Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies Ten Years After 9/11: An Anarchist Evaluation 2011.1
A New Path to Real Peace: Sander Hicks Responds to Bill WeinbergSander HicksIf you are against 9/11 skepticism, you tend to paint it with the brush of whatever you find politically most odious. If you are on the right of the political spectrum, you claim 9/11 Truth is a crazy left- wing ideology. But if you are from the left, you see 9/11 skeptics as nefarious neo-Nazis.
Neither position is correct. 9/11 is a funny political issue. Asking questions about 9/11 is taboo in the US media. To the right, it presents the possibility that the Bush/Cheney administration were in fact capable of an evil that is beyond most of our understanding.1 If you are on the left, 9/11 showed that US imperialism got its “just desserts,” and woe to those who question that logic. As a result 9/11 skepticism is, more often than not, ignored. Still, the issue grows silently like a cancer, a growth that aims to kill the current form of crony capitalist cover-ups of power politics.
But what if you are not married to any one political ideology? What if you are free to scientifically examine the issue, free from
1 Not everyone in the 9/11 skeptics movement believes Bush/Cheney were directly responsible. Some simply call for a new investigation.
*
Sander Hicks is an active part of the movement demanding truth regarding US power and 9/11. Hicks has published on green economics for Alternet, and on the Marx- ist/Christian dialogue for The Huffington Post. He is a veteran of four national speaking tours and the lead singer of art-punk ensemble White Collar Crime. He started the independent media companies Soft Skull Press and Vox Pop Inc. He is author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle-Blowers and the Cover-Up (Vox Pop, 2005) and Slingshot to the Juggernaut: Total Resistance to the Death Machine Means Complete Love of the Truth (Soft Skull Press, 2011).
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politics that create biases?
In my personal case, 9/11 Truth has expanded my mind and broad-
ened my spirit. It has made me more open others’ paradigms, and has made me less hateful of my so-called “enemies.” After all, the notion of “enemy” is socially conditioned. (Another lesson made vividly clear in the by the post-9/11 world of scape-goating and paranoia.)
Get beyond the social conditioning of American politics per se, and one begins to see the possibilities of a mass movement built beyond sectarian limits. We express our deepest hopes for the world through our politics. And when those politics get hot and heavy, often our rationality goes out the window. With Bill Weinberg’s essay, we see emotions rise up in response to 9/11 skepticism. Perhaps some people feel threatened, to see elements of the right and left working together.
Despite accusations of political extremes, 9/11 skepticism is radical for its non-sectarianism. There are elements of both the patriot, grassroots right, and the radical left in 9/11 skepticism. And there are plenty of normal red-blooded Americans wary of extremism. There are those who think that the whole left/right paradigm is a part of the problem.
To accuse the movement of being dominated by either extreme is incorrect. It only exposes the accuser as a product of an outdated political paradigm. A truly anarchist analysis of 9/11 skepticism would appreciate how both libertarians and leftists can unite around a deep mistrust of the state’s Official Story.
Bill Weinberg’s essay is a good example of losing sight of the ball in the thicket of political ideology. He is so married to the notion that 9/11 skepticism is a dangerous topic of discourse he sabotaged his own radio show of 20 years at WBAI FM. Despite warnings, he denounced the program director on-air, and criticized other radio hosts, whom he felt were too open to 9/11 skepticism. Unable to wrestle down his demons, he was fired. He received sympathy only from a New York Times blogger, whom I happen to know. That blogger suffers from the same blinders, and with his article was clearly trying to justify his own prejudices about 9/11 and the social movement that has sprung up in its wake.2
2
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/ ... -but-only- from-the-airwaves

A New Path to Real Peace: Sander Hicks Responds to Bill Weinberg 105 Weinberg’s Lures
Let’s take a look at Bill Weinberg’s mix of logic and emotions by analyzing an essay he wrote: “9–11 AT NINE: The Conspiracy Industry and the Lure of Fascism.”
