Right Wing 'Crisis Actor' Conspiracy Snares Redondo Family

REDONDO BEACH, CA – Following the deadly Parkland, Florida shooting last week, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have been interviewed on national television voicing their anger over the senseless cruelty in which 17 of their peers died. Amidst the movement, a conspiracy theory has started circulating – that the students are actually "crisis actors" who travel from tragedy to tragedy and pretend to be victims, and the students are agents of Democratic donor George Soros, the liberal media or the anti-Trump FBI, the Los Angeles Times reported.

One of the student survivors accused of being a "crisis actor" is David Hogg, one of the most prominent students calling for gun control. However, you may remember him from a viral Youtube video he posted showing an altercation in Redondo Beach between a lifeguard and a teenager. One Facebook user found a video of Hogg speaking to CBS2 Los Angeles in August 2017 about the confrontation, according to Los Angeles Times.

"So Called 'Student,' But actually a CRISIS ACTOR, David Hogg, was on camera months ago, pretending to be a high school student in California," the user wrote. "Now, suddenly, he is a high school student in Florida???"

Related >> Altercation Between Lifeguard And Teen Stirs Up South Bay Brouhaha

The post was shared more than 100,000 times, but in a follow-up story this week, the CBS2 reporter explained that Hogg had been visiting family and friends in Redondo Beach and happened to record to fight between his friend and the lifeguard.

"I'm not a crisis actor," Hogg told CNN. "I'm someone who had to witness this and live through this, and I continue to be having to do that."

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, finds the conspiracy claims disturbing because he knows Hogg's mother, a teacher in Torrance, and the rest of the family including Hogg himself.

"He is definitely not a 'crisis actor,' " Lieu told the Los Angeles Times. "He is a student who is trying to explain to America what he witnessed in that horrific mass shooting."

Lieu told the Los Angeles Times that he was appalled by the attacks on the student survivors, and yet he was unsurprised.

"They've been quite effective, I believe, in media, articulating a message that some people find threatening, which is that we need reasonable gun safety measures," Lieu told the Los Angeles Times.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times