Submitted 8 months ago by fastandcurious@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
When Al-Qaeda themselves claimed responsibility, even with overwhelming evidence aside? Why were so many people still reluctant, I was researching about this stuff and was shocked to see people who I respect a lot believe in this
It’s easier to believe the people in charge are secretly in control of everything than to believe they’re barely in control of anything.
This.
Conspiracy theories are comforting because they are more pleasant to believe than the truth, which is that we’re all aboard a ship going full steam ahead with nobody at the rudder.
It also gives people a sense of deep satisfaction believing they know some dark hidden secret nobody else does... regardless of how absurd it is
Nobody’s at the rudder, but also all of us are. Everyone has more capacity than anyone is comfortable with
And yet, this all powerful government couldn’t even fake finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to “validate” their invasion reasons.
Government incompetence is the main reason I didn’t go down the conspiracy rabbit hole. They’re too stupid to pull most shit off without tripping over their own dicks.
Also, at the time, in the west, Al Qaida were a largely unknown terrorist cell operating in far-away third-world countries. It seemed incredible that such a devastating attack could be carried out on US soil by a small group most people had never heard of.
I didn’t actually believe this, but it was fun to entertain the idea.
Here’s why. At the time, there were a bunch of very odd coincidences. I’ll do my best to remember the best of them.
Next!
Next!
There are more, but it’s been 20 years and my memory is hazy.
Overall, there were some oddities around the whole event that, when allowing yourself to think completely outside of reality, make sense as to why it was an inside job.
Finally, personally I believe the Saudis did it in cooperation with Bin Laden and their goal was to bankrupt America. They did a pretty good job, from their perspective.
I 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.
I 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.
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.
Incorrect information in a chaotic situation? Would never happen!
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.
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.
A building fire started by jet fuel absolutely can melt steel beams, and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire, which happened because the fire in the other buildings was blown across by the wind and explosions. None of the building collapse videos look like a demolition.
If the government wanted to execute an attack on Americans, why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings? Let the jihadists crash planes into buuldings. Setting hidden, controlled demolition charges and trying to make it look like a collapse is harder than finding some terrorists willing to die for their cause and teaching them to fly.
It is conceivable to me that members of the intelligence community, the military-industrial complex, and/or the government ignored warnings and allowed the attacks to happen for their own benefit. I would prefer to think it wasn’t true, but I must concede that it would explain many inconsistencies.
It is theoretically possible, but implausible to me, that those same people would coordinate the attacks and support the terrorists to ensure that the attacks would happen as a false flag operation. This is an extraordinary claim with almost no evidence.
It is not in any way possible that the government demolished any of the buildings attacked on purpose and then covered up all evidence of the demolition. There would need to be too many people involved, too many videos altered or destroyed, and too much evidence planted after the fact. It is demonstrably false.
and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire
It wasnt the first skyscraper fire, but it was the first and still only skyscraper to collapse from a fire. So no i wouldnt say its expected at all.
As I said with the very first statement, I don’t believe any of this.
why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings?
This is exactly what many tinfoil hatters thought and probably still think.
The main one for me was that NORAD, for the first time ever, was “stress testing” their system and running every flight sim they had, so when things went down, they had no idea what was real and what wasn’t.
The order to do so, for the first time, unprovoked, unnecessarily and unneededly came from Dick Cheney himself, who didn’t even have the authority to order the Pentagon to do ANYTHING but his orders were followed regardless.
That’s a pretty big discrepancy. It’s really hard for me to rule that one out
Building 7 is a big leap of faith to hurdle.
The twin towers themselves collapsing in a controlled manner, that doesn’t happen without blowing individual floors. Buildings in war zones don’t fall down vertically, they’ll partially collapse or fall over, not straight down - that ONLY happens with controlled demolition.
That’s a big leap of faith.
Like almost everyone else, I was glued to the TV all day on 9/11. I remember when the Pentagon footage was aired on TV. It was played ONCE. That was a missile. It was clear as day. Beyond that, if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.
That’s a big leap of faith.
It requires to many leaps of faith to believe the given story. Idk the whole of what happened, but I know we weren’t told it.
