What is the origin, importance and future of trutherism?
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33 comments to Discussion Point XXXI |
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If you are referring to 9/11, then I think it is a deliberate construct of the Western Enemy Class.
Trutherism is particularly designed to blunt our response to the perpetrators of the atrocity (through the use of its anti-liberal friends in the MSM.) These perpetrators were all very very cheerfully frank about what they had done.
Also, because everyone wants to be seen to like to believe that George W Bush is the most wicked human being alive today, trutherism is a good way of spreading despondency and hesitation among liberals.
For the benefit of foreign readers:-
When I say “liberals”, I mean libertarians: when truthers say liberals, they mean what I call fascists.
I don’t think there is one motivation behind all truthers. For some its merely a cover story for out & out Jew hatred. I have encountered several vile Paultard truthers of this ilk.
We had 8 years of watching Bush unable to string a coherent sentence together, even with a script in front of his nose.
I also saw the look on his face when he was told of the first plane hitting the towers.
If that look of astonishment and shock was acting, then he should get a lifetime Acadamy Award.
I also watched the second plane smash in live on tv.
There must be a shot somewhere that will reveal the aviation identity number on the aircraft and lay this bullshit to rest.
RAB-
Forget about it. Exculpatory evidence is merely proof that Da Jooz (or whoever we’re blaming it on) were clever enough to cover their tracks. And if the government were clever enough to pull off the attacks then certainly they could change an entry in the FAA tail number registry.
It’s like trying to reason with a young-earth creationist or a Marxist or a Randroid. Whacking yourself in the parietal with a brick and then having a stiff drink will be less painful.
And what happened to the OKC conspiracy theories? Especially the one that McVeigh and Nichols being the bombers, but with an additional conspirator that they met in some neonazi group in Arkansas who was a BATF CI who slipped his leash?
And the black helicopters and the chemtrails people? I miss them!
South Park had an interesting take on the 9-11 conspiracy people. (Link)
Its the same old paranoid conspiracy fantasies, just with a different subject matter.
“We had 8 years of watching Bush unable to string a coherent sentence together, even with a script in front of his nose.”
OK RAB – cite examples. I’ve had it with all these “truther” like examples of haw haw Bushisms.
If it’s ignoramuses you’re looking for look no fuirther than the 57 stater who believes among other things, worse than any Bush mumble, that Austrians speak Austrian, etc. etc.
I agree with mandrill. If they weren’t going on about 9/11 they’d be talking about fluoridation or the Bilderburgers. Some people just have an overwhelming need to believe they know “the real story”, because it makes them feel more intelligent than everyone else.
There’s probably a little bit of denial in there too. If the actual perpetrators aren’t domestic then the world is a much more dangerous place than they’re willing to face.
Importance? None, except maybe as a reminder that not everyone around you is quite right in the head.
I think they’ll fade away as 9/11 recedes in memory. After all, the Bilderburgers are still meeting, and tomorrow’s news will hold the kernel of the next conspiracy.
Personally I find the “we deserved it” crowd far more offensive.
Well Millie, I dont collect Bushisms, but it has to be said that he wasn’t the most articulate communicator on the Planet for a World leader, was he?
It’s like the death of Princess Diana.
The conspiracy theorists will pick away at that one for ever more.
Now just lets say that there really was a conspiracy to kill her, involving the Royal Family and the Secret Service.
Where would you choose to do the deed?
In a tunnel under Paris with half the worlds press riding pillion on motorbikes, snapping away like billio following behind, with all the variables that entails, or would you have done it the week before, when she and Dodi were on daddys yacht in the Med, and she swimming off the side.
An ex SBS frogman seconded to the black ops of the SIS, could easily have popped up from under and grabbed a leg and drowned her. Wrapped a bit of seaweed round it and no one would have been the wiser.
Tragic accident like Stephnie Powers.
To believe what the Truthers believe, you would have to believe that either the Twin Towers were built with explosive charges built into them, for just this purpose, which is just insane, or that someone snuck in and planted explosives to take the Towers down in a controlled fall.
Just not possible or very credible is it?
Origin: Lack of sexual intercourse
Relevance: Endless entertainment for the rest of us
Future: Limited to the birth of The Next Obsession
RAB, did you misunderstand my criticism? As a linguistics professor I deplore journo smartypants types who lard their writing with the wrong use of whom and more and most importantly pointing the finger at the supposed knuckle dragging neanderthal conservatives. They hee-hawed endlessly about Sarah Palin’s accent which to my Professor Higgins type ears sounds exactly like the average Canadian who again sounds a lot better than the Sloblish speakers like Pelosi, Obama et al.
