Conspiracy Theories Drain Our Political Energy, Lead Nowhere

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Re: the op article

Ech. Boilerplate spook-isms scorning "conspiricism." They tremble. Good.

Funny how the 'author' waited until the very end of the article to admit that the psyops creating the lynch mob-mentality US invasion of Iraq was a "conspiracy theory," apparently one of those rare real ones, ya see.

I'm so comforted.

BTW, 8bitagent. When you put the bogus assertion up as a thread title the way you did...you are reinforcing the lie. Details details.

[ninakat]

8bit agent wrote:

My view is that you can genuinely have devoted(or brainwashed) jihadits to the core whose motivation is "blowback", but that the true masterminds and provocatuers could care less about Allah or anything relating to the Islamic cause...and instead are merely using Islamic extremists to create chaos.

This is what I'm talking about- a way in which "blowback" and "inside job" can both exist in the same world. Maybe this is actually the world we are living in. Either way, gets to my (implied) point that we don't need to always be fighting each other- we may all be somewhat blind, but speaking about the very same elephant...

Well, of course "blowback" and "inside job" can coexist. But I don't think Howard Zinn was pondering that in the back of his mind when he made the statement "Why are there people in the world who want to blow up our buildings, who want to scare the American people, who want to do terrorist [things]," and who "are enraged by American foreign policy." Regardless, the main point was that Zinn thinks conspiracy theories are a "diversion," which flies in the face of his record of supposedly wanting to reveal more of the truth about our collective history. That's what I call hypocrisy, and I'm glad Richard C. Cook called him out on it.

[American Dream]

Howard Zinn may well be completely sincere in his opinions about "conspiracy theories". Same goes for a lot of other "Left intellectuals", though by no means all. Case in point, Michael Parenti, who show us that it is indeed possible to maintain a institutional analysis and be realistic about the existence of political conspiracies.

Although upholding our analysis is important, I also feel that solidarity ought to be an important principle, too. For this reason even though there are important differences between some structural leftist and some deep conspiracy investigators, I don't think it's necessarily helpful to make wholesale attacks on the "other side". In fact, I question the idea of strengthening those "sides"...

[Truth4Youth]

Well, of course "blowback" and "inside job" can coexist. But I don't think Howard Zinn was pondering that in the back of his mind when he made the statement "Why are there people in the world who want to blow up our buildings, who want to scare the American people, who want to do terrorist [things]," and who "are enraged by American foreign policy."

In that case you're willing to ignore Zinn's past endorsements of 9/11 truth:

Endorsement of The New Pearl Harbor: "David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9-11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation of the Bush administration's relationship to that historic and troubling event."


Endorsement of Debunking 9/11 Debunking: "Considering how the 9/11 tragedy has been used by the Bush administration to propel us into immoral wars again and again, I believe that David Ray Griffin's provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed."


Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. … As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." http://www.911truth.org/article.php

http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html#Zinn

Regardless, the main point was that Zinn thinks conspiracy theories are a "diversion," which flies in the face of his record of supposedly wanting to reveal more of the truth about our collective history. That's what I call hypocrisy, and I'm glad Richard C. Cook called him out on it.

Given the fact that people are still arguing about the Kennedy assassination to this day do you think that maybe he's right to some extent, at least from the perspective of someone seeking peace and justice in our world today?

[ninakat]

T4Y, yes I'm aware of Zinn's past endorsements of D.R. Griffin's books. But did you watch/listen to the interview?

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?opti ... mival=3553

What about this quote?

"People will write books -- it'll be an enormous waste of good energy."

Isn't that a slap in the face to D.R. Griffin and all other 9/11 authors? Or, is Zinn merely in lockstep with the new Obama age of Let's Just Move On?

And then there's:

"Maybe there was a conspiracy, who knows?" (Zinn laughs nervously)

"It's not that I doubt any of the doubters" (nervous laughter again)

Watch the video -- he doesn't take "conspiracy" or "the doubters" seriously at all. Why else would he laugh?

Here's where I disagree with Zinn. He's suggesting that the real investigation needs to be about why American foreign policy enrages so many people around the world. I just don't see how that approach could possibly get anywhere. It seems even less politically possible than working towards a new 9/11 investigation.

Given the fact that people are still arguing about the Kennedy assassination to this day do you think that maybe he's right to some extent, at least from the perspective of someone seeking peace and justice in our world today?