The Patriot Act was introduced 5 weeks after the attack. 342 pages, no contradictions in the whole thing. Introduced, passed, and signed into law in 4 days. 5 weeks isn’t enough time to read 350 pages of legalese, let alone write it. It was ready to go
Add to all the sus, America’s government post WW2, at least, has not warranted any trust from the public. The CIA has done a LOT of fucked up, illegal shit to us. The Bay of Tomkin was a false flag fucking lie to the people. The incessant lie of Neoliberalism telling us that GDP is up! But everyone’s quality of life is being striped away faster than our rights. Citizens United is bullshit, 2000 election was bullshit, Iraq and Afghanistan were both bullshit, qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture are fucking repressive FASCIST bullshit and yea, you know, I don’t think the people calling the shots have our best interests in mind, how could you?
“_______ doesn’t happen without _______” all all bullshit based on nothing. NIST has published their findings. They had 200 Experts, 125 of which came from the private sector investigate how the towers came down, and there is absolutely no evidence what so ever that they were brought down in a controlled manner. I even remember watching a documentary that interviewed the owner or engineer of one of the US’s top demolition companies that easily pokes holes in the idea that a major skyscraper with people, furniture, etc could be brought down like that at all. It’s total nonsense. NIST has a FAQ page
Donald Trump’s presidency pretty much removed any doubt I had about the official 9/11 story.
He proved that our government is full of regular idiots who are just barely able to work together. Of course the 3 letter agencies have a lot of power and fancy technology, but if the CIA or NSA was seriously that in control of this country, Trump would have never happened. He is a bumbling moron who did a ton of damage to this country and nobody lifted a finger apparently? Damaging alliances, burning undercover assets, etc.
Our Congress can’t work together long enough to pass basic bills. No way the Patriot act was planned with a false flag in mind.
The 9/11 conspiracy is just way too big and would need way too many participants to keep it under wraps like that.
Plus, every big disaster has conspiracy theories. If you believe all of them, you’re pretty much saying bad things never happen without the overlords planning them.
9/11, Hurricane Katrina, JFK assassination, RFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and every other major event have had massive conspiracy theories and claims that they were inside jobs.
Yeah, the official story has holes but reality is messy. It was a big attack involving/affecting a lot of agencies, corporations, and people. It’s pretty much guaranteed that out of the measly 365 days per year, a lot of these groups and individuals would be doing their “once a year” inspections, misremembering details in their panic, dealing with other terrorist attacks, intersecting with ongoing crimes that were being committed separately, etc.
if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.
There was plenty of wreckage. There were no big chunks of fuselage or wings or engines, but that isn’t uncommon with extreme accidents. A plane at high speed slamming into the ground, a cliff, or a heavily reinforced building, is going to disintegrate into pretty small pieces, making investigations difficult. And indeed there are photos of small chunks of plane wreckage found at the Pentagon on 9/11.
How can you not believe any of what you wrote but also say that you believe the Saudis did it? The Bush-Saudi connection was known for a decade before September 11th.
Bush Sr. literally invaded Iraq to protect Saudi oil interests. No one at the top actually believed Saddam was an immediate threat to U.S. interests.
The only planes that flew out of the U.S. after the attacks were Saudi nationals who were granted exception by the White House to flee the country.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but where I land on the question is basically I think there’s a very good chance that GWB knew about a credible threat of something like 9/11 happening and deliberately chose not to interfere. So more like an act by intentionally doing nothing.
Because I knew someone would take the bait. The saudis did it is another conspiracy theory from the time.
The conspiracy theories around 9/11 are almost as numerous and as fun to play with as JFK assassination.
Building 7 had one of the towers fucking fall on it, was seen bulging massively before collapsing, and it was pretty obvious what was going to happen, hence people getting confused and saying it had already collapsed.
the towers were obviously hit by planes, we have plenty of video evidence of this. The controversy is around how the towers actually fell. This is where the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” meme comes from.
Of course, the meme is a parody of anyone who thinks that’s a legitimate argument. You don’t need to liquify a material for it to lose its structural integrity.
No, people actually believed it from day 1.
Weren’t the towers completely closed just prior to the incident?
