Library of Congress Book festival. Its great to see the crowd here on the stage. Thank you again. [applause] if you missed any of the authors todayup please go on and catch p with the marvelous offers that have been parted so far. We have a lot to cover so on to the discussion. I will there is always been conspiracy kind of wrapped around i whether its from the revolutionary war or to the cold war to the assassination of jfk to the murders of innocent children in newtown and a september 11 to january 6th. Today we are here to discuss the struggles that have been dealt to the nation. Joining us today as the professor of history at Boston University and the author of the book a story of faith and conspiracy and revolutionary america. [applause] and joining him as the New York Times writer and author of the new book sandy hook an american tragedy and the battle for truth, elizabeth williamson. [applause] welcome to both of you. I want to ask you first just a couple of weeks ago the verdict for alex jones came down. Have you spoken to the families and how are they reacting to it . I did almost immediately and throughout the trial which i was covering for the New York Times they were weighing in and they were particularly gratified by the confrontation in the courtroom that scarlet lewis whose son jesse lewis died at the sandy hook had with alex jones for 90 minutes she was on the stand and addressed the responses to every question to him personally and held him to account so that was something that really cheered them. How are they coping . I know this is in the end of the line. Theres a couple more hearings. How areel they feeling moving forward . I hesitate to characterize anyone or describe anyone feeling to the entire group or even to speak for them, but they are absolutely determined to hold alex jones and the other conspiracy theorists who supplied w this content and harassed their families to account. [applause] when i started by said conspiracy theories had been part of the country for more than 200 years. The book started at 200 years ago but i do want to quote something from elizabeths book and i will pick it to you. You write conspiracy rumors can be a collective response to depsychological threats which ae defined as an attack by outsiders on a groups identity, values, faith or politics. Those last items seem to be the common denominator from 200 years ago to today. What started it back then . It runs back in angloamerican thinking to the reign of elizabeth 1 so you have a kind of belief that somehow people either believe the rights or liberties are being infringed on, the group is being threatened into thereve been different contexts thats occurred but its something thats deeply ingrained in the political and social thought that somehow liberty or personal autonomy or Group Identity is a threat by those in power so that is a very common theme in the angloamerican thinking from the time of elizabeth 1 at the time of the beginning of the late 16th and early 17th century until today as suggested. Does it seem like the common denominator of fear and Everything Else is what is being recognized to move these theories forward whether its fear or religion or misinformation . Im going to point to brandon because he has a lot to say about this. Its often in cases where people feel as you say they feel something is threatened and im not surprised in the sense of what elizabeth has written about the issue in the Second Amendment its one of the central fears and that has run back to the revolutionary generation as fear of a Standing Army or overreaching government or that the government is going to somehow infringe your rights or somehow personal autonomy and that has run back deeply in the society and was a major issue in the generation and why it also ultimately leads to the Second Amendment and continues to be an issue since then. One of the things you talked about in your book of the Second Amendment and freedom of speech where is it freedom of speech and when is it that you are in sliding a rumor or bad Conspiracy Theory . When youre spreading lies that harm Vulnerable People or any people and have been debunked countless times there is a penalty for that. Free speech does and protect that although conspiracy theoriststs generally tend to claim that it does. Attacks on people, knowing they are false, the First Amendment doesntt protect that. How did they deal with it 200 years ago . The conspiracy had corrupted the monarchy and ministry in the British Government and the revolution was mobilized on that belief. Once that regime began to take shape there were people who believed that the regime had been corrupted so. People came to oppose the regima and use that kind of what we would consider conspiratorial language because. Mobilized and resistance. One of the things of course is the factor of media when it comes to reporting whats happening. You wrote about this very well. How does about reporting contribute to bad furious . So, what happens in the chaos after a major event or mass tragedy is of course in the rush to report to americans what happened, mistakes are made. There was this idea of a second shooter but that is something that often crops up, for example, so theres always a balance to be struck and making sure that its accurate and what conspiracy theorists after the event tend to do is point to anomalies in the reporting an essay the official narrative is false or wrong or willfully being misrepresented thats where you have to kind of pitch a perfect game when youre reporting on these tragedies although its not possible in many cases because youre getting information from authorities who are trying to teachhe it together to make sure the information doesnt go out and can be recognized later. I see hopeful developments in the reporting after these mass tragedies. Making sure the details are correct, questioning and that was very important because the police narrativese was false. You have to be respectful to the families like not repetitively naming the gunmen or focusing on the exclusion of the victims and their families and putting them first and foremost in the reporting and being respectful and doing so. The one medium thats being used as social media whether its twitter or facebook or youtube how did these entities make things worse for f the families . And reporting on the event to the Conspiracy Theory you have people that say this part of the narrative is incorrect ray is being