Millie, I used to be a Bush supporter, and still I thought that he was very inarticulate.
Trutherism (along with other conspiracy theories) comes from the same source as mainstream religion and bureaucratic totalism: the desire of human beings to have coherent stories to explain the more distressing and unpredictable aspects of a chaotic world as predictable in the eyes of someone of greater power than themselves, and to place themselves in relation to the framework of authority and control presented in those stories.
The nutcases who destroyed the Twin Towers (getting extremely lucky but also closing the security hole that they exploited), thinking themselves part of the intricate plan of a supernatural being on the verge of taking over the world, the nutcases who say it couldn’t possibly have been malice + chaos and it must have been the intricate plan of a superstate agency on the verge of world government, and the nutcases who say it was not malice empowered by chaos, but the working out of the intricate planning of supervillains heading a multinational terror corporation that is on the verge of taking over the world, are all running versions of the same model, in which it is impossible for ‘little people’ to effect big things by dumb luck, inconceivable that they should attempt to do so without the guidance of a Great Authority.
Oh for goodness sake, I don’t know.
Perhaps it was was a bunch of Islamists who hated the Western Civilisational Canon (er, as you do) and wanted an iconic and suicidal victory against us?
Occam’s Razor.
A drug-crazed 7th-century desert warlord (who had dreamed an empty-quarter-survival-manual for his mates) said they should be awarded The Cup, they couldn’t pluck it off the dais through the flying champagne from the real winners, and so they threw their toys out of the pram: simple as that or not?
Yep.
Ailsa, indeed W is a mumbler and jumbler who is very uncomfortable with public speaking. That was not my point which was that speakers of Sloblish – most of the MSM and Obama fans – should not be calling the kettle black until they clean up their own linguistic acts. They could start by restoring all the medial t’s they throw under the bus and go on to teach the semi-inarticulate Michelle O that the word is centred not cennered.
Very true Millie, but it was RAB’s comment you were responding to, not someone from the MSM:-)
Ailsa, it’s the ignoramuses of the MSM who trash anyone and everyone who does not hold their PC worldview and RAB’s comment was an example of just how successful they’ve been.
I think the truthers (and similar conspiracy theory groups) are contributing toward something of direct import to the libertarian cause, which is a coarsening of the terms of popular explanation.
Anyone who expounds a “coherent story” (e.g. too much government) to explain particular problems (e.g. unemployment) will often be dismissed as a lunatic, not because of this particular story, but because it is a “coherent story” per se.
What is increasingly normal today is for people to keep their gaze level with the commonplace demands and comforts of everyday life, though perhaps having the odd flirt with weird superstition or obsession over personalities. Most people have a strong distaste for anything beyond their accustomed range of thought and action.
Groups like the truthers are making an already very difficult task that much more difficult. And that’s putting it mildly.
Millie:
No, it decidedly was not: RAB is not part of the MSM, and he simply expressed a personal opinion on Bush’s rhetorical skills (or lack of them, to be more precise), one that you seem to share, judging from your earlier comment.
Ailsa please reread my comment without attitude. What I wrote was that RAB’s view was an example of how successful the MSM has been in shaping opinions.
Millie, so you are saying that RAB’s opinion was shaped by the MSM? But you yourself said that Bush is a mumbler and jumbler who is very uncomfortable with public speaking, while your original comment to RAB was:
We all saw him and hear him mumble and jumble, the MSM has got nothing to do with it.
Anyway, I’ll go no further with this as it is not important enough. I didn’t mean to pick on you personally, just couldn’t see the point of your original comment and the seemingly contradictory consequent ones,
It’s a simple point that people want to be able to sit on fences and avoid taking sides. This was hard on 9/11, but even by 9/12 the signs were already there in a number of important steps:
1. You need to inventing possible reasons why such an act might be justified (ignoring what the perpetrators themselves said). Pick a cause, any cause. Even global warming will do. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who says it’s to restore the Caliphate – you know better.
2. Then you need to find a counter-enemy just as bad as the perpetrators. Jump on any daft statement by any right-wing and/or religious person and inflate this into legions of foaming-at-the-mouth Christian millenarials every bit as scary as Al Qaeda. Any conversation with any “liberal” will quickly move towards this point.
3. At the same time question the events. Again, this seemed preposterous on the day, but even the next day Fisk was muttering about the oddly stilted Arabic in the “supposed” bombers’ testaments. You don’t have to prove your theory, you just have to get to the point where people feel that something is being hidden.