His title implies that anyone who speculates about the common crime of “conspiracy” may be setting a lure to bring others towards fascism. This is a rather nasty extreme hypothesis, and I will prove its thorough falsity.
Ironically, it’s Weinberg himself who complains about how “the left is complicit in eroding its own vigilance against fascism by using the word ‘fascism’ as a mere baseball bat to beat our enemies with, often with little regard for its actual meaning.” It seems Weinberg there could be talking about himself. Fascism has a concrete meaning, but none of Weinberg’s examples from 9/11 skepticism fit the bill.
Weinberg promises to prove that, in the case of 9/11 at WBAI, “What began as an examination of seeming anomalies in the case
of 9–11 has lured some of our best minds down a black hole of irra- tionality that ultimately leads — and this, as shall be demonstrated, is not just hyperbole — to fascism.”
However, Weinberg does engage in hyperbole. Weinberg never “demonstrates” any proof, in this essay or elsewhere, that 9/11 stud-
ies lead to fascism. What he does prove is that it is intellectually enfeebling to be an anarchist/radical/leftist so stubbornly wedded to a certain viewpoint, when revolutionary methods of historical analysis are so life-giving and fresh.
No “Critical Inquiry versus Conspiranoia”
In his essay’s first paragraph, Weinberg sloppily conflates a variety of theories as he tries to appear rational about 9/11 skepticism: “It may begin with pre-planted explosives or missiles bringing down the Twin Towers . . . Once you abandon reason, anything goes.”
There are no elements of the 9/11 Truth Movement who claim that “missiles” took down the WTC. Weinberg may be confusing this subject with theories about what may have happened at the Pentagon. Or perhaps he doesn’t feel any part of this topic as a whole is worthy of rigor.
There are over 1,500 certified Architects and Engineers for 9/11
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Truth (AE911truth.org) who have petitioned Congress and raised a public ruckus, because to “abandon reason” is to forget that steel- framed structures do not just explode. In fact, no steel-frame struc- ture has ever collapsed due to fire. The WTC was built to withstand the impact of a jet. If you “abandon reason,” you forget to ask why there was molten metal in the ruins of Ground Zero for over three months after the attacks, or why seismic data shows an explosion at Ground Zero before the buildings collapsed.
Weinberg, however, is clearly not writing for that audience; he’s writing with a common left imperiousness that turns up its nose at new ideas outside the bound of “left historicity.” He assumes, or desperately hopes, that the reader shares his special disdain for any- one who asks these kinds of questions. So without proving that such material is beyond “reason” Weinberg simply asserts that “pre- planted explosives” at the WTC are a theory that “abandons reason.”
Weinberg’s pessimism overwhelms his ability to simply see his- torical truths. When he dismisses the historical pattern of power conspiring against popular will, he claims: “historians are going to be arguing about [9/11] for generations to come, just like they are still arguing about the Reichstag Fire, the JFK assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin and the sinking of the battleship Maine.”
Actually, Mr. Weinberg, most “historians” heard the Nazis confess at Nuremberg that the Reichstag was a false flag attack blamed on a lefty scapegoat in order to foment support for militarism and the right. Just like 9/11.
His other examples are just as poor. Most rational minds agree that the Warren Commission’s “magic bullet” theory of the JFK as- sassination also abandoned reason. Recently, the US Military itself has admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin and the sinking of the Maine in Havana harbor were false provocations used by the eager US War Machine to expand foreign military adventures.
It’s only a glum form of subjectivism that alleges that there will never be any answers. The answers are out there for those who do the work. How strange a time we live in when even the US Military can at times be more intellectually honest than members of the “radical left.”
Now that the US war machine has murdered Osama, it’s clear to many people on Earth that Bin Laden’s guilt was never proven. Promises were made, but no indictment delivered. Instead, US Navy Seals under orders from the White House killed him on the spot, despite the annoying fact that Bin Laden wasn’t even wanted by the
A New Path to Real Peace: Sander Hicks Responds to Bill Weinberg 107
FBI for the crimes of 9/11.