manufactured or concocted by the federaled government in particular. But social media in general is what gives a megaphone to people who question these events and these official reports. The conspiracy theorists can speak to this and were often isolated in earlier times they had to rely on wordofmouth reprint but social media to speed around the world and again adherence not just in the handfuls of the scores. The generation was also living through the expansion of the means of communication at the same way that we are. Newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, sermons, so information got out as the revolution mobilizes in the 74 and 75 the opportunity to spread information increased geometricallyn and what amounts to the struggle of what is accurate and what is not accurate. We are engaged in a radical experiment in the democratization in the spirit of knowledge or the massive new marketingio information and its hard t for people to sort that information and uncomfortable understanding of the basic things, so you have the legacy media and social media theres a tremendous amplification of whats available and theres not much of anything in the ability to make sense of what youre hearing and whats accurate and whats not. It went on with a revolutionary generation as well. The fear that protestantism is somehow being undermined by the upper end there is no catholic conspiracy that they believed there was to seize control of thero british empire. It allowed things to percolate. There is a lack of kind of control of information. Whatas happened is the institutions appear and they have a kind of agenda and communicatend in certain ways. A lot of people are left out of that or they have an incomplete sense of whats going on so they are left to sort things out themselves. Its not that different from people trying to sort through which website is valid and who doesnt know anything about the situation and has an ax to grind. One thing i did actually because of some of the families they kind of started the domino effect of how the social media were regulating what information was put out there. When we speak about the dramatic uptake in social media, in thed book i talked to a womn whose daughter was injured in the i Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, and i asked her and in the aftermath laurie became very activein in the guncontrol movement so she was out there a lot, speaking before the state legislature, she was pushing for new Gun Legislation so she was very visible and i asked did anyone come up to you and contact you on social media and call you a liar or someone who was part of a government plot. She went through her Facebook Page and said we really dont see anything, but the thing was that was 2007. The shooting occurred in 2012. In those five years in 2007, there were maybe 5 million sent out a day. In 2012 there were 5 million every second. Five years later when sandy hook happened there were 1 million so you can just see this beyond that happens when they are put out and as brandon said, with the implausibility of the vetting whichng of the Facebook Accounts are accurate and which ones are based on the fact and what is just malicious. Making sure these internet trolls were held accountable what method did he make to make sure twitter and facebook and youtube did the right thing . The father of the youngest sandy hook victim had a Technology Background and could see it wasnt just a oneoff theory or something built on gun control and out of the realistic expectation that Gun Legislation would result from the tragedy. He knew that this was a foundational story for how the information and the fulls narrativeses have spread in our society and with a predictor and kind of morning on where we are today in the post january 6 environment and the kind of world that we are steeped with online, so there are thousands of the videos calling on the flyers and saying facebook can you take some of the material down. He gotso nothing and described e never got anything related to the response. To call attentionte to what was going on he did all that in the newspapers and interviews, powerful interviews on the radio, bbc. He called out the companies and shamed them and called out the individual conspiracy theorists swho were generating so much truth that his family was being threatened and harassed and forced to move because people kept publishing their home address online. At the actual danger that they were in because of these lies and if theres anything the social Media Companies respond to, its public shaming and thats what he was doing so he began doing that and he continues to do that. He is the true hero of the story and the final thing and now they do Pay Attention to him, they go to him first and he reports the material conspiracy theorists always felt like they were just on the fringe. When there is a sense of disorder, these kind of things move to the center of the ediscussion when the society has more stability. There is the velocity on a scale of information in this vast change that happened in the revolutionary generation as well and it took them 40 years to stabilize. Of thean American Revolution doesnt really fully stabilize until the Second Party System emerges in the 1820s. Itos was at the beginning of the explosion of social media that it is a test to see how we can have a Stable Society with this muchow information moving this quickly and they are struggling to make sense of that and how fast people move and what they say with the governor of michigan would you like to tell the audience. Its a strong parallel in thatal you have a group of peope who feel like the governor or the state that they are in is a threat involved in some kind of broad action against them and its a case of the book i write against the protestant religion against the traditional practices and so ultimately they move into the position they think we are going to kill not only the governor of North Carolina but that you lead. They are hostile and want to kidnap and the people that have this m assassination in 1777 thy were both sort of extreme manifestations of much broader Belief Systems to their extreme and sort of irrational fear. We are going to kill everything in North Carolina and start the uprising tove get it done and similarly the idea. Before we get there its hopeless i should say and i want to read one passage from your book. I mean, that as a complement by the way. In the best