Translated material
Troll for trolls
A fan of conspiracy theories became a victim of conspiracy therapists and declared war on them: The New York Magazine
The murder of 27 people at the Sandy Hook school in 2012 is one of the worst crimes in modern US history. True, among the supporters of the theories of the conspiracy, the version is popular that in fact there was no murder: the government allegedly staged the death of schoolchildren to tighten the control of weapons. The New York Magazine tells the story of Lenny Pozner, who was fond of similar theories as long as the Internet activists who were preoccupied with the search for “hidden truth” did not say that the son of Pozner, who died in Sandy Hook, never existed. For a year and a half, Pozner suffered, and then declared a war to the “conspirators”.
The theory that there was no mass murder at the Sandy Hook school in December 2012 is popular among fans of the “alternative truth” - just like talking about imitation of landing on the moon or participation of the US government in the September 11th attacks. According to conspiracy therapists, all media certificates about the massacre at Sandy Hook are fabricated: family photographs of the dead are made in Photoshop, and the memories of relatives of the dead children are nothing more than a lie. Two weeks after the massacre on Yetube, a half -hour “revealing video” appeared about the crime, the authors of which were wondering whether the criminal could kill so many children - because they quickly run and difficult to get on them. The video was watched more than 11 million times.
Lenny Pozner moved with his wife Veronica to the town of Newtown in Connecticut in 2005. The couple had three children - Sofia, Ariel and Noah. On December 14, 2012, Posner took them to Sandy Hook. On the way, the family listened to the beloved song of the 6-year-old Noah-“Gangnam Style”. It was on this day that Adam Lanza opened fire at school. Noah became his youngest victim; Sofia and Ariel managed to escape.
Posner recognized Posner as a massive murder at Sandy Hook among conspiracy therapists before all of the parents of the dead children: he himself was fond of similar theories and regularly listened to the podcasts that described alternative versions of certain events. As Pozner recalls, he could well listen to the podkist of the famous supporter of the theories of the conspiracy of Alex Jones on the way home from Sandy Hook. Posner, according to him, was not that he believed in all these theories, but perceived them as science fiction films.
According to the version of the conspiracy therapists and Posner and his wife were hired by the US government to participate in the staging of the joke, and their son Noah simply never existed. According to this “version”, Veronika Posner is a Swiss diplomat named Holler (Pozner's wife is really from Switzerland, and her maiden surname is Holler). Fans of the conspiracy theory carefully examined the Posner family accounts in social networks, found supposedly suspicious shadows and pose in the photographs - and concluded that Veronica “took a picture” for all the pictures to create a convincing legend.
At first, Lenny Pozner was not up to conspiracy therapists - he was heavily experienced by the death of his son, and the marriage with Veronika fell apart: shortly after the death of Noah, the couple divorced and parted. Everything changed in the spring of 2014-Posner could not stand it and declared war on the conspiracyxes. He published a certificate of death of Noah and other documents proving that he had a son. Posner joined the groups of conspiracy therapists and led many hours of discussions, trying to prove that there was no conspiracy. In response, he basically received insults and threats. They told Pozner that they would not communicate with him until he exhumes the body of his son.
In the end, he created the Conspiracy Theorists Anonymous group, which began to debunk the theory of staging a massacre at Sandy Hook. Posner himself did not take an active part in the exposure of the revelations - it was still hard for him to read a police report on the death of his son - and relied on other activists. Many of them turned out to be, like Posner himself, in the past zealous supporters of the theories of conspiracy. They dedicated the year to the exposure, they did not yet understand that no one listens to their answers, and supporters of the theory of staging are ordinary trolls that enjoy the fact that they insult other people. The trolls did not perceive any arguments and did not look for answers and evidence, but simply argued for the sake of dispute. Realizing this, Posner came to the conclusion that conspiracy therapists should somehow be punished.
“You can’t come home with a baseball bat - well, I can’t come, I have children,” says Posner. He decided that it was necessary to turn the life of conspiracy thes into the same hell as they arranged for him. Posner launched a site on which he published personal data of the most active trolls, achieved a book from sales at Amazon that shooting at Sandy Hook was a staging, forced the site for collecting donations to stop working with conspiracyologists and filed a lawsuit in violation of the right to private life against one of them. The lawsuit was registered on September 11 - Posner did it on purpose. He explains that those who do not believe in Sandy Hook believe that the FBI arranged the 2001 terrorist attack. Pozner also opened a site with fake news, on which it openly mocks the conspiracygists.
All this was done within the framework of the Honr Network created by Pozner, its goal is to fight the theories of the conspiracy. Honr Network, in particular, issued a 165-page book about a prominent ideologist of the theory about staging joking Wolfgange Halbig. It is written in a similar manner of conspiracy books: endless questions that bring the reader to the idea that Halbig has something to hide.
In fact, as The New York Magazine writes, Posner turned into the same troll as those against whom he fights.
Posner knew that he would provoke an attack of anger against the conspiracy thespools; Many of Newtown consider it a counterproductive campaign. But he does not believe that the hornet's nest is turning: “People do not understand what trolls are. If they do not feed them, they will not leave anyway ”(English.).