Sometimes I wonder....

[Travis]

Sometimes I wonder where many in the Truth Movement got their start as deniers of fact and falsifiers of history. Was it borne from some preexisting paranoia? Did they start out as ardent pacifists who ended up associating with the wrong crowd? Were they originally anti-globalization activists or black bloc anarchists (admittedly the two are hard to tell apart as they are both clearly insane) rioting and looting through Seattle's streets? I wonder how many of the UK Truthers got their start at this or this anti-war rally back in 2001?

The answer, of course, is complex because people are complex. People of all sorts have always found their ways to irrational movements for reasons that to them seem entirely rational and consequently a concise answer is not forthcoming. However it doesn't really stop me from.....wondering.

 

[Walter Ego]

It’s an odd mix where the paranoid right dovetails with the paranoid left. The strands are complex.

From the Right: Outrage over Waco and Ruby Ridge leads to the Okalahoma City bombing. The Militia and Patriot Movements. Anti-Semites. Alex Jones. Wing TV (also in Austin, TX.), etc.

From the Left: The 60’s radicals, now middle aged. Webster Tarpley, Jim Fetzer (long time conspiracy kook), David Ray Griffin, Gore Vidal (LIHOP, Pearl Harbor & 911), Kevin Barlett, etc.

The underling theme is that those in power are inherently evil and are controlled by the ‘Elites’ who are behind it all. Government is intrinsically evil. The people In Control have amazing almost magical powers and influence over every aspect of our lives. We only think we have free will and personal autonomy. Only those who see the TRUTH know what’s going really going on.

… Or maybe they’re just nuts.

 

[Brainache]

I think for many it starts with a stoned conversation late at night, or watching Youtube similarly affected.

 

[gambling_cruiser]

Maybe some were so horrified by 9/11 that they suspected this could not happen without LIHOP/MIHOP behind the scenery?

 

[gambling_cruiser]

Maybe they feeled so vulnerable that they had to go in denial to avoid break down/freak out?

 

[Travis]

It’s an odd mix where the paranoid right dovetails with the paranoid left. The strands are complex.

From the Right: Outrage over Waco and Ruby Ridge leads to the Okalahoma City bombing. The Militia and Patriot Movements. Anti-Semites. Alex Jones. Wing TV (also in Austin, TX.), etc.

From the Left: The 60’s radicals, now middle aged. Webster Tarpley, Jim Fetzer (long time conspiracy kook), David Ray Griffin, Gore Vidal (LIHOP, Pearl Harbor & 911), Kevin Barlett, etc.

The underling theme is that those in power are inherently evil and are controlled by the ‘Elites’ who are behind it all. Government is intrinsically evil. The people In Control have amazing almost magical powers and influence over every aspect of our lives. We only think we have free will and personal autonomy. Only those who see the TRUTH know what’s going really going on.

… Or maybe they’re just nuts.

You are correct though in that the Truth Movement is unusual in that is made up of both loons from the left and the right. Few movements have had this kind of "unifying" effect. Too bad it couldn't have been for something......productive.

 

[Travis]

Maybe they feeled so vulnerable that they had to go in denial to avoid break down/freak out?

Certainly the events of that day were hard to comprehend and I'm sure many did withdraw to the solace of denial....but it's 2008 now. You gotta pull your head out of the sand at some point.

 

[peteweaver]

Some people are gullible.

To those who haven't seen all the facts (and happen to be gullible), a few lies, half truths and distortions from scare mongers like Alex Jones, will convince.

 

[eromitlab]

Considering that a great many twoofers are teenagers and young adults, if we're talking about members of the movement in general and not just its leaders, I'm of the opinion that it has something to do with the education received. The education many children receive, at the high school level at least, is more about memorization, about reciting factoids pulled from textbooks and regurgitating them onto a separate sheet of paper for a test or a paper, about reading a book to see a certain message implied by the author instead of arriving at the message on one's own. Teachers are becoming more concerned with following the textbooks and are pressured by administrators to tailor their lessons to standardized tests that enable the government to rate their performance with statistics instead of a more nebulous concept that's harder to show in a cut-and-dried form.

Bottom line at what I'm driving at, kids these days aren't getting the lessons in critical thinking and logical reasoning that they should be. That falls by the wayside, as it doesn't really serve the goals they're after with student performance and testing. Plus, a kid who thinks critically and questions things isn't the pliant and obedient student they'd like to have to ease the burdens of student discipline.
One kid finds this "Loose Change" on the Internet and watches it. The kid isn't able to see through the propaganda techniques, deliberate obfuscations and outright lies and errors. They just see one "fact" after another. They have to be facts... the filmmakers seem so sure of it all, as if there is no other conclusion. They're not as prepared as they ought to be to defend their minds against that kind of a pollutant. If they do try to verify what they've seen, they'll very well run into a truthy source that supports the conspiracist view, and feeds them a bunch of other conspiracies they didn't know about. They're likely angsty about the state of things around them, looking to belong to something and be the difference-making person everyone's told them they are, and it all seems to make sense and rationalize everything. How could the government let this happen? It's the same thing as when something tragic happens, and a religious person wonders how God could allow something so bad to happen... except in the religious instance, the answer isn't usually "God could have stopped it, but LIHOP or MIHOP for (insert reason here)". A tr00ther is born... and they immediately attempt to procreate and spread their seed by trying to send their other friends to the things they've seen.

