Everyone was thinking "it was a controlled demolition" or talking about Lazer beams, trying to explain that the plane was edited in, maybe the towers never even existed and were invented by the media. But in reality it was a lot simpler, the Saudis sent people to fly planes into towers. Was the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams", like, purposeful misdirection or were conspiracy theorists just too imaginative for their own good
One of the most plausible theories imo is that flight 93 was shot down. The Americans on board were indeed martyred for their country like the official narrative states, but not willingly. There was very little wreckage from that plane. That site did not look like a plane crash and they found tiny bits of plane like a mile away.
But the most egregious conspiracies are significantly more well documented. Depending on who you’re talking to, they’re either too obvious to state or too unpatriotic to consider. Bush and Cheney politicized a tragedy to profiteer for the war machine, propagandize the American public, and pass draconian surveillance laws. The feds knew and the whole “intelligence sharing” thing was more about the agencies realizing their lockstep was out of sync (state power coming from the need to mediate disputes among the owning class). We invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attack. Bin Laden was offered to us on a silver platter and we refused him in favor of continuing with the invasion. The list goes on and on. Millions dead
I think so. Adding on to the above, US intelligence knew of an impeding terror attack on the US months in advance, but the Bush admin did fuck all to prevent it. The conspiracy here is that they wanted a big war in the Mideast to profit off of, for oil, as Cheney had been a CEO at Haliburton (and was kind of connected even after leaving, shocker), Haliburton being a massive oil company, before becoming GW's running mate (and Bush himself was descended from a bunch of oil magnates and likely still had his own ties there). US started with just Afghanistan, but built to Iraq because they deemed them part of the new 'Axis of Evil' for potentially having WMDs/harboring terrorists (US GAVE them WMDs to kill Iranians years prior lol and none of the hijackers were from Iraq), the 'Axis of Evil' thing being something the Bush admin invented (which consisted of Iraq, Iran, and N. Korea; explains quite a lot about diplomatic relations there, doesn't it).
That's the conspiracy, as far as I am concerned; a number of aggressively self interested assholes let a terror attack on the US occur so they could justify invading one country (and later another, under false pretense) to steal their resources and profit from it.
As for the Bin Laden being offered to us claim above, I genuinely forgot the Taliban offered him up in Oct 2001 lmao
But I think you can probably draw that it was never about Bin Laden, that was just the excuse needed
Edited to use an archive link for paywalled source
Agreed, I just need to recalibrate my 9/11 understanding every so often.
Does it seem like the 2001 article is more straightforward and offers more information than if it were written today?
It does seem a bit like that, doesn't it. I did find this, unsure of how credible is. Of note are the Conclusion section and summary, as is chapter 3
Conclusion ... It appears some negative effects – such as shorter, more emotive content – can be attributed to platforms; others – like pressures of the 24/7 news cycle – are largely an aspect of digitisation.
Two aspects present specific future risks: sudden algorithmic changes which can severely disrupt conditions under which news is produced; and the potential devaluation of journalism through extractive summaries
I do recall reading other things summarizing what this does essentially though; that is to say, the digitization of news and the 24 hour cycle incentivize the production of many short articles which 'grab' the reader, rather than longer and more technically informative stuff. The commodification of it probably also plays a role, as I notice some sites only allow so many 'free' articles per month before requiring subscription
A lot of it was people with very little understanding of things like engineering, avionics, etc., grasping at threads and straws to try and find some smoking gun that proves it all had to be orchestrated, since the actual smoking guns (if they do exist) are all probably lost to time and secrecy at this point. I'd say a lot of it was, indeed, people being "too imaginative for their own good", as you said.
Also, a lot of the actual "boy that's fuckin' weird" coincidences that did actually happen are all tied to finance and industry, and a lot of people in the US were, and still are, very uncomfortable with imagining that the economic instruments that caused our ascendancy to world power could also be the driving force behind the levels of willful carelessness and cynical neglect that could allow the attack to happen, or allow people at the top of the food chain to swallow that bitter pill of thousands of dead civilians at home and far more abroad, for the sake of personal enrichment and power mongering. That's a lot messier and more upsetting for your typical reactionary conspiracy theorist than disguised cruise missiles, doctored video footage, or secret cabals with inscrutable, fantastical methods for world domination.
If the conspiracy is operating outside the norms of your society and ideology (through incredible conspiracy and magical technology), then you don't have to engage in any self-examination of the nation you live in, or your way of life. That's all fine, it's the Mysterious Other Outsider that has intruded on your otherwise moral and correct way of life, and that's why the bad things happened. Your ideology is safe. However, the moment you contend with the possibility that Capitalism and the financial system may have been a major driver of, at the very least, a lot of the questionable decisions that led to loss of life and perpetual war, then it becomes unavoidable that something might be wrong at the core of the American ideology, and your average person is going to have a much more avoidant reaction to anything that goes in that direction.
