S1, Ep2 | Ye Olde Crisis Actor Myth

Amy Westervelt [00:00:00] This episode contains discussion of gun deaths, child death and sexual violence. It's discussed throughout the episodes, so if those are topics you don't want to hear about right now, go ahead and skip on to episode three.

MTG archival [00:00:15] David, why are you supporting the red flag laws?

Side thorn archival [00:00:18] This is supposed to be a man of God, but yet he's told the whole world that twenty six people died in his church when he's no. Nobody died. He's a liar.

Covid archival [00:00:24] I had avoided posting about COVID for a long time because of the negative reactions I got, like, called a crisis actor all the time.

[00:00:34] For the past couple of decades, every time there's a tragedy, a small but growing group of people will find a way to say that it didn't really happen. That shooting is a hoax. COVID is a hoax, a false flag, and especially those people, the victims. They are not really victims. They're crisis actors. You could be forgiven for thinking it's something Alex Jones concocted on Infowars, but in fact, it's a story as old as… Well as old as the PR industry. Welcome back to Rigged The Story of Disinformation, a podcast about the war for hearts and minds and reality right here on U.S. soil. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today's trick: Crisis actors. But first, let's welcome back Mary Annaise Heglar.

[00:01:33] OK, first, I want to know what you think of when you hear the term crisis actor.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:01:39] Alex Jones.

Amy Westervelt [00:01:41] Mm.

Amy Westervelt [00:01:41] Mm hmm. Yeah, totally.

[00:01:42] Quick reminder Mary is my friend and partner in crime. We do a podcast called Hot Take Together, but I also call her whenever I find something weird in the murky underworld of disinformation. And now someone else you met last time.

Ivy Lee archival [00:01:58] Mr. Rockefeller listen to me patiently, pleasantly and calmly until I'd finished my eloquent presentation of why you should do what we recommended.

[00:02:09] Ivy Ledbetter Lee, the railroad guy! Lee is generally considered the first modern publicist, and a big part of why he holds that place in history comes down to the very first job he did for the Rockefellers.

Woody Guthrie [00:02:26] It is early springtime and the strike was on…

Amy Westervelt [00:02:31] That's Woody Guthrie singing about this incident 30 years later. If you don't know that name, and I suppose some of you might not. Woody Guthrie was one of the most important and influential folk singers of the 20th century. He was a survivor of the Great Depression, and he inspired a lot of the big folk acts of the 1960s. So, you know, no Woody Guthrie, no Bob Dylan. And Guthrie was deeply committed to unions and the labor movement. By the time he wrote this song in the 1940s, the Ludlow miners strike had become a lightning rod for the American Left. But at the time that Ivy Lee was getting involved back in 1914, it marshaled the forces of the burgeoning PR industry to try and nice wash one of the worst massacres in American labor history. Today, we remember the Woody Guthrie version, so I guess folk music won in the end, in your face, Ivy Lee!

[00:03:34] Here's the story. In 1914, coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado, have been striking for more than six months.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:03:43] Yes, like so. I read a little bit about the conditions and coal miners around this time. And it really was like, there's a lot of people who were former slaves who worked in coal mines and their like. These conditions are not much different. So these company towns? Yeah. Yeah, the company towns were not that different than living on a plantation, especially if you factor in like sharecropping, right? And so like obviously, the work itself is arduous, which is why you get somebody doing it. You kind of don't want to let them go. The the the history of forced labor in coal mines in the north and the south is like really deep and really terrible. One of the things I heard about was like the sexual violence in these coal mining camps. So like the families would have to buy food on credit and then pay it back when they got their wages from, you know, picking or from mining the coal. I almost said picking the cotton and then like, but if you couldn't pay, if you didn't get enough money back, the women had to pay it back with their bodies.

Amy Westervelt [00:04:49] Oh, that's so disturbing. But also, yeah, of course. Or what their daughters? Right? I mean, this is this. This is a big part of what was behind the Ludlow strike to they wanted fair wages. They didn't want to have to live in the company town. You know, they didn't want to have their house tied to their employer. So that was the whole thing. And then there was the whole company store thing. So it was like the company had total control over every aspect of their lives.

[00:05:22] There's some evidence to suggest that what would become the crisis actor myth might have even begun further back than a lot of those strike. Some politicians in the South accused civil rights activists in the wake of the Civil War of being paid agitators. But Ludlow is the first documented example of the crisis actor narrative being really strategically used by a corporation to discredit its critics for a lot of historians. It also marks the birth of the modern PR industry

Woody Guthrie [00:05:57] that drove US miners out of doors out from the houses that the company owned. We moved into. Ends up and a whole lot more.

