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Greater thinkers than I have contemplated the ideas I am afflicted with. Most, if not all, have moved past these ideas. I am caught in a no-mans land between history and philosophy in a realm commonly called conspiracy. I want out of the trite conspiracy perspective, but the education I have given myself has created a monster: I believe 9/11 was an inside job.

This gives me great pause. If this is what I believe, then I believe a mere slogan - a slogan I have repeated for my friends, my employers, and strangers, like a devotee to a religion. For you to know the truth accept it into your heart. From there you will be informed by your new opinion since there is no shortage of biases custom-built for leftists, anti-establishment youth, and anarchists. As soon as you buy the premise of 9/11 being an inside job, you’re in, joining the “big umbrella” of an anti-establishment protest community which resembles a grassroots global religion.

Other than their obvious web video presence, “truthers” hit the streets in much the same way a church would reach out to “the lost.” Some of them hold signs. Some of them have pamphlets. Some appeal to your mind. Some appeal to your heart. Handing out DVDs, they want the people of the world to “wake up!” They have many talking points, or statements, which they call questions. They are blind to the way their behaviour looks to the outside world, with antics that are intent on spreading “the truth.” They want to swell their numbers, dethrone the King, and reinstate the republic. They are a youthful and radical political group who talks tough about really serious issues. No wonder I have joined them. But have I been suckered into subscribing to ideas which are better off discarded?

There’s a big industry in the United States, on the left as well. I mean, you should see the e-mails I get. This huge Internet industry, from the left, trying to demonstrate that this was all faked and it was planned by the Bush Administration and so on. If you look at the evidence, anybody who knows anything about the sciences would instantly discount that evidence.”
-Noam Chomsky

Sensible words from someone who has been regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers. But certainly this alone is not enough to dissuade me. Instead I find it more appropriate to pick apart his statement than to internalise it as the truth. His arguments, that “this huge industry” attempts to demonstrate “this was all faked and it was planned by the Bush administration,” are easily spotted “straw man arguments.” A straw man is a dubious idea which is set up to be knocked down, bringing the associated argument down with it.

“All faked” is an allusion to the no-plane/digital-plane theory which has been wholly rejected by all earnest researchers as lunacy, or worse, intentional misinformation. “Planned by Bush” is quite far fetched given his apparent idiocy, and (as elaborated at the tail end of a previous post) it could have been planned outside of the oval office while nevertheless suiting the agenda of those in power. Of course that is speculative but let’s keep moving. Neither of Chomsky’s straw men have much traction because they are indeed instantly discounted. Notably he chose to debunk only the claims which are not actually promoted by conspiracists.

I should point out that this still proves nothing about the original “inside job” claim and, infact, my nitpicking is indicitive of truther thinking despite my outward attempt at fence sitting.

I have yet to decide how to make my case or even if I should make a case at all. It would be hard to argue for anything except inside job since that is what I believe. For that, if this were a court case and I was on a jury, I would be asked to leave. I want to be judicial not advocative. How can I objectively take a fresh look when what I already know is what will inform my opinion?

The problem isn’t the information, but the implicit conclusions which came as bias baggage to the information. Someone else’s conclusions have been implanted into my head. I’m not suggesting they are incorrect. I’m suggesting that they were not my own conclusions. They were suggested to me based on information from sources of varying authenticity. I should seriously re-examine the biases at work and the basis of each claim.

The “inside job” thesis may indeed be the factually incorrect propaganda of a new anti-establishment grass roots religion. A multimedia orgy of speculation and exaggerated statistics… a political movement with seemingly shoddy research and a bloviating cheerleader.The Internet is, in and of itself, synthetic, anarchistic, and distracting, and so too are its blockbusters. Internet films, forums and websites that fulfill the prophecy that “the medium is the message.”

9/11 truth is just one brand of the anarchist message of the Internet. Sharing 9/11 truth’s alternative history are extremists from both the right (my land, my gun) and the left (let’s share everything), as well as UFO watchers, New Age spiritualists, and some who claim shape-shifting reptilian aliens are our overlords.

A few steps further down the rabbit hole and you will come across neo-Nazis and their pledges to fight the New World Order. I don’t mean to exaggerate. Unfortunate for 9/11 truth, a great deal of their underlying views (the structure of the secret world) are shared - perhaps were pioneered - by white power anti-semites, in a century old book written as if by the conspiritors themselves called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mentioned in the trailer of documentary of the same title (linked below) the book is rife with lies about Jewish customs of global domination. Suggestive that this ideology was formative for Adolf Hitler as he found “evidence” in Protocols that provided justification for doing away with the Jewish people all together. YouTube

I find it disturbing that that the underlying philosophy of 9/11 truth - that secret societies run the world - could be a secularized repackaging of the same antisemitism which was capable of convincing millions in the early 1900s of a verminous scapegoat. For now it is not “the Jews” but the “New World Order,” or, for more mystique, “The Illuminati.”

In the case of the shape shifting reptiles, the Anti-Defamation League accused reptilian-theory conspiracist David Icke of speaking in code. By reptile overlords, they say, he means Jews. I saw a documentary which took a look at this. “DAVID ICKE: The Lizards and the Jews” Google Video

To be clear, even if Icke is a closet anti-semite, and believes 9/11 was an inside job, that doesn’t mean the 9/11 inside job thesis is anti-semetic, nor reptilian. And even if a wide array of fringe groups, neo-nazis included, subscribe to the 9/11 inside job thesis, that doesn’t invalidate the thesis itself (although certainly does cast it in a new light, as if the reptile thing wasn’t enough.) The authenticity of the 9/11 truth thesis will take some examination for me to come to terms with. Ultimately facts will speak for themself and one day soon I will try to write a thoughtful presentation of the case for or against the inside job thesis.

Before I can build a case I want to examine all the biases I have swallowed in accepting it as my belief. I don’t think it is as cut and dry as it has been made out to be. I just don’t want to find myself accidentally reciting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion when I explain what the woes of the world are.

I need a thought from someone with more credibility. How about Aristotle.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle

The whole point of writing for FlatPlanet is to explore ideas and hopefully to discard the dubious ones. I don’t wish to be seen as promoting 9/11 truth. I am writing because it has affected me in a deep and important way and in the end my hope is that it will be either vindicated or evaporated.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Politics/Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.