Crisis actor

In the parlance of conspiracy theorists, a crisis actor is an actor who participates in an event such as a bombing or mass shooting that may or may not be simulated by the conspirators—usually government or corporate forces—in order to achieve some goal such as justifying increased government surveillance, disarmament of the population, or military action against blamed nations or groups. Crisis actors are claimed to play the part of bystanders or witnesses, emergency response personnel, and (with the aid of stage makeup) wounded victims of staged school shootings or hoax terrorist attacks. Playing a prominent media role in the aftermath of these attacks, they may be professional actors controlled by government agencies and media manipulators, to deceive the public with portrayals of trauma and suffering.

Conspiracy theorists have claimed to have identified crisis actors at incidents including the 2012 Aurora shooting, Boston Marathon bombing, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Umpqua Community College shooting, Sydney hostage crisis, Paris Islamic terror massacres, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and most notably the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. These claims are rejected out of hand by the mainstream media.

Although "crisis actors" are a real service provided for disaster drills by legitimate companies, their alleged use by conspiracy theorists is significantly different.

Origin and examples

The term "crisis actor" appears to have had very limited use since 2007, and started to get picked up after August 2011.

Sandy Hook massacre

Main article: Sandy Hook massacre

The term was popularized in early 2013 after Professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University, who has a history of questioning mainstream media and government claims as untrustworthy narratives, attracted some media attention for blog posts claiming that the media coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre of December 2012 had been misleading. Tracy claimed that the many witnesses interviewed or photographed by the press were actually "crisis actors" portraying the "official story" as part of a cover-up of whatever did or didn't actually happen. He was intensely criticized for making such claims. Use of the phrase "crisis actors" quickly spread, becoming popular with conspiracy theorists who queried or denied the accepted accounts of Sandy Hook and other crises such as the Aurora shootings of July 2012.

Citizens who had been interviewed at Sandy Hook found their media interviews and private lives and Facebook profiles under scrutiny, and their privacy invaded with aggressive telephone calls. Gene Rosen, a local resident, had looked after six children who fled the school on the day of the Sandy Hook massacre. He was interviewed many times during the media coverage of the shootings. As the Sandy Hook "truther" movement picked up momentum, Rosen quickly became identified by various bloggers and conspiracy pundits as a crisis actor, and suffered sustained campaigns of online and real life harassment.

Robbie Parker, the father of Sandy Hook shooting victim Emilie Parker – after doing a CNN interview on the day after the shooting – became the target of conspiracy theorists, who claimed the interview was staged. Parker has been attacked by theorists who believe he is a "crisis actor" and was "getting into character" before going on CNN to grieve over the loss of his child.

Boston Marathon bombing

He "doesn't look to be in pain" whatsoever, according to some theorists.

The actual Nick Vogt. Note the location of the injury.

It takes both a special kind of paranoia and a complete lack of shame to call a bombing victim a paid government shill for somehow not looking enough like a bombing victim.

— Mike Rothschild, Skeptoid

The crisis actor meme resurfaced in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, with some skeptics (including James Tracy once again) claiming that the publicized footage of explosions and injured victims was unrealistic, and that the whole thing had been staged as a false flag operation.

In particular, a Before It's News blogger claimed that images of a man who lost both legs in the bombing were unconvincing and that he was actually an amputee actor dressed up in fake gore. Many others made similar claims. This idea was questioned by the mainstream media, however. As Mike Rothschild noted, they appeared to have different injuries, with Vogt losing his legs above the knee, and Baumann below the knee. But to crisis actor believers, the facts still lent confirmation to the conspiracy theory. To them, Vogt was pretending to be Baumann, taking on a lead role in the government’s latest false flag – a pernicious fake designed to take away rights and heap restrictive laws upon the population. Opponents of Islamic immigration disagreed with both sides in this debate, claiming the government actually covered up the ease with which Muslims could enter the USA under presidents Bush and Obama.

2014 Sydney Siege

Main article: 2014 Sydney hostage crisis

In the aftermath of the 2014 Sydney Islamic terror attack, numerous conspiracy theorists claimed that the incident was a false flag and that the hostages involved were crisis actors, and also that the perpetrator was an actor of some kind.

DAESH Paris massacres

After the 2015 Islamic terror attack in Paris, many blogs started claiming the attack was a false flag. Before It's News posted an image of a Parisian comparing her with other accused crisis actors. Conversely, after the attack there were many claims the French authorities covered up the worst atrocities by the terrorists, to avoid threatening the ongoing stream of Islamic immigration into France.

October 2017 Las Vegas massacre

After 58 people died in this mass shooting, skeptics claimed this was a False flag operation. Some began harassing survivors and accusing them of being crisis actors.

Parkland, Florida high school massacre

Main article: Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

Hours after 17 people died in America's largest high school shooting to date, the accusation that crisis actors were seen on television coverage soon surfaced. Many anomalies were also claimed in the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the attack. One student who was specifically mentioned was the activist David Hogg, whose father was a retired FBI agent. A YouTube video detailing this accusation reached No. 1 on YouTube's trending page before it was banned. Online media companies then began to ban the use of the term "crisis actor" in post titles, and sometimes in posts themselves.

Others

• A survivor of the 2016 Orlando Islamic terror attack was harassed online for allegedly being a paid actor.
• A Las Vegas shooting survivor felt pressured to remove his presence from social media after harassment.