Transcripts For CSPAN2 National Book Festival - Author Conve

Through cspan radio just got easier. Tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio and listen to washington journal, important other Public Affairs events through the day and weekdays at 5 pm and 9 pm eastern catch washington today for a fastpaced report on the stories of the day. Listen to cspan anytime, just tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio. Cspan powered by radio. Good afternoon everyone, im roswell encina and because we cant say this enough on behalf of my wonderful colleagues welcome to the library of Congress National book festival. Its great to say see this huge crowd on the state. [applause] and if youve missed any of the authors today please go to llc. Gov and you can catch up with some of our marvelous authors thats been part of the festival. We got a lot to cover so on to our discussion. Almost as long as how old this nation is theres always been conspiracies surrounding whether its from the revolutionary war to the cold war to the fascination assassination of jfk to the murders of innocent children in newtown and from september 11 to january 6. Today we are here to discuss the struggle thats been done to our nation. Joining us is a professor of history at Boston University and the author of the book britain, a story of the and conspiracy and revolutionary america, author brendan mcconville. [applause] and joining him his 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. Elizabeth, i want to ask you first just a couple weeks ago the verdict for alex jones came down, have you spoken to any of the families and are they reacting . I did almost immediately and throughout the trial which i was covering for the New York Times they were waiting in and they were particularly gratified by the confrontation in the courtroom that Charlotte Lewis whose son jesse lewis died at sandy hook had with alex jones. For 90 minutes he was on the stand and she addressed his responses to every question to him personally and held him to account. That was something that. Really cheers them. How are they coping . I know this is not the end of the line yet, a couple more hearings. Are they feeling moving forward . I hesitate to characterize anyone or describe anyones feelings to the entire group or even to speak for them but they are absolutely determined to hold alex jones and the other conspiracy r theorists whose content and harass their families to account. [applause] when i started i said conspiracies have been partof the country for more than 200 years. Rendons book started 200 years ago but i want to quote something from elizabeths book and ill pivot to you brendan. You write conspiracy rumors can be a collective response to psychological threats which the funds are defined as anattack by outsider on a groups identity , values, faith or politics. Those for last items seem to be the common denominator from 200 yearsago to today. What started it back then . Conspiracy theory rate runs back to the reign of elizabeth first and probably before that so you have a kind of belief that somehow, people either believe that their rights or their liberties are being infringed upon, their group is being threatened and theres different contexts in which thats occurred but theres something thats ingrained in angloamerican political and social politics that somehow liberty for personal autonomy or Group Identity is somehow always threat by those in power so that is a common theme in angloamerican political thinking from the time of the elizabeth the first at the beginning of the late 16th and early 17th century until today and as elizabeth suggests. Doesnt seem like the common denominator of fear and Everything Else is whats being weapon eyes to move these theories forward whether its fear or religion or misinformation . Im going to give this to brendan because he has a lot to say in his book. Its often i think in cases where people feel as you say that something is threatened and im unsurprised in the sense of what elizabeth has written about at the issue, the Second Amendment issue was at the core of it s. That fear has run again, that runs back to the revolutionary generation. Its fear of a standing army, fear of an overreaching government, fear that the government is going to infringe your rights or your somehow infringe on your personal autonomy and that has run that deeply in the society and of course it was a major issue in the revolutionary generation is why it ultimately leads to the Second Amendment and continues to be an issue, has continued to be an issuesince then. One of the big things you talk about your book is the Second Amendment, freedom of speech. Where is the line . What is freedom of speech and when is it youre inciting a rumor or a bad Conspiracy Theory . During the trial the lawyers for the sandy hook families had a great phrase that i think should beput on a tshirt actually. It said speech is free but lies you pay for. So when youre spreading lies that harm vulnerable peopleor any people , and are patently false and have been debunked countless times, there is a penalty for that in our laws. Free speech does not protect that although conspiracy theorists generally tend to claim that it does. Attacks on people, knowing that they are false is prohibited. Thats the First Amendment does not protect that. How do they did they deal with 200 years ago . Conspiracy theories . The revolution mobilized on the fact that a conspiracy had corrupted the british monarchy and the British Government and the revolution was mobilized on that belief. Once the revolutionary regime began to take shape there were people who believe that regime had been corrupted so it works in the