9/11 and the Left: Is there any way forward?

[MacCruiskeen]

Nathan28 and I started an exchange about this on the "New Aerial photos of 9/11 attacks" thread, thereby throwing it off-topic. So I'm starting a new one.

Have to dash out now. I've said all I want to say for the time being here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27049&start=0

[nathan28]

Nathan28 started an exchange about this on another thread, thereby throwing it off-topic. So I'm starting a new one.

Have to dash out now. I've said all I want to say for the time being here:

You mean here: http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27049&start=15

(I AM WINNAR)

[MacCruiskeen]

You mean here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27049&start=15

(I AM WINNAR)

Bugger it. You anticipated my amendment. This means schism and years of bitter infighting.

[nathan28]

Don't worry, one of us will send someone with an icepick thirty years from now.

To keep things going. Mac, what was your bit about the concern for "truth"? How do you think that exposure of numerous fraudulent parts of the OCT is going to present a boon?

I'd suggest that coming clean about the matter would head off the sort of speculation that does fuel the John Birch wing of Team Fascist America--and that really, since the '70s, it's quite clear that a substantial portion of the elite--the "Prussian" neocons and far-right industrialists (like H.L. Hunt) that PD Scott juxtaposes against the "Traders" and the older Realists (like Kissinger)--has courted a certain critical mass of the populist far right (i.e., proto/pre-fascists)--so it's not going to happen.

[thatsmystory]

Myopic focus on 9/11 can distract from larger issues that concern the left. The problem is that no focus on 9/11 means that one's political analysis will be lacking. It should never be an either/or choice. For example, Vince Salandria was an early critic of the Warren Commission report. He eventually realized that excessive focus on physical evidence was not productive. That didn't mean he concluded that the assassination had no importance. Instead the lesson was that the assassination and the cover up needed to be understood in a more expansive context.

[Nordic]

Myopic focus on 9/11 can distract from larger issues that concern the left. The problem is that no focus on 9/11 means that one's political analysis will be lacking. It should never be an either/or choice. For example, Vince Salandria was an early critic of the Warren Commission report. He eventually realized that excessive focus on physical evidence was not productive. That didn't mean he concluded that the assassination had no importance. Instead the lesson was that the assassination and the cover up needed to be understood in a more expansive context.

Well yes, of course, but that assumes an acceptance, on a large scale, of the facts of the matter.

The trouble, and the frustration, with dealing with this is that, well, "it changes everything". Knowing that the official story is a complete lie, knowing that it was a grand psyops conducted in order to start this endless "war on terror" which they are now predicting will basically go on forever, knowing that it was just a huge mind-fuck and a mass-murder .....

It really does change everything. It changes the very paradigm of all that our culture assumes to be the basis of its "truth".

So knowing that, and seeing how the mainstream majority is literally on the other side of the reality scale, the frustration sets in and then we're back to pointing out the physical anomalies and the ridiculous claims made about that day.

"LOOK! Goddamnit, LOOK!"

You see it in comments on Youtube and elsewhere: "Look up, sheeple!"

Where it's at now: we have people who know these things, and who can talk about the "big picture" of what it all means and why it was done, and where it's leading, then we have people who have no fucking idea.

These two groups are literally living in two different realities.

I don't think I've ever seen American culture so split into two (or more) competing realities. Not just points of view, or opinions, but actual realities. And the media is helping this along, with the nut-job right-wing delusional tea-party heavy breathers literally living in their own Corporate Supported reality where global warming is a hoax, and Al Gore is a con man, and Rush Limbaugh is a father-figure, and Sarah Palin is a hero, and Obama is a Kenyan Socialist Idealogue .....

[Simulist]

For me, the most disturbing lesson of 9/11 is how easily the very people you'd think wouldn't be, are 100% manipulable. Just so long as "the voice of authority" says that something is so (no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary or how ridiculous the claim), most people will believe it — both on the right and on the left.

Until that changes — until the mere "voice of authority" ceases to possess this overarching sway over their unquestioning minds — no, I don't think there is a positive path forward for such people concerning 9/11.

