From CBS News, in June:
The father of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that claimed the shooting never happened — the latest victory for victims’ relatives who have been taking a more aggressive stance against conspiracy theorists.
The book, “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook,” has also been pulled to settle claims against its publisher filed by Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was killed in the shooting.
“My face-to-face interactions with Mr. Pozner have led me to believe that Mr. Pozner is telling the truth about the death of his son,” Dave Gahary, the principal officer at publisher Moon Rock Books, said Monday. “I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology to the Pozner family.”
It has now been reported that one of the book’s authors, James Fetzer, must pay $450,000, while the other author, Mike Palacek, negotiated a private settlement. The outcome of a similar action against Alex Jones is eagerly anticipated.
Here, however, I am primarily interested in the publisher, whose subsequent actions are not consistent with a man who wishes to atone for degrading the memory of a dead child and adding to grieving parents’ suffering. According to Splinter News he afterwards said that he still has “questions”, and he reportedly sold off remaining copies of the book by auction rather than destroying them. Further, although the book is no longer sold on the website, a page soliciting donations to fight Pozner remains live, along with photos of the front and back cover.
Gahary has also not felt the need to reconsider other titles which make a mockery of the grief of the bereaved by suggesting that violent deaths never happened. Thus the publisher’s website continues to sell other books by the same authors such as The Parkland Puzzle: How the Pieces Fit Together and Political Theater in Charlottesville, as well as a sequel to Nobody Died at Sandy Hook entitled And Nobody Died in Boston, Either (this is followed by And I Suppose We Didn’t Go to the Moon, Either, a silly title suggestive of cynicism rather than genuine credulity). Several of these titles are proudly advertised as “Banned by Amazon”.
Other authors associated by the imprint include one Larry Rivera (The JFK Horsemen); Preston James, PhD (The New Gutenberg Press, on “how the Deep State is threatened by the internet”); Nick Kollerstrom (Chronicles of Fale Flag Terror – “a European perspective”); and Chuck Gregory (White Rose Blooms in Wisconsin – co-edited with Palecek on “The life and accomplishments of Kevin Barrett and Jim Fetzer as representatives of ‘the American resistance’ to creeping fascism in America”). And that’s just authors who appear on the front covers – some of the books are edited volumes.
Even the title And I Suppose We Didn’t Go to the Moon, Either, which may sound relatively benign, is in fact an utterly vile miscellany that touts Holocaust revisionism. Contributors to this particular work alongside Fetzer and Palacek include Jay Weidner, Nicholas Kollerstrom, Robert Faurisson, Thomas Dalton, Jim Marrs, Yvonne Wachter, Winston Wu, James A. Larson, Anne Walsh, Zen Gardner, Sterling Harwood and Timothy Spearman.
Despite being the co-author of a book called Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, Fetzer has also expounded the contradictory theory that the massacre was real but perhaps orchestrated by Mossad. Several of the Moon Rocks Books authors are associated with Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about Israel, and with the Veterans Today website. Gahary himself has interviewed a number of individuals for the American Press Press website – these include the Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, as well as various 9/11 Truthers, and, more unexpectedly, the late “End Times” Christian author Grant Jeffrey (previously blogged here).
Note
Fetzer and Spearman have previously featured on this blog in connection with networks promoting Satanic Ritual Abuse conspiracy theories.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The same happens in the U.K.:- institutional child abuse Denial of the Truth Crimes in Crimes against Humanity, albeit there are a few false claims, but in the majority of cases, True and evidenced-True. The problem is some focus on the very few frauds, which damages the reputations and integrity of the mass of genuine evidenced victims, and talking about “conspiracy theories” being rubbished, denies the real heavily-evidenced cases across the U.K. HMIC has repeatedly expressed “serious on-going concerns” about police corruption in institutional child abuse, so if a case is evidenced, it cannot be considered a “theory”. The real “conspiracy” is, there is police no working criminal accountability against police corruption in the U.K. and the Judge Sir Richard Henriques, has recently denounced the IPCC.IOPC as “unfit for purpose”. So PCA to IPCC to IOPC complete failures. PSDs are same-force, self-investigation into same-force evidential crimes, and we are overflowing with this evidence at the U.N., and I.C.C. Registered Cases. When will it change to equitability ? When the International Court community begin Prosecutions under Article 258 Rome Treaty to inject criminal accountability, and this will happen in a few months, once the ICC referred pre-2002-to-U.N. cases start at a Special tribunal. With 19,000 documents of generic evidence it will take a few months, but it is going to happen. It has taken us international Prosecutors eighteen years to amass the evidence for the U.N., I.C.C. (post 2002 cases).
“now been reported that one of the book’s s authors, James Fetzer, must pay $450,000,”
Am I right in thinking the immediate headline compensation award figures given for US cases are the plaintiff’s claim/awarded by the jury, but that the judge then reviews it and slashes it to a fraction of the original figure?!
The case was tried by Summary Judgment, where the Court would not allow me to present proof that nobody died at Sandy Hook on the ground it was “irrelevant” to the truth of the death certificate in question, which said the decedent had died from “multiple gunshot wounds” at Sandy Hook Elementary School on 14 December 2012, which was absurd. Then when I introduced two (2) forensic document examiners’ reports that found the certificate in question was fake, the Judge set them aside as “someone else’s opinion”. Although the sentences for which I was sued appeared in chapters of a book I had edited and in another blog, the Court never ruled on my status as a journalist–even though I had submitted a 7-page summary, which you can find here: https://jamesfetzer.org/2020/01/jim-fetzer-why-the-sandy-hook-pozner-v-fetzer-lawsuit-matters-whats-really-at-stake/ The Court of Appeals bought the “official narrative” and cited it against me, even though the question has never been decided in a court of law, where the other cases have all been decided on procedural or other grounds that did not reach the issue. These are classic examples of SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) to punish those who speak out on matters with evidence and proof that the government would prefer not to become known to the public.
The biggest problem I have with the criminalisation of eg Holocaust “Denial”/”Deniers”, apart from the basic Free Speech aspects, is what is, and who gets to decide, what it and they are.
For example are you a “Denier”, and so a criminal, or at least liable to pay libel damages, if you query a claim that 6.5M Jews died in the Holocaust, which some people insist is the true figure, having included all Jews from front-line troop casualties to grannies in East end garrets killed in the Blitz.
How about those who point out that while the total death toll had been given as a cumulative total of 6M, some of the figures from individual Extermination Camps had been revised downwards substantially after mainstream historians had refined the figures for each one, but the total was still being reported as 6M?
What about those who accept that a holocaust definitely happened, Jews were definitely gassed and cremated, even that 6M were exterminated, but that the gas chambers and crematoria could not have processed as many as claimed, so the balance of individual figures for different categories of death and disposal are historically inaccurate.
And if it is accepted that such a query doesn’t deserve a prison sentence, should a query over whether the gas chambers were actually asphyxiation chambers (why have airtight chambers AND complicated extract systems AND poison gas and STILL have to wait for a safe period and then handle the contaminated bodies with care, even if you are using other Jews for the job, when you can just seal the door and wait a fraction of the time without all the complications and expense?!).
And if that is not a justification for jailing why is any historical query or even “justified” denial?
Why can’t we settle for counter-arguments?
Or is there some other justification for ad hominem attacks, ostracisation, and even criminalisation and incarceration?!
The various laws against Holocaust deniers do not result in prosecutions of those who question figures, rather those who actually deny the event even happened. And for good reasons. Too much evidence has been recorded from eye-witnesses- not just those who survived Concentration Camps but those who worked in them from Nazis to civilian helpers. Most of those prosecuted for participating in the event never deny the Holocaust rather claim they played no part in it. In the Adolf Eichmann trial the defendant admitted he was in charge of sending millions to the camps for extermination but that he was merely doing his job while expressing great pride in his work. At one stage in his trial he admitted he attended the gassing of 20 or so Jews in the back of a truck as a possible new mobile efficient method but was horrified by the screams and pondered on whether soldiers had such qualms when they had to shoot dozens of prisoners & wether they were badly affected. We could discuss the merits of whether such laws should be on the books but victims and survivors do have a right not to have their experiences denied by mainly right wing fanatics who try and paint Adolf as just another jolly chap who meant no harm. Quibbling about figures is just another way of fanatics to raise doubt.
Even if all of what you say is true it’s also true that many lump in anyone who queries the figures as “Deniers” and attack them in one way or another.
And even if everyone who is “Quibbling about figures is just another way of fanatics to raise doubt” about the Holocaust, “Quibbling about figures is just another” legitimate role of a true historian.
Should historians be attacked as “Deniers” for “Quibbling about figures” about Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, the Assyrians, Persians, or even the Battle of Waterloo?
Having said that a quick Google finds that even the Guardian says of David Irving, probably the most famous Denier:
“one of his *most* *controversial* books, Hitler’s War, which challenges the *extent* of the Holocaust.”
And:
“contended *in* the *past* that *most* of the people who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz were not murdered but rather succumbed to typhus and other diseases”
And even quotes him as saying he:
“was standing trial for remarks made 17 years ago”
And got three years!
However nasty a taste “Deniers” leave in the mouth, you can’t deny that the way they are treated is pretty fascistic.
Or rather Stalinist.
But, strangely you don’t see writers such Hobsbawm, Sartre or Duranty, or even half the old TUC, locked up for far worse than quibbling about the figures!
Oh, and do people not “have a right not to have their experiences denied” of a spherical earth?
At least jailing Flat-Earthers won’t have the effect of pushing them into clandestine revolutionary or terrorist groups!
Fetzering
Noun: 1. The act of making an unfounded or unsubstantiated claim.
2. In philosophy, a method of debate or discussion based of the premise of: I think, therefore I am. I think you’re wrong. therefore you are.
3. The act of disagreeing by employing rancor, name calling, ad hominem attacks or straw man argument.
Etymology: Fetzering began in earnest in the late 1960’s, being implemented by a JFK conspiracy theorist and has since expanded it’s use in the 9/11 debate arena.
1. Without evidence your claim is simple fetzering.
2. He should rely on his data instead of fetzering
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fetzering
I have tried arguing with Deniers. Men I knew who remembered 1945 advised
me not to waste my time.
Deniers have the right to express their
opinions. I have the right to express mine that they’re a bunch of Nazis, anti-Semites, cranks and dupes!
Well, Mike suggested someone might respond to the title, NOBODY DIED AT SANDY HOOK (2015; 2nd ed., 2016), with AND I SUPPOSE WE DIDN’T GO TO THE MOON EITHER? (2016), which I think is right. Have you actually read the studies that you are condemning here? The proof the official narrative of the Holocaust cannot be sustained is straightforward and compelling. As an exercise, explain what we have wrong and how you know. Otherwise, you are merely performing a gratuitous smear which has no basis in science or history in defense of a myth.