There's a kind of fervor attached itself to this belief that I think is a sort of quasi religious thing. People have reinvented themselves around this. They've created brand new roles for themselves. And they found a whole group. But most important what drives people is the sense of group identification when you try to inject truth into this narrative, they react as a unit.
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One in five Americans believe that every high profile mass shooting is staged by the government. In this episode New York Times journalist Elizabeth Williamson joins author and filmmaker Jon Ronson to delve into the dark world of conspiracies and examine one of America’s most prominent and controversial theorists, Alex Jones. Elizabeth Williamson joins us from Connecticut where she is reporting on Alex Jones' second defamation trial this year, sued by the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting after he repeatedly claimed the tragedy was a hoax.
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