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Misinformation is spreading rapidly
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Jun 01, 2022
In the short week since a fatal mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the far-right has reared its heads in the cruelest of ways with conspiracy theories about the incident.
Like the many mass shootings in the US that preceded Uvalde, nonbelievers and school shooting deniers are questioning the legitimacy of the incident.
Conspiracy theorists claim that the Uvalde shooting was a “false-flag” operation with crisis actors involved.
The 1.7 million members on the popular “r/Conspiracy” subreddit were fed a ton of misinformation recently by one of the moderators who felt the need to share their conspiracy regarding the Uvalde school shooting.
They claim that there is a “major glitch in the mainstream news narrative” after seeing two different interviews of two different men who claimed to be the father of 10-year-old victim Amerie Jo Garza, Angel Garza and Alfred Garza.
“CNN and NBC interview two completely different individuals posing as the grieving ‘father’ of 10-year-old victim Amerie Jo Garza. Neither is remotely convincing,” Sabremesh wrote.
“This is a major error. Either one or both of the men posing as Amerie Jo Garza’s father is a fraud. The networks can’t get their story straight.”
Instead of thinking about the world of possibilities as to why one of the victims would have two fathers, they immediately went into “crisis actor” mode, as did some other Reddit users.
The truth of the matter was that the two men were actually the girl’s fathers — one was her stepfather and the other was her biological father, according to Amerie’s obituary.
They were both interviewed separately because both men are grieving the loss of their child, as are many other families. Both men have the same last name.
“Low credibility ‘debunk’,” replied Sabremesh when someone corrected them. “Both of these ‘Mr. Garza’s’ claimed to be her father, not step-father.”
Of course, Sabremesh fails to realize that many step-fathers call themselves fathers.
This type of misinformation and denial is a common theme that occurs after school shootings — most notably in QAnon circles.
It happened with Sandy Hook in Newtown and Stoneman Douglas in Parkland.
People claimed that the students in the Parkland shooting were “crisis actors” who were paid to protest against current gun laws and ask for gun control.
They thought that Sandy Hook was a “hoax” and that it was a government “false flag” operation — some tragedy that is planned out to push a certain political agenda forward.
Now, conspiracy theorists are trying to say the same thing about Uvalde, which was the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook.
The push for gun control seems to be the loudest it’s ever been after the Uvalde school shooting claimed the lives of 19 children as young as eight years old, and two teachers.
Delegitimizing these deaths by claiming they are fake will not stop the calls for stricter gun laws.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. He is a graduate of Rutgers University. Keep up with his rants about current events on Twitter.