One of the survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting says that his father has been buying into the conspiracy theories that he, along with his classmates, are “paid pawns” who faked the school shooting that claimed 17 lives, per VICE News. The 18-year-old graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, who goes by Bill in the article, is part of the final class of survivors but he explained that his father’s recent discovery of QAnon has led him down a dark path.
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“It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests,” Bill told VICE. “His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn’t like having to wear masks it wouldn’t matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon.”
Bill explained that his dad saw the video of Georgia Rep. Marjory Taylor Greene, famed for pushing QAnon conspiracies, harassing a Parkland survivor which further fueled Bill’s father into thinking it’s a hoax.
“From there it 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,” Bill added.
In a Reddit post shared last week, Bill detailed the type of abuse he has to endure from his father over these conspiracies. “He’ll say stuff like this straight to my face whenever he’s drinking: ‘You’re a 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,” he wrote in the post.