We support cspan as a public service. Good afternoon, everyone. Im achieved a mitigations mitigations officer for the library of congress, cant say this enough on behalf of my wonderful colleagues, welcome to the 2,022 library of Congress National book festival, great to see this huge crowd on the stage. [applause] if you missed any of the authors please go to lsc. Gov bookfast to catch up with how marvelous authors. We got a lot of cover so on to our discussion. Almost as long as how old the nations there has always been conspiracies wrapped around it whether it is from the revolutionary war to the cold war to the assassination of jfk to the murders of innocent children in newtown, september 11th to january 6th. Today we are here to discuss these struggles delta to our nation. Joining us today is professor of history at Boston University and author of a story of faith and conspiracy in revolutionary america. [applause] joining him his New York Times writer and author of the new book sandy hook american strategy and the battle for truth, elizabeth williamson. [applause] welcome to both of you. I want to ask you a couple weeks ago the verdict for alex jones came down. Have you spoken to any of the families and how are they reacting . I did almost immediately and throughout the trial, they were weighing in and they were particularly gratified by the confrontation and the court room Scarlett Lewis whose son jesse lewis died at sandy hook had with alex jones. 90 minutes she was on the stand and she addressed her response to every question to him personally and held him to account. That was something that really cheered them. How are they coping . I know it is not the end of the line yet. A couple more hearings. How are they feeling moving forward . I hesitate to characterize or ascribe 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 supply the content and harass their families, to account. [applause] when i started, conspiracies have been part of the country for more than 200 years. Brendans book started 200 years ago. I want to quote something and then pivot to brendan. Youre right conspiracy rumors can be a collective response to psychological threats which is defined as an attack by outside or on a groups identity, values, faith or politics, those last items seem to be the common denominator from 200 years ago through today. What started it back then . Conspiracy theory runs back in angloamerican thinking to the reign of elizabeth i at least and probably before that so you have a kind of belief that somehow people either believe their rights or their liberties are being infringed on, their group is being threatened and theres different contexts in which that has occurred but it is something deeply ingrained in angloamerican political and social politics that somehow liberty or Group Identity is somehow always at threat by those in power so that is a very common theme in angloamerican political thinking from the time of elizabeth i, at the beginning of the late 16th and 17th century until today. It seems the common denominator of fear is being weapon iced to move these theories forward . Whether it is fear or religion or misinformation . Brendan has a lot to say about this. It is often i think in cases where people feel as you say that something is threatened. Im not surprised in the sense of what elizabeth has written about the the issue, the Second Amendment issue was at the core of it since its one of the central fears and that fear goes back to the revolutionary generation, fear of a standing army, fear of an overreaching government, fear that the government is going to somehow infringe your rights or your personal autonomy and that is run back deeply in society and it was a major issue in the revolutionary generation and why it ultimately leads to the Second Amendment, and continues to be an issue since then. Something you talked about in your book is the Second Amendment and freedom of speech which tends to be defense for many of them. Where is the line. Where is freedom of speech and inciting a rumor or bad Conspiracy Theory . During the trial the lawyers for the sandy hook families had a great phrase that i think should be put on a tshirt actually. It said speech is free but lies you pay for. When you are spreading lies that harm Vulnerable People or any people and are patently false and have been debunked countless times there is a penalty for that. Free speech does not protect that, although conspiracy theorists generally tend to claim that it does. At tax on people knowing that they are false is prohibited. The First Amendment does not protect that. How did they deal with at 200 years ago . In a since the revolution mobilized on the belief a conspiracy had corrupted the british monarchy and the. Ministry, the British Government and the revolution was mobilized on that belief. Once the revolutionary regime began to take shape people believed that regime had been corrupted. It works both ways, both the regime and the regimes people come to oppose the regime both use that kind of what we would consider conspiratorial language because they believed the dispensation of power was controlled by groups of individuals or groups of individuals who wanted to gather as much power to themselves and even in Something Like the fear the Second Amendment will be abridged, theres that fear that somehow youre going to lose that and that was how the revolution was mobilized and resisted in certain respects. So much has changed obviously since the revolutionary war, one of the big things is the factor of media when it comes to reporting what is happening. You