sense both ways. Both the regimes and the regimes people that have come to oppose the regime both use that kind of what we would consider conspiratorial language because they believe that the dispensation of power was controlled by groups of individuals who wanted to gather as much of that power to themselves and even in Something Like the fear that the Second Amendment will be abridged theres that fear that somehow youre going to lose that and that was part of the way the revolution was s mobilized and resisted in certain respects. So much has changed obviously since the revolutionary war. One of the big things of course is the factor of media when it comes to recording whats happening. You wrote about this very well elizabeth. How does bad reporting contribute to bad theories . What happened in the chaos after a major event or a mass tragedy is of course that in the rush to report to americans what happened, mistakes are made. There is i saw after our recent mass shooting this idea of theres rarely a second shooter but that is something that often crops up for example. So theres always this balance to be struck between getting the information to people quickly and making sure its accurate and what conspiracy theorists after these events tend to do is point to anomalies in the reporting and say that these are proof of the fact that it didnt happen that way, that the officialnarrative is false or wrong or willfully being misrepresented. That is where you have two pitched a perfect game when youre reporting on these tragedies although that is just not really possible in many cases because your getting information from authorities who themselvesare trying to teach it together. Ive been meaning to ask you that. During breaking news n like this and a competitive media market people tend to report whatever is told to wthem and things change in newsrooms to make sure disinformation doesnt go out there that can be weapon eyes. I see really hopeful developments in the reporting after these mass tragedies. In particular, and here i want to give a shout out to my colleagues at the Texas Tribune who is there in the audience and his staff reported after uvalde and you see the asquestioning that was important after uvalde because the Police Narrative was false and self protective and that is still being unpacked by the media. You also have to be respectful to the families saying things like not repetitively naming the gunmen. Not focusing on the gunmen to the exclusion of the victims and their families and putting them and foremost in your reporting and being respectful in doing so. Aside from the mainstream media, one big kind of medium thats been used is social media whether its twitter or facebook or youtube. How did these entities make things worse for the families of the sandy hook . In reporting on the events for the conspiracy. I believe both. Again, you have people who sees on the initial reporting to sort of say this detail was wrong so therefore this part of the narrative or even the entire narrative is correct or is being manufactured or concocted 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 and brendan can this print were often isolated or in earlier times they had to rely on wordofmouth or print but social media allows online to really speed around the world and gain adherence not just by numbers and handfuls or in the scores but in the millions and that happens within minutes. Back to brendan. Obviously there was no twitter during the revolutionary war, how did people get together to you know, report in a group. Is interesting, the revolutionary generation was also living through the expansion of the means of communication just in the same way we are. Newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, speeches, sermons. So information got out on a pretty as quickly as the mobile revolution mobilizesin 1774 and 75. Opportunities increase geometrically thats what you get this sort of, you get a kind of uncontrolled situation in some respects about the way information is passing, what amounts to kind of stumble over what information is accurate, whats not accurate and one of the things i have bought about our own time and about what elizabeth writes about is where it engaged in a radical experiment in the democratization of the spread of knowledge or of massive new marketing information. And its very hard for people to sort that information and im come to an understanding of even basic things. You have a legacy media and social media, there is a tremendous amplification of whats available and not much of an applicant indication of anything if theres a decline in the ability to make sense of what youre hearing and whats accurate and whats not. Thats something that went on with the revolutionary generation as well. One of the big fears in the revolutionary generation is the fear protestantism through 74 and 75 is being undermined by hidden catholics in the upper end of the British Government including the king himself ultimately but it takes hold even though its completely false. That belief, there was no catholic conspiracy in the British Ministry but they believe there was an catholics were trying toseize control of the british empire. Nowadays as you mentioned that social media can amplify but back then maybe a lack of information really allow things to percolate. In many respects what happens is that there is a lack of kind of control of information. And what has happened in the revolutionary generation is to new kinds of institutions of your, committees of safety and committees of correspondence so they have a kind of agenda in their behavior and communicate in certain ways and a lot of people are either left out of that orthey have to