what the media tells you.”

Milo Yiannopoulos: My call for shooting journalists was just a 'troll' | TheHill

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A shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper building in Annapolis, MD, caused multiple injuries and fatalities. Even before anyone knew details about the shooting, message boards known for their far-right vitriol reacted gleefully, echoing the anti-journalist rhetoric President Donald Trump has made so prominent.
On the “politically incorrect” boards in 4chan and 8chan, users immediately set out to comment on the breaking news, some dismissing it as a “false flag” meant to distract from Trump “winning all week,” or warning of “a parade of crisis actors” was forthcoming, echoing the narrative pro-Trump media pushed to dismiss survivors of the Parkland, FL, school shooting and their calls to reduce gun violence afterward. More disturbingly, a significant amount of users celebrated and encouraged the violent incident, celebrating what they saw as an attack on journalists.

Far-right online message board users celebrate Annapolis newsroom shooting

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Infowars host Alex Jones on Monday issued a threat toward special counsel Robert Mueller, accusing him of covering up sex crimes and suggesting he wanted to duel the former FBI chief in an imaginary gunfight. Jones made the comments on an episode of "The Alex Jones Show," first reported by Media Matters. "I mean, Mueller covered up for a decade for [Jeffrey] Epstein kidnapping kids, flying them on sex planes, some kids as young as seven years old reportedly, with big perverts raping them to frame people," Jones says in the video, referring to billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes after being accused of soliciting multiple teenage girls as young as 13.

Alex Jones threatens Mueller: ‘You're going to get it, or I'm going to die trying’ | TheHill

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Just let this sink in for a moment, in all it's abject horror..

This week, the new york times reported that Alex Jones, InfoWars founder and professional peddler of lies, is seeking more than $100,000 in court costs from the family of Noah Pozner, one of the 20 children who were murdered in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Jones is seeking that amount to recover the court costs involved with his legal defense: Veronique De La Rosa and Leonard Pozner, Noah’s mother and father, sued Jones for defamation because of the conspiracy theories he spread about the Sandy Hook murders. Jones insisted that the kids’ deaths were a great hoax, a performance staged by gun-control activists backed by the American government. As a result of that, Noah Pozner’s family says, they have been stalked and subjected to death threats by Jones’s legions of epistemically gullible yet digitally savvy followers—a fact that has, doxxing by doxxing, forced them to move seven times over the past five years, ever farther away from the body of their slain son.

To reiterate: Alex Jones is seeking money from the parents of a murdered child because of a series of lies that have cruelly compounded the family’s suffering since the initial tragedy—lies that Jones, himself, has spread.

The Lasting Trauma of Alex Jones’s Lies - The Atlantic

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And why do so many people believe in these conspiracy theories? Teleological thinking..

"We find a previously unnoticed common thread between believing in creationism and believing in conspiracy theories," says Sebastian Dieguez, a neuroscientist at the University of Fribourg, who described research newly published in the journal Cell Biology. "Although very different at first glance, both these belief systems are associated with a single and powerful cognitive bias named teleological thinking, which entails the perception of final causes and overriding purpose in naturally occurring events and entities." Teleological thinking involves ascribing intentions and purposes to features of the world that may not have any consciousness or desires at all. One example Dieguez gave is the thought that the sun rises to provide us light — when in reality the sun appears to rise in the sky because of the Earth's rotation in the solar system. These patterns of thought are "part of children’s earliest intuitions about the world," the authors, led by Pascal Wagner-Egger, note in the paper.

Scientists Identify a Key Cognitive Error that Could Explain Why People Believe in Creationism and Conspiracy Theories | Alternet