wrote about this very well. How does bad reporting contribute to bad theories . What happens in the chaos after a major event or mass tragedy is of course that in the rush to report to americans what happened mistakes are made. I saw after a recent mass shooting this idea of there is rarely a second shooter but that is something that often crops up for example. Theres always this balance to be struck between getting the information to people quickly and making sure it is accurate and what conspiracy theorists after these events tends to do is point to anomalies in the reporting and say these are proof of the fact that it didnt happen that way, that the official narrative is false or wrong or willfully being misrepresented. And that is where we pitched a perfect game when reporting on these tragedies although that is just not really possible in many cases because you are getting information from authorities who themselves are trying to piece it together. During breaking news like this in a competitive media market, things changed in newsrooms, make sure this information isnt weapon eyes did later. I see hopeful developments in reporting after these mass tragedies in particular and i want to give a shout out to my colleague at the Texas Tribune whos here in the audience and his staff reported after ualde and you see the attention paid to make sure details are correct, questioning, that is very important after that because the Police Narrative was false and self protective and that is still being unpacked by the media and you have to be respectful to the families, doing things like not repetitively naming the gunman, not focusing on the government to the exclusion of the victims and their families including them first and foremost in your reporting and being respectful in doing so. Aside from the Mainstream Media, one big medium is social media, twitter or facebook or youtube, how did these entities make things worse for the families of sandy hook . And reporting on the event or the Conspiracy Theory . Both. Again, you have people who sees on the initial reporting to sort of say this detail was wrong and therefore this part of the narrative or even the entire narrative is incorrect or is being manufactured or concocted by the federal government in particular but social media in general is what gives a megaphone to people who question these events and these official reports and so that is something, conspiracy theorists can speak to this, often isolated and had to rely on wordofmouth or print or but social media allows a liar to really feed around the world and gain adherents not just in that handfuls or scores but in the millions and that happens within minutes. Obviously there was no twitter in the revolutionary war. How did people get together to form a group . It is interesting, the revolutionary generation was living through the expansion of the means of communication in the same way we are, newspapers, pamphlets, broad bills, speeches, sermons so information got out, as it mobilized in 17741775, the opportunity to spread information increase geometrically and that is why you get this sort of uncontrolled situation in some respects about the way information is passing, what amounts to a struggle over what information is accurate, what is not accurate and one thing that i thought about in our own time and what elizabeth writes about his we are engaged in a radical experiment in the democratization of the spread of knowledge or massive new marketing information it is hard for people to sort that information and come to an understanding of basic things so you have the legacy media and social media, terminus amplification and what is available and theres not much amplification of anything, but theres a decline in the ability to make sense of what you are hearing and what is accurate and what is not. That went on with the revolutionary generation as well. One of the big fears in the revolutionary generation is the fear that protestantism is somehow being undermined by hidden catholics in the upper end of the British Government including the king himself ultimately but it takes all even though it is completely false. There was no catholic conspiracy and the British Ministry but they believed there was the catholics were trying to seize control of the british empire. They can amplify things. Lack of information really allowed things to percolate. In many respects what happens is theres lack of control of information and what had happened in the revolutionary generation is two new institutions appear, committees of safety and committees of correspondence and so they have a kind of agenda in their behavior and they communicate in certain ways. A lot of people are left out of that or they have a sort of incomplete sense of what is going on so we sort things out, which website is valid and which one is introduced by someone who doesnt know about the situation and has an ax to grind. One thing i did notice, the families of sandy hook triggered the domino effect of how social media were regulating what information is put out. When we speak about the dramatic uptick in social media. In the book i talk to a woman named lori haas whose daughter was injured in the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and i asked her in the aftermath of that, lori became active in the guncontrol movement, she was out there a lot, demonstrating, speaking before state legislatures, pushing for new Gun Legislation so she was very visible and i asked her did anyone come up to your contact you, someone who was part of a government plot and she went through her Facebook Page and said no, really dont see anything but the thing was that was 2,007. Sandy hook shooting occurred in 2012. In those 5 years, in 2,007 there were maybe 5 million tweets sent out a day. In 2,012 there were 5 million every second. On facebook, when lori was not finding anything in 2,007 there were 20 million facebook users around the world. 