XPost: alt.guns, misc.education.home-school.christian, chi.media   
   XPost: co.media   
   From: sandy.hoax.gun.grab@barackobama.com   
      
   Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner is one of too many parents   
   painfully familiar with the answer. Dogged by a relentless   
   conspiracy theorist, he's spent the past three years fighting to   
   protect the honor of his murdered son.   
      
   BY MIKE SPIES· @MIKESPIESNYC·December 11, 2015   
      
   A year and a half after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook   
   Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Lenny Pozner called   
   to set up a meeting with Wolfgang Halbig. The 68-year-old   
   security consultant was the de facto leader of a community of   
   conspiracy theorists, known as hoaxers, who claimed that the   
   shooting had been staged by the government. To the hoaxers, the   
   26 victims — one of whom was Pozner’s six-year-old son, Noah —   
   were fictional characters.   
      
   It was May 28, 2014, and Pozner, an IT consultant, was in   
   Florida on business. He hoped to sit down with Halbig at a   
   coffee shop near his home in Orlando, Florida. He wanted to talk   
   to him face-to-face about Noah, who was his only son and never   
   far from his mind. On December 14, 2012, the day of the   
   shooting, Pozner had been the one to drop Noah off at school. As   
   they drove, they listened to “Gangnam Style,” Noah’s favorite   
   song. When they arrived, Pozner said, “Have a fun day,” and   
   watched as his child headed inside, fiddling with his backpack   
   and brown jacket.   
      
   Ever since his son’s death, Pozner had been dealing with the   
   hoaxers. It was his habit to regularly post photos of Noah, a   
   happy boy with soft blue eyes and a wide smile, on his Google   
   Plus page. He would put up pictures of Noah hugging his twin   
   sister, or playing on the beach, or showing off the tooth he   
   lost less than two weeks before he was murdered. The hoaxers   
   would see these images and offer comments: “Where’s Noah going   
   to die next?” read one. Another commenter, seemingly believing   
   that Pozner had been recruited to help perpetuate the myth of   
   the shooting, asked, “How much do you get paid?”   
      
   Pozner was one of the rare Sandy Hook parents who confronted   
   those who questioned his child’s murder. In response to their   
   comments, he posted online his son’s birth and death   
   certificates. He shared the medical examiner’s report and one of   
   Noah’s report cards. The hoaxers said the records were   
   counterfeits.   
      
   Pozner remained undaunted. He thought that perhaps if he could   
   show Halbig the documents in person, he and the rest of the   
   hoaxers might at last relent. “I wanted to be as transparent as   
   possible,” Pozner says. “I thought keeping the documents private   
   would only feed the conspiracy.”   
      
   When Pozner did not receive a reply from Halbig, he contacted   
   Kelley Watt, one of the more aggressive hoaxers who showed up on   
   his Google Plus page. Watt wrote back on Halbig’s behalf.   
   “Wolfgang does not wish to speak with you,” her note said,   
   “unless you exhume Noah’s body and prove to the world you lost   
   your son.”   
      
   Giving up on a meeting with Halbig, Pozner looked to engage in   
   some sort of dialogue with the people who, around this time,   
   made him their chief target. (One video montage that started   
   making the rounds showed images of Noah set to a soundtrack of   
   pornographic sounds.) In June 2014, Pozner accepted an   
   invitation to join a private Facebook group called Sandy Hook   
   Hoax. He told its members that he was willing to answer their   
   questions. “I think I lasted all of eight minutes,” he recalls.   
   One participant said, “Man, I’m gonna have to coach you up if   
   you wanna go on TV and make money Lenny.” Another typical   
   attacker proclaimed, “Fuck your fake family, you piece of shit.”   
      
   Pozner eventually realized that, for Halbig and his brethren,   
   this was a game without end. His efforts to combat them became a   
   mission. “I’m going to have to protect Noah’s honor for the rest   
   of my life,” he says.   
      
   Every modern atrocity or disaster has its attendant conspiracy   
   theories. Their shared thesis is that governments, needing a way   
   to keep the populace in fear, orchestrate mock calamities, using   
   the tools of the state to cover their tracks. Within 24 hours of   
   the recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, videos   
   claiming the event was “staged” surfaced on YouTube and received   
   thousands of clicks.   
      
   It was the same in 2007, after a senior at Virginia Tech killed   
   32 people and wounded 17 others in the worst mass shooting in   
   U.S. history. The record death toll fed rumors that “black ops”   
   must have been behind the incident. Five years later, in the   
   wake of an attack on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Alex   
   Jones, who runs the popular conspiracy site InfoWars, implied   
   that the gunman was in cahoots with the government, pointing   
   listeners to his graduate student work at a “government-funded   
   neuroscience program,” not mentioning the fact that, like most   
   grad programs, it receives plenty of private funding as well. In   
   one of the darker ironies America has recently produced, the   
   sheriff investigating the October mass shooting at Oregon’s   
   Umpqua Community College was found to have shared mass shooting   
   conspiracy theories on Facebook.   
      
   Yet even amid this terrible canon, the conspiracy theories that   
   sprang up after Sandy Hook have been exceptional. Less than a   
   month after the shooting, a video called “The Sandy Hook   
   Shooting — Fully Exposed” had received 10 million views on   
   YouTube. Driving some of these hoaxers, in part, was a panic   
   over new firearms restrictions. An infamous conspiracy theorist   
   named James Fetzer called the Newtown attack a “FEMA drill to   
   promote gun control.” The National Rifle Association laid the   
   groundwork for such sentiments. In February 2012, Wayne   
   LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, described then-   
   first-term President Obama’s hidden agenda: “Get re-elected and,   
   with no more elections to worry about…erase the Second Amendment   
   from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S.   
   Constitution.”   
      
   In the wake of the massacre, Halbig started the website   
   sandyhookjustice.com. He touted his credentials as a former   
   security director for schools in Seminole County, Florida, and   
   claimed he worked on the official investigation into the mass   
   shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. He said his knowledge   
   of security protocols and procedures provided him with a   
   singular ability to analyze what happened that day in Newtown,   
   and highlight what he believed to be the government’s many lies.   
   Other hoaxers rallied around Halbig’s alleged resume, and   
   donated tens of thousands of dollars to his GoFundMe account. On   
   his show, Alex Jones championed him as a “leading expert” on   
   Sandy Hook.   
      
   To press their case, hoaxers designated themselves experts on   
   the physiology of grieving. The parents didn’t appear sad enough   
   in interviews, they argued; therefore, they could not possibly   
   have lost children.   
   Halbig became known for asking a set of 16 questions that he   
   argued proved the event was staged, carried out by “crisis   
   actors,” whom the government pays to pose as victims during   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)