Patterns in CT nutters

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ira Glass in today's "This American Life" series had a wonderful segment about the 911 mirror conspiracy theory going on in England over the 7/7 London subway bombings. I could only find this mentioned in a couple threads and wondered why we hadn't discussed it more. It was incredibly familiar! And the insight one gets from seeing a different CT with every one of the 911 CT elements is very enlightening.

You can hear the segment here. I can't recommend it highly enough for anyone interested in talking to these truthers. If you have the option of hearing it, it will be repeated on public radio on many stations Sunday, 8/3. But you can also hear it online. Playing it from this link starts with 20 minutes of an unrelated segment. Push the play marker forward to near the end, put the playback on hold and wait for the program to catch up. That's what I had to do to skip ahead to the right program.

In a couple of days you should be able to go strait to the program segment from here.

Act One. What Part of “Bomb” Don't You Understand?

Rachel North was on a train that got blown up during the London subway bombings. After writing a very popular blog about her experience and her recovery afterward, Rachel became a spokeswoman for a survivors' group. Then conspiracy theorists—who believed that there were no bombings and that the whole thing was a cover-up by the British government—started attacking her online, saying she was a spy...or a plant by the police...or,worse, that she didn't exist at all. Jon Ronson tells her story.

Jon writes books, hosts radio shows, and produces BBC documentaries—all of which you can check out on his website. A version of this story appeared on his BBC Radio Four series Jon Ronson On....

Rachel North has written a book about her experience, called Out of the Tunnel. (20 1/2 minutes)

You can hear a pertinent part of the program on this Youtube link but I had trouble with it pausing every couple seconds for a couple seconds and it was annoying. Maybe there is a better version out there.




And here's another link to part of the Ronson/Shayer interview. If you keep the window open it will play the interview nicely. But for me if I want to play it while on another 'tab' the audio pauses. I give you all these options so you can listen to the one that works best with your browser.


Ronson interviewing Shayer is sooooo classic. Shayler repeats all the same rationalizations, the same dodges, everything, just as if it came straight from a 911 truther.

Some of the 911 truthers came to our skeptic meeting a couple weeks ago at our invitation. Honestly, the similarity in their intense ramblings was just about word for word the same as this interview with Ronson and Shayer. If you confront them with an obvious contradiction to their beliefs, they shift right to the dodge as if it were a reflex. They insist one just need hear the evidence. The elements in this belief system to me, seem like many borderline personality disordered people. The followers may be something else, but this guy Shayer and a couple of the guys who came to our skeptics' meeting were too intense to just be believers. I'm convinced there is a borderline mental illness here that likely explains the behavior of the most hard core of these people. The symptoms of the thought disorder are too similar to be explained by coincidence.

Here's a link to Rachael's blog talking about the Ira Glass interview. It appears to be a year old. Maybe there is an old thread on this but I couldn't find it.

I'll be contacting her with some links to our forum. We should definitely give her our support.

 

[moon1969]

CT people can be very dangerous. Just look at people like Timothy McVeigh, Randy Weaver, Theodore Kaczynski, Terry Nichols and maybe Charles Manson. I don"t know if David Koresh was a conspiracy theorist but the heavens gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite was. So CT people really do have self destructive patterns. It says alot that there are many people who believe David Icke even if Icke claims that Boxcar Willie was a reptile. CT people are dangerous and crazy.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Apparently Ronson has been interested in the people who control the world for some time now.

 

[Brainster]

This was a rebroadcast of a show from last summer. Good stuff; I'm a fan of Ronson's books and shows and Rachel's incredible pluck despite two very harrowing experiences is inspiring.

 

[Brainster]

The followers may be something else, but this guy Shayer and a couple of the guys who came to our skeptics' meeting were too intense to just be believers. I'm convinced there is a borderline mental illness here that likely explains the behavior of the most hard core of these people. The symptoms of the thought disorder are too similar to be explained by coincidence.

Shayler thinks he's the son of god. No kidding. Of course, most of his friends think he's just been smoking a little too good a brand of reefer.

Most of the Troofers are paranoids. I don't know if there's really a connection between pot smoking and Trooferism, but there are an awful lot of prominent pot smokers in the movement. The local guys all think I'm CIA; gotta stop wearing sunglasses and talking into my lapel.

 

[Thunder]

7/7 didnt happen. its all in your mind!!!!!