5 years later when sandy 00 happened there were 1 billion so you can just see the speed and what happens when false theories are put out. The impossibility of vetting which of these Facebook Accounts is accurate, which ones based on the facts, which is just malicious. One of the parents, cantor members name, the father who took action making sure these internet trolls are held accountable, what method did he do to make sure twitter and facebook and youtube did the right thing . The father of noah pozner, the younger sandy hook victim had a Technology Background so he could see that sandy hook was not just a one off theory or even something built on gun control and out of the realistic expectation that Gun Legislation would result from this tragedy. What he knew was that this was a foundational story for how misinformation and false narratives have spread in our society and was a predictor, a bellwether for where we are today in the post january 6th environment and the kind of world of lies we are steeped with online. So he began by trying to appeal, as he would, to the social Media Companies, youtube, there are thousands of these videos out here calling us liars and Crisis Actors in saying this was false. Facebook, can you take some of this material down . Less so twitter because it was a smaller platform. He got nothing. He describes it as shouting at a locked iron door open up, he never even got anything relating to a response. He got auto messages and things like that so he started to use his power as a grieving father to call attention to what was going on here so he did opeds in the newspaper, he got some interviews, powerful interviews on the radio through bbc and he called out these companies and shamed them and also called out the names of individual conspiracy theorists who were generating so much missed truth that his family was being threatened and harassed and being forced to move because people were publishing their home address online so he started to talk about this secondary trauma that was being inflicted on them and the actual danger they were in because of these lies and if theres anything social Media Companies respond to it is public shaming and that is what he was doing so he began doing that. He continues to do that. He is a true hero of this story and the final thing he has done and now they do Pay Attention to him, they go to him first and he reports this material on behalf of not just the sandy hook families but a whole array of people being harassed online. The numbers about how social media has progressed since Virginia Tech is staggering. I want to ask you, from the revolutionary war to the Virginia Tech time or just september 11th, conspiracy theorists always felt they were just on the fringe then, i hate to say, become more mainstream now. Why do you think it was better controlled 200 years ago. It wasnt always better controlled. When society is in crisis and theres a sense of disorder these things move to the center of discussion when society has more stability. There is less chance for that movement to occur. What elizabeth said, you have our vast in the velocity of scale of information thats change. This happened in the revolution a generation and it took 40 years to stabilize, the American Revolution doesnt stabilize until the Second Party System emerges in the 1820s, 40 years later, in our own time we are at the beginning of this explosion of social media and it is a test in our society how to have a Stable Society with this much information moving quickly and people struggling to make sense of that information and how fast it can move and people say i think it is this way and someone says that, breaks down surety of understanding. Feels like history repeats itself. The story in your book, you can see the parallels in what happened with the governor of michigan. A strong parallel in the sense you have a group of people who feel the governor of the state they are in is involved in a broader action against them, the and against their protestant religion and practices and ultimately they move into position where they will kill not only the governor of North Carolina but the entire governing elite, try to kill him amid a diversionary slave uprising they are going to start. You get the same thing the governor of michigan in the sense you have a group, the real parallel is people who were hostile or wanted to kidnap the governor of michigan and the people who have this assassination plot in 1777 were both extreme manifestations of much broader Belief Systems that were carried out to their extreme and irrational degree, in some cases the fears they had was that there governor didnt share their religious beliefs which was true but they nonetheless carried out to the degree that we are going to kill the entire governing elite of North Carolina and start a slave uprising to get it done. The idea that somehow kidnapping the governor of michigan, where does that go . It is a strange solution to a problem of i dont like the governor of michigan or i will vote for the other candidate instead, it is a strange response which i can vote for somebody else, i dont have to kidnap the governor. We are taking questions shortly, there are two microphones in the aisle. If you have a question come up, before we get