"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... ...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,"(*)(*)(*)(*) your fake family, you piece of (*)(*)(*)(*)." https://www.vice.com/read/sandy-hook-truthers-what-kind-of-person-calls-a-mass-shooting-a-hoax So, I'm okay with anybody believing whatever they like. But when you start attacking real-life people who have dealt with tragedy, then you are no better than the Westboro Church clowns. These 'truthers' have revealed themselves as scum.
To be fair, they obviously don’t believe that they’re dealing with people who have actually dealt with the tragedy, they think these people are actively engaged in a grand cover-up conspiracy and they’re clearly too wrapped up in their narrative to even consider the possibility they could be wrong. They’re not actually saying “These are grieving parents, let’s be nasty to them”. I actually feel the kind of people who continue to get so wrapped up in this kind of conspiracy so long after the event in question are suffering some form of psychological problems and could be seen to be as further victims of the attacks. I give great credit to the father who is trying to engage with them in this manner and I do think he may well achieve something in some cases, though they’re probably unlikely to admit to any doubts or change of mind publicly (not least because of how they’d be treated by their former fellow conspiracists).