Weinberg asserts that “the problem ultimately is not the power
of hidden elites, but that we live under the capitalist system.” He doesn’t give details, but if he did, he might realize that this assertion is also contradictory. The capitalist system is about a superstructure of oppression. Class oppression is thorough and translates into suppression on racial, gender, and secrecy lines. The latter is seldom discussed, but Karl Marx said as much in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx’s own study of how the elite used secrecy, conspiracy, and “bourgeois terror” to come to power.3
A radical critique of capitalism embraces the class analysis of history. Whether one is anarchist or Marxist, or beyond, radical ideologies understand capitalism as a rapacious system in which the working class (in the broadest sense of the word) is enslaved by economic conditions to work and to fight in wars based on lies, in order to avoid starvation. This is done by a powerful network of hidden elites, a.k.a., the ruling class, who work under a cloak of secrecy. They fuel the fires in this giant Platonic Cave, and keep us chained to fear the shadows.
“Elites” are just another name for the ruling class. You learn fast in the 9/11 Truth Movement, in its sprawling diversity, that people coming from a more rural or “patriot” background may use the word “elite,” while those coming from a more urban, “progressive” background denounce the “ruling class.” Both are actually talking about overthrowing the same class, the “hidden elite” calling the shots atop this crystal pyramid of illusions we call capitalism. They teach us it’s made of steel but experience tells us it’s built on sand. It could fall any time. Knowing this in our minds, hearts and bodies is the first step.
Let’s take this further out of the realm of theory. Instead of “hidden elite,” let’s look at one faction inside it: the Bush Family. It’s a histor- ical fact that they make secrecy the currency of their power. George W. Bush’s pathetic biography of cut corners and shady backroom deals was polished by GOP spin doctors just enough to make him quasi-“Presidential.” His father was a top manager of the narcotics/ weapons/black market power politics of the Iran/Contra network.4
3 MacGregor, D., and P. Zarembka. (2010). Marxism, conspiracy, and 9–11. Socialism and Democracy, 24.2, 139–163.
4 Chaitkin, A., and Tarpley, W. (2004) George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography. From Chapter XX “The Phony War on Drugs” “The Iran-contra drug-running and gun-run-

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As CIA Director in the late 70’s he spread disinformation about the assassination of Chilean ambassador Letelier on the streets of DC.5 Bush was involved in and actually present at the hit on JFK in Dallas in 1963.6 During the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan, Vice President Bush was put in charge of the “investigation.” He failed to make public the strange and long relationship that the Bush Family has with the “lone gunman” from the Hinckley family, back in the Houston oil industry.7
But to those who have lost hope, like Weinberg, the only accept- able response to ruling class machinations like these is to shrug and terminate the debate by saying “we’ll never really know the truth.” My wish for Mr. Weinberg is that he can use this crisis of his ra- dio show ending and find some sort of place for spiritual/political renewal.
Because, Mr. Weinberg, the light has not yet been smothered! For all their evil, there is an equal response.
“We will never know the truth?”
We know what we demand to know.
And we demand to know how to change this system.
Icke as a “Neo-Nazi”
David Icke, Weinberg claims, is a “Neo-Nazi.” But Weinberg never offers any proof for the assertion.
Icke is a lot of things: a former Green Party UK spokesman (a fact conveniently overlooked by Weinberg) and a former sportscaster. Icke has quickly written numerous books of bizarre, fantastic forms of conspiracy theory. Icke’s major thesis is that the ruling elite is so nefarious, that they must be alien beings with an ability to “shape- shift” into human forms at will.
When you pick up Icke’s books, you soon notice a startling lack of footnotes, or citations, or sources for anything. This is not a book for scholars, or serious skeptics. Could it be that Icke is a red herring?
ning operations run out of Bush’s own office played their role in increasing the heroin,
crack, cocaine, and marijuana brought into this country.”