there we will keep talking. I have a question, elizabeth. Reading your book, your research and your reporting are outstanding for both of them. It does leave you feeling a little hopeless, i should say. I want to read one passage from your book. I mean that as as a compliment by the way. In the best possible way. You right, not only do a false flag claims around sandy hook persist, they have metastasized to virtually every mass shooting since. It feels like since sandy hook which is hard to believe which was 10 years ago, how more Mass Shootings have progressed in the past 10 years after that, the rumor ville and theories of gotten worse. Is there how do you think we can get hold of all this . It is true that now 1 5 of americans after every high profile mass shooting espoused the belief that that shooting was faked or staged. That is a shocking statistic. It doesnt point to it is important to say this, it doesnt point to politics or ideology as much as it does psychology. And people will find a sense of social belonging in adhering to these conspiracy theories, they find a community online, they are often lonely, the ones i interviewed for the book often have trauma in their background, they are looking for something and they are looking in the wrong places but it is the reason that once you try to get someone to disavow these conspiracy theories they are extremely resistant. They often reinvented themselves. Dont say they have developed an entirely new identity, some when i interview, a woman in the book, who had at House Cleaning business in tulsa, oklahoma. Being one of the most pernicious conspiracy theorists around sandy hook allowed her to reinvent herself as an author, a researcher, and investigative journalist. This is important for people so there has been a lot of research into trying to get people to be suspicious of these theories, use that natural suspicion in their personalities and their natures and that skepticism and apply it to when they see this material online and there has been a lot of hopeful success and breakthroughs in that area. The other hopeful thing is the fact that i am gratified so many people are here. It really says that people are recognizing the message the sandy hook families of send was by talking with me and they said every day through these lawsuits and that is that this is a problem. We are being steeped in a world of lies. It is affecting not only us as individuals but our democracy and that is huge. [applause] [applause] that is hopeful. People are paying attention and people who are in a position to do something about this, whether it is social Media Companies tightening up on their policies, whether it is Congress Looking at new forms of legislation, and this by the way is a bipartisan effort, and whether it is the big thinkers out there looking at the psychology behind this and trying to figure this out, those are all very hopeful signs. What can we learn from history to move forward . Going to elizabeth said it is the ability, as we become more just as in the revolutionary generation people begin to come to an understanding of how to i sort information that seems rational to me from what does not and i think that is where we are, but it takes as i said my earlier comment it takes time. These social media things are new. They come, talking about 2012, 10 years seems like a long time but it is not that long given the nature and the way they have insinuated themselves, how many our audience have sat in bed looking at social media, looking at tweets, facebook, almost everyone will have, they have insinuated themselves into every corner of our existence. It will take a long time but if you look back, earlier societies who went through a similar though less dramatic and less rapid but some of the parallel things they do find a path forward in the sense of creating a more stable polity and stable order in their society and that is the hopeful thing. It is also an issue of education that if you understand, shooting a 7yearold child is hard for me to believe anyone could believe that but it is a question of education and looking at the society i think. We have a lot of people lined up for questions starting with this gentleman here. I have a question about sandy hook in general and alex jones specifically, to what extent do you think he has made an obscene amount of money on his website. To what extent do you think he sincerely believes what he talks about versus how much do you think he is weapon icing riling other people up so he can then make the claim . Great question. As one of the individuals who i interviewed for the book who used to work for info wars told me it doesnt matter if he believes it and he knows it happened. It is that people in his audience of tens of millions many of them believe the lie that he is spreading about it. s Business Model is ingenious, he sells products to people who distrust traditional medicine, established science, the federal government, and many of our institutions so by dried food and things for their shelters, they are buying sky supplements which is an enormous business for him, people who distrust traditional medicine. He has definitely built an empire around these lies and you can see, i trace this in the book, traffic to his website surgeons when he spoke about sandy hook. It resonates with people and that leads to sales so it is a very cynical into ingenious Business Model he has pursued and it is not based on any genuine suspicion around the event itself. To my left. My name is alex. Misinformation and conspiracy can affect anyone. We often feel it can be a distance problem