 

[Garb]

Considering that a great many twoofers are teenagers and young adults, if we're talking about members of the movement in general and not just its leaders, I'm of the opinion that it has something to do with the education received. The education many children receive, at the high school level at least, is more about memorization, about reciting factoids pulled from textbooks and regurgitating them onto a separate sheet of paper for a test or a paper, about reading a book to see a certain message implied by the author instead of arriving at the message on one's own. Teachers are becoming more concerned with following the textbooks and are pressured by administrators to tailor their lessons to standardized tests that enable the government to rate their performance with statistics instead of a more nebulous concept that's harder to show in a cut-and-dried form.

Bottom line at what I'm driving at, kids these days aren't getting the lessons in critical thinking and logical reasoning that they should be. That falls by the wayside, as it doesn't really serve the goals they're after with student performance and testing. Plus, a kid who thinks critically and questions things isn't the pliant and obedient student they'd like to have to ease the burdens of student discipline.
One kid finds this "Loose Change" on the Internet and watches it. The kid isn't able to see through the propaganda techniques, deliberate obfuscations and outright lies and errors. They just see one "fact" after another. They have to be facts... the filmmakers seem so sure of it all, as if there is no other conclusion. They're not as prepared as they ought to be to defend their minds against that kind of a pollutant. If they do try to verify what they've seen, they'll very well run into a truthy source that supports the conspiracist view, and feeds them a bunch of other conspiracies they didn't know about. They're likely angsty about the state of things around them, looking to belong to something and be the difference-making person everyone's told them they are, and it all seems to make sense and rationalize everything. How could the government let this happen? It's the same thing as when something tragic happens, and a religious person wonders how God could allow something so bad to happen... except in the religious instance, the answer isn't usually "God could have stopped it, but LIHOP or MIHOP for (insert reason here)". A tr00ther is born... and they immediately attempt to procreate and spread their seed by trying to send their other friends to the things they've seen.

Unfortunately that pretty much sums it up...

 

[DavidJames]

Considering that a great many twoofers are teenagers and young adults, if we're talking about members of the movement in general and not just its leaders, I'm of the opinion that it has something to do with the education received. The education many children receive, at the high school level at least, is more about memorization, about reciting factoids pulled from textbooks and regurgitating them onto a separate sheet of paper for a test or a paper, about reading a book to see a certain message implied by the author instead of arriving at the message on one's own. Teachers are becoming more concerned with following the textbooks and are pressured by administrators to tailor their lessons to standardized tests that enable the government to rate their performance with statistics instead of a more nebulous concept that's harder to show in a cut-and-dried form.

Bottom line at what I'm driving at, kids these days aren't getting the lessons in critical thinking and logical reasoning that they should be. That falls by the wayside, as it doesn't really serve the goals they're after with student performance and testing. Plus, a kid who thinks critically and questions things isn't the pliant and obedient student they'd like to have to ease the burdens of student discipline.
One kid finds this "Loose Change" on the Internet and watches it. The kid isn't able to see through the propaganda techniques, deliberate obfuscations and outright lies and errors. They just see one "fact" after another. They have to be facts... the filmmakers seem so sure of it all, as if there is no other conclusion. They're not as prepared as they ought to be to defend their minds against that kind of a pollutant. If they do try to verify what they've seen, they'll very well run into a truthy source that supports the conspiracist view, and feeds them a bunch of other conspiracies they didn't know about. They're likely angsty about the state of things around them, looking to belong to something and be the difference-making person everyone's told them they are, and it all seems to make sense and rationalize everything. How could the government let this happen? It's the same thing as when something tragic happens, and a religious person wonders how God could allow something so bad to happen... except in the religious instance, the answer isn't usually "God could have stopped it, but LIHOP or MIHOP for (insert reason here)". A tr00ther is born... and they immediately attempt to procreate and spread their seed by trying to send their other friends to the things they've seen.

No doubt what you say is true for some, but I don't think you can ignore that people have minds of their own. If you have kids you'll know that you can model behavior and you can teach rules but you can't force them to think. Nor can you force them to "behave" when you're not around.

Education is very important, but requires a receptive mind and attitude.

