On Feb. 28, during a campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump said the following:
“The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus…One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.’”
According to an interview of Trump done by The Guardian, Trump’s “use of the word referred to ‘the action (Democrats) tried to take to try to pin this on somebody because we’ve done such a good job…The hoax is on them. I’m not talking about what’s happening here. I don’t like it when they are criticizing (federal health officials), and that’s the hoax.’”
Even if the president wasn’t calling the virus in and of itself a hoax, his comments reminded me of two conspiracy theories from years past that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the Holocaust were hoaxes.
Before I go into any further detail, let me remind you with 100% certainty that both of these events actually did happen. I will also warn you that while I won’t be describing the events, I will be describing the behaviors of those who believe the events were faked. Reader discretion is advised.
Lenny Pozner
Lenny Pozner, the father of one of the 20 children murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, runs an organization called the HONR Network. The network’s mission is to fight back against those who claim that the massacre was faked, the children were not real, or that the parents had been paid to claim the attack was real.
According to Pozner, the conspiracy theories started “the same day” as the shooting, which occurred in 2012. In 2014, after Pozner published information about his son’s life and published his death certificate, Minnesota professor James Fetzer accused Pozner of publishing a fake death certificate in his 400+ page book, “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.”
In the summer of 2019, Pozner won a defamation case against Fetzer. In the case, Pozner and his wife had to provide DNA evidence to the court to prove that their son “lived and…died.” In a post on HONR’s website, Pozner said, “there is still a long way to go.” In 2020, Pozner is still fighting to prove that a shooting that occurred eight years ago actually happened.
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Deborah E. Lipstadt runs a website called “Holocaust Denial on Trial,” which ensures “perpetual access to the evidence, transcripts, judgment and appeal documents that made the case in the David Irving v. Penguin Books U.K. and Deborah Lipstadt trial and (refutes) the misleading claims of Holocaust deniers with historical evidence.” According to the Jewish Chronicle, “Lipstadt was sued for libel in 1996 by British historian David Irving after she referred to him as a Holocaust denier in her book, “Denying the Holocaust.” She won the case in 2000, after a trial which was dramatized in the 2016 film, “Denial.””
According to Time Magazine, most Holocaust deniers “do not deny that Jews were interned in prison camps…rather…that the number of deaths was greatly exaggerated…Attorney Edgar J. Steele said, ‘All those pictures of skinny people and bodies stacked like cordwood were actually of Czechs and Poles and Germans (who) died of typhus, which was rampant in the camps.’”
In conclusion
As of Monday, 595 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the New York Times. There are zero confirmed cases in Arkansas at press time, but 100 recent travelers are under surveillance by the Arkansas Department of Health and three people are currently being tested. It has not yet been confirmed whether any of them have coronavirus.
So yeah, Trump, maybe “hoax” wasn’t the best choice of words. Sandy Hook was real. The Holocaust was real. The coronavirus is real. End of story.
Categories: Opinion
THE HERALD 
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