[MacCruiskeen]

For me, the most disturbing lesson of 9/11 is how easily the very people you'd think wouldn't be, are 100% manipulable. Just so long as "the voice of authority" says that something is so (no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary or how ridiculous the claim), most people will believe it — both on the right and on the left.

Until that changes — until the mere "voice of authority" ceases to possess this overarching sway over their unquestioning minds — no, I don't think there is a positive path forward for such people concerning 9/11.

Yeah, that was what shocked me most, too: to see human brains collapsing into their own footprints at free-fall velocity. To hear people who I thought were smart and rational and well-informed and independent-minded just mouthing phrases straight off the TV as if it were gospel truth. And the fear in their glassy eyes while they were doing it.

[bks]

There is a great deal of denial among much of the so-called "politically aware" concerning just how far outside the reach of true regulation the machinery of state has moved. It's easy enough to see, it's just really, really hard, i think, for lots of progressives to fully accept. tPeople in regulatory positions in government, even if they have a sense of public service, are not permitted to rearrange anything except the deck chairs, and thus what they're doing is really ceremonial. A kind of play-acting at democratic republicanism. Health care is a recent and disgustingly obvious example of how easily any effort to enact significant change can be co-opted and re-directed away from the needs of citizens and toward the achievement of corporate/elite goals.

If a person in Congress shows the slightest inclination to make real change, they're kept far away from the controls [see Kuchinich] and, if they persist on making a pest of themselves in word or deed, they can be smeared by an always-willing corporate press machine and targeted in subsequent elections [see Mckinney].

Here's the tie-in: I think a big reason 9/11 skepticism narratives are so despised is because they insist on facing the fact that we've lost control - and long ago - of vital aspects of self-governance. With an military/intelligence apparatus literally unaccountable to the people, the US is simply not the country it's leaders like to tell us it is. The best 9/11 skeptics like PD Scott and Nafeez Ahmed show their readers quite clearly key facets of this drift into unaccountability. Conveniently, however, for the left-ostrich contingent, there are several other sorts of 9/11 narratives to pick from when one wants to strengthen the denial of this process, and it's usually the sloppiest, implausible or idiotic that is chosen for this purpose.

It's very rare to see a thoughtful, evidentiary reply to the work of Peter Dale Scott or Nafeez Ahmed or Paul Thompson on 9/11. As Nafeez points out, most replies either attack the most idiotic of theories, or offer a defactualized analysis of 'conspiracy theory' as a discursive object, rather than bother with the content of a particular argument.

More telling is that when an ostrich does engage a 9/11 skeptic's work and finds an error or weak point in the evidence presented, somehow that weakness becomes sufficient reason to for the ostrich to write off the person's work completely, and to deride 9/11 skepticism as well.

[American Dream]

bks wrote"

It's very rare to see a thoughtful, evidentiary reply to the work of Peter Dale Scott or Nafeez Ahmed or Paul Thompson on 9/11. As Nafeez points out, most replies either attack the most idiotic of theories, or offer a defactualized analysis of 'conspiracy theory' as a discursive object, rather than bother with the content of a particular argument.

Thank you.

[17breezes]

For me, the most disturbing lesson of 9/11 is how easily the very people you'd think wouldn't be, are 100% manipulable. Just so long as "the voice of authority" says that something is so (no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary or how ridiculous the claim), most people will believe it — both on the right and on the left.

Until that changes — until the mere "voice of authority" ceases to possess this overarching sway over their unquestioning minds — no, I don't think there is a positive path forward for such people concerning 9/11.

Wow. "Unquestioning minds?"

So is your position is that we can write off the opinions of a huge majority of minds both dull and bright as being merely unquestioning and mere puppets of the "voice of authority?"

I for one feel uneasy with such simplicity

[Simulist]

For me, the most disturbing lesson of 9/11 is how easily the very people you'd think wouldn't be, are 100% manipulable. Just so long as "the voice of authority" says that something is so (no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary or how ridiculous the claim), most people will believe it — both on the right and on the left.

Until that changes — until the mere "voice of authority" ceases to possess this overarching sway over their unquestioning minds — no, I don't think there is a positive path forward for such people concerning 9/11.

Wow. "Unquestioning minds?"