Amy Westervelt [00:06:10] Shortly after the Ludlow strike began, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company kicked all the strikers out of their homes, proving their point entirely. The strikers set up a tent city at the mine, and there were pretty regular skirmishes between them and company guards or military. And when I say skirmishes, I don't mean, you know, people calling each other names at the country bar. I mean, actual danger men with guns hired by the mine company today, we might call them private military contractors or even mercenaries hired muscle. Woody Guthrie calls them soldiers.

Woody Guthrie [00:06:51] I was worried bad about my children, the soldiers guarding the railroad bridge. Every once in a while, a bullet would blood kick up gravel under my feet.

Amy Westervelt [00:07:09] Tired of the strike, the mine owners sent in the Colorado National Guard to help their little private army shut down the encampment. They would regularly head to the camp, dragged strikers out of their tents and generally mess with them. And one April morning in 1914, things seriously escalated. We're going to hear all about what happened that day and the aftermath of the most violent campaign in American labor history. Right after this. OK, so we've heard about how tensions were ramping up between the striking coal miners and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. By April 1914, things had started to calm down. Actually, the state couldn't really afford to keep the National Guard at the camp, and scab workers had disrupted the miners bargaining power. But just as it looked as if the strike was going to end peacefully, well, relatively peacefully. The private guards helped by stragglers still remaining from the National Guard, attacked the strikers.

Woody Guthrie [00:08:20] We were so afraid you'd kill our children. Nuggets of Cave, the seven foot deep, carried our young man, a pregnant woman down inside the cave. The sleep that very night you soldiers waited till all those miners was asleep. You snapped around our little ten pound soaked our palms to the old kerosene. You struck a man. The blaze it started, you pull the triggers of your Gatling guns. I made a run for the children, but the firewall stopped me. Thirteen children died from your gun as

Amy Westervelt [00:09:13] they fired into the camp and set the miners tents on fire, killing over 20 people, including women and children who had been hiding from the gunfight.

Woody Guthrie [00:09:24] I said, God bless the mine workers union, then I hope. My hidden pride.

Amy Westervelt [00:09:35] It was brutal and quickly became a national story about greed and the plight of the working man, especially when people figured out that the majority owner of the mine was the Rockefellers. The fancy pants iest of the robber barons. It didn't take long before the press were calling it the Ludlow massacre. And here's the amazing thing they didn't break the strike even after they'd been shot at and had their children literally set on fire. They refused to back down. The strike didn't go away, and neither did the bad press. Mary Harris Jones, the famous labor organizer known as Mother Jones. She even showed up.

Woody Guthrie [00:10:20] No longer a single day when we have to destroy those institutions were on hand to spend the night before and show the world what the workers can do.

Amy Westervelt [00:10:42] Ivy Lee had his work cut out for him to turn the tide on this thing, and he already had a full time job as the PR guy for the Pennsylvania railroad. Do you remember how much Ivy Lee liked trains, but the Rockefellers wanted him and what the Rockefellers want the Rockefellers get. This was John D. Rockefeller Jr. we're talking about at this time. And so off Ivy Lee went to Colorado by train. Of course, his first big idea was to create regular bulletins and distribute them to important people in Colorado, New York and D.C. Only a handful of these people were journalists. Most were prominent business types or politicians. Remember, this is the guy that would casually leave brochures on the seats of trains for his rail clients. So it might not surprise you to learn. He also wanted to distribute them to the miners homes. Well, tense at that point. It's possible he didn't really think this through anyway. Women had the vote in Colorado, and Lee figured if the miners wives got a hold of the truth-telling, they would vote the right way and maybe even influence their husbands to calm it down with the strike. Not creepy at all. The bulletins were all published under the title The Struggle in Colorado for Industrial Freedom, Industrial Freedom, Amazing Freedom from the Curse of Unions, Freedom to be set on fire by the management. Lee worked really hard to keep his and Rockefellers names out of it, but they were his baby. And in those bulletins, all the way back in 1914 was the very first example of the crisis actor myth. The very first pamphlet that Ivy Lee wrote reads

Speaker 5 [00:12:24] a strike was forced on Colorado. The men did not ask for it. They had presented no grievances to their employers.

Amy Westervelt [00:12:32] It goes on to say that these strikers are out-of-towners. They don't even work here. It's all made up by the unions. But what about the whole killing women and children, thing? Well, Ivy Lee goes, "Well, we didn't kill them and they weren't shot. They just suffocated." Here's how he put it.

[00:12:53] A fire was accidentally started either by an overturned stove or an explosion, and two women and 11 children were afterward found suffocated. Not one of them was hit by a bullet.

Amy Westervelt [00:13:07] What a ringing endorsement of corporate social responsibility! Not one of them was hit by a bullet. Put that on the recruitment poster. It's bizarre how much it sounds like the Parkland or Sandy Hook truthers that we hear from today.

Parkland truther [00:13:22] It's a horrible thing to think that 17 children got murdered, but it's even more disturbing to think that the government would do something like this and present it as a real event when it's not.