5 See former AP reporter Robert Parry’s excellent journalism on this:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/092300a.html
6
http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm7 The Hinckley-Bush Family connections were commented on by Newsweek and NBC,
at the time, see
http://www.nathanielblumberg.com/neil.htm
A New Path to Real Peace: Sander Hicks Responds to Bill Weinberg 109
A buffoon set in place to discredit the more careful researchers and critics of the global power structure?
If so, Weinberg has taken the bait. By spending so much time on him, Weinberg is guilty of the “straw man” fallacy: the weakest and worst example of a class of people is held up as the example that proves the rule.
Icke must be a Neo-Nazi, reasons Weinberg. Icke once quoted from the anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
I prefer the analysis of Alex Constantine, a much more thorough analyst of the machinations of power. He calls Icke’s work “an amateurish omelet of used conspiracy theories concocted by the John Birch Society and other far-right groups to discredit legitimate research on fascism, which is inherently conspiratorial. Most people, dumbed down by ‘mainstream’ media, can’t tell the difference.”8
Bill Weinberg, despite his radical claims, can’t seem to tell the difference either.
Let’s recall what Constantine just said. Fascism is real. Like Marx, Constantine sees that it is inherently conspiratorial. Our resistance to it must be disciplined and sustained. We must call forth a higher ideal of truth.
Bill Weinberg instead waters down the use of strong words like “neo-Nazi” to critique an already discredited figure. Icke is looney tunes, but I’m still waiting for the “proof” promised that this nut is
a “Neo-Nazi.”
Icke’s theory is that the international ruling class are shape-shift-
ing aliens. Weinberg claims that what he really means by aliens is “The Jews.” If you actually try to read Icke’s books though, you see that Icke is more concerned with the bloodlines of European royalty, the House of Windsor, etc., as much as the Jewish banking families of old Europe. Mentioning the Rothschild’s place in history does not
make one a Nazi.
Take a Breath
Towards the end, Weinberg concludes with, “The conspiracy the- ory of history has right-wing roots, and remains inherently a phe- nomenon of the right.”
8
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.c ... art-three- my.html

110 Sander Hicks
To this, I would say, Bill, take a breath. Exposing the secret machi- nations of a militarist, right wing, fascist system is actually quite liberating. It’s fun, it’s confrontational, and it’s life-giving. And it’s very “left” if you like to use that term. History is not exclusively any single group’s method. But it is liberating when history is based on hard, materialist, political realities. Studying these realities is a part of liberating the global working class from the vampires.
“Conspiracy,” after all, happens all the time. It’s a common crime in our system of common law, prosecuted in the courts every day. Weinberg’s rejection of 9/11 skepticism only creates unnecessary drama. Tortured logic and twisted reasoning on the left are right now preventing us from seeing that a new social movement is on the rise. It’s dedicated to not letting Bush and Cheney, et al., get away with their crimes, especially 9/11, the crime of our time. While you wring your hands with “we may never know the answers,” I see time is running out to bring Bush and Cheney, et al., to trial. I see the evidence we will use clear as day.
An obsession with the ideological side of politics has stripped Bill Weinberg of his ability to even see the topic he is addressing. His blindness is common among the academic, intellectual left, which prizes precious postmodern theories and timid subjectivism over ac- tual real-world evidence. A fear of working class organization makes too many of us demonize anything not as pure left as a “dangerous militia movement” or worse.
The 9/11 Truth Movement is an interesting social movement wor- thy of more serious study. The politics around 9/11 have lead to real wars. The truth about 9/11 will lead to a real peace. And it’s a truly radical theory of history that will get us there.
He'll be DEAD, so how will he hand it to you? Unless.... this "Counterpunch is Vile" thread actually turns WR into one of the Walking Dead 
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!