possible way. You would not only do these claims around the sandy hook persist they have virtually every mass shooting since. It is a shocking statistic and it doesnt point to, i think its important to say this it doesnt point to politics or ideology as much as it does to psychology, and people find a sense of social belonging and adhering to these theories they find a community online. They are often lonely to those i interviewed for the book often have trauma in their backgrounds. They are looking for something. To get someone to disavow they areth resistant. Theyve often reinvented themselves. This is important for people so theres been a lot of research toto get people to be suspicious of these theories. People are recognizing the message the families have sent by talking with me and they sent every day to these local students that this is a problem. We are in a world of lies in not onlyal us as individuals but our democracy and that is huge. [applause] people are paying attention and people that are in the position to do something about this, there its the social Media Companies tightening up on their policies, whether its Congress Looking at new forms of legislation and by the way this is an bipartisan effort. Its the ability as we become more in the revolutionary generation people begin to come to an understanding of how do i sort information that seems rational to me from what does not and i think thats where we are. These social media things are new basically from 2012 just ten years seems like a long time but given the nature and the way that theyve insinuated themselves theyve insinuated themselves into every corner of existence so it will take a long time but if you look back at the societies that went through a similar much less rapid, they do go forward and find a path forward creating a stable order in their society and thats the hopeful thing but also an issue of education that if you understand its a question of looking at the society to what extent do you think that he has made an obscene amount of money on his website and mail supplements and what have you. To what extent do you think that he believes what he talks about who versus how much do you think hes recognizing riling people up so he can then make money . Thank you. Its a great question. As one of the individuals i interviewed for the book told me it doesnt matter if he believes it and by the way, he knows what happened. Its that people in his audience of tens of millions many of them believe the lie that he is spreading about it. He sells products to people that establish science, the federal government and many of our institutions, so there are the doomsday and things for their shoulders with diet supplements. He is definitely built an empire. You can see and i traced this in the book traffic to the website surges when he spoke about sandy hook so it resonates. Its a very cynical and ingenious Business Model that he is pursued and its not based on any genuine suspicion around the event itself. My name is alex. Misinformation can affect anyone. I believe we often feel it can be a problem that doesnt directly impact us particularlye when we see it on the confined realm of social media. Because of this when it takes root in our t personal lives or those close to us we can be caught off guard. How do you recommend we navigate to address the dangers of misinformation without damaging the relationships with others . I dont know if i have a recommendation for that. Ultimately one of the challenges it really is ultimately up to each individual and two way what they are doing. In certain terms of the consumption of information but i do think that its important if youre looking at something as tragic and important as sandy hookok that you come to an understanding i need to have an understanding of the sort of history and background to what happened before you go up and say okayou the person that said that theyy must be right. They have all the information about how this was. Its clear and anyone can amount to c almost anything on the internet. Theres very little check on it right now and you have to have the ability it means broadening the understanding of what youre learning andou finding on the internet and how it can be measured and sort of understood. I dont think that solves the problem, but i had a general questionio ia world where there is a lot more awareness and immediate reporting on the kind of events especially major tragedies, do you have any thoughts on how a journalist or kind of common person in taking all this information can handle the concepts in the immediate aftermath without bringing further harm or attention to the conspiracy . Great question. Thank you this is something i struggled with with the book and we struggle with every day. How dok you debunk the theories without drawing more adherence m to them. I tried to focus on, and i do this in the book religiously on the victims t of those theories rather than the substance of them. I sometimes see coverage of this that you can tell the conspiracy theorists like this because it glamorize is what they are doing and what they are saying. I try to focus on the impact. We didnt really talk about that here but people that have had to move a dozen times because their address was being put online and people were coming to their homes. People were looking and family members homes to gain through their trash, threatening their lives, defacing memorials. All these things. I try to focus on this because that stirs up people that are good people that will do things and to try to push more solutions. Do you know of any other shootings that have been treated the same way, the families of sandy hook and have other families moved so they wont to be treated the same way as these families . Ibe would say the number of moves is sort of a special case in a way because the sheer number they took a very forward role so they were instantly identifiable with the battle. They were targeted specifically for that. But yes, unfortunately people after the Las Vegas Shooting in their hospital beds were logging on to facebookg to post themselves as safe and seeing people calling them liars and Crisis Actors while they were still being hospitalized so it does happen after every shooting. So they were kind of the first. Good afternoon. Earlier you talked about the conspiracy theories as having a long tradition having spent quite a bit of time in the middle east i know it can spin a conspiracy