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Why the Conspiracy Theorists Will Have a Tough Time With Boston
By David Weigel | Posted Monday, April 15, 2013, at 10:23 PM
Shortly before 9 p.m. I got out of a much-needed, much-delayed catch-up with a friend who shared my desire to escape—briefly—the news from Boston. It was inescapable. A bar next door had turned a flatscreen toward the street, then cranked up the sound so that CNN's live feed/interviews/speculation echoed around the block, attracting a steady crowd.
We walked past it right in time to hear the "false flag" guy. Dan Bidondi, a "reporter/analyist" (sic) for Alex Jones' Infowars, managed to ask Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick the very first question in a nationally televised press conference.
Why were the loudspeakers telling people in the audience to be calm moments before the bombs went off? Is this another false flag staged attack to take our civil liberties and promote homeland security while sticking their hands down our pants on the streets?
Patrick, looking on with a mixture of rage and pity, said "no," surely aware that he couldn't halt this guy's incipient Internet fame.
Which I'm furthering by writing about him. Sorry about that.
Still, the emergence of the truthers was inevitable. My friend Alex Seitz-Wald was writing about it 90 minutes after the bombing, explaining that Jones et al. looked at the carnage and figured "the government did it and is going to pin the blame on them because today is Patriots’ Day, a special day in the militia movement." More than 11,000 people quickly shared Seitz-Wald's article on Facebook, because before we actually know anything about the perpetrators of the bombings, the truthers make useful punching bags. Like Seitz-Wald says, it's easier to mock them than to speculate about right-wing motives (and become infamous on Fox) or Muslim connections (and ... feel no repercussions, really, but probably make yourself unelectable in 23 or 24 states)
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/04/15/why_the_conspiracy_theorists_will_have_a_tough_time_with_boston.html
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