the doesnt impact us particularly when we see it on the confined realm of social media. When misinformation takes root in our personal lives or those close to us we can often be caught off guard. How would you recommend we navigate a conversation that addresses the dangers of misinformation damaging our interpersonal relationships . Do you want to take that . I dont know if i have a recommendation for that. One of the challenges we are facing is it is up to each individual to weigh what they are doing, their exposure to social media, their exposure to technology. In terms of the consumption of information. I do think it is important that if you are looking at something as tragic and important as sandy hook that you come to an understanding that look, i need to have an understanding of the history and background to what happened before you say the person who tweeted that must be right, they have all the inside information about how this was faked, clearly, anyone can mount almost anything on the internet. Theres little check on it right now and you have to have the ability, that falls on the citizen to develop their own citizenship, knowledge of their society, things around them, reading the newspapers, reading and broadening your understanding to see what you are learning and finding on the internet, how it can be measured and understood. I dont think that solves the problem. I had a general question. In a world where there is a lot more awareness in immediate reporting on these events that may involve or surround conspiracy theories, do you have any thoughts on a journalist or common person in taking this information can handle these concepts in the immediate aftermath of the reporting without bringing a further harm or attention to the conspiracy . Good question. It is important, this is something i struggled with with the book and we struggled with in the media. How do you debunk these conspiracy theories without drawing more adherence to them . I try to focus on, i do this in the book, religiously, on the victims of those theories rather than the substance of them and sometimes i see coverage of this that you can tell the conspiracy theorists like it because it glamorize is what they are doing and saying. I try to focus on the impact. We didnt really talk about that here but briefly, it is like people who have had to move a dozen times since the shooting because their address was online and people were coming to their homes, people looking in family members windows digging through their trash, threatening their lives, defacing memorials to the dead. All of these things. I try to focus on this because it stirs up people who are good people who will do things to try to push solutions. Do you know if any other shootings, have other families moved 10 times so they wont be treated the same time. What they had to go through is a special case in a way, i she her number because they took us a forward roll so they were instantly identifiable with the battle against the hoaxers so they were targeted specifically for that. Unfortunately the survivors of Mass Shootings, after the Las Vegas Shooting still in their hospital beds logging onto facebook 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, the sandy hook families were the first. Earlier you talked about conspiracy theories, having spent a bit of time, and and the human condition that include exists when they sensed secret are being kept from them from various people in many of these arab governments as well and the origin of these conspiracy theories when someone receives rightly or wrongly some kind of facts is being hidden, like Alex Jones Live in, because they preyed on their erroneous beliefs and to that extent the belief, shouldnt talk about shooters names, doesnt that feed, and the hucksters that sweep up that information. In the arab world, at the heart of all conspiracy theories is, someone is benefiting from that, discernible movement, whether it be to abolish the Second Amendment or do whatever it is to do, what you have is the belief that what you are seeing is a result of the conscious actions of certain actors who think they will benefit from this. When you have that believe, you can read it into everything. Literally everything. It becomes common and hard to dissuade people. Sandy hook happened or holocaust deniers, that the holocaust happened, if you want to believe that it is hard to dissuade people but the belief that somehow somebody is benefiting and in control of events in a way that youre not in control and is being hidden from you. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here today. I have a question about the ethics of journalism. On the one hand as a journalist you are the employ of a company and have your response ability to your shareholders and beneficiaries of the company which might include publishing something to generate internet traffic like a conspiracy mongering article that could contribute to conspiracy theories so how do you reconcile that with being a journalist and having that response ability to representing the truth to society. I think the earlier question spoke to a similar issue, how to draw attention to the existence of this climate of disinformation without glamorizing it or glorifying the bad actors. We just simply try never to do that. When you talk about generating traffic, when i write in the New York Times, describing this battle for truth is the way to do it and that gained plenty of readers on its own because people recognize this battle, it is continuing and the right way to cover it is talk about its impact on people. Thank you for