Elizabeth Williamson (3)

Early in Elizabeth Williamson’s “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth” the author recounts the tsunami of gifts people, businesses, and institutions sent to the parents of the murdered children, to the school, and to the town.

The motives for the gifts were clean and good.

But almost as soon as the gifts began arriving clouds appeared. Fraudsters created bogus funds and pocketed donations themselves. Rifts appeared among the parents about how the financial gifts should be distributed and a whole new bureaucracy had to be created to moderate the disputes.

And then, ultimately, envy appeared from those who had read the headlines and wondered why anybody should have cashed in on such a tragedy, parents or no parents.

It started with surprise, turned to resentment, then envy, and finally belief in a conspiracy.

Envy is a great motivating factor in this phenomenal work of journalism, something Williamson saw but, I think, not so clearly through the smoke of the truthers and the grifters who glommed on to a golden opportunity.

I can think of no better metaphor for the cancer in American society. Why was there no proper mental health support for the community? Why was the need for high powered rifles so pronounced that legislators fell silent? And why was “social” media so easily turned to anti-social ends?

In today’s America the supremacy of the individual trumps (sorry for the pun) community action at the most basic level until chaos supplants rational and clear thinking.

When I hear so-called right-leaning politicians (and really, folks, there is no “left” left in America) decrying the left for promoting communism (or “wokeness” the new code for communism) all I see is people afraid of ponying up for stuff that society will take from them one way or another.

Yes, consumer protection is needed in America. Yes, the rampant proliferation of firearms in America will force individuals to spend ridiculous sums to build “gated” communities, as if one can really “gate” a so-called freedom-loving people. And yes, global warming will force painful trade offs on who gets the shrinking water supplies in the southwest and who goes wanting.

These are just examples of a society that misses its communitarian roots, those forged in early New England even as the society pushed westward and displaced its indigenous peoples.

I thought Williamson did a good but not perfect job getting into the heads of the truthers, trying to disentangle their motives for making the survivors lives hell on earth. The truthers accused the parents of staging the tragedy. They accused various government agencies of covering up the grifters, and they accused the lame-stream media of covering up a charade.

I think Williamson understated the role envy played in the motivations of the truthers. I may be wrong, but I see it much more plainly in everyday life.

I thought her takedowns of Alex Jones, of the social media platforms, and the opportunist right were both necessary and profound.

But these are not just American problems. In this regard, America is not exceptional. Not two weeks ago I was forced to listen to a conspiracist ranting about the control of the Bank of Canada by internationalist forces right in my own store in Toronto.

These crazies took over the streets of Ottawa and Paris and, I think, run the Kremlin. They don’t trust their communities to act on their behalf. They don’t trust their neighbours who after all make up government. And they sure don’t trust what they see with their own eyes: that any guy with a gun is just any guy with a gun.

What I found most extraordinary in this story is that it has a hero and that’s why I kept reading on. Without spoiling the story for you, let me just say that a few people did not accept victimhood without a fight.

It was a fight well worth having, a fight which yielded some amazing results.… (altro)

This was a very hard book to read, even though its focus is not entirely on that awful day in December 2012 when 20 children and 6 educators were brutally murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It does start with that event, and the descriptions are heartrending--kissing your child as he leaves for school not knowing that is the last time you will see him alive--and brutally graphic. However, most of the book focuses on the aftermath of the tragedy that day. That day was bad enough, but then came the brutalization, the torture and harassment of the families of Sandy Hook by the conspiracy theorists.

As the lies and conspiracy theories took over the internet, and as people began to believe the lies they heard and read about on the internet, they began to insert themselves into the lives of these grieving families, attacking them on the street, attacking their relatives and friends. These were families who had experienced the ultimate tragedy, and their suffering was increased monumentally by the people who believed the conspiracies. Alex Jones and his InfoWars organization was one of the purveyors of these lies and conspiracy theories, and many of the harassers of the Sandy Hook families got their information from Jones's show. A large part of the book discusses Alex Jones and how he profited immensely from exploiting these conspiracy theories.

The book demonstrates how the internet amplified and spread the lies, how people are influenced to take action by these lies, and draws a direct line from Sandy Hook to the events of January 6.

A difficult but worthwhile read.

3 1/2 stars… (altro)

This is not a recounting of the murder of 26 children and adults in Newtown, CT in 2012. Instead, the author looks at the conspiracy theorists who claimed that the child "crisis actors" were still alive, or that the entire tragedy was a "false flag". Her largest and most heinous target is Alex Jones. She provides background, though no clear explanations, of why he turned out the way he did (hint: Daddy's cash). She takes you into the room where he first sucked up to Donald Trump. And she cites the many, many times he and his staff doxxed Sandy Hook parents, and how his worst followers took the bait and demanded, among other travesties, that one parent have his son's body exhumed to prove that the child was murdered. Progress is made, by brave parents, by police and law enforcement stepping in (not all the time) to have the worst liars arrested, and, reluctantly, the social media companies finally de-platform Jones and other liars. Her most valuable revelations are her judgments on why fake news purveyors become viral, but, unfortunately, no solutions except to hire expensive lawyers and hope for extreme financial punishments.

Quotes: “Some mass delusions transcend politics. What we’re left with is dark personality traits, the “Dark Triad” : narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.”

“Conspiracists act on an impulse common in all of us, “atomized, isolated individuals”, ripe for joining a movement that affords them fellowship with other souls obsessed with a desire to escape from reality.”

“The more time people spend in this alternative world, the harder it is for them to leave. Turning back would prompt attacks by their group, and acknowledging error could bring shame at their gullibility and a reckoning with the pain they’ve inflicted.”… (altro)