Amy Westervelt [00:13:35] Lee also exaggerated the salaries of various union leaders and Mother Jones, a fact he later had to apologize for publicly and correct. The thing is, the bulletins probably didn't even do that much. In the end, it was the union running out of money that put an end to the Ludlow standoff. But not long after, at Lee's insistence, Rockefeller actually met with and talked to union leaders and even had Miss Jones in, and that helped turn the tide of public sentiment in favor of Lee's client. It helped Rockefeller develop something of a reputation for being reasonable and flexible, being the kind of guy who could change his mind because Lee was so involved, and because his campaign really did improve the public's perception of what happened in Colorado and who the Rockefellers were. Ludlow is considered the first example of modern corporate PR and those few throwaway lines about how the strikers weren't really miners. Just outside agitators didn't really amount to much in Ludlow, but they planted the seeds of a new trick, one that would take root and grow in various directions. Ivy Lee only dreamed of random citizens, let alone journalists, picking up his insinuations and running with them, while Ivy dreams do come true. Let's take a look at how the crisis actor myth shows up in today's world. This is a guy who claims the First Baptist Church shooting never happened because he can find no evidence in the church walls. That bullet holes there were ever fixed by the church.

Side thorn archival [00:15:26] All right, guys, we just want to show everybody that there's a fixed bullet hole anywhere. No way was anything replaced bullet holes.

[00:15:37] OK, folks, this is this is dark, really fucking dark. This guy calls himself side thorn. Not his real name. And he's been fixated on the idea that the First Baptist Church shooting, which killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas, didn't really happen. And a little like Ivy Lee with those women and children at Ludlow, he focuses on bullets and bullet holes as his proof. But this guy goes way beyond an inappropriate line in a pamphlet. He harassed survivors and victims families to the point where he wound up in jail.

Alex Jones archival [00:16:14] We didn't say you were crisis actor and believe this happened. We just pointed out that you're an admitted actor and journalism student and said that your anti-gun and that you're being fed talking points.

Amy Westervelt [00:16:23] This is Alex Jones with one of his many attacks on David Hogg, one of the Parkland school shooting survivors. Because of course, if you're a theater kid or God forbid, a budding journalist, you must be a crisis actor. For some, like Jones, there's money to be made off of these conspiracy theories. Others are fervent believers that there should be no regulation at all on guns and don't like that. These events encourage talk of, you know, making it slightly harder to own heavy artillery. Still, others simply can't face that these terrible things are actually happening. And with shocking regularity. The thing is, some protests do use actors. The ones organized by corporations and their PR firms, for example. It's a tactic we're going to talk about later. In the series called Astroturfing, corporate PR firms have hired actors to protest regulations and even to show up at city council meetings, posing as outraged citizens, giving public comment. We'll tell you how to spot astroturfing later, but in the meantime, here's how to tell when someone is just trying to de-legitimize a real tragedy or protest. They use the term crisis actors never seen. Someone is not pushing a conspiracy theory. Use this term unless they happen to be in disaster management, which actually does use crisis actors to practice rescue missions. They go after particular people who fit the story they want to tell a theater kid, for example. They rarely make statements about the people they're accusing, because that could lead to lawsuits. Instead, they ask leading questions Why is he so well-spoken? Why would a kid whose dad used to be in the FBI be anti-gun? Hmm. Really makes you think. And then there are the folks playing politics. Unfortunately, the ones in recent history have been very specifically targeting. Low information, voters, this is Caitlin Gilbert, a Ph.D. data scientist who focuses on disinformation and who traced exactly how it was flowing online during the 2020 election. Marginalized communities are especially vulnerable because they don't have the proper resources in many cases, or they're already coming from a place of inequity in their lived experience. So they're more likely to be like, Yeah, well, this fits with my notion of how this country has treated me thus far. So wait. After more than a century of being fed propaganda and an effort to manipulate them and benefit the powerful people are susceptible to disinformation and conspiracy theories. Who would have thought? That's it for this episode. Next week, we're going to throw on a white coat and delve into one of the most effective PR tactics ever science denial. Thank you for joining us on this dark and twisty journey through the murky history of PR. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Take this ride all the way to the end.

[00:19:47] Rigged is an original Critical Frequency production, lots of documents, photos, videos and other fun facts about the wild world of PR are on our website at Rigged Dot Media. Our producer is Martin Salt's Bostwick. He also scored this season. Artwork is by Matthew Fleming. Our fact checker is Ashley Bryan. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the 1st Amendment project. Big thanks to Mary Agnes Hagler, who you'll hear throughout this series. If you want to hear more of Mary Mary joking around. Check out Hot. Take the show we do about climate change. Archival tape in this episode is courtesy of the Library of Congress. The show is reported by me. Amy Westervelt. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.