The right finds a new enemy: survivors of the Parkland shooting
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… former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a prominent surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign … may be known for something else: he’s the guy who’s criticizing the teenaged survivors of the Parkland mass-shooting, suggesting they may be puppets of nefarious liberal forces. He made the argument on CNN yesterday morning – he’s an official political commentator on the network – and repeated it again last night.
As the New York Times reported, Kingston is not alone.
[I]n certain right-wing corners of the web — and, increasingly, from more mainstream voices like Rush Limbaugh and a commentator on CNN — the students are being portrayed not as grief-ridden survivors but as pawns and conspiracists intent on exploiting a tragedy to undermine the nation’s laws.
In these baseless accounts, which by Tuesday had spread rapidly on social media, the students are described as “crisis actors,” who travel to the sites of shootings to instigate fury against guns. Or they are called F.B.I. plants, defending the bureau for its failure to catch the shooter. They have been portrayed as puppets being coached and manipulated by the Democratic Party, gun control activists, the so-called antifa movement and the left-wing billionaire George Soros.
The theories are far-fetched. But they are finding a broad and prominent audience online. On Tuesday, the president’s son Donald J. Trump Jr. liked a pair of tweets that accused David Hogg, a 17-year-old who is among the most outspoken of the Parkland students, of criticizing the Trump administration in an effort to protect his father, whom Mr. Hogg has described as a retired F.B.I. agent.
The right-wing pushback against these kids has been fierce, but just as importantly, it’s been widespread.
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