Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/19/sandy-hook-dad-to-get-450000.html
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Looks like accusing people of faking a death certificate is even stupider than accusing them of not having a birth certificate
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If you look at how much Pozner has been hounded and doxxed by the conspiracy theorist mob, it is just insane. He has had to change residences time after time because, whereever he lives, stalkers appear and harass him. It is beyond belief how zealous the Sandy Hook deniers are.
Fetzer began to promote John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, later 9/11 conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories regarding the 2002 death of Senator Paul Wellstone and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories since the multiple fatalities in 2012. He cofounded Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
There’s something going on psychology-wise that, once you believe one conspiracy theory, you have to believe in all conspiracy theories. And it always leads to rabid anti-semiticism, the original conspiracy theory:
“James Henry Fetzer of Veterans Today, in an interview on Iran’s Press TV, [puts forward the theory] that Benjamin Netanyahu was behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March.” (link)
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Sounds like it should have been a lot more than $450,000. Maybe $450,000 plus all the assets of the deniers for their entire lifetimes.
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Man I hope they don’t find some way to weasel out of paying the full amount.
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I remain impressed by the strength and righteousness of Mr. Leonard Pozner. Bully for him.
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There’s no way on Earth to excuse someone who makes a career out of hounding strangers for having their children murdered. I don’t have any nice wishes for this guy.
As for the horrifyingly large number of people who would buy his books, or watch Infowars or whatever, I think what we really need is to cultivate routes out of that diseased mental state. Currently, if you’ve somehow ended up as a Sandy Hook denier, and a little voice says “this is not OK”, your only options are to live aboveground as a self-identified irredeemable scumbag, or to double down on your fake beliefs and at least have the other trolls to hang out with. We need narratives about how people can be rehabilitated from this state, not just stories laughing and pointing at the hideous morons.
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I have been wondering why the US seems to have so much conspiracy theorists. A related Wikipedia article gave one hint about this.
“James Tracy, a former professor at Florida Atlantic University who taught a course on conspiracy theories, has suggested the shooting either did not actually occur or occurred very differently than accounted in mainstream reports, claiming political motives for the coverup. His allegations were strongly criticized by Patricia Llodra, a Newtown selectwoman. Additionally, Florida Atlantic president Mary Jane Saunders issued a statement that Tracy’s views were “not shared by” the university. In response to his comments, the university opened an investigation of Tracy, who had tenure.”
Apparently universities have courses on them. WTF!
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The irony here is that even if this was a government conspiracy you are likely to never have any concrete proof. Short of having a DNA match on the people who died everything else is speculation.
The government makes people disappear, reinvents their identity creating someone from nothing…but why? I mean I know what reasons conspiracy theorist say, but thats a lot of effort on a very long game.
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Yeah, they should have courses on them, but in the same way they have courses on cults: A psychology course on the warning signs something is one, how to identify them, how to pick them apart, the psychology behind them, and how to fight them.
This college got it wrong: Just like you’re not supposed to have a cult leader teach your course on cults, you aren’t supposed to have a conspiracy nut teach your course on conspiracy theories.
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Let’s also not forget the number of moving parts and people involved for this to work. It’s insane to think something on this scale with this level of complexity and secrecy could possibly stay that way for more than a year or two. Someone would crack, or some concrete evidence would be found, or (god forbid) someone who was set up with a new identity would accidentally (or purposely) spill the beans. I mean, seriously, you think they could get two dozen or so elementary school-age kids to leave their families and never see them again and not say shit about it to anyone wherever they got moved to? You think you could get that many parents at one school all to agree? (And not just that many to agree, but 100% of the ones you approached to agree - if even one approached family didn’t want to the secret would be out.)
Your only other option makes this even more unrealistic: That this was an even longer game, that started with establishing that many sleeper cells in a single city, having them raise children to the right ages, and then put the plan into action? And faking a shooting in such a way that only the sleeper cell members were “victims”?
Honestly, the only real conspiracy theory that would make any sense is that the shooter - and only the shooter - was in on the Deep State™ plan. False flag operations are at least plausable, unlike the shit these Sandy Hook deniers are spouting.
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Also keep in mind that so many of these shootings are obviously false flags. The people who do them must be exhausted!
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I can see a course on dissecting conspiracy theories: what they are, why people believe them, how they spread, how to handle the believers.
I guess James Tracy was sloppy with his sterile procedure, and caught the disease he was studying.
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I wondered where I’d heard of Fetzer, apparently we both started faculty positions at the same small institution the same year. (I moved a couple of years later.) He seems to have had a fairly distinguished career in Philosophy of Science before going off the rails.
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Indeed; so many of these Conspiracies fall apart with the minimum of logical thought.
“The Earth is flat, but THEY don’t want you to know!”
“Why (don’t THEY want us to know)?”
“The Twin Towers were destroyed by a Controlled Explosion orchistrated by THEM!”
"How (did THEY sneak sufficient explosives in to the building, place them and wire them up without anyone noticing)?
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“Good morning, students. This semester’s course, “Cult Indoctrination 101”, has been sponsored by the Church of Scientology.”
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A more accurate headline would say that “Judge orders that …” There is absolutely no guarantee that any money will change hands. A bankruptcy judge could immediately nullify the payment and attorneys could infinitely prolong the process. Nothing is certain in the legal system.
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People would rather believe conspiracy theories than admit that there is something fundamentally wrong with the US. If a country was a person the US would be a dangerous psychopath.
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Apart from mounting legal fees.
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pulled from bookshelves in June and the publisher, Moon Rock Books, has apologized to the Pozner family.
I’m rather of dubious about the sincerity of an apology from a publisher that is solely devoted to printing conspiracy theory bullshit. Looks like Fetzer and Palecek (the ‘editor’ of the sandy hook book) also have their hands in half or so of Moon Rock’s other titles. That James Tracy shows up as a contributor on their books, too.
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