No. That's a cop out. And, as I said above, I don't think his approach to peace and justice is any more effective than calls for a new 9/11 investigation.

But perhaps he's been threatened, or merely finds his past association with 9/11 truth to have created problems for his legacy. All I know is that he's obviously back-tracking from what his previous endorsements stated (which I fully applauded at the time -- and frankly was pleasantly surprised to hear).

[8bitagent]

8bit agent wrote:

My view is that you can genuinely have devoted(or brainwashed) jihadits to the core whose motivation is "blowback", but that the true masterminds and provocatuers could care less about Allah or anything relating to the Islamic cause...and instead are merely using Islamic extremists to create chaos.

This is what I'm talking about- a way in which "blowback" and "inside job" can both exist in the same world. Maybe this is actually the world we are living in. Either way, gets to my (implied) point that we don't need to always be fighting each other- we may all be somewhat blind, but speaking about the very same elephant...

Precisely. It's like if you got a friend to go into disgruntled homeless areas and paid them a bunch of money to make some statements on camera(with at least one of them seriously convinced this is a good idea)
and then had em all meet at a train station...which is already rigged to blow. Voila, instant "Islamic terror plot" with ultimate plausible deniability. You already even have the "video will" already to air. Whether if they were all duped or a couple of them were able to be stirred into going along out of hatred("blowback") it's merely inconsequential as the whole thing was a setup.
And that is precisely what we see with 9/11, 7/7, 3/11, Bali 2002, and virtually every other major modern day "Islamic terror" attack on a Western or tourist area.

If you click on part 3 of this PBS documentary, it goes into the high level brainwash loop tape mind control used in mosques(which Im guessing are MI6 or other intel linked) to turn young impressionable Muslims into suicide bombers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... ront/view/

I myself absolutely do not by the "lihop" argument, because this implies al Qaeda is somehow an organic independent group that was the sole brains and orchestrators of sept 11th. From my own research it's clear to me that even the WTC 1993 and "Bojinka" plot were merely fed to Ramzi Yousef, and not from the product of his imagination. When you have so many provocatuers, moles, informants, etc. the "jihad" waters get pretty murky...as Nafeez Ahmed and Paul Thompson have shown.

[slomo]

The problem with 9/11 conspiracy is that 9/11 was ultimately a mass Fortean event. By that, I mean that all attempts to parse its meaning become highly subjective. Every interpretation can produce evidence to support its claims. And, while it is true that some viewpoints/interpretations have been developed to be intentionally obstructive, a large number of them have arisen organically (i.e. without the help of spooks to push them along).

This ensures that any attempts to pin down 9/11 objectively will devolve into metaphysics and theology. It is for this reason that an unhealthy focus on 9/11 is misguided.

I'm not saying we should not try to understand all of the relationships that surround 9/11 like a halo, and to communicate the overall pattern whenever possible. But to focus on the minutiae of 9/11 will never lead anywhere useful. I mean, not even RI readers can agree on an interpretation, and for the most part RI is fairly homogeneous with respect to its political orientation.

[slomo]

To follow up my last post....

The real question is, what constitutes useful action?

1) Conventional letter-writing and phone-calling: not useful
2) Demonstrations: not useful
3) Researching CT: not useful
4) "Educating" the public about truth gleaned from (3): not useful.

(1) is pretty obvious among RI'ers. (2) is evident by examining recent history, where the largest demonstrations get downplayed by corporate-owned media (thus nullifying the PR value), and the implied threat of a mass of angry peasants is nullified by modern military technology. (3) and (4) are less obvious, but they relate to what I call the "veil". If you can see through the veil, you have no need for education, and if you can't see through it, no amount of educating/proselytizing will change your mind. You have either made the synaptic connections that allow you to see it, or you have not.

So, what to do? Fortuitously, Kevin Flaherty's recent post sheds some light on both the problem and the solution:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=8388

Lierre Keith is absolutely NOT suggesting that eating industrially produced meat is a viable option. Obviously, it isn’t. What is she saying to eat? In short: Food that encourages perennial polycultures to thrive; meat and fish with the standard Weston A Price caveats. She mentions Weston A Price by name, actually. But this is not your standard WAPF advocacy message. Keith advocates Derrick Jensen’s militant anti civilization perspective, which, unfortunately, is dumb. I’m not saying that we’re not fucked, or to look for glimmers of hope inside this system. I’m saying that the release of nuclear weapons should be on the mind of anyone advocating the indiscriminate destruction of critical infrastructures.