It’s not really a deliberate conspiracy (the first post above is amusingly similar to the South Park take) and it’s not really related to organised religion either. I find it quite fascinating myself; before 9/11 I used to devote a lot of energy to idiot moon-hoaxers, but the presence of these theories despite the fact that, well, we all saw it live, is amazing.
And as for Bush’s lack of verbal skills – I was deeply moved by some of his pronouncements at the time, and I’d argue his State of the Union address that year was well judged and delivered with real passion.
Has anybody seen the South Park 9/11 conspiracy episode? Cartman is a truther, denying that 9/11 was caused by terrorists, and ultimately blames it on Kyle (the Jew). Kyle goes off to debunk the accusation by uncoverring who really was responsible. In the end, when he suspects that the US government did 9/11 he actually uncovers an even greater truth: No way did the US government organise 9/11, because the government couldn’t organise its way out of a paper bag. On the other hand, it benefits from having people believe it can, so, rather than organise 9/11, it organised the 9/11 conspiracies! 9/11 was just caused by mad religious nutters.
Bloody hell folks!
I’ve been at the Bristol Kite Festival all afternoon and come back to find my name being batted about all over the thread!
Actually the MSM were telling me that Bush was an inarticulate moron even before he got elected.
I didn’t believe them.
I saw a documentary on the last days of the first election, when he was flying around the country doing whistlestops in god forsaken places, hoping to pick up a few more votes here and there.
His official speeches were rather stiff, but not too bad, but when you saw him talking informally to journalists on planes etc, he was both articulate and witty.
Once elected however, he steadily got worse. Like a surgeon who had suddenly developed a fear of blood.
Oh and I am actually part of the MSM, just not the political wing of it.
I am a rock critic. We specialise in purple prose, as few facts as we can get away with, and humour. Some of you must have noticed by now? 😉
Oh, and thanks Alisa.
I dunno, ask Ron Paul, unless you’re too busy, umm, voting for him.
The scary thing isn’t that Truthers refuse to face the real danger present in the big scary world;
but that they believe their own leaders planned and murdered innocent American civilians and they DON’T run screaming from such a dangerous country.
I mean, really.
They know better than that, Liz. If it’s the government they are blaming, then this is usually combined with the belief in a world-government conspiracy. Conversely(?), if they are blaming the Joooz, then again, there is no escaping, since we really do rule the world. We are all doomed, see?
Alisa: Ah, so you’re Jewish! Nice…
Now, now, Jews may rule HALF the world, but we all know that the CHINKS rule the other half. Why, if we joined forces we’d be invincible!
And I promise we won’t even serve roast pork at the celebratory dinner.
So, how about it? The Evil Jewish Conspiracy and The Evil Chinese Commissariat hand in hand.
The funniest thing is, you can make a better (certainly more logical and coherent) case for Chinese taking over the world (or having taken over the world already).
Who invented paper money? Gunpowder? Whose products are sold everywhere? Who has the largest standing army in the world? Which race can count its descendants in every nation on Earth?
Sad truth is that Truthers are just loonies out to find any excuse to bay at the moon. Hate to say this, but birthers are not much better. Some, but not much.
Actually, Liz, Alisa and Gregory, there is a darker possibility. It could well be that the truthers have no personal objection to engaging in the activities they accuse others of doing, they just would do it for different purpose. That would explain why the don’t run screaming. This explanation does not bode well for putting truthers in the corridors of power, does it?
Ron Paul did not believe in 9/11 truther theories – however a lot of people too close to his campaign did.
Not just some of the odder people at the Ludwig Von Mises Insitute (the best economics outfit in the world by the way – but some of the people it attracts…..), but Ron Paul did not even sense trouble when Mr Black and son of “Stormfront” turned up.
If someone called “Mr Black” (no such English name – that would be an American of German ancestry whose family had tried to make their name sound less German) came up to me and introduced himself as the head of “Stormfront” (which he did) I suspect I would have smelt something odd – but then I am just paranoid I guess.
Ron Paul just saw a fellow ethnic German American – most likely a meteorologist.
By the way I am not bigoted against German Americans – after all I am very strong Glenn Beck fan (and “Beck” is as big a giveaway as “Black” in terms of where a family came from).
What, the nose job is that good?:-P Oh, and if you are not serving roasted pork, I am not coming!
I am becoming more and more inclined towards doing away with the corridors of power all together…