sort of incomplete sense of whats going on. So there left to sort of try to sort things out themselves and of course its not that different from people sorting through what they which website is valid and which one is being produced by someone who doesnt know anything about the situation and it just hasnt asked to grind, a point to grind. One thing i did and elizabeth because of some of the families of sandy hook , they kind of triggered a start of a domino effect of how social media or regulating what information is put out there, can you talk about that . When we speak about the dramatic uptake in social media, so in the book i talked to a woman named lori hobbs whose daughter was injured in the Virginia Tech shooting in2007. And i asked her , and in the aftermath of that lori became very active in gun control so she was out there a lot. She was demonstrating, speaking before state legislatures pushing for new Gun Legislation so shes very visible and i asked her did anyone come up to you and you know, or contact you on social media and call you a liar or someone who was part of a government plot. And she aactually went through her Facebook Page and said no, i really dont see anything but the thing was that was 2007. Sandy hook shooting occurred in 2012. In those five years in 2007 there were maybe 5 million tweets sent out a day. In 2012 there were 5 million every second. In on facebook when lori was not finding anything in 2007, there were 20 million facebook users around the world. Five years later, when sandy hook and there were 1 billion. So you can just see the speed and the virality that happens when false theories are put out and as brendan said, the impossibility of defending which of these facebook e etaccounts is accurate, which ones based on the facts, which one isjust malicious. One of the parents, i cant remember his name of llthe father, the one who took action. To making sure that these internet trolls were held accountable for what they were being pulled into what method did he do to make sure facebook and youtube did the right thing. Lenny posner who is the father of noah posner the youngest sandy hook victim had a Technology Background so he could see that sandy hook was not just a oneoff theory or even something built on gun control and out of the realistic expectations that done legislation would result d from this tragedy. What he knew was that this was a foundational way for how misinformation and false narratives have spread in our society and was a predictor, a kind of warning bellwether for where we are today in the post or a sixth environment and the kind of world of lies that were steep with online. So he began by trying to appeal as you would to the social Media Companies. There hello, youtube, there are thousands of these idiots out here calling us liars and Crisis Actors and saying this is 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 unlocked iron door open up. Ckhe never even got anything relating to our 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 opt ads in the newspaper. He got some interviews, very powerful interviews onthe radio , the cbc and he called out these companies and shamed them and he also called out the names of individual conspiracy theorists who were generating so much mystery that his family was being threatened and harassed andbeing forced to move because people kept publishing their home address online. He started to talk about the secondary trauma that was being inflicted on them and the danger that they were in because of these lies if theres anything that social Media Companies respond to, its public shaming and thats what hewas doing so he began doing that. He continues to do that. He is the true hero of this story and the final thing hes 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 who are being formatted online. Ill give the numbers you were sharing earlier about how social media has progressed since Virginia Tech is staggering. I want to ask from the revolutionary war to even just the Virginia Tech time for september 11, conspiracy theorists always felt like they were some fringe that i hate to say it they become a little bit moremainstream now. Why do you think it was better controlled 200 years ago. I think it wasnt always better t controlled when the society is in crisis, when theres a sense of disorder these kinds of things to the center, can move to the center of discussion when the societyhas more stability. Theres less chance for that movement to occur. One thing that what elizabeth said you have a vast in the velocity and scale of information you have this vast change. This happened in the revolutionary generation as well and it took them 40 years to stabilize. The American Revolution doesnt fully stabilize until the Second Party System emerges in the 1820s which is 30 years after the revolution and after you have this explosion in print culture and in our own time where at the beginning of this explosion and it really is a test to see in our society of how we can have a Stable Society with this much information moving this quickly and with people very sort of struggling to make sense of that information and how fast it moves and what people say and people can to and say i think its this way and someone said that, it breaks down surety of understanding in a very sort of concrete way. Whats scary is it feels like history itself. The story in your book is you can see the parallels of what happened with the governor of michigan. Would you like to tell the audience . In both cases i think a strong parallel in the sense that you have a group of people who feel like the governor of the state therein is a threat and is involved in some kind of broader action against