You can read his entire post to get the context. But, the only answer I can come up with, and one that remains elusive even for myself, is voluntary simplicity. The more people disconnect from the "American Dream" and the trajectory of Western Civ, the more the system will naturally decay and get swept away. In some ways, the slower the process, the better, for reasons that KF makes clear.

[MacCruiskeen]

The problem with 9/11 conspiracy is that 9/11 was ultimately a mass Fortean event.

It didn't rain frogs, slomo, and the Twin Towers were not transformed into tulips. 9/11 was ultimately, as well as first and foremost, a crime, pure and simple. Why mystify it?

The only mystery inheres in the fact that we don't know exactly who dunnit or exactly how, for a single obvious reason: We are not permitted to know it. That in itself is entirely unmysterious, for the crime was never seriously or independently investigated. This in turn is - yet again - no mystery, because many, many powerful people (not just in the USA) would have had much to fear from a serious, independent investigation of the crime. Therefore, they hid the evidence and protected themselves and each other, and they are continuing to do so today. Precisely as one would expect them to do.

All this is crystal clear and easily verifiable, and as unFortean (and unsurprising in itself) as tax-dodging or "creative accounting" or the hypertropic growth of the financial sector. It's the way of the world, at least under capitalism.

I mean, not even RI readers can agree on an interpretation

And why? Because it's not in their power to do so. Not even RI readers have access to the Pentagon's Top Secret files and the White House's confidential memos, nor are any of us in charge of the FBI or the CIA or the NYPD or NORAD. There are very clear historical reasons for all this, and they have to do with the rapidly increasing consolidation of political power in the hands of an ever-smaller and ever-more-wealthy class, plus its numerous dependents & retainers in the above-named institutions and the mass media.

Karl Marx is a much more helpful guide to 9/11 than Charles Fort, which - sincerely - is no disrespect to Fort.

[slomo]

The problem with 9/11 conspiracy is that 9/11 was ultimately a mass Fortean event.

It didn't rain frogs, slomo, and the Twin Towers were not transformed into tulips. 9/11 was ultimately, as well as first and foremost, a crime, pure and simple. Why mystify it?

The only mystery inheres in the fact that we don't know exactly who dunnit or exactly how, for a single obvious reason: We are not permitted to know it. That in itself is entirely unmysterious, for the crime was never seriously or independently investigated. This in turn is - yet again - no mystery, because many, many powerful people (not just in the USA) would have had much to fear from a serious, independent investigation of the crime. Therefore, they hid the evidence and protected themselves and each other, and they are continuing to do so today. Precisely as one would expect them to do.

All this is crystal clear and easily verifiable, and as unFortean (and unsurprising in itself) as tax-dodging or "creative accounting" or the hypertropic growth of the financial sector. It's the way of the world, at least under capitalism.

I mean, not even RI readers can agree on an interpretation

And why? Because it's not in their power to do so. Not even RI readers have access to the Pentagon's Top Secret files and the White House's confidential memos, nor are any of us in charge of the FBI or the CIA or the NYPD or NORAD. There are very clear historical reasons for all this, and they have to do with the rapidly increasing consolidation of political power in the hands of an ever-smaller and ever-more-wealthy class, plus its numerous dependents & retainers in the above-named institutions and the mass media.

Karl Marx is a much more helpful guide to 9/11 than Charles Fort, which - sincerely - is no disrespect to Fort.

There may be an objective truth (as there may be with respect to UFOs) but it will never, never, be known to the public. The very forces you mention ensure that is the case, so from an epistemological perspective the event is as Fortean as raining frogs. It only serves the interests of the "ever-smaller and ever-more-wealthy class" to perseverate on a 9/11 "truth" that can never be known. And by "never" I mean a very emphatic "never". The problem with modern Marxists is that they ignore the unconscious collective forces that obey laws as inevitable as Newtonian mechanics.

As with any epistemological problem that is ultimately metaphysical, the real question is not "does it exist?" but, rather, "what are you going to do about it?"

[American Dream]

slomo wrote:

The real question is, what constitutes useful action?

1) Conventional letter-writing and phone-calling: not useful
2) Demonstrations: not useful
3) Researching CT: not useful
4) "Educating" the public about truth gleaned from (3): not useful.

