Vise has looked into what started
out as an anonymous Reddit
thread involving a victim of a mass
shooting who alleged that his
father believed that he was part of
a false flag operation.
Vice confirmed that this was
actually real.
We're not going to name the the
person involved out of respect for
this person's privacy but
we have more details.
So it is a survivor of the Parkland
shooting that took place and
he says that his father is just
absolutely convinced because of
the conspiracy theories he reads
and consumes online that it
was a false flag and
that his own son is involved in it.
Here's what Bill, the anonymous
Parkland student said,
he'll say stuff like this straight
to my face whenever he's drinking.
You're real piece of work to
be able to sit here and
act like nothing ever happened if
it wasn't a hoax.
Shame on you for
being part of it and putting your
family through it, too.
So how did this start?
Well, he wrote that anything,
that contradicted my father's
feelings was wrong.
So he turned to the Internet
to find like minded people which
led him to QAnon.
Bill's father saw a video of
Georgia representative Marjorie
Taylor Green harassing Parkland
survivor David Hogg in 2018.
Ever since then Bill's father has
become convinced the shooting his
son survived was a so-called false
flag event.
And that the shooter was a radical
commie actor.
From there, it's snowballed into
what he is today believing that if
the government is able to overthrow
an election, then everything else
is probably a lie too.
>> Yeah, so there's so many parts
of the story that are really,
really interesting and
unfortunately devastating.
So look, your own kid gets involved
in a shooting.
I don't know if the father went to
the funeral of the all the kids who
died.
Nine of them were in his son's
class, okay?
But afterwards, propaganda works.
And the way the propaganda works is
they appeal to your emotions
rather than your logic.
And once they've got you by their
emotions, you're done.
So he doesn't even
believe his own son.
So he thinks his own son's
a crisis actor.
You can't get
any more lunatic than that, right?
But by the way, people who
are queuing on or other conspiracy
theorists that are watching this
will turn around and go, well,
maybe he knows best because they
take whatever happens and
twist it into their own reality.
Right, and they become more and
more convinced as they go down that
rabbit hole.
I mean, look the power propaganda I
told you about it before it Foxnews
is brainwashed.
Obviously millions of people in
this country but including an uncle
of mine who voted for Donald Trump
in 2016 when Donald Trump was
talking about banning Muslims.
My uncle is Muslim.
He wants to ban himself, okay?
That's how powerful propaganda is.
Now, of course he doesn't perceive
it that way, he thinks no, no,
it won't apply to me.
And that's why we did those stories
if you remember after the right
after the 2016 election,
when Trump started kicking out
immigrants in the country.
In Indiana, in Ohio in so
many places, they're like, well,
I didn't think they were going to
kick out Jose is a great guy.
We all love him.
He's in our church.
He's in our community.
But we know he didn't have a green
card, but
he was working on getting one.
What do you think it
was going to put in?
There's even landowners in Texas.
Their own land gets cut off
by Trump's wall and they're well,
we didn't think it was
going to apply to us.
We thought they were going to build
it on other parts of the board
>> One of my favorite stories was
a woman whose husband was deported
after Trump was elected.
And she's like, she voted for
Trump.
She's like, wait, but
I didn't think that they were
going to deport my husband.
It's my husband,
my husband is okay.
It's just all those other
undocumented immigrants.
I thought they
were going to be the ones deport.
I mean, yeah,
people don't really care unless it
touches them and their lives.
But in this case,
we're talking about a mass shooting
that impacted his own son's life.
>> And devastated the kid, right?
I mean he still has massive issues
about he writes about, like
the shooter wore burgundy shirt
whenever he sees a word burgundy
shirt he has natural reaction,
right?
And so, but now he's that doesn't
believe any of it because
the power of propaganda.
And so that one part of
it is emotions, what's your appeal
to their emotions?
They're not listening to you
anymore in logic.
And it took me a long time to
really understand that because I
like to think that I'm a person who
cares more about logic.
So it was I had hard time
relating to people who don't care
about logic.
Who just act based on emotions, and
they just genuinely like, I know
that they think they care about the
facts, but they've lost the thread.
It's your son you know he's not
an actor.
What is wrong with you, right?
>> What exactly what I would like
to understand with
false flag operation allegations in
various instances, right.
Whether it be chemical weapons
attacks or in this case we're
talking about mass shooting.
>> All the Las Vegas shooting-
>> All the Las Vegas shooting,
which I recently learned,
some people that I didn't expect
also think that that's a false flag
operation.
But anyway, that's beside the
point. They're like, okay- >> You
should look up who that is lll.
>> Jimmy Dore, but why?
[LAUGH] >> But why?
Why, like, why would there be
a hoax mass shooting?
What is the goal of that?
To pass gun control?
because that doesn't ever happen.
And then, all of those dead bodies
and all that blood, and all that
evidence of the mass shooting
taking place, was that all pretend,
was it a ketchup?
It doesn't really take much to just
keep that logic train go,
just keep thinking about it, right?
Why is this particular father more
willing to just not believe his son
and believe random people online?
His son experienced it firsthand,
his son has been traumatized by it,
he witnessed his own classmates get
slaughtered in that school.
Why would his son be a crisis
actor?
For what?
What does he get out of that?
>> No.
>> What does he get out of that?
I want to know.
>> By the way, if you're still
pretending to be a left winger and
you're peddling right wing
conspiracy theories,
again you should check yourself to
see if you actually are or
the audience should check you.
Anyways, now look the other part of
this story is the bell curve, and
as different cults form online now
as media is now basically it used
to be, we had Walter Cronkite and a
couple of anchors and that was it.
And we all had a shared opinion by
the way, some of the former
president Dwight Eisenhower who's
a Republican,
John F Kennedy who's a Democrat,
were enormously popular because we
all share the same media.
And for better or for worse,
the media was centrist.
And so that had a lot of
problems too.
Don't get me wrong, right.
But now as the media had not
disintegrates but
becomes more individualized.
Different cults are forming and
don't get me wrong, the main stream
media is a form of a cult.
Where they get you to believe how
the centralized position is
a correct position,
it's the corporate position is
the objective position, status quo
is wonderful and they brain
wash people in that direction.
But this form of brain washing
effects some
portion of the bell curve.
Remember, not everybody thinks like
you, not everybody has the same
level of intelligence or
emotional control, etc.
So for some portion of that
spectrum or that bell curve,
it's really easy to track them.
And so they're getting huge
percentage of
the country to believe completely
nonsensical things
even if it affects them personally,
because it turns out cults
are super easy to form as long as
you press that emotion button.
And whether it's right wing or
in a small sliver of the left wing.
>> I wish I knew more about Bill
obvious, that's the pseudonym and
I just wish I knew that he
was out of his parents house.
Because going through that kind of
trauma is hard enough, living with
a parent who refuses to validate
that you went through something
traumatic is a billion times worse.
Because they're the people
closest to you,
supposed to be your support system.
I know that that's not the case for
a lot of people.
But in this particular case,
I just feel,
my heart goes out to him.
I hope he's living in a safer
environment and
doesn't have to deal with his
father like this on a daily basis.