them and in the case of the book i write against theirreligion , against their traditional practices and so they ultimately they move into a position where they think were going to kill not only the governor of Smart Speaker<\/a> play cspan radio and listen to washington journal, important other Public Affairs<\/a> events through the day and weekdays at 5 pm and 9 pm eastern catch washington today for a fastpaced report on the stories of the day. Listen to cspan anytime, just tell your Smart Speaker<\/a> play cspan radio. Cspan powered by radio. Good afternoon everyone, im roswell encina and because we cant say this enough on behalf of my wonderful colleagues welcome to the library of Congress National<\/a> book festival. Its great to say see this huge crowd on the state. [applause] and if youve missed any of the authors today please go to llc. Gov and you can catch up with some of our marvelous authors thats been part of the festival. We got a lot to cover so on to our discussion. Almost as long as how old this nation is theres always been conspiracies surrounding whether its from the revolutionary war to the cold war to the fascination assassination of jfk to the murders of innocent children in newtown and from september 11 to january 6. Today we are here to discuss the struggle thats been done to our nation. Joining us is a professor of history at Boston University<\/a> and the author of the book britain, a story of the and conspiracy and revolutionary america, author brendan mcconville. [applause] and joining him his New York Times<\/a> 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. Elizabeth, i want to ask you first just a couple weeks ago the verdict for alex jones came down, have you spoken to any of the families and are they reacting . I did almost immediately and throughout the trial which i was covering for the New York Times<\/a> they were waiting in and they were particularly gratified by the confrontation in the courtroom that Charlotte Lewis<\/a> whose son jesse lewis died at sandy hook had with alex jones. For 90 minutes he was on the stand and she addressed his responses to every question to him personally and held him to account. That was something that. Really cheers them. How are they coping . I know this is not the end of the line yet, a couple more hearings. Are they feeling moving forward . I hesitate to characterize anyone or describe anyones feelings to the entire group or even to speak for them but they are absolutely determined to hold alex jones and the other conspiracy r theorists whose content and harass their families to account. [applause] when i started i said conspiracies have been partof the country for more than 200 years. Rendons book started 200 years ago but i want to quote something from elizabeths book and ill pivot to you brendan. You write conspiracy rumors can be a collective response to psychological threats which the funds are defined as anattack by outsider on a groups identity , values, faith or politics. Those for last items seem to be the common denominator from 200 yearsago to today. What started it back then . Conspiracy theory rate runs back to the reign of elizabeth first and probably before that so you have a kind of belief that somehow, people either believe that their rights or their liberties are being infringed upon, their group is being threatened and theres different contexts in which thats occurred but theres something thats ingrained in angloamerican political and social politics that somehow liberty for personal autonomy or Group Identity<\/a> is somehow always threat by those in power so that is a common theme in angloamerican political thinking from the time of the elizabeth the first at the beginning of the late 16th and early 17th century until today and as elizabeth suggests. Doesnt seem like the common denominator of fear and Everything Else<\/a> is whats being weapon eyes to move these theories forward whether its fear or religion or misinformation . Im going to give this to brendan because he has a lot to say in his book. Its often i think in cases where people feel as you say that something is threatened and im unsurprised in the sense of what elizabeth has written about at the issue, the Second Amendment<\/a> issue was at the core of it s. That fear has run again, that runs back to the revolutionary generation. Its fear of a standing army, fear of an overreaching government, fear that the government is going to infringe your rights or your somehow infringe on your personal autonomy and that has run that deeply in the society and of course it was a major issue in the revolutionary generation is why it ultimately leads to the Second Amendment<\/a> and continues to be an issue, has continued to be an issuesince then. One of the big things you talk about your book is the Second Amendment<\/a>, freedom of speech. Where is the line . What is freedom of speech and when is it youre inciting a rumor or a bad Conspiracy Theory<\/a> . During the trial the lawyers for the sandy hook families had a great phrase that i think should beput on a tshirt actually. It said speech is free but lies you pay for. So when youre spreading lies that harm vulnerable peopleor any people , and are patently false and have been debunked countless times, there is a penalty for that in our laws. Free speech does not protect that although conspiracy theorists generally tend to claim that it does. Attacks on people, knowing that they are false is prohibited. Thats the First Amendment<\/a> does not protect that. How do they did they deal with 200 years ago . Conspiracy theories . The revolution mobilized on the fact that a conspiracy had corrupted the british monarchy and the British Government<\/a> and the