Incorrect information in a chaotic situation? Would never happen!
Comment on Why were so many people believers in the conspiracy that 9/11 was an inside job
Bipta@kbin.social 8 months agoI can't vouch for the veracity of most of your content but I wanted to add that building 7 was also announced to have collapsed before it actually did.
Montagge@kbin.earth 8 months ago
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Countless incorrect things were announced. Everyone was collectively panicking. That’s odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything considering the building was already visibly damaged.
Rakonat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The building had been on fire for hours at that point with no water pressure to run the sprinklers or allow firefighters to effectively combat it. It was decided to stop efforts to save the building as it was presumed the integrity of the structure was damaged beyond repair.
As for the reporters announcing it collapsing early, its doubtful that it was anything but one of many mistakes reporters made live on air hours into an exhausting day of chaos. Maybe that had been told the building was going to collapse at any minute or maybe they had been told efforts to stop collapse had ceased and an assumption was made by the crew on the ground it had already fell. As I recall it was the BBC that said it fell before it actually did, so the idea of a foreign news outlet being in on a false flag conspiracy is just too ridiculous to be believable over something such as an exhausted reporter misspeaking in the middle of an emotionally overwhelming day.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yep. There was also the quotes from Rudi Guilani where he said something along the lines of “Pull Building 7”, where pull is demolitions parlance to set off the charges. This was like a day of audio snippet. Its also basically impossible to find the original footage that isn’t pure conspiracy drivel, but I remember it from the time when all of this was happening. There was so much going on in the wake of 9-11, with the country pretty much instantaneously jumping into war mode, being immediately handed a narrative around al-Qaeda with no investigation into the causes or veracity of the government claims around al-Qaeda.
The push back on questioning the narrative was surreal. Like, you would be drawn and quartered publicly for doing so. The ‘feeling’ at the time was that the investigation into what actually happened and how felt like a complete sham that the government didn’t really want to do because so many people weren’t accepting the party narrative.
Also, keep in mind the context. There was a strong anti-war sentiment in 2003 going into the invasion of Iraq. The “9-11 was an inside job crowd” found themselves running with the anti-war crowd as general anti-institutionalists. This was when Alex Jones was just finding his footing and definitely wasn’t quite fully right wing. He was more accurately (at the time, in historical context) anti-establishment. The modern right-wing movement hadn’t fully formed, although it found its roots in this historical period (the Tea party would also come out of this period).
So just broadly consider the different vectors operating on public perception at the time. We were basically instantly construction a “Going to War is the Solution” narrative within hours of 9-11 happening, and the narrative around that construction was found to be fully formed as soon as it emerged, almost as if the institutions of the US government and its surrounding media had been prepared for this exact moment. Push back against this was effectively an instantaneous scarlett letter and there basically was none in US mainstream media*. There was a strong push back against any kind of independent investigation into the events leading up to the event. We got reports from the CIA and FBI, but considering the context, like, if those are the parties in question, do you believe them? Then you had the Saudi Bush family connections, the fact that we were basically going to war with Afghanistan when we knew it was the Saudis that did 9-11, which was like a pretty big red flag. Then there were the reports that globally, many governments warned about this happening to US intelligence agencies, but it seemed like they just kind of let it happen. Which is really where the conspiracy was focused. These days it gets too wrapped up in ‘inside job’ etc, but the general scheme was more about 9-11 being allowed to happen as an excuse for a Bush invasion into the middle east. This wasn’t a conspiracy that was built in hindsight, the speculation was built in real time (before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), and then go figure, Bush invades the middle east, and specifically, goes after Iraq. This basically fully validates the theory, and to put a cherry on top, the evidence on Iraq was all just… fraudulent. So if you limit the scope of the theory to 9-11 was ‘allowed’ to occur to justify a military industrial complex incursion into the middle east, its kind-of like “well yeah duh” because thats exactly what happened.
Wild fukin time and wild bit of history. Important to keep context in mind, and to have sources of information about the past which aren’t ‘edited’ to reflect newthink.
*Democracy Now did exist by this time (finding its establishment after the Seattle WTO protests). If you want to really understand what was going on at the time, this would be the media source I would recommend.
Pinkburitto@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Do you write? I really enjoyed reading your comments, just flowed naturally talented
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
I’m a scientist, so I do ‘write’ professionally, but its a very different kind of writing than I do here, and I would say that they are entirely seperate (excepting my discussion sections where I afford a bit more liberty to style, although I tend to be more focused on methods).
I attribute my writing style to years of participating in forums and threaded discussion boards, starting in the early 90s. I try to use quotes from who I’m replying to, hyper links, bold and italics for emphasis, but to use a conversational/ editorial style. When I was coming up on the internet, I truly believed that the internet allowed for the democratization of ideas, in that, on the internet you have no appeal to authority on your credentials or name or background. The only weight you can provide is rhetoric and whatever evidence you can scuff up, and because of that, the best ideas should find their way to the top. Boy was I wrong, but I still believe in the virtue of good ideas, and that belief is part of my motivation for being involved in places like (formerly) reddit or (currently) lemmy.
JustZ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I would attribute not to all the writing you’ve done, but all the reading.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
As a scientist, how did you feel at the time about the railroading of scientist Bruce Ivins for the Anthrax scare?
machinin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Before the Bush election, Cheney and Rumsfeild belonged to a think tank called a New American Century that created the plan to invade Iraq in order to create a government friendly to the US.
One author even said that America would need a new Pearl Harbor to regain its military strength.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, this shit writes itself. If history were a work of political fiction, it would be called out as tropish, too on the nose and goofy to sustain disbelief.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 8 months ago
The vast majority of the time, the pushback was low effort “asking questions” based on fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter or entirely pulled our of their asses.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Bro say what you will about the baselessness of it, but 9-11 conspiracy theorists were anything but low effort. People made documentaries, traveled to track down steel, built media enterprises off the back of it.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Time consuming sure; But doubling down on their own fundamental misunderstandings and preconceived notions isn’t what I would classify as real effort.
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
And those people are all people like Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson who are totally shameless liars and manipulators, all his 911 truth stuff led to stuff like the sandy hook denials and maga nonsence.
Illuminostro@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Hard to believe he was Super America Mayor Man, and threw it away for an overgrown child. And his tax rate.