(1) is pretty obvious among RI'ers. (2) is evident by examining recent history, where the largest demonstrations get downplayed by corporate-owned media (thus nullifying the PR value), and the implied threat of a mass of angry peasants is nullified by modern military technology. (3) and (4) are less obvious, but they relate to what I call the "veil". If you can see through the veil, you have no need for education, and if you can't see through it, no amount of educating/proselytizing will change your mind. You have either made the synaptic connections that allow you to see it, or you have not.

So, what to do? Fortuitously, Kevin Flaherty's recent post sheds some light on both the problem and the solution:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=8388

Lierre Keith is absolutely NOT suggesting that eating industrially produced meat is a viable option. Obviously, it isn’t. What is she saying to eat? In short: Food that encourages perennial polycultures to thrive; meat and fish with the standard Weston A Price caveats. She mentions Weston A Price by name, actually. But this is not your standard WAPF advocacy message. Keith advocates Derrick Jensen’s militant anti civilization perspective, which, unfortunately, is dumb. I’m not saying that we’re not fucked, or to look for glimmers of hope inside this system. I’m saying that the release of nuclear weapons should be on the mind of anyone advocating the indiscriminate destruction of critical infrastructures

.


You can read his entire post to get the context. But, the only answer I can come up with, and one that remains elusive even for myself, is voluntary simplicity. The more people disconnect from the "American Dream" and the trajectory of Western Civ, the more the system will naturally decay and get swept away. In some ways, the slower the process, the better, for reasons that KF makes clear.

I think every sort of tactic has its place- the key question is in the where, the when, the by who, the towards what goals, that sort of things.

Therefore, while writing letters and making phone calls will never be enough by itself to fundamentally change Society, it does have its place.

Demonstrations the same, and I will point out that getting positive coverage from the major corporate media is only one possible goal of many...

Researching also has its place, especially if the information uncovered somehow gets at the root of the problem...

Education comes naturally out of research, and works well as an organizing tool, too.

Ultimately it all depends on the situation and the strategy. Dropping out and/or building counter-institution has its place, but it is not a panacea either...

[MacCruiskeen]

There may be an objective truth (as there may be with respect to UFOs) but it will never, never, be known by the public. The very forces you mention ensure that is the case, so from an epistemological perspective the event is as Fortean as raining frogs. It only serves the interests of the "ever-smaller and ever-more-wealthy class" to perseverate on a 9/11 "truth" that can never be known. And by "never" I mean a very emphatic "never".

Ah well, that's me told. But, "from an epistemological perspective", I have to ask: How, exactly, do you know that what you're telling me is true? And why, exactly, should I believe you? Because you do seem very, very, very sure of yourself.

The problem with modern Marxists is that they ignore the unconscious collective forces that obey laws as strong as Newtonian mechanics.

Which forces would they be, exactly, and which laws? I've yet to make their acquaintance.

As with any problem that is ultimately metaphysical,

You are presuming what you claim to have demonstrated, although you haven't actually done so. From a logical perspective, your argument is, therefore, clearly already invalid.

As with any problem that is ultimately metaphysical, the real question is not "does it exist?" but, rather, "what are you going to do about it?"

Does what exist? The crime? Of course it exists! (If you insist on putting it that way.) Ditto the cover-up. This is why it matters when people as prominent as Hari and Aaronovitch claim there was neither a crime nor a cover-up.

What am I going to do about it? Keep talking about it, and writing about it, and keep pointing out the weaknesses of prominent publications that propagate nonsense (such as Aaronovitch's book and Hari's article), and keep looking for windows of opportunity to spread the word collectively and to influence people who have greater influence than I do. That might not be much, but I can only use the means at my disposal.

In any case, it strikes me as a much better use of my time than pretending, as you do, that 9/11 was a deep unfathomable Fortean hyperdimensional metaphysical mystery which can never, ever, ever be solved. Because it wasn't. It was an uninvestigated crime that most members of the clerical class are too frightened or self-interested even to contemplate, which is just as their ruling class anticipated. That might conceivably change. And indeed much has changed in the last eight years. (Just for instance: Lynn Margulis.) Throughout the world, "9/11 conspiracy theories" are now almost certainly embraced by a large majority of the population. Only in Britain and the USA is the proportion slightly smaller, for reasons clearly rooted in material self-interest and status-angst. But tides can turn.

This much... I know.