the excellent talk. Changes in communications technology, with the internet and social media driving similar revolution in conspiratorial thoughts with the rise in print media, looking at the past, eventually people figure out how to deal with new forms of media, sometimes a rough road with things like wars of religion and world war ii so standing where we are today can we see how rocky a road is ahead of us as we figure out how to inform the media or are these changes so greater in scope and magnitude that we have no idea where this will go . How rocky a road . Folders are ahead. It is not going to be easy because we want to have a free and open society and in that society one of the risks is you have some issues, in other words in this case freedom of information that is unprecedented and how to come to terms with that. I see a boulder road ahead where we struggled to come to terms with this. We are not near the end of that road. Technology changing too quickly. One thing i think is important to note, brandons book puts this very well, i find myself reassured that we have these in our history and this is something unprecedented and the plot to kidnap and assassinate the leadership of North Carolina in 1777 versus 2020, Gretchen Witmer in michigan, it tells you something, it is a little bit hopeful, this is a feature of our society and these can be gotten over. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. Do you feel harmful conspiracy theories will grow after the alex jones trial . I think the absolute victory the families have achieved in bringing these lawsuits and confronting him in court and there are two more trials for damages ahead against alex jones including a big one in connecticut which is being brought by families of twee 8 sandy hook victims, highlighting this phenomena showing the human impact of it mother absolutely devastating effect it can have on people who are already traumatized. I think it makes other would be conspiracy purveyors think twice about what they are going to do. Not everybody has the resources alex jones does to absorb these judgments and verdicts. That is my hope. I feel like alex jones has been put aside. Is there another alex jones type on the horizon to reformulate the formula he did . I will punt this to brendan because of the historical nature here but yes. There are many and that is partly because it is in our National Character to question official narratives. Be suspicious of authority. In answer to your question we are at the end of this long and terrible epidemic. Theres a lot of political division, we are in the shadow of two long contentious and unsuccessful wars so it depends what the course of your ands is going forward. If there is a period of stability, i think the opportunity for this hardcore alex jones type conspiracy theorist to spread something will diminish. It wont go away and is never going away but it will diminish. Of society remains in the level of dislocation and turmoil we are right now because of all these challenges soil remains fertile for it. Thats a fair way to think about it historically. We have time for one quick question, we will give you the last one. Thank you for coming. I was wondering if you had any recommendations to the audience for how we can more critically evaluate the information we see on social media, verify that information and check it . Good way to end today. Great question. With a longer answer than we have time for. The trustworthy sources of information havent changed. Im not saying one shouldnt question my employer or other Mainstream Media accounts but one of the keys is for people to get out of the mode in which we have so much media, so many choices that people tend to choose the one that closely corresponds with their political beliefs. That may not not necessarily feeding them falsehoods but definitely coloring the world in a way that makes them comfortable. If we consume an array of media. There is information out there. We know that info wars of the world are not trustworthy sources of news but if we graze a little more widely that is one step. Its important to know what people outside your media bubble are thinking and questioning in order to more efficiently argue with them. The group think of the algorithm. One thing that is important is if you look at sources of information, books, old media, new media, visual, television or other visual things, going across platforms, the type of information you get helps you get a better grip of how to weigh what you are hearing and come to a rational conclusion, that is important, not just one source that you are going across platforms to look for different information about given problems, given people, given issues, given events. Im a given issues, given events. Thats important. Thank you to the two of you. We appreciate both brendan and elizabeth. Both of them middle and high school students, its your time to shine. You were invited to participate in this years cspans studentcam documentary competition. In light of the upcoming Midterm Election picture yourself as the newly elected member of congress. We asked vicious competitors what is your top priority and why . Make a five to six minute video that shows the importance of your issue from opposing and supporting perspective. Dont be afraid to take risks with your documentary. Be bold. Amongst the 100,000 in cash prizes is a 5000 grand prize. Videos must be submitted by january 20, 2023. Visit 20, 2023. Visit our website at studentcam. Org for competition rules, tips, resources and a stepbystep guide
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