revolution was mobilized on that belief. Once the revolutionary regime began to take shape there were people who believe that regime had been corrupted so it works in the sense both ways. Both the regimes and the regimes people that have come to oppose the regime both use that kind of what we would consider conspiratorial language because they believe that the dispensation of power was controlled by groups of individuals who wanted to gather as much of that power to themselves and even in Something Like<\/a> the fear that the Second Amendment<\/a> will be abridged theres that fear that somehow youre going to lose that and that was part of the way the revolution was s mobilized and resisted in certain respects. So much has changed obviously since the revolutionary war. One of the big things of course is the factor of media when it comes to recording whats happening. You wrote about this very well elizabeth. How does bad reporting contribute to bad theories . What happened in the chaos after a major event or a mass tragedy is of course that in the rush to report to americans what happened, mistakes are made. There is i saw after our recent mass shooting this idea of theres rarely a second shooter but that is something that often crops up for example. So theres always this balance to be struck between getting the information to people quickly and making sure its accurate and what conspiracy theorists after these events tend to do is point to anomalies in the reporting and say that these are proof of the fact that it didnt happen that way, that the officialnarrative is false or wrong or willfully being misrepresented. That is where you have two pitched a perfect game when youre reporting on these tragedies although that is just not really possible in many cases because your getting information from authorities who themselvesare trying to teach it together. Ive been meaning to ask you that. During breaking news n like this and a competitive media market people tend to report whatever is told to wthem and things change in newsrooms to make sure disinformation doesnt go out there that can be weapon eyes. I see really hopeful developments in the reporting after these mass tragedies. In particular, and here i want to give a shout out to my colleagues at the Texas Tribune<\/a> who is there in the audience and his staff reported after uvalde and you see the asquestioning that was important after uvalde because the Police Narrative<\/a> was false and self protective and that is still being unpacked by the media. You also have to be respectful to the families saying things like not repetitively naming the gunmen. Not focusing on the gunmen to the exclusion of the victims and their families and putting them and foremost in your reporting and being respectful in doing so. Aside from the mainstream media, one big kind of medium thats been used is social media whether its twitter or facebook or youtube. How did these entities make things worse for the families of the sandy hook . In reporting on the events for the conspiracy. I believe both. Again, you have people who sees on the initial reporting to sort of say this detail was wrong so therefore this part of the narrative or even the entire narrative is correct or is being manufactured or concocted 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 and brendan can this print were often isolated or in earlier times they had to rely on wordofmouth or print but social media allows online to really speed around the world and gain adherence not just by numbers and handfuls or in the scores but in the millions and that happens within minutes. Back to brendan. Obviously there was no twitter during the revolutionary war, how did people get together to you know, report in a group. Is interesting, the revolutionary generation was also living through the expansion of the means of communication just in the same way we are. Newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, speeches, sermons. So information got out on a pretty as quickly as the mobile revolution mobilizesin 1774 and 75. Opportunities increase geometrically thats what you get this sort of, you get a kind of uncontrolled situation in some respects about the way information is passing, what amounts to kind of stumble over what information is accurate, whats not accurate and one of the things i have bought about our own time and about what elizabeth writes about is where it engaged in a radical experiment in the democratization of the spread of knowledge or of massive new marketing information. And its very hard for people to sort that information and im come to an understanding of even basic things. You have a legacy media and social media, there is a tremendous amplification of whats available and not much of an applicant indication of anything if theres a decline in the ability to make sense of what youre hearing and whats accurate and whats not. Thats something that went on with the revolutionary generation as well. One of the big fears in the revolutionary generation is the fear protestantism through 74 and 75 is being undermined by hidden catholics in the upper end of the British Government<\/a> including the king himself ultimately but it takes hold even though its completely false. That belief, there was no catholic conspiracy in the British Ministry<\/a> but they believe there was an catholics were trying toseize control of the british empire. Nowadays as you mentioned that social media can amplify but back then maybe a lack of information really allow things to percolate. In many respects what happens is that there is a lack of kind of control of information. And what has happened in the revolutionary generation is to new kinds of institutions of your, committees