Because the FBI gave the terrorists all the training, weapons, and about $2bn in cold hard cash money that lead to them being able to commit the act. Because "jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams", although it does weaken steel beams. Because engineering and demolition experts came out and said the whole thing seemed coordinated exactly in the way in which they coordinate twar downs for a living. Because the terrorists who on the same day planned to blow up the George Washington Bridge got sent home on a plane and were never spoken about publicly again. Because it was obvious Saidi Arabia had a hand in it, which later became confirmed fact, and we're buddy buddy with Saudi, so somebody had to have known something was going to happen but didn't sufficiently try to stop it on our side of the water. Because the Bin Laden family and the Bush family have a weird amount of connections. Be cause conspiracy theory culture was seen as more typical/harmless, and less of a thing for Nazi terrorists like today. Because the FBI had Bin Laden dead to rights in 1998 and had a bedside conversation with him instead of taking the opportunity to kill him while he was on dialysis. Because the 40 years that preceded 9/11 were lousy with proven incidence where our leadership, specifically the FBI & CIA in conjunction with corrupted presidents, in which American citizens were coerced, sabotaged, drugged, tortured, and killed, and all the leaders had to say about it was ‘whoopsy doopsy, so sowwy’
the whole thing seemed coordinated exactly in the way in which they coordinate tear-downs for a living
Oh, yeah, there’s that. The buildings had a very unusual¹ structure that tends to naturally collapse on a similar way as controlled demolition. It’s extremely unlikely for normal buildings to go down that way, so it did raise some suspicion.
1 - Unusual for buildings in general, but common for buildings of that size.
CIA. FBI is domestic.
I think it’s because people would rather believe the world is secretly controlled by some truly awful people than acknowledge no-one’s steering the bus.
I think it is because of the bizarre way the towers collapsed. Just like a controlled demolition looks like.
Also, the way the WTC7 that did not get hit by any plane also collapsed, supposedly because it caught on fire too.
I think this is really the cause of suspicion, it was just pretty bizarre. Also a lot of people came forward to explain that a fire couldn’t brind such a massive structure down.
Also, the US is known for doing weird shit behind everyone’s backs, like weird shit the CIA is constantly doing, like taking governments down or causing a drug crisis in black neighborhoods.
You gotta admit the US agencies are sneaky in general, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were actually responsible for the twin towers.
There’s no evidence but I’m pretty sure the CIA was somehow involved with the Nord Stream pipeline
Also a lot of people came forward to explain that a fire couldn’t brind such a massive structure down.
And yet One Meridian Plaza was a skyscraper built in the same era as 7 World Trade Center that had a fire so bad that caused the building to be condemned due to structural damage caused by the fire. The only reason One Meridian Plaza didn’t completely collapse during the fire was because there were fire sprinklers on some of the floors and the fire got up to a floor that had them.
So now Lower Manhattan had lost water pressure, making the fire sprinkler system worthless. You also had a lot of the people who would be responsible for fighting the fire pancaked in debris nearby. This was the first skyscraper of its size in a over a decade allowed to burn.
But a controlled demolition is a lot more comforting of a thought that the complete failure of disaster response.
Here is an interview with a Dutch demolitions expert, who claims that WTC 7 was clearly brought down in a controlled demolition.
How do you place explosives at exactly the height of impact?
This explains most conspiracy theories: it’s easier to believe that the bad in the world is caused by some evil cabal than it is to accept that it’s just chaotic and crazy shit happens. It’s no surprise that most conspiracy theorists are also religious and believe there is some fight between the devil and god playing out. It’s a small leap from one position based on faith to the other.
Because there was some legit sketchy shit:
Bush was warned at least a month in advance that an attack was coming. He deliberately did nothing. This was documented publicly in a Senate hearing afterwards. We don’t know whether he did nothing because of incompetence or malice, and we don’t know who else knew in advance as well, but either way, at least he and the people who briefed him knew.
The dirty secret of skyscrapers is that they’re mostly made of nothing. They’re almost entirely air. It takes precious little to weaken them and bring them down. The Bin Laden family was in the construction business and they knew this fact very well.
As others have noted in the thread, Bin Laden and the Muhjadeen had been funded, trained, and armed by the USA. They were our creation.
Usually when people are suspicious, they’re right to be suspicious. They’re not always right about what to be suspicious about.
It takes precious little to weaken them and bring them down.
I would argue that an airliner filled with tons of fuel is not “little”. That was a lot of mass moving really fast into the towers. Even then, it took a while for the structures to become weak enough to collapse. Given the circumstances, it was amazing the towers lasted as long as they did after they were hit.
Your core description is correct though: There really isn’t much to skyscrapers.
I’m confused by this comment, what exactly is sketchy?
W is/was an incompetent fool that didn’t feel the threat was worth acting upon. Instead of imagining some 4D conspiracy its much easier to see and understand that him and his administration were inept.
There have been numerous documentaries and analysis about skyscrapers and planes and the conclusion was that the towers actually performed ABOVE average. People don’t seem to understand the power involved in a fucking jerliner slamming into a building.