So is your position is that we can write off the opinions of a huge majority of minds both dull and bright as being merely unquestioning and mere puppets of the "voice of authority?"

I for one feel uneasy with such simplicity

Then you missed my point.

[MacCruiskeen]

bks wrote"

It's very rare to see a thoughtful, evidentiary reply to the work of Peter Dale Scott or Nafeez Ahmed or Paul Thompson on 9/11. As Nafeez points out, most replies either attack the most idiotic of theories, or offer a defactualized analysis of 'conspiracy theory' as a discursive object, rather than bother with the content of a particular argument.

Thank you.

Seconded. Great post, bks.

This is what has frustrated the hell out of me over the years while trying to discuss 9/11 with people (nearly always men) like 'lenin' of Lenin's Tomb: the shabby evasiveness of their argumentative stance. If you tell them something they can neither deny nor refute, their routine response is simply to pretend it had never been said - to act as if they had never heard it. Laa-laa-laa-fingers-in-ears. Ahmed's "The Defactualisation of Analysis" (for example) is just unanswerable, which presumably explains why it's never been answered. Instead, it's ignored, like a fart in church. And as soon as the smell has dissipated, back they come with the same old arguments that had just been roundly (but inaudibly) refuted. Very quickly, you start to feel you've landed in the fifth circle of Hell.

So much for the idea of argument as the disinterested pursuit of the truth. Most of this stuff is ego-driven. These guys -- yes: guys -- staked out their position immediately after the attacks ("It was blowback, and WE saw it coming!"), so they simply cannot tolerate the perceived loss of face involved in admitting such a big mistake. It would make nonsense of much of what they've written over the last nine years. It would practically kill them. Hence the irrationality and rabid vehemence of their responses to "9/11Truth". The Blowback Doctine has to be defended the way the Vatican defends the doctrine of papal infallibility. Or, to switch metaphors: the way boys defend their toys (or their reputations as wise guys).

Equally unanswerable is this, from Jamey Hecht:

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

http://www.911inquiry.org/Presentations/JameyHecht.htm

Cockburn, Monbiot, 'lenin', and the other left-ostriches must know this perfectly well, and yet they carry on deploying that abysmal bourgeois shibboleth as an all-purpose thoughtstopper. (shibboleth; n. A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another. )

Here's the tie-in: I think a big reason 9/11 skepticism narratives are so despised is because they insist on facing the fact that we've lost control - and long ago - of vital aspects of self-governance.

Yes. Chris Hedges makes much the same point in the great piece just posted here by ninakat. But the boys will not abandon their fantasy that the world is essentially both transparent and well-ordered, and that therefore the goodies must eventually prevail.

[Simulist]

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

http://www.911inquiry.org/Presentations/JameyHecht.htm

That's exactly right.

People tend to believe what they're told, especially if it's told to them by an authority figure and most especially if it's told to them by lots of authority figures — and almost absolutely if there is a hefty social price for them to pay for daring to question said authority. The pejorative (and dreaded) label, "conspiracy theorist," ties that all together with an ugly scarlet bow.

Some people have a hard time understanding how comparatively effortless such manipulation really is.

[MacCruiskeen]

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

http://www.911inquiry.org/Presentations/JameyHecht.htm

That's exactly right.

People tend to believe what they're told, especially if it's told to them by an authority figure and most especially if it's told to them by lots of authority figures — and almost absolutely if there is a hefty social price for them to pay for daring to question said authority.

Some people have a hard time understanding how comparatively effortless such manipulation really is.

Exactly. A hefty social price. Also, and by no means irrelevantly: a hefty financial price too, if you're a freelance journalist or an untenured academic. Reason has very little to do with it, so you can forget the disinterested pursuit of the truth. These people have accumulated a certain amount of social and financial capital as tough-minded, no-nonsense left-liberal opinion leaders, and they'll be damned if the self-educated and excitable plebs are going to get their hands on it. It's a class thing. Material interests are at stake.

You would expect soi-disant leftists to understand all that. But, as Upton Sinclair said:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

(For "salary", read "precarious freelancer's fee" or "book deal" or "treasured reputation as guru", wherever appropriate.)