 

[Pardalis]

The elements in this belief system to me, seem like many borderline personality disordered people. The followers may be something else, but this guy Shayer and a couple of the guys who came to our skeptics' meeting were too intense to just be believers. I'm convinced there is a borderline mental illness here that likely explains the behavior of the most hard core of these people. The symptoms of the thought disorder are too similar to be explained by coincidence.

It's fear of authority really, in this case the Bush administration which is more authoritative than most administrations but in the end it doesn't really matter, they just hate anything "government". They prefer to apologize for savages like AQ than to accept the government is not responsible.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Shayler thinks he's the son of god. No kidding. Of course, most of his friends think he's just been smoking a little too good a brand of reefer.

Most of the Troofers are paranoids. I don't know if there's really a connection between pot smoking and Trooferism, but there are an awful lot of prominent pot smokers in the movement. The local guys all think I'm CIA; gotta stop wearing sunglasses and talking into my lapel.

The pot connection is a stretch. Maybe it makes someone already nutty worse, but I know hundreds and hundreds of people who used to smoke pot. They are as normal as anyone else.

But as for the Shayler being certifiable, that makes exact sense with what I am saying. Those of you who are familiar with borderline personality disorder may see the symptoms here. I certainly do.

So the next question is, who is actually mentally ill and who are just fooled by the stories told with such certainly?

 

[Brainster]

The pot connection is a stretch. Maybe it makes someone already nutty worse, but I know hundreds and hundreds of people who used to smoke pot. They are as normal as anyone else.

I certainly don't think the pot-smoking is causal, by any means, otherwise we'd be overrun with Truthers. But I think pot-smoking makes some people more susceptible to nonsense like this, just as I suspect a lot of people smoking pot back in college dorms in the 1970s made Carlos Castaneda's books seem profound.

But as for the Shayler being certifiable, that makes exact sense with what I am saying. Those of you who are familiar with borderline personality disorder may see the symptoms here. I certainly do.

So the next question is, who is actually mentally ill and who are just fooled by the stories told with such certainly?

The most common personality disorder among Truthers is narcissism. This is the movement to get involved with if you want your 15 minutes of fame. Mark Dice, Dylan Avery, Alex Jones, Luke Rudkowski, Richard Andrew Grove, Indira Singh... the list goes on and on.

My guess is that Alex Jones is a mixture of genuine paranoia mixed with a little bit of cynical hucksterism. Bermas seems to really believe the stuff he says, which is a little disturbing.

The Truthers who are a little nutty if not commitable would be a quite long list indeed. There are few undamaged Troofers; there's always some weirdness going on. Many of them have been involved in cults before in their lives; Webster Tarpley (Truther author and radio personality) was a LaRouchee, as apparently are several people involved with the Truthers, including Craig Hill (former Green Party candidate for US Senate), Laurie Dobson (Green Party candidate for Congress from Connecticut) and Bruce Marshall (also involved in the Green Party).

Richard Heinberg (author and lecturer) was a member of "The Emissaries of the Divine Light", which he describes as a benign cult. Laura Knight-Jadczyck (author) runs her own cult from France based on messages she receives from the aliens via her Ouija board. Les Jamieson (leader of the NY Truthers) and Byron Belitsos (a founder of 911Truth.org) were former proponents of the Urantia Book. Lynn Pentz, a major figure in the LA Truther community, told me that she had experienced ten miracles in her life. David Ray Griffin (author, lecturer and filmmaker), considered the most respectable Troofer, wrote a book about parapsychology in which he estimated the possibility of life after death at 50% and engaged in hilarious credulity regarding remote viewing, ESP, and mediums. Steven Jones (physicist and editor of the Journal of Nine-Eleven Studies) dedicated a few months in 2005 to analyzing the ridiculous "artifacts" from the Burrows cave, which are transparent hoaxes that have been debunked since the 1970s.

Note: These are not the footsoldiers in the movement, they are the "leaders". And even they almost all have some other "woo" going on. Most of them are functioning nutty; they can drive cars and comport themselves normally for short periods of time provided of course that they are not off on their favorite conspiracy theory. There are a few who seem borderline certifiable; certainly the Web Fairy (Rosalee Grable) would strike anybody as a person who might need some help functioning from day to day.

I think ALL of them believe in 9-11 Truth (of course rather loosely and even personally defined). They may understand that lots of the theories are nutty (usually the ones they don't believe in personally) and many of them are not beyond deception and even outright lying in what they see as the service of the "higher truth". Richard Gage is making a hard charge at earning a living doing 9-11 Truth, and so you think maybe he's just in it for the buck. But his wife left him over his mania and he had to refinance his house, so I suspect he's just legitimately a nut.