Bin Laden was trained and armed to fight the Russians, which he did. He then decided to turn on us because he always was always a lunatic.
Again, nothing about 9/11 is mysterious to me and I don’t get the conspiracy thinking.
A lot of people grew up being used to a safe county. The idea that the government didn’t actually keep people safe, and that leaders could be so insanely incompetent, was so shocking it was easier to believe in crazy conspiracy theories.
It’s pretty easy to believe in an incompetent government after 9/11, but W came after Clinton and Bush Sr. The first Bush was the head of the CIA. He was evil, but highly competent. Clinton was clearly a world leader, also highly competent. Before that you had Reagan, who was Machiavellian as fuck running secret wars around the world. You had decades of these people looking like they were playing geopolitical 4d chess, then you had this clown who was playing checkers with pidgins. Then you had this incredible shock of the biggest attack on the US since Perl Harbor. It broke a lot of people’s brains.
Usually the conspiracy theories are along the lines of…
The sketchy shit makes a lot more sense than the conspiracy theories about demolitions and no planes (just projectors, lmao)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Though I found that often malice has a part in problems.
A lot of it was shock and confusion. How could this happen? Why did this happen? People wanted answers and people got answers.
I was a truther right away, after 9/11. It’s embarrassing to say now. I fell for narratives like “jet fuel doesnt melt steal beams” and “only a controlled demolition collapses like that.”
Jet fuels softens steal beams, and they were holding up so much weight. And that’s exactly how a really tall building, surrounded by other tall buildings were attacked.
People were hot with emotion and it’s hard to be rational in that state of mind.
At this point, I believe some in the US government knew the attack was imminent but did not know when, and by the time it was happening, it was too late.
I can’t dismiss as out of hand the idea that Bush, Cheny, and some of their friends in Saudi Arabia (people who are now Donald Trump’s friends), wanted the attack to happen, specifically in order to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I do believe were just wars under a doctrine of irredentism.
Because the FBI lost 2.3 trillion the day before 9/11 (though note that this was brought up way before 9/11, but was restated the day before), and mixed with things like ruby ridge incident, Waco incident, and other things has lead people to be distrustful of the FBI, and I honestly can’t blame them.
I thought it was the Pentagon that lost the 2 trillion dollars
You can blame someone for believing stupid conspiracy theories without any concrete evidence though.
I mean prob because although it wasn’t done directly by the gov they had plenty of warning and did nothing.
What do you mean by they had plenty of warning? Do you consider the government, FBI, and CIA to be one entity?
Normally the agencies coordinate.
Cheney changed that when Bush was elected, and had everything go thru him. It was his decision what another agency and even the president was told.
The pieces were all there, but Cheney was literally the only person who saw all the pieces before it happened.
And he never said anything.
Maybe he was incompetent, maybe he was evil enough to let it happen.
But lots of people call Dick Cheney evil, no one calls him incompetent
Don’t quote me on this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many other countries considered those to be in the same camp.
Go pull the nyt for the week before. There were warnings of terrorist attacks, but they were believed to be threatening US bases overseas, specifically on Okinawa.
It’s not “they knew and did nothing”. It only becomes clear in hindsight. It was a massive failure. Of intelligence and of imagination.
Because two planes hit two buildings (and the other one) and like 3-4 buildings imploded. It didn’t look real.
Im guessing engineers didn’t plan for planes to strike the building which is why they crumbled.
That was literally it. It was so odd a situation to our daily lives that parts of it didn’t seem real.
They actually did design the buildings to survive such incidents, which is one of the many reasons that makes it all a bit fishy
They designed the buildings to implode because on the 60s and 70s there was a worry that buildings would topple over onto neighbouring buildings if damaged or compromised, and was a legitimate concern as architects were putting forth designs using less reinforcement because they didn’t need as much half a century earlier to build things like the empire state building thanks to better building techniques and materials.
They did exactly what they were designed to do when their integrity was compromised to the point to failure, which is impressive feet. Just ask any engineer what happens when a small but dense and fast moving object slams into the end of a second class lever.
The buildings were designed to withstand a small or medium sized aircraft at a relatively low speed with low fuel, similar to the incident with the Empire State Building. It’s not uncommon for other buildings to be built to similar standards, so I don’t see how this would be fishy. It’s a pair of skyscrapers, the threat of a plane hitting them accidentally during bad weather was a possibility. They were not designed to withstand a modern airliner travelling at an incredibly high speed with a full load of fuel. The fact they survived as long as they did is miraculous.