To sum up, slomo: When you say "We can never know!", who benefits?

I think we both know the answer to that question.

On Edit: corrected the confusing punctuation.

[slomo]

Mac, I will concede that to the extent CT "research" and "education" help others to pierce the veil, it may be valid. Ditto for my #2 above, i.e. public demonstrations. The problem is that I doubt #2 is very effective anymore, and both #3 and #4 (CT research and education) have already had their day.

You ask what forces obey quasi-physical laws? Read Kotke, Eisenstein, Jensen, and maybe a dozen others that have documented the trajectory of civilization. There is no sustaining movement that has countered the bright, exponential curve that these authors have described. Their work has been far more transformational to me personally than any 9/11 truth screed.

With all due respect, your plans to "Keep talking about it, and writing about it, and keep pointing out the weaknesses of prominent publications that propagate nonsense" will likely be ineffectual, given that there are about 1000 other people doing the same thing, all with different points of view, muting the very message you would like to promote. And while all this talking is going on, nothing much else happens.

Kevin Flaherty, John Michael Greer, and Ran Prieur are among the few people I think are actually doing something constructive. They each have their flaws, but we live in a flawed world, and it is extremely difficult to manifest an authentic vision. In short, they are actually living a form of voluntary simplicity that is our only way out.

If you can inspire people to such action (or even to make small steps in that direction), then more power to you. But until you can demonstrate that 9/11 truth has much transformative value, I have my doubts.

[MacCruiskeen]

Slomo, I respect the points you're making (though I haven't read all your authors) and funnily enough I don't believe we're in any essential disagreement. I just don't think the term "Fortean" is any help at all when trying to deal with 9/11 - on the contrary - and I've now heard it so often that it's becoming a really destructive cliché, a barrier to thought, not to mention action. And thought is action too, at least as soon as it's expressed, especially in the globalised information-economy we now inhabit.

In short, they are actually living a form of voluntary simplicity that is our only way out.

Oh, I agree with that too. But the people behind 9/11 (the crime and the cover-up) are, by contrast, living a life of voluntary hypercomplexity and murderous greed. And it's they, not Ran Prieur, who currently rule the world, not least because they got away with 9/11 and are still getting away with it. They therefore have a vested interest in encouraging people to believe there's no way they can ever know what happened there. Because their power and privilege, their greedy and hypercomplex lifestyles, require a powerless population that has accepted the inevitability of its own enforced ignorance.

Hence the rhetorical question at the end of my last post.

[slomo]

Slomo, I respect the points you're making (though I haven't read all your authors) and funnily enough I don't believe we're in any essential disagreement. I just don't think the term "Fortean" is any help at all when trying to deal with 9/11 - on the contrary - and I've now heard it so often that it's becoming a really destructive cliché, a barrier to thought, not to mention action. And thought is action too, at least as soon as it's expressed, especially in the globalised information-economy we now inhabit.

In short, they are actually living a form of voluntary simplicity that is our only way out.

Oh, I agree with that too. But the people behind 9/11 (the crime and the cover-up) are, by contrast, living a life of voluntary hypercomplexity and murderous greed. And it's they, not Ran Prieur, who currently rule the world, not least because they got away with 9/11 and are still getting away with it. They therefore have a vested interest in encouraging people to believe there's no way they can ever know what happened there. Because their power and privilege, their greedy and hypercomplex lifestyles, require a powerless population that has accepted the inevitability of its own enforced ignorance.

Hence the rhetorical question at the end of my last post.

Yeah, I realize we're basically on the same page, which is one of the reasons why I hesitate to go on about this, and also (incidentally) why I eschew 9/11 truth. I don't disagree with anything you say about the greedy elite. But where we might disagree is on the value of focusing on their crimes. Oddly enough, I think it pleases them that so many people are obsessed with 9/11 truth, because that has become its own form of left-wing gatekeeping. For me, it is more empowering to know that I might be able to live without them, because in many respects they need us more than we need them. If enough people dropped out, their hypercomplexity would collapse. I have no illusions about the probability of people dropping out voluntarily en masse (for the same reasons I discount activism, i.e. the seemingly inevitable laws of collective human behavior). But the present economic unraveling may force the same effect, and it is incumbent upon those of us who see beyond the veil of consumerist/distractionist culture to lead people gracefully through the chaos to the kind of simplicity that (I hope) will spawn a better world.