{"id":1110,"date":"2019-03-27T03:41:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:41:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:41:28","slug":"the-obsession-with-conspiracy-theories-that-stole-a-young-mans-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1110","title":{"rendered":"The Obsession With Conspiracy Theories That Stole A Young Man's Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE GOOD NEWS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories are rarely real \u2014 and the commitment of these filmmakers helped expose an inconvenient truth about obsessive thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n

When David Crowley returned from military service in Iraq in 2007, he was a changed man. He\u2019d become a pacifist and wanted to be a filmmaker who could expose what he saw as the injustices of a world order that too often profited from war and the suffering of others. He had an easy smile and was well-liked in his small, Minnesota community. On the surface, he sounded like someone you\u2019d meet at a Bernie Sanders rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the time of his death, Crowley and his film project \u201cGray State\u201d had become a star of the then-emerging alt-right movement. This was before the rise of Trump and the\u00a0 movement really took hold. Nonetheless, it had captured his imagination, with its focus on government conspiracy theories, and cravings for political revolution. Armed only with $6,000 of his own money, the military veteran with movie star looks, and an infectious charm, quickly rose to prominence with his self-funded movie trailer for \u201cGray State.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGray State\u201d was a dystopian thriller that embraced the darkest conspiracy theories of rightwing extremists: that corrupt global government forces and the \u201cdeep state\u201d are actively conspiring against the American people. It wasn\u2019t long after he\u2019d posted the trailer for \u201cGray State\u201d in 2012 that Crowley became a social media sensation and a beloved figure in the alt-right community. His ominous vision of the near-future attracted high-profile supporters like \u201cInfo Wars\u2019\u201d Alex Jones. A crowdfunding campaign for the film granted him the ability to pay himself a $70,000 salary to focus on the feature-length script \u2014 though Crowley had yet to film a second of the actual movie. \u201cI strongly believe that Crowley was not really a storyteller,\u201d acclaimed director Werner Herzog told GOOD. “If we had given Crowley $50 million dollars he still would not be beyond his trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzog executive produced a new documentary \u201cA Gray State\u201d about Crowley\u2019s life and death with his long-time producing partner Erik Nelson. After seeing a small newspaper blurb about Crowley\u2019s death in a local Minnesota paper, Nelson began an ambitious investigation into his mysterious life that formed the basis for his documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were sincere in their beliefs,” Nelson said. “They bought into it completely.”<\/p>\n

After raising nearly $70,000 through a crowdfunding campaign, Crowley finished the script and went to Hollywood where he successfully attached his script to a production company who shared his vision of raising $30 million to produce the movie. He was well on his way to becoming the next alt-right celebrity. Then, seemingly without explanation, he was dead, after killing his wife and their 5-year-old daughter, before apparently turning the gun on himself.<\/p>\n

The gruesome deaths appeared to many to be the result of one man\u2019s descent into madness. But to his followers, they were proof that Crowley had stumbled onto the truth, falling down the rabbit hole of an even more bizarre conspiracy theory: that Crowley was killed by the government in a pre-emptive move to stop his \u201cmessage\u201d from reaching the masses.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Nelson partnered with\u00a0New Yorker reporter Alec Wilkinson, traveling to Apple Valley, Minnesota, to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding the Crowley\u2019s deaths. What they found was much stranger than either had imagined.<\/p>\n

An accomplished documentary filmmaker, Nelson is best-known for his collaborations with Werner Herzog, who executive produced \u201cA Gray State,\u201d on films like “Grizzly Man” and \u201cCave of Forgotten Dreams.\u201d He and Wilkinson gained incredible access to Crowley’s surviving family, and hundreds of hours of footage filmed by Crowley himself stretching back nearly a decade to his days serving in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Crowley had been meticulously documenting his life on camera right until the very morning of his murder-suicide on Christmas Day in 2014. When police arrived, they were greeted by the sound of a music playlist blaring from Crowley\u2019s home speaker system that contained an assortment of orchestral tracks from films like \u201cSpiderman 3\u201d along with more contemporary songs. As officers entered the family home, they found a message scrawled in blood on the living room wall which read, \u201cAllahu Akbar,\u201d looming over a copy of the Koran opened to a section on forgiveness \u2014\u00a0a detail\u00a0seemingly designed to fuel\u00a0the wildest fears of the conspiracy theorists who\u2019d obsessed about him.<\/p>\n

A community calling itself \u201cJustice for David Crowley\u201d has since attracted thousands of followers despite its near complete lack of evidence or authoritative voices. As one such “citizen researcher” says in the film, “Credibility means nothing to me. What I care about is\u00a0truth.\u201d Nelson\u2019s film quickly makes it clear that Crowley wasn\u2019t the same political diehard so many of his fans are, and likely never embraced a unified political philosophy. Rather, his opinions were a collage of often-contradicting beliefs that fit nicely within the alt-right community, which is less about coherent principles and instead fueled more by conspiracy theories, resentment, and an extreme form of populist revolt against a perceived world order that is actively working against innocent, and often defenseless, citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a core sample of American crazy,\u201d Nelson said, \u201cand he’s right at the vortex of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being swept up in the crazy, Crowley wasn\u2019t a racist, homophobe, or ignorant. The most unsettling moment in the film may be when Nelson intercuts footage of Crowley\u2019s wife, Komel, with Crowley talking about how the Iraq war showed him how America had overstepped its bounds in what he called an \u201cunjust\u201d and \u201cillegal\u201d war.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, Crowley and his wife began to lose touch with reality. Their home videos in the months leading up to their deaths show Komel increasingly convinced that a dark, supernatural force has invaded their lives and she appears to be actively convincing Crowley that they should end their own lives to join others who have been \u201craptured.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the documentary, the couple’s families say David and Komel slowly cut off contact with them, an experience echoed by Crowley’s film producers who repeatedly tried to reach him in hopes of moving his project forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Crowley was the victim of a vast conspiracy,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cIt wasn’t the conspiracy that he thought. The conspiracy is being an educated, somewhat aimless, white guy growing up in Minneapolis with a lot of time on his hands who got captivated by the gun culture, captivated by violent movies and video games, who thought he could become a star, a YouTube sensation.\u201d Crowley never did see those dreams realized. Yet, Nelson has managed to piece together so much footage of Crowley and his family, that the film ends up nearly serving as Crowley’s posthumous message to the world. It’s the film he was never able to complete himself. But in Nelson’s documentary, Crowley is the first person on screen, in archived interview footage, discussing his combat experience in Iraq, and how it helped shape his worldview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of creating a lost film that was in essence created by a madman and being an accomplice to his work has of course given me thought,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cI grappled with it all the time but I didn’t feel I had any choice. I always believed it was a window to a larger truth.\u201d Ultimately, Crowley’s failure to complete his film, and the tragic killings that ended the lives of his wife, child, and himself, raise more questions than answers.<\/p>\n

As Nelson put his film together, a psychiatrist viewed the raw footage. \u201cAfter a lot of time and effort, his basic conclusion was, \u2018Beats me,\u2019\u201d Nelson said. \u201cHe couldn’t figure this out.\u201d Herzog remains deeply sceptical of those who blame Crowley’s fall on mental illness. Instead, he sees a man beaten down by grandiose expectations that couldn’t be fulfilled by what he called limited artistic abilities. Nelson is far more sympathetic toward Crowley’s story but he’s also not in denial about how his death has been hijacked by those who wish to use it to serve their own conspiratorial ends. \u201cEveryone has a bully pulpit now,\u201d he says. \u201cThe \u2018Justice for David Crowley\u2019 folks can disseminate as much content as they want on YouTube now. It\u2019s much easier to create your own club now with rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Nelson was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, he had to decide how best to end a story that remains open-ended for so many. (Spoilers ahead.) His solution was to use footage taken just before the Crowley\u2019s deaths, showing David playing with the family dog, Paleo.<\/p>\n

In a heartbreaking moment in the film, David\u2019s brother says\u00a0that he wants the dog back.\u00a0Nelson had to track down the dog\u2019s whereabouts, but Paleo is now living with a new family. Crowley\u2019s friend Mason Hendricks shot footage, which Nelson put together into a single minute of new film, showing Paleo running through a seemingly tranquil backyard, cautiously looking back at the camera. Herzog then picked the final shot of that sequence to end on before the film’s credits while the same song Crowley had chosen for the soundtrack to his death plays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how \u201cA Gray State\u201d ends \u2014 but like all conspiracy-driven movements, it\u2019s not the end of the story. Since the documentary\u2019s release, the \u201cJustice for David Crowley & Family\u201d Facebook group say they have experienced a sharp rise in visitors to their page. The very existence of the film itself even has some members confidently speculating that Nelson is part of a larger conspiracy to cover-up the truth about Crowley\u2019s death.\u00a0
\n <\/span>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

Share photo courtesy of A&E Films.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE GOOD NEWS: Conspiracy theories are rarely real \u2014 and the commitment of these filmmakers helped expose an inconvenient truth about obsessive thinking. When David Crowley returned from military service in Iraq in 2007, he was a changed man. He\u2019d become a pacifist and wanted to be a filmmaker who could expose what he saw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}