Bin Laden was US-educated and a buddy of the Bush family.
To be fair the Bush family also hates Americans
Operation Northwoods
Wtc7 a building not hit by a plane collapsed. With there being a video of the leaseholder saying they brought it down on purpose because it was badly damaged. Controlled demolition takes weeks of planning.
Plus the BBC reported on wtc7 collapsing too early, the building was still visible in reporters background
It is the only day in history that 3 steel buildings collapsed because of fire
Firefighters reported explosions going off in the basement just before the plane hit the building
Reports of pools of melting iron which allegedly can only be caused by thermite. Thermite would also be the reason why there was so much dust
The Pentagon; no good footage of the plane hitting. All the camera footage of surrounding business have been confiscated
For those who actually believe in these theories or are uninformed about them, consider reading this, which is backed up by sourcing and debunks every common 9/11 theory. rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11
Reports of pools of melting iron which allegedly can only be caused by thermite.
You can only melt iron with thermite? What?!
Thermite would also be the reason why there was so much dust
Yeah, why else would there be dust…around a gigantic building that collapsed.
"Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning" because under normal circumstances, the risk of waiting is not that high. That doesn't mean that subject matter experts aren't capable of making an intelligent plan in a short period when a building is catastrophically damaged in heavily populated area where waiting can very easily result in more damage and more risk of casualties.
As for "melting iron", if you're talking eyewitnesses before the demolition, they have no idea what was melted. If you're talking after, no shit they used demolition-grade explosives. It was a fucking skyscraper in the middle of a massively populated city that wasn't stable. It had to come down.
I think you need to reassess these people you respect a lot. Belief in 9-11 conspiracy theories is not common.
The Venn Diagram overlap between anti-vaxxers, 9-11 ‘truthers’, and flat earthers is nearly a circle
Some would call them “independent thinkers”
What’s more admirable, to conform and be right or to think independently and be wrong?
I drove away from the WTC on the morning of 2001-09-11. I watched from a safe distance as the towers fell. It was a surreal day I shared with like 10 million people.
I still - I’m ashamed to admit - think something was SUPER-fishy about the pentagon strike. I believe it when they say the parts don’t add up, and I believe them when they say the surveillance tapes from a local gas station were taken, and I debated the significance of the lamp-posts being taken down in the days before where they magically didn’t get hit by the incoming plane.
Do I think the planes hit the towers? Yep. Do I think the jet fuel weakened the structure until it popped? Yep. But I can’t resolve the rumour that the basement was empty on that day of all days.
I don’t think there’s gonna be an alternate explanation to cover the weird concerns I have, and I can live with that; but I’m not gonna forget it.
That’s the way it is.
It was done by a group propped up by the CIA.
Immediately after the attack the US gov did nothing but watch Bin Laden go from a known position into unreachable hideout. Then immediately started an illegal attack that took years to get authorized.
Just after this, the US started a huge war, with plenty of indiscriminate civilian killing against one of the largest enemies of the people behind Al-Qaeda, and started exercises for a war against another one of their other top 3 enemies.
The US intelligence organizations got several warnings, didn’t act on any of them.
And I’m pretty sure there are more issues, I didn’t follow it closely. During all that time the media was laying about everything. So, if you have to believe something that is not the official information, I’d guess it’s not hard to go overbroad and decide the US gov took the building down by themselves.
Because critical thinking never intersects with conspiracy theories.
I’m going to give one that might be controversial. It was the first high attention news event after the internet made us more connected. It allowed for oddball ideas to get passed around faster than ever before, shaping a “coherent” narrative faster than old media could handle.
It was unthinkable to millions of people that an attack on the USA could reach so far in as to hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in a single morning. We were the strongest military on earth and had fully operational radar, but failed to keep planes from absolutely demolishing the towers. A lot of people just can’t understand the complicated stuff like that.
The government has done a lot worse.
My guess is that if you repeat BS enough, people will sooner or later start believing it.
To quote Pearl from ‘Keep Beach City Weird’:
Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. They want to blame all the world’s problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone’s control.
Also the usual pattern (seen in many countries/empires, not just USA) - since civil war war-profiting (closely related to the two parties & why the switch happened) the industry was always hungry and in need of a good loosing-ish war (or - only short periods without a war).
