Notes

Sandy Hook ushered in new era of conspiracy and lies, creator finds
On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman shot and killed 26 folks, together with 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Robbie Parker's 6-year-old daughter Emilie was among those murdered.
The subsequent day, Parker became the first family member to speak publicly concerning the capturing. Stepping as a lot as the rostrum, Parker emitted a nervous, half-laugh earlier than he gathered himself collectively and began to reminisce about Emilie's quick life.
New York Times journalist and writer Elizabeth Williamson says that Parker's reflexive response to the tragedy would later turn out to be basic to an enormous conspiracy marketing campaign that claimed what happened at Sandy Hook was a sinister government plot designed to encroach upon gun owners' rights.
Alex Jones, who hosts a conservative radio present and the net site InfoWars, broadcast Parker's statement repeatedly, Williamson says, and "People picked up on this and this snicker, this sort of split-second second in a a number of minute long, simply anguished presentation, and so they said that this small, gasping snicker was proof that [Parker] was lying."
Denying that the Sandy Hook mass shooting had occurred grew to become "a highly symbolic thing," Williamson says. "People did this for reasons of ideology. They did it for, in Alex Jones' case, profit. They did it for psychological reasons. There was a tribalistic bonding that happened around this."
Williamson's new e-book, Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, examines how conspiracists tormented the victims' parents by accusing them of being "disaster actors." In the years because the tragedy, the households have endured relentless online abuse, stalking and private threats. In 2016, Parker was visiting Seattle along with his household when a man approached him on the street and accused him of lying about Emilie's death, as Williamson recounts.
"That 3,000 miles away from Newtown, he could be accosted 4 years later by somebody who believed the lies about Sandy Hook ... gives you an concept of the power of those lies and the best way they travel," Williamson says.
Some Sandy Hook mother and father have fought again, battling online platforms to take down much of the hoaxers' content material and suing Jones for defamation. Jones has misplaced 4 defamation fits to Sandy Hook mother and father and is now facing scrutiny from the House choose committee examining the Jan. 6 assault on the us Capitol. Williamson sees a direct a connection between the lies spread about Sandy Hook and those informed in regards to the 2020 election.
"In the Cold War, it took a classy foreign adversary like Russia to sow nationwide discord," she says. "Now all you need is an Alex Jones or even a man with a smartphone who has access to social media. That is a very ominous development, and it additionally factors to the following election, because we do not really need Russia to sow disruption in our politics anymore. We are doing a fairly good job of it ourselves."
On particulars that conspiracy theorists cite as "evidence" that the capturing was faux
On the day of the capturing, ... there was just this outpouring, as all of us keep in mind, of grief and generosity and provides of assist. At some level, someone delivered port-a-potties to an space outside the firehouse. It was most likely a neighborhood merchant. ... No one actually knows how they obtained there, but they had been put there as a outcome of the place was teeming with members of the family, with first responders, with media, and somebody in all probability thought that may be useful.
[One conspiracy theorist] repeatedly requested some type of receipt, some kind of documentation. He was satisfied that the appearance of these port-a-potties was proof that the entire thing had been planned in advance and that each possible contingency had been supplied for before the taking pictures really occurred. That was one such declare. Years value of public records requests went into this.
On the absurdity that conspiracy theorists believe the bloodbath was a government hoax
You'll recall that in December of 2012, President Obama had simply been reelected. Newtown went for Mitt Romney. So the concept this city had coordinated and cooperated with the newly re-elected president to stage a seamless plot as a pretext for confiscating American's firearms is just past absurd. It certainly pales as a whopping falsehood to any of these specious particulars that these "hoaxers" ... might possibly dig up exhibiting anomalies within the reporting or initial errors in what was broadcast or unusual reactions by mother and father.
On the difference in the on-line remedy of the Virginia Tech taking pictures in 2007 and the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012
Sandy Hook
In 2007, the worst school taking pictures in American history occurred in Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. That was 32 people killed and 17 wounded. I went and talked to Lori Haas, whose daughter had been wounded in that capturing. And I actually asked her, "Can you undergo your Facebook web page and simply tell me if anyone got here to you with a conspiracy concept or referred to as you a liar?" Because she was very visible in an effort to vary the nation's gun insurance policies in the aftermath of Virginia Tech. So she went back and she mentioned, "Boy, I'm really wanting. I don't see anything. Here are condolences. Here are some folks eager to know if I'm going to attend this or that event or rally." And so here was a woman who could be very active in the gun control effort submit Virginia Tech, who couldn't discover a single factor.
