Last week, a jury in Dane County, Wisconsin, awarded Leonard Pozner, whose son, Noah, was the youngest victim of the Sandy Hook Massacre (he was 6), $450,000 in a defamation lawsuit against James Fetzer, a conspiracy theory whackadoodle. Fetzer has repeatedly opined about how Sandy Hook was a government conspiracy to bring about stricter gun control. In his book, Nobody Died At Sandy Hook, Fetzer claimed that Pozner falsified his son’s death certificate, that he was possibly not even the boy’s father.
Fetzer, a retired professor from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, has a long history of spouting off his “theories”. The Minneapolis weekly paper, City Pages, noted that he once said:
“I have been astonished at the public vilification that has been directed at members of this society for pursuing the truth about 9/11,” he wrote in the preface of his 2007 book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America, claiming “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.”
Fetzer is not the first person to be hit back upon by the parents of the Sandy Hook victims. Looking at you Alex Jones. Fetzer has vowed to appeal the jury’s decision, calling it “absurd”.
It also bears noting that Pozner has waged a long and sometimes difficult battle against the ilk who spout off about Sandy Hook:
Pozner has been pushing back for years against hoaxers who have harassed him, subjected him to death threats, and claimed that he was an actor and his son never existed. He has spent years getting Facebook and others to remove conspiracy videos and set up a website to debunk conspiracy theories. Others who lost relatives in the Newtown shooting have joined the fight lately after quietly enduring harassment and ridiculous assertions for years.
We are approaching the seventh anniversary of that horrific event. And yet, there are those who still cling to the idea it was all made up. And what shakes me and many others, is that the images of those young victims did so very little in the long-term to move the debate on firearms safety and regulation. (I know there will be those who differ with that last statement. If so, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.)