So I'd say almost all of them are mentally ill in some form. The younger folks of course could just be disaffected stoners.

 

[Pardalis]

I certainly don't think the pot-smoking is causal, by any means, otherwise we'd be overrun with Truthers. But I think pot-smoking makes some people more susceptible to nonsense like this, just as I suspect a lot of people smoking pot back in college dorms in the 1970s made Carlos Castaneda's books seem profound.

It's not the pot smoking per se, it's the pot-smoking culture AKA the anti-government pseudo-anarchists and leftists.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's not the pot smoking per se, it's the pot-smoking culture AKA the anti-government pseudo-anarchists and leftists.

[side track to correct a false claim] I've got news for you, the pot-smoking 'culture' includes a lot more people that you seem to realize.

An American Pastime: Smoking Pot

And finally, Anthony notes, it's a matter of culture: the U.S. is home to a huge baby boomer population that came of age when experimenting with drugs was a part of the social fabric. "It became a more mass-population phenomenon during a period when there were a large number of young people who were in the process of creating a culture of their own," Anthony says.

Table 7 in the actual paper shows that smoking cannabis is positively correlated with higher income and higher education level, and the survey found over 40% of the Americans surveyed had smoked it.

But this is getting too far off topic.[/sidetrack]

 

[Alareth]

*** Post deleted due to redundancy ***

 

[Minadin]

Apparently Ronson has been interested in the people who control the world for some time now.

Jon Ronson is a member of this forum.

 

[Jontg]

CT people can be very dangerous. Just look at people like Timothy McVeigh, Randy Weaver, Theodore Kaczynski, Terry Nichols and maybe Charles Manson.

Hell, look at Hitler. Is it any wonder the woo quotes him so often?

 

[kosai]

We know a side-effect of marijuana is paranoid thoughts so I do think an *excessive* use of pot can and does lead to a more long term paranoid thinking in many... The most hard core of conspiracy theorists I know seem to have a pretty strong like for the weed. The funniest of which would be located here:

http://oneheartbooks.com/resources/audios/from_the_bunker_radio.htm

 

[cgallaga]

Ira Glass in today's "This American Life" series had a wonderful segment about the 911 mirror conspiracy theory going on in England over the 7/7 London subway bombings.

Yeah strange it wasn't talked about here before...this is actually a repeat show that originally aired last year. Anyway very good shew.

 

[Billdave2]

It's fear of authority really, in this case the Bush administration which is more authoritative than most administrations but in the end it doesn't really matter, they just hate anything "government". They prefer to apologize for savages like AQ than to accept the government is not responsible.

I think there is actually an opposite force at work in a lot of these CTer's. They would rather believe that the government is all powerful, rather than unable to stop things like 9/11 or 7/7. It is more comforting to know that there is no chance or luck involved in major events like these, than to think that it could just have easily been them. It is similar to the scale that you hear about when people think about CT's. They are generally involving huge events and it just doesn't seem to "make sense' that a large event could be caused by such a small group (it doesn't balance). Along the same lines, if a lone nut or small group can kill a president or bring down the world trade center, then how do you prevent it from happening again.

These types would rather have an evil, all-powerful government than a good or neutral weak government.

 

[dudalb]

It's fear of authority really, in this case the Bush administration which is more authoritative than most administrations but in the end it doesn't really matter, they just hate anything "government". They prefer to apologize for savages like AQ than to accept the government is not responsible.

I think you are probably right concerning the majority of truthers.
There is a minority that hates the Bush Administration so much they will accept anything that is negative about them, no matter how crazy, is motivated primarily by hatred of this specific administration, and these will probably drop out if the Dems take the white house. But the majortiy of truthers will hate Obama as much as they did Bush is Obama gets in. You all already seeing "the Dems are in on it too" memes all over the Truther pages.

 

[Toke]

Why was Henry Kissinger first choise to head the 9/11 investigation?

How much incompentence was there to hide?

And why have ct not mentioned it, or have they?

 

[Travis]

Why was Henry Kissinger first choise to head the 9/11 investigation?

Probably because he was well known.

How much incompentence was there to hide?

Considering the consequences even a little would be worth hiding. Remember that the Bush Admin was, pre 9/11, asserting that the threat of terrorism had been greatly exaggerated by the Clinton Admin to distract people from the truly important issues of Bill's sex life.