No small part was the proliferation of the underground movie "Loose Change" which collated a bunch of the conspiracies around the event and really solidified in the lib unconcious that something weird went down that day. Weird fuckin movie, wonder what those guys are at now
There was a strange syncretism of anti-Bush politics at the time, too, that helped that movie spread. Like, you'd have Alex Jones types side-by-side with what we'd now call MSNBC libs, united by the common enemy of Bush and the Iraq war.
Building no 7 is kinda amazing. It might have a very reasonable explanation too but why did this other building beside it just collapse can seem mind-boggling at first glance.
Anyway the more interesting stuff is the speed with which Cheney and Bush took advantage of it and also the anthrax attacks which followed so soon after (which really helped turn the tide in the Senate towards passing the Patriot Act IIRC).
Edit: Oh and building 7 literally hosting CIA offices surely doesn't help people retain their sanity points
If I'm remembering right from the WTYP podcast, Building 7 was engineered with the corners of the building being major load-bearing structures, so when one of the corners of the building got taken out by a large piece of debris, it caused the rest of the building to rapidly collapse. Might be misremembering that, though.
The guy the FBI blamed for Amerithrax (not the first guy, who the press latched on to but was later exonerated, but Bruce Ivins) killed himself and the investigation only ever found circumstancial evidence with no clear motive (although they did accuse him of being a cross dresser).
I always interpreted as two things, since this was one of the rare instances where libs (mostly radlibs) and conservatives both somehow adopted the same conspiracy theory. I've hung around a lot of conspiracy theory circles and there are strikingly few groups that have mixed political ideology. For the libs, I think it was a way to further demonize Bush and express an anti-war sentiment, since they didn't have any kind of structural theory to explain American imperialism. For conservatives, it's a way of protecting American exceptionalism while at the same time expressing that very odd sort of "antiestablishment" Alex Jones style brainworms. It's a way of saying America is so great there could never be a legitimate external threat while also expressing a distrust of the current internal structure.
in essence, it's alienation, brainworms, and an inability to place blame on imperialism for anything. It's literally easier for Americans to accept the government would create hologram planes than accept America gave $40 billion to the mujaheddin so they could become Al-Qaeda.
people always come up with wild ass ideas to explain pretty mundane things
I think in this case (along with a lot of conspiracy theories) it's inventing the most fanciful, complex explanation in order to avoid any scrutiny of capitalism and imperialism
There's been a lot of writing on why people believe conspiracy theories like that. Believing that there was an elaborate plan involving the government shooting lasers or whatever actually makes us feel more comfortable---if it wasn't the government, if it wasn't like something out of a movie, if a bunch of randos can just get together and do a terrorist attack and have such a huge influence on all our lives, that's terrifying.
There's some irony there, in retrospect. There absolutely were shady connections to be made, and lies told by the government in the aftermath. But the truth was more mundane than the wild conspiracies.
To be a bit conspiratorial myself, it reminds me of a plot point in the X-Files, where the government tacitly encouraged wild conspiracy theorising about UFOs, etc, as a way to distract from the more mundane, actual shady/secret/illegal things they were doing.
the other 9/11 conspiracy theories are at least somewhat believable but all the controlled demolition/the planes were piloted from the ground shit is insane to me.
Broke: jet fuel can't melt steel beams
Woke: the buildings were fragile and easy to destroy due to shoddy c*pitalist construction
I've seen a bunch of 9/11 theories in the past 20 years but I would always be thinking "if the government is so evil and secretive, why wouldn't they just use planes to blow up the twin towers"
It’s nice to hear some sanity about 9/11 in these comments, sometimes i feel like everyone is on that TrueAnon shit.
I think it comes down to people having a really hard time accepting simple explanations for complex, earth-shattering events. "The Saudis sent people to blow up the Twin Towers" doesn't sound satisfying - like, how could something that killed 3000 people and completely reshaped geopolitics be so simple? No, the cause has to be as complicated as the effect. Once you accept that, you have to invent a reality that matches it, which usually involves grasping straws.
And also, when it comes to...
Was the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”, like, purposeful misdirection or were conspiracy theorists just too imaginative for their own good
Some people are really just dumb as rocks.
Was the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”, like, purposeful misdirection or were conspiracy theorists just too imaginative for their own good
People forgot how ovens worked
Probably the funniest part about that conspiracy is that the official explanation never involves melted steel. Jet fuel burns at a high enough temperature to make steel very flexible and thus lead to structural failure.