It always follows the same pattern --> need for profits/power expenditure rises --> if public is (fuded) on board, great, if not, we need a terrorist-like attack, seemingly unpreventable yet utterly publicly show before it happened.
Like in WWII, USA had stakes on both sides, but also not ‘as big’ of a military budget as they could have. The problem was that the public was super against entering the conflict (80~90% against, this is the time when the civil war was well within lining memory with soldiers and widows on proper military pensionsv still alive, regular parades, etc). So for the first time ever they decide to put all their ship-eggs in one Pearl-basket & advertise that move a lott, how they did that, where they did that (how much time they are gonna wait there, lul), and what defenses are there, how the seamen were sent home etc. All under the disguise of showing their military power to Japan (that’s like exposing your balls to an enemy that is already attacking you). Ofc the attack successfully happened, propaganda machine spun up (still today we get movies about that, ‘the horror’), the public option switched over night and politicians could hike the military budget substantially. (Movies that we don’t get is about what/how USA did to japan - like how they killed more civilians with regular carpet bombing per day compared to the killed in blasts of atomic bombs - the most destructive single air attack in human history … and USA dropped about 4× as much bombs total in Vietnam)
The same with 9-11, public is anti war, you have the two towers and movies detailing how easy it would be to crash a plane into specifically the towers. Or Vietnam proxy war, which lasted for so long that the public turned back against it (hippies) and government had to demonize them (the ridiculous anti weed laws/enforcement, “satanism”, etc).
Funding and assisting a foreign terrorist group for profit is shockingly common. Sometimes you even have to manufacture a new group because the existing don’t suit your needs.
Oh, and the atrocities compared are always like x killed in domestic attack, xxxxxx killed in the foreign bombarding campaign. When public opinion isn’t that big of an issue a smaller trigger point is needed - usually USA sends literal military personnel into sovereign foreign countries & when the invaded county returns fire in the invading force USA counts that as an act of war (huh, I guess technically that is correct).
In 2001, I would have considered it crazy to think that an administration would sacrifice the lives of several thousand US citizens to further their own political interests. In 2024, a few thousand lives seems like a low number.
The mainstream conspiracy theory is that the US knew about it but allowed it to happen for a reason to pass more restrictions like the Patriot Act. One fact we do know is that the CIA was actively still trying to recruit and turn one of the terrorists on one of the planes. So we have proof that the CIA knew about it.
politico.eu/…/attacks-will-be-spectacular-cia-war…
We know that the majority of pilots were Saudi citizens
theintercept.com/…/september-11-saudi-arabia/
There’s more, but the CIA connection shows we knew about it before it happened.
My personal “hmmm” moment was how well the towers fell, almost as if they were controlled demoloshed, but I admit ignorance on the subject.
It certainly wasn’t a plane that hit the Pentagon.
For me its Tower 7 falling. Nothing hit it.
Same reason people believe in the Earth being Flat, Vaccines causing Autism, or any other insane bullshit that doesn’t stand up to reason.
Why sit around and wait for a “new Pearl Harbor” when you can just make your own? You’d have to be a fool to believe that the official story of 9/11 is the complete truth. The MIC had to justify itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union and steamroll that was Desert Storm.
Kitty History time!
People are emotion driven. The idea of a conspiracy is somehow more soothing to them than a chaotic world where no one’s really in control. Also many people are, frankly, fragile cowards, and the idea of admitting they are wrong is too much for their ego to take.
People’s beliefs are social. Once they’re in a social group that believes something, they’re very unlikely to change. It’s not even wholly conscious. But if someone’s in conspiracy circles, abandoning the beliefs means losing all those friends. That feels like Danger to the brain, and most people will reject it.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because Bush and company did everything they could to protect the Saudis and the Bin Laden family, and then made massive fortunes attacking Iraq which had nothing to do with the attack.
At best, the Bush administration were opportunistic war-profiteers who abused the situation for their own gain.
That doesn’t validate any of the absurd theories about demolitions or RC planes.
lettruthout@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Unfortunately many “leaders” seem to abide by the saying “Never let a good disaster go to waste.”
s_s@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Every conspiracy theory comes back to covering for oil money and the political party they run (Republicans).
Watergate happened? “Yeah, but aliens…” worked so well Reagan was elected in another landslide six years later.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Not to mention all the ties between the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royal family and the Bush family… denverpost.com/…/bush-ties-to-bin-laden-haunt-gri… …m.wikipedia.org/…/House_of_Bush,_House_of_Saud