nathan28 wrote:I realize I just implied that a political movement needs a theory behind it. That's not necessarily the case--though at a minimum a political movement needs an unified vision or at least a family resemblance in its desired ends--but it needs more than "Truth." In my rough estimation, the People of the Internet who advocate 9/11 Truth, be they Ickeians or Alex Jones fans or anarchists or libertarians or socialists, imagine some sort of vague good that will inevitably follow the revelation of 9/11 Truth, as though it were the eschaton, that truth might be forced on the leaders of men and somehow this truth will do something--just what isn't, and has not been, clear to me.
nathan28 wrote:And to get some perspective: 9/11/01 was simply not that big of an event compared to anything any nation besides the United States has experienced. I suspect the same way the bombing of the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin, etc., are largely footnotes [...]
Nathan, it always astonishes me when I hear these objections, and they crop up incessantly.
The Cockburnite-Guardinista Leftists have no problem being BritishImperialism Truthers, Vietnam Truthers, IraqiWMD Truthers, GuantanamoTruthers, Enron Truthers, Chilean9/11Truthers, etc., etc., etc. In other words, they spend much of their time unearthing, analysing and publicising historical and contemporary truths. Clearly they too think it matters. Clearly they believe that what people know (or erroneously believe) will and must affect what they do and what they don't do.
How could it not? Why did the Party in Orwell's book place such importance in doublethink? Why was it so difficult to instil, even in the most willing Party members? And, pardon the bold type, but why should anyone doubt that the truth can affect people's behaviour, when no one denies that the lies of advertising, TV and the other mass media have a very profound & far-reaching effect?
History is always contested, and half the battle of the left has consisted in struggling to establish a historical record that did not ignore or obfuscate truths inconvenient to the ruling class. Just for instance: Here in Germany, many 68ers were shocked into political action by reading (and seeing films about) the words and deeds of the German ruling class during the Third Reich. They were shocked, too, to see how many old Nazis had survived and held onto powerful positions in public life, and by how little anyone in early-60s Germany wanted to talk about it. Some of those young people responded by becoming historians or sociologists or psychologists or teachers, some by becoming hippies, some by forming the Green Party, many by screaming at their parents for ignoring or repressing the truth, some by succumbing to drugs, and some by joining or sympathising with the Baader-Meinhof group. Nearly all of them marched against the Vietnam war and against the Shah of Iran, and more than a few of them lost their lives while doing one or more of these things. The government of Helmut Schmidt was in very serious trouble for a while, and some lasting and important changes have since taken place in German society. (The way people raise their kids, for a start. Not to mention the number of real Nazis they're prepared to tolerate in positions of power.)
Therefore: perceptions do indeed demonstrably affect actions, even if they don't positively determine them. This is particularly true when it's a perception of your own country and your own ruling class. QED.
Nor is it a matter of expecting the eschaton. Clearly today's Bundesrepublik Deutschland is not exactly the New Jerusalem, but at least it's not Nazi Germany! And la lutta continua, y'know? Rome wasn't razed in a day.
So, concretely, what might "9/11truth" eventually achieve? Well, if it acquired a critical mass, it might very well result in:
- very noisy, angry and even violent responses to public appearances by politicians;
- demonstrations so large, noisy and perhaps violent that they would be very difficult to ignore;
- a crisis in the maintenance of the Spectacle, if enough people stop buying newspapers;
- strikes, especially by public servants, and maybe even by soldiers.
For instance. And that's just for starters. Because even the most complacent citizens of the imperialist United States are likely to be pretty pissed-off if it becomes generally known that their rulers actually connived in the murder of 3,000 people
in Manhattan so that they could wage two ruinously expensive wars that cost the lives of more than 3,000 more Americans.
It is a bit close to the bone, is it not? Like finding out that your father had murdered your mother. It would tend to affect your attitude to Daddy*, and your behaviour, even without the help of an adequate theoretical framework. It might well make you want to see him in jail, or even dead. Not least because: if he could that to her, then he could also do it you, or to your kids.
*
Even if you had previously worshipped him as a war-hero.