of safety and committees of correspondence so they have a kind of agenda in their behavior and communicate in certain ways and a lot of people are either left out of that orthey have to sort of incomplete sense of whats going on. So there left to sort of try to sort things out themselves and of course its not that different from people sorting through what they which website is valid and which one is being produced by someone who doesnt know anything about the situation and it just hasnt asked to grind, a point to grind. One thing i did and elizabeth because of some of the families of sandy hook , they kind of triggered a start of a domino effect of how social media or regulating what information is put out there, can you talk about that . When we speak about the dramatic uptake in social media, so in the book i talked to a woman named lori hobbs whose daughter was injured in the Virginia Tech<\/a> shooting in2007. And i asked her , and in the aftermath of that lori became very active in gun control so she was out there a lot. She was demonstrating, speaking before state legislatures pushing for new Gun Legislation<\/a> so shes very visible and i asked her did anyone come up to you and you know, or contact you on social media and call you a liar or someone who was part of a government plot. And she aactually went through her Facebook Page<\/a> and said no, i really dont see anything but the thing was that was 2007. Sandy hook shooting occurred in 2012. In those five years in 2007 there were maybe 5 million tweets sent out a day. In 2012 there were 5 million every second. In on facebook when lori was not finding anything in 2007, there were 20 million facebook users around the world. Five years later, when sandy hook and there were 1 billion. So you can just see the speed and the virality that happens when false theories are put out and as brendan said, the impossibility of defending which of these facebook e etaccounts is accurate, which ones based on the facts, which one isjust malicious. One of the parents, i cant remember his name of llthe father, the one who took action. To making sure that these internet trolls were held accountable for what they were being pulled into what method did he do to make sure facebook and youtube did the right thing. Lenny posner who is the father of noah posner the youngest sandy hook victim had a Technology Background<\/a> so he could see that sandy hook was not just a oneoff theory or even something built on gun control and out of the realistic expectations that done legislation would result d from this tragedy. What he knew was that this was a foundational way for how misinformation and false narratives have spread in our society and was a predictor, a kind of warning bellwether for where we are today in the post or a sixth environment and the kind of world of lies that were steep with online. So he began by trying to appeal as you would to the social Media Companies<\/a>. There hello, youtube, there are thousands of these idiots out here calling us liars and Crisis Actors<\/a> and saying this is 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 unlocked iron door open up. Ckhe never even got anything relating to our 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 opt ads in the newspaper. He got some interviews, very powerful interviews onthe radio , the cbc and he called out these companies and shamed them and he also called out the names of individual conspiracy theorists who were generating so much mystery that his family was being threatened and harassed andbeing forced to move because people kept publishing their home address online. He started to talk about the secondary trauma that was being inflicted on them and the danger that they were in because of these lies if theres anything that social Media Companies<\/a> respond to, its public shaming and thats what hewas doing so he began doing that. He continues to do that. He is the true hero of this story and the final thing hes done and now they do Pay Attention<\/a> 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 who are being formatted online. Ill give the numbers you were sharing earlier about how social media has progressed since Virginia Tech<\/a> is staggering. I want to ask from the revolutionary war to even just the Virginia Tech<\/a> time for september 11, conspiracy theorists always felt like they were some fringe that i hate to say it they become a little bit moremainstream now. Why do you think it was better controlled 200 years ago. I think it wasnt always better t controlled when the society is in crisis, when theres a sense of disorder these kinds of things to the center, can move to the center of discussion when the societyhas more stability. Theres less chance for that movement to occur. One thing that what elizabeth said you have a vast in the velocity and scale of information you have this vast change. This happened in the revolutionary generation as well and it took them 40 years to stabilize. The American Revolution<\/a> doesnt fully stabilize until the Second Party System<\/a> emerges in the 1820s which is 30 years after the revolution and after you have this explosion in print culture and in our own time where at the beginning of this explosion and it really is a test to see in our society of how we can have a Stable Society<\/a> with this much information moving this quickly and with people very sort of struggling to make sense of that information and how fast it moves and what people say and people can to and say i think its this way and someone said that, it breaks down surety of understanding in a very sort of concrete way. Whats scary is it feels like history itself. The story in your book is you can see the