Bloggasm

This was published some time ago, but there’s a wonderful profile of 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists in this New York Magazine article:

They keep telling us 9/11 changed everything. But even in this Photoshopped age of unreliable narrators, much remains the same. The assassination of President John Kennedy, the Crime of the Last Century, occurred in plain sight, in front of thousