crisis actor

Noun

crisis actor (plural crisis actors)

1. A person employed to portray a disaster victim during emergency drills.
2. A person who secretly acts out a role, such as victim or mourner, as part of a staged depiction of a deadly event, particularly a mass shooting.
   • The victims in the shooting? They were “crisis actors” hired to promote the story as a pretext to impose tighter gun restrictions, the theory goes.2016 June 28, Christopher Mele, “After Orlando Shooting, ‘False Flag’ and ‘Crisis Actor’ Conspiracy Theories Surface”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   • One possible option the Russians are considering, and which we [the United States Department of State] made public today, involves the production of a propaganda video. A video with graphic scenes of false explosions, depicting corp-, corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners and images of...2022 February 3, 0:44 from the start, in State Department Spokesperson Holds Briefing (television production), spoken by self (Ned Price), United States Department of State, via C-SPAN 2
3. A participant in an international crisis.
   • Finally, the greater the proportion of nondemocracies among crisis actors, the more likely it becomes that escalation will occur.2000, John A. Vasquez, What Do We Know about War?, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 47
   • Cases with minimal crisis actor participation are found in most regions of the global system.2019, Michael Brecher, Crisis And Change In World Politics, Routledge, →ISBN, page 35