The term “crisis actors,” used by Sandy Hook fabulists to mean people pretending to be victims or survivors of the massacre, was used after the Sandy Hook shooting by James Tracy, a Florida Atlantic University professor and Infowars guest whose side hustle as a conspiracy blogger cost him his job. Some believers of Infowars’ lies about Sandy Hook have tormented the relatives of the victims ever since. Late last year, Mr. Jones lost four defamation lawsuits filed in Texas and Connecticut by victims’ families because he had repeatedly failed to produce court-ordered documents and testimony; juries will next decide how much he must pay the families in damages. Last week, days before those trials were to begin, Infowars filed for Chapter 11 protection, delaying the trials. In addition, his role in organizing “Stop the Steal” events is under scrutiny by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

It’s impossible to know whether Russia studied the language used in this particular conspiracy theory before spreading lies around its invasion of Ukraine. But the similarity is eerie. Russia has long used incidents of American gun violence to support its propagandistic claims of cultural superiority. Now, during this war, the Kremlin is adopting the language of American mass shooting deniers to deny towering evidence of its army’s atrocities in Ukraine, including calling injured and killed Ukrainians crisis actors.