The National Butterfly Center is closed because of threats from conspiracy theorists, robbing children in an underserved area of a chance to learn
But now, spurred by hate groups tied to Trump’s border wall, deranged people have attacked the center and our employees, and more recently, grifters have live-streamed these groups’ absurd sex-trafficking lies. On February 2, we had to close our doors to protect our staff and our visitors. The North American Butterfly Association (NABA), of which I am the president, is acutely aware of how conspiracy theories can fuel violence.
In 2019, the people behind one of the pro-wall groups, We Build the Wall, started inventing malicious lies that the center was a “sham” operation and what it really was doing was sex and drug trafficking. This group’s leaders were later indicted for defrauding their own supporters out of millions of dollars in their sham crusade to build a wall.
But it didn’t matter. Their unbelievable claims stuck.
Thus, the thugs who threaten the butterfly center aren’t just coming after us. They also threaten and harm the people and the environment of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. We know what can happen; a conspiracy theorist shot and killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso; and accusations of child sex trafficking fueled the attack on Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C., in 2016. It’s not just a ruse for these conspiracy groups to raise money, but also to raise hell. Five years after all this drama started, we at NABA sit frustrated and in disbelief. When people gather millions of dollars by wrongly claiming that people they don’t like are raping babies, bad results are certain to follow.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dangerous-lies-threaten-the-national-butterfly-center/