But I suppose that points to what actually happened: The 2007 social media make up was a tiny fraction of what it was in 2012, when Sandy Hook occurred. ... While perhaps some people had some conspiracy theories around Virginia Tech, they'd no means for spreading them the method in which they did in 2012.
On how Lenny Pozner, father of victim Noah Pozner, was profitable in his efforts to take away content on hoaxer Facebook groups
The thing that he discovered that turned sort of a main device in his toolkit was the copyright laws. ... Lenny maintained a memorial Google Plus page to [his son] Noah that included plenty of images of Noah and his sisters and videos of him. And these conspiracy theorists would go onto that web page and raise the pictures and use them in videos in making false claims and blog posts and Facebook pages and such. So [Lenny] owned that material. So that's one thing that is inside the rules that violates these social media platforms' terms of service. So he might get that materials taken down. So he and his HONR Network volunteers amassed lists by the 1000's of movies, posts and various claims that have been made about Sandy Hook using these photographs, and the businesses would take those down.
On why eradicating content made Pozner a target for Alex Jones and his followers
[That] was one thing that these individuals could not stand. They didn't care that the households would make statements talking about how that they had moved so many times as a outcome of their address was being put on-line, or the torment that it had put their surviving youngsters through. ... They didn't care about any of that. They did care if their materials was being taken down. That, to them, was a violation of their First Amendment rights. ... So [Alex Jones] flew into a fury when this happened, and that was all really it took to gin up plenty of fury out there amongst his listeners against Lenny. ...
[Lenny] has lived in hiding ever since he began to have interaction these people, the hoaxers, the spreaders of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. They have repeatedly posted his personal data, his Social Security quantity, his cellphone numbers and people of Veronique, his ex-wife, his household and prolonged household, online. He has moved, at this level, about a dozen times, principally as a result of these individuals hold posting his handle on-line.
At one level, there was a conspiracy theorist who had spread a few of these lies about Sandy Hook, who was residing around the corner from him. ... [Lenny] doesn't allow people to see his face [in interviews]. He does not allow himself to be photographed within the media, and these conspiracy theorists had picked up a element within the railing of the balcony of his house building outside the window and tracked the building and posted it on-line. Another time, a man who has since been convicted of assault, known as him the day he moved in, or a few days later. and read his new address to him over the telephone. So he is never been capable of actually settle until very, very recently, as a result of he's in fixed concern that somebody is going to take motion based on what they imagine that they learn on-line.
On why Pozner says he won — regardless of being doxxed and tormented
There was a thing that Lenny advised me early on that basically stuck with me. He told me about how after Noah died, that he was trying to find anything that smelled like him, garments that perhaps hadn't been washed, anything that smelled like his son, as a result of he remembered how he would, at night time, go into [Noah's] room when he was sleeping and he would inhale that scent, that if you have children, anyone knows of a sleeping child. That actually resonated with me, because what he was saying was that every one hint of Noah was gone by a couple of months afterward. He could not discover that scent. And what he was principally saying was Noah's essence on-line, the record of his life and demise, was in danger of being obliterated in comparable fashion by these lies. Where when you googled "Sandy Hook," you'll find not an accounting of the crime or a tribute to the victims – you would discover these lies. And he realized that if this continued, if he did not try to stop it, that Noah would fade, like his scent, to nothing and that his legacy would not survive.
And [Lenny] has succeeded. If you test it out, when you google [Noah] at present and you google the "Sandy Hook shooting," you will find a factual illustration. You will not discover lies and conspiracy theories and Alex Jones broadcasts. And to [Lenny], that may be a victory. The different factor is that Alex Jones, his title isn't talked about any more without that being attached to him, that this was the one who spread lies about Sandy Hook that resulted in years of torment of these families. And that also, to Lenny, is a victory..

Here's my website: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/09/1084912392/sandy-hook-hoax-elizabeth-williamson