 

[PB&J]

The more I interact with anyone who claims to be part of the 911 truth movement, the more it seems - to me - like this is attractive to younger people (teens to early 20's) as just another facet of something "cool and rebellious".

Don't get me wrong, there are a good handful of older nutjobs who have been in the truth movement for some time.. I'm simply referring to any "new" members to the truth movement.

Being a part of this movement is first and foremost anti-establishment. "The Man" had his hands at the wheel, damn The Man! There has been, and always will be, an attraction to something anti-authoritative to any new generation.

When I try to debate the facts with a lot of the "new" truthers, they just kind of close up and go away, leaving the nut-job perpetrators to fight their battles for them. They don't do much research, but feel comfortable rallying behind anyone who shares their mistrust of our government. It's more emotion-based than fact based.

In time, I think most of them will grow out of this phase. Some will of course perpetuate this and wrap themselves in denial, but my hope is that most of them will move on.

Now, some of the main CTs who concoct these ideas about 9/11 probably do have a history in supporting other conspiracy theories. All CTs kind of share a similar trend; they've got a few cooks at the helm, and everyone else on board is just there for the ride because that ship isn't as crowded as the USS Normality.

 

[Architect]

In my oft-stated view there is an inability of many of the Truthers to grasp the complexity of the issues which they avow to understand, notwithstanding that qualification in these fields requires many years of university-level education.

I would find it unlikely that those who had been through such higher-level education would, on the whole, so readily dismiss the depth of understanding required and this certainly seems to be an issue with many of the Truthers we encounter.

 

[Travis]

In my oft-stated view there is an inability of many of the Truthers to grasp the complexity of the issues which they avow to understand, notwithstanding that qualification in these fields requires many years of university-level education.

I would find it unlikely that those who had been through such higher-level education would, on the whole, so readily dismiss the depth of understanding required and this certainly seems to be an issue with many of the Truthers we encounter.

Yes, if only that had worked for Stephen Jones.

 

[Mr X]

Re. "Sometimes I wonder where many in the Truth Movement ............"


You say that as if the 'opposing' side has provided all the answers in the form of irrefutable proof.

 

[Brainster]

Sometimes I wonder where many in the Truth Movement got their start as deniers of fact and falsifiers of history. Was it borne from some preexisting paranoia? Did they start out as ardent pacifists who ended up associating with the wrong crowd? Were they originally anti-globalization activists or black bloc anarchists (admittedly the two are hard to tell apart as they are both clearly insane) rioting and looting through Seattle's streets? I wonder how many of the UK Truthers got their start at this or this anti-war rally back in 2001?

You're looking in the right direction, although I would remind you that a large percentage of the Troofers were, like Dylan, still in high school in 2001. But certainly some of the early members (e.g., Carol Brouillet) were antiwar first and 9-11 kooks second.

My current working theory is that 9-11 Truthiness is not about 9-11, but about what happened after 9-11: Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, etc. It's a way to wish all that stuff away, just as Holocaust Denial is not really about the Holocaust, but about Israel.

 

[Pardalis]

I think it also has to do with the fact that 9/11 was a traumatic event, and some people haven't come to terms with it.

 

[DavidJames]

I think it also has to do with the fact that 9/11 was a traumatic event, and some people haven't come to terms with it.

I can understand that for those that lived through it, but 6.5 years later I think at this point it more about rebellion, politics, charlatans and mental illness (alone or in combination).

 

[cisco]

There is a difference between the leaders and followers.

Most of the 9/11 woo pioneers had woo backgrounds before the attacks. Thierry Meyssan, Alex Jones, Stephen Jones (the jesus paper), etc.

The followers have a myriad of reasons. Some are the types of people that always believe the first argument they hear. Some have beef with authority and feel this jusitifies it. Some have beef with the Bush admin and feel this justifies it. Some need a reason for why their life sucks - if an all-powerful conspiracy is controlling everything then it's not their fault they can't do anything right. I have no doubt that some of them are in it because it makes them look "smart" among their peers - they know something no one else knows.

 

[T.A.M.]

Very interesting discussion, and one we have had here from time to time.

Many of you have hit the nail on the head. Notably PB&J and Travis in his OP, seem to fall in with my line of thinking.

There are many facets to the psychology and sociology that is the 9/11 truth movement. Rather than spew a long winded diatribe, let me highlight my main points.

1. Rebellion against "The Man" (presently known as BUSH hating, but also includes Cheney and the Neocons).
2. A longing to belong to something. For the young, it is the same thing that drives them to protest just about everything. For the older it is a combination of nostalgia, and lack of acceptance amongst their own peers.
3. Paranoia. There is a good heaping of this in the movement, some of it pathological.
4. Boredom.
5. Social Inadequacy.

TAM