as more of a human condition that exists in places they sensese secrets are being kept from them from various people like it exists in many of these governments does this feed into the idea somebody somewhere out there is hiding a s fact frm me and therefore i need to go somewhere else to an alternate sphere to find the real truth to sweep up that kind of information. My understanding from people that lived in the arab world and at the heart of the theory is in my view the belief that whatever is happening, somebody is benefiting from that end its a discernible movement of people that will benefit. Whether it be abolished the Second Amendment to do whatever it is. Once you have that there is the belief everything is the result of a conscious action of those that are going to benefit from this or get something they want from it. When you have that belief you can link it to everything literally everything and so it becomes hard to dissuade people for example that sandy hook happened orr holocaust deniers butt, its the belief that somew somebody is benefiting and that they are in control in a way that you are not and that its being hidden from you. You are the employee of a company and have the responsibility to the shareholders andns beneficiaries that might include publishing something that would generate internet traffic or something that could conspiracy contribute so how do you reconcile that a with also being a journalist and having the responsibility to present the truth, does that make sense . How to draw attention to the existence of this information that we are living in without glamorizing it or glorifying the actors and we just simply try never to do that and when you talk about generating traffic i find describing the battle for truth is the way i do it and that gains plenty of readers on its own because people recognize it is continuing into the right way to cover it is to talk about its impact on people. It seems pretty clear changes in the Communications Technology especially with of the internet and social media are driving civil similar defaults to what weve seen with the print media and looking back at the past eventually, if people figured out how to deal with the rise of the new forms of media but sometimes it can be a rough road with the war of religion or world war iiro so standing where we arere today, can we see just how rocky overrode as we figure out how to deal with the new forms of media or are these changes so greater in scope and magnitude than whats happened in the past that we have no idea where this is going to go . For historical context. How rocky overrode . Boulders are ahead. [laughter] its not going to be easy because we want to have a free and open society and enough society one of the risks is that youre going to have some issues that people in other words youre going to have in this case freedom of information thats unprecedented and youll have to learn to come to terms with that so i see a bold issue ahead in which we do struggle to come to terms with this. I certainly dont think west are near the end of that road right now. Technology is changing quickly and to society is changing quickly. One thing thats important to note and brandon puts this very well in reading his book i found myself reassured that we have these spasms in our history and that this is that something holy unprecedented and the parallel between the plot to kidnap and assassinate the leadership it tells you something that in itself is a little hopeful because you can see that this is a feature of our society, of our country, of our development and that these can be gotten over. Thank you for coming today. My question do you feel the theories will lessen or continue to grow after the alex jones trial . I think the victory that the families have achieved in bringing these lawsuits and now confronting him in court and by the way there are two more trials for the damages ahead including a big one and a couple of weeks in connecticut that is being brought by the families of eight sandy hook victims its highlighting this showing the human impact of it, the absolutely devastating affects it can have on people that are already traumatized so i think it makes other would be conspiracy purveyors think twice about what they are going to do. Not everybody has the resources alexod jones has to absorb these kind of judgments into verdicts, so thats my hope. I was going to ask you now i feel like alex jones is put aside is there another type thats on the horizon that could reformulate the formula that he did . Im going to give this to brendan because of the historical nature but yes there are many and thats partly because it is in our National Character to question unofficial narratives. Question unofficial narratives, be suspicious of authority and i would say in answeror to the question, we are at the end of this long and terrible epidemic. Theres a lot of of chris political division. We are now in the sort of shadow of the long and contentious unsuccessful wars so it depends what the course of events is going forward. If theres a longer period of relative stability, i think the inopportunity for this hardcore alex jones conspiracy to spread something will diminish. It wont go away and its never going away but if the society remains at a level of dislocation and turmoil that we are at right now because of the various challenges, it remains free fertile for it. It looks like we have time for one more question, one quick question. I was wondering if you had any recommendations for the audience how can we evaluate the information we see and what tips can we verify . Its a longer answer than we have time for but the trustworthy sources of information havent changed and imm not saying one shouldnt question my employer or other Mainstream Media accounts, but i think one is for people to get out of debt mode in which we have so much media out there and so many choices People Choose the one that closely corresponds with their political beliefs and its coloring the world in a way that makes them comfortable. One thing that is important if you look at the sources of the information or other visual things in other words coming across platforms helps you come to a rational conclusion about it its not just one source. Thank you for coming and we will see you soon the world changed in an instant about we were ready. Traffic soared and we never slowed down. 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