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July 28, 2021, 6:16 am*
Over the last few years, we’ve all seen some of the horrible things that come out of people believing the QAnon conspiracy theories that various school shootings were actually just false flag operations — they end up harassing survivors, harassing their parents, convincing others of their insane beliefs.
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These have generally been people with no connection or proximity to the events. But now, one Parkland survivor is coming forward to talk about how his own father has turned from being thoughtful and supportive in the wake of tragedy to falling fully down the QAnon rabbit hole to believe his child was paid to help stage a school shooting.
The explanation and plea for advice was initially posted to Reddit’s QAnonCasualties, where people whose loved ones have fallen prey to the various wild theories created by the mysterious “Q.” The former Stoneman Douglas student kept his identity a secret, but VICE News later vetted him and confirmed that he is, in fact, a survivor of the shooting.
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“Back in January, [my dad] saw the video of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing David Hogg about the shooting being a false-flag operation, and while my dad was already into Q, he’d never gone down that particular rabbit hole and now he’s convinced everything was a hoax and it breaks my heart,” the student, who VICE refers to as ‘Bill’ wrote on Reddit.
Bill goes on to explain that his father believes the shooter is a “radical commie actor who was paid to sacrifice his life in order to remove our guns” and that his father now constantly goes out of his way to attempt to trigger his PTSD to see if it’s real.
It’s a far cry from the father Bill remembers him being after the shooting, who he says even stopped wearing burgundy shirts because it reminded him of the shooter’s clothing. Now, his father is more concerned about shaming him and putting his family through drama over a “hoax.”
“It’s bringing back so much of my survivor’s guilt and I f—king hate him for it,” he wrote. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s hit his head or had a f—king stroke because I almost can’t believe it’s the same person. What the f—k is QAnon doing to people??”
Bill has received an outpouring of support on Reddit, from people reassuring him that cutting his father out of his life for his own sanity is understandable to those suggesting perhaps this is a coping mechanism after he failed to grapple with the idea that his own child could have been killed.
But he hasn’t received the same sort of support at home, as he says his mother refuses to tell his dad to “get professional help or move out,” instead simply telling Bill not to be home so much.
“It’s not really going anywhere because she’s too naive to think he’ll magically get over wanting to constantly retraumatize me and I’m not waiting around for that,” he told VICE News.
Bill finally graduated recently — among the last class of Parkland survivors to do so — and while he says he wanted to help ‘fix’ his dad before he left home, he’s realized that very well may not be possible at this point.
“That person [he was] is completely gone and I miss him so f—king much,” he wrote.
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h/t VICE
*First Published: July 28, 2021, 6:12 am
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