parallels of what happened with the governor of michigan. Would you like to tell the audience . In both cases i think a strong parallel in the sense that you have a group of people who feel like the governor of the state therein is a threat and is involved in some kind of broader action against them and in the case of the book i write against theirreligion , against their traditional practices and so they ultimately they move into a position where they think were going to kill not only the governor of North Carolina<\/a> the entire governing elites of North Carolina<\/a>. Trying to kill them amid a diversionary uprising which theyre going eto start. You get them and the same thing with the governor of michigan in the sense that you have a group. The real parallel is that the people who were hostile or wanted to kidnap the governor of michigan and the people who have thisfascination plot in 1777 were both sort of extreme manifestations of much broader Belief Systems<\/a> that had been carried out to some of their extreme and sort of irrational , in some ways the fears they had in North Carolina<\/a> was that there governor and share their belief which was true but nonetheless , they carry it out to where going to kill the entire governing elites of North Carolina<\/a> and start a slave uprising to get it done. The idea that kidnapping the governor of michigan, where does that go, its a strange solution to a problem i dont like the government of michigan or maybe ill vote for the other candidate instead. Its a strange response. I can vote for somebody else. I dont have to kidnap the governor. Were taking questions shortly, theres two microphones in the aisle so if you have a question just, but for we get there will keep on talking. I have a question elizabeth. Reading your book, both your research and your reporting are just outstanding for both of them. It does leave you feeling a little bit hopeless i should say. I just wanted to read one passage. Of from your book. And i mean thatas a compliment by the way. You write you not only do. Flag claims around sandy book persist, they have metastasized to virtually every mass shooting sense. It feels like since sandy sbook which is hard to believe it was 10 years ago, and this just how much more Mass Shootings<\/a> have progressed for the next 10 years after that. The rumor feel and the theories just got worse. Is there, how do you think we can get a hold of all this . It is true that now, one fifth of americans after every highprofile mass shooting espoused the belief that that shooting was fake or staged. Thats a shocking statistic. And it doesnt. 2 and i think its important to say this. It doesnt point to politics or ideology as much as it does the psychology. Thats in that people find a sense of social belonging and adhering to these conspiracy theories. Theyfind a community online. They are often lonely. The ones i interviewed for the book often have trauma in their background. Theyre looking for something. And theyre looking pobviously in the wrong places but it is the reason that once you try to get someones to disavow these conspiracy. They are extremely resistant. Often reinvented themselves, lenny posner says dont tell me theyve developed an entirely new identity, someone i interview a woman in the book who had a House Cleaning<\/a> business in oklahoma being one of the most pernicious conspiracy theorists aroundsandy hook allowed her to reinvent herself as an author, a researcher, an investigative journalist. This is important for people so theres been a lot of research into trying to get people to be suspicious of these theories, use that natural suspicion in their personalities and natures and apply it to when they see this material online. And there have been a lot of very hopeful breakthroughs in that area. The other hopeful thing i think is just the fact that im so impressed by so many people are here. I mean, it really says that people are recognizing the message that the sandy hook families and by talking with me and that they send every day through these lawsuits and that this is a problem. Were being steeped in a world of lies, thats affecting not only sus as individuals but our democracy and that is huge. So that is hopeful. People are paying attention and people who are in a position to do something about this whether its the social Media Companies<\/a> coming up on their policies, whether its congress lookingat new forms of legislation and this by the way is a bipartisan effort. And whether it is the big thinkers out there looking at this psychology behind this and trying to figure this out, these are all very hopeful signs. Brendan, what can we learn from history to move forward . I think going back to what elizabeth said its the ability and as we become more in the revolutionary generation ofpeople begin to come to an understanding of how to buy sort information that seems rational to me from what does not. And i think thats where we are. But it takes as i said in my commentearlier it takes time. Its these social media things are new. Youre talking about from 2012, just 10 years seems like a long time but is not that long given the nature and way theyve insinuated themselves. How many people in our audience sat in bed looking at social media, looking at facebook, almost everyone will have, theyve insinuated themselves into every corner of our existence. So it will take a long time but if you look back earlier societies who went through a similar all their own much less rapid but some of the parallel things they do go forward, they do find a path forward in the sense of creating a more stable policy and order in their society and thats really the hopeful thing. But it is also an issue of education. If you understand that people are going to fake shooting a sevenyearold child, its just hard for me to believe that anyone could believe that it is the question of education and looking at the society i think. Weve got a lot of people here lined up fordiscussion so well start with this gentleman right here. Thank you for coming out, i have a question about sandy in general. To what extent do you think he has made an obscene amount of money on his website selling things like meal prep kits and mail supplements. To what extent do you think he sincerely believes what he talks about versus how much do you think hes just wet advising the act of riling other people up so that he can then make money . Its a great question. So as one of the individuals who i interviewed for the book who used it to work for infowars told me, and by the way, he knows it happened. Its that people in his audience of tens of millions, many of them believe the lie that hes spreading about it. His Business Model<\/a> is ingenious. He sells products as you said to people who distrust Traditional Medicine<\/a>, established by in. The federal government and many of our institutions so theres doomsday peppers buying dried food and things for their shelters. Their buying diet supplements which is an enormous business or him. People who distrust Traditional Medicine<\/a> so he has definitely built an empire around these lies. And you could see and i trace this in the book that traffic to his website searches when he spoke about sandy hook. So it resonates with people and that leads to sales so it is a very cynical and ingenious is this model that hes pursued and it is not based on anygenuine suspicion around the event itself. We will go here to my left. My name is alex. Misinformation and conspiracy. Can affect anyone i believe we often feel it can be a problem that doesnt directly affect us only when we see it on the confined realm of social media. Because of this when misinformation takes root in our personal lives for those close to us we can often be caught off guard. How wouldyou recommend we navigate a conversation on the dangers of misinformation without damaging our interpersonal relationships . I dont know if i have a recommendation for that. Ultimately one of the challenges were facing is that its really ultimately up to each individual to, and to weigh what theyre doing, to weigh their exposure to social media, with their exposure to technology in certain terms that theyre in consumption of information but i think its important that if youre looking at something as tragic and important as Something Like<\/a> sandy hook that you come to an understanding that look, i need to have an understanding of the sort of story and sort of background to what happened before you sort of go off and say the person who tweeted that, they must be right. They have all the inside information about how thiswas fixed. Theres clearly anyone can mount almost anything on the internet. Theres very little check on it right now and you have to have the ability and that falls on the citizen to develop their own sense of citizenship, knowledge of their society, knowledge of the things around them. It means reading the newspapers and sort of broadening your understanding to see how that, what youre learning what youre finding on the internet how it can be measured in a sort of understood. I dont think that salsa problem. I just had a general question. In a world where theres a lot more awareness and immediate reporting on these kind of events that may involve or surround conspiracy theories in the news especially major tragedies do you have any thoughts on how anyone from like a journalist to a common person in taking all this information can handle these concepts in the immediate aftermath of the recording without bringing further harm or attention to the conspiracy . Great question, thank you. It is important and this is something that ive struggled with in the book and that we struggle with every day in the media. How do you debunk these conspiracy theories without drawing more into adherence to them. I tried to focus on and i do this in the book religiously on the victims of those theories rather than the substance of them. And i sometimes see coverage of this that you can tell the conspiracy theorists like it because it glamorized is what theyre doing and what theyre saying. I tried to focus just on the impacts and you know, we didnt really talk about that here but just thbriefly it is like people who have had to move like the posners had to move house in the 10 years the shooting because their address was being put online and people were coming to their homes. People looking into family members windows, digging through their trash, defacing memorials to the dead. All these things. I tried to focus on this because that stirs up people who are good people who will do things to try and push for solutions. Do you know of any other families of Mass Shootings<\/a> that have beentreated the same way the founders of sandy hook . Were going to take your life to the senate, part of our commitment to bring you live coverage of congress. We will return following whats expected to be a short pro forma session here on cspan2","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601507.us.archive.org\/17\/items\/CSPAN2_20221024_171000_National_Book_Festival_-_Author_conversation_on_Conspiracies_in_America\/CSPAN2_20221024_171000_National_Book_Festival_-_Author_conversation_on_Conspiracies_in_America.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20221024_171000_National_Book_Festival_-_Author_conversation_on_Conspiracies_in_America_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240619T12:35:10+00:00"}