James Fetzer’s Disastrous “Ask Me Anything”

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Or “James Fetzer And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ask Me Anything”

For the uninitiated, Reddit is a user-driven content aggregator, broken up into what is referred to as “subreddits”. These subreddits are organized by area of interest and truly run the gamut, covering news, politics, culture, and absolutely everything in between. Seriously, there are thousands of them. And based on the number of total subscribers, the conspiracy subreddit is currently ranked the 108th most popular on the site (nestled comfortably between the NBA and anime). Sandy Hook denial is unfortunately yet predictably a popular subject there, so even a clueless doofus like James Fetzer manages to receive regular praise (as well as occasional scorn as conspiracy theorists love to eat their own almost as much as they love conspiracies).

While it struggled to find an audience, the “conspiracyAMA” – or conspiracy “ask me anything” – subreddit was created as a way to take the incredibly popular “ask me anything” format regularly utilized by celebrities and other public figures looking to interact with Reddit’s enormous userbase and make it a safe space for conspiracy folk. And while it ultimately paled in comparison to its inspiration, it did play host to one of the most disastrous AMAs I’ve seen this side of Woody Harrelson. The guest of honor was – you guessed it – bloated clown James Fetzer, there to take full advantage of the fifteen minutes allotted to him by his then-recent Amazon ban.

I really recommend that you mark out some time and attempt to read this beast in its entirety (it eventually grew to 371 comments before running out of steam) as it’s pretty amazing, but I’m going to touch on some of my favorite moments, full of Fetzer’s baldfaced lies, furious backpedaling, and even his predictably asinine thoughts on other topics (but especially Jews). All answers are given by James Fetzer, transcribed by the moderator. It may not mean much to you if you’re unfamiliar with the site, but it’s worth noting that Fetzer’s answers were rated so poorly by the audience that many of them are hidden from view. That’s how badly things went for poor James… in his own AMA! But don’t feel too bad for the guy; he seems to think it went swimmingly. Seriously! Just look at this Facebook post!

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Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Chapter Nine

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“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Nine
By: “Dr. Eowyn” (aka Maria Hsia Chang)

Parsing through James Fetzer’s bullshit page by page has been a frustrating yet oddly satisfying process. So, it’s both a relief and a little disappointing when I come across a chapter that doesn’t require me to eviscerate yet another gross pile of lies—because someone else has already done such a stellar job of it. In this case, that someone is CW Wade from Sandy Hook Facts. CW has done an excellent job taking on “Dr. Eowyn” (real name Maria Hsia Chang), dismantling the nonsense in Chapter Nine so thoroughly that it would be a waste of my time (and frankly disrespectful to his work) to repeat the effort. You can find his takedown here and an excellent supplemental article here.

While CW’s work is meticulous, it’s a shame he didn’t delve deeper into how frequently the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) makes mistakes. This is a critical context, especially when Chang relies so heavily on it for her “research.” CNN reports that 1 in every 200 deaths is incorrectly entered into the SSDI’s Death Master File. An article from the Daily Republic about 3,000 9/11 victims missing from the MDF includes a quote from Social Security spokesman Mark Hinkle:

We make it clear that our death records are not perfect and may be incomplete or, rarely, include information about individuals who are alive. Because we do not receive reports for all deaths and cannot release all of the reports we do receive, the absence of a particular person [in the Death Master File] does not prove the person is alive. Our error rate is about 0.5 percent.

Nearly every SSDI search engine warns about these potential errors. GenealogyBank, which Chang relied on for her “research,” is no exception. Here’s what they have to say about the SSDI’s limitations:

GenealogyBank updates the SSDI database each week. The updates include corrections to old death records, as well as new names of the recently deceased. If a person is missing from the index, it may be that the SS death benefit was never requested, an error was made on the form requesting the benefit, or an error was made when entering the information into the SSDI.

In other words, Chang’s “research” is based on a source so notoriously flawed that even the organizations using it issue disclaimers about its unreliability. But sure, let’s treat it as gospel.

Next: Chapter Ten: “Sandy Hook: CT Crime Data Confirms FBI Report” by James Fetzer and “Dr. Eowyn”

E-mailing “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook” Contributor Allan Powell

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After powering through chapters seven and eight of “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, I wanted to reach out to Allan Powell – who contributed both chapters – to see whether he was willing to clarify a couple of things for me. Mainly, with so many pictures that were not taken on December 14th (according to Powell, of course), I wanted to know when he believed they were taken as well as whether or not there were any photographs in existence he believed were actually taken that day. By forcing him to establish a timeline, I wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself.

Like so many Sandy Hook deniers, Allan’s information wasn’t particularly easy to find. But I was able to locate an e-mail address and I wrote him a short, non-confrontational e-mail. I was surprised not only that he replied, but that he appeared even more clueless than I had expected.

I’ll present the entire e-mail chain, in chronological order. So read from the top down. Powell’s replies are in brown (because what other color would he be?).

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Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Chapter Six

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“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Six
By: James Fetzer

Chapter Six is nothing more than a transcript of a thirty-minute interview with a man named Paul Preston from May 2014. That’s it—just a transcript. It’s hard to imagine a lazier way to pad a book, but it’s certainly indicative of the regard Fetzer has for his readers. This interview isn’t even premium content; it’s already freely available.

So who is Paul Preston? Like Wolfgang Halbig, he’s repeatedly described as a “school security expert,” though any concrete credentials to support that claim are elusive.

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Who Writes This Shit? Who Is “Dr. Eowyn”?

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James Fetzer frequently brags about the quantity as well as alleged quality of his book’s contributors, usually as a way of deflecting attention away from the actual quality of his research (or lack thereof). After all, a book written by multiple doctors couldn’t possibly be wrong, could it?

One of the book’s more flagrant chapters – Chapter Two – is written by someone calling themselves “Dr. Eowyn”, who goes to great lengths to remain anonymous not only throughout this book, but on their own crank website, “Fellowship of the Minds”. But I wanted to know a bit more about the kind of person who could shit out something so vile and have the audacity to commit it to print. Were they actually a professor and professional author, as they so proudly claimed? Without a name, we have only their word, and can we really trust the word of someone capable of making so many elementary mistakes? So I did some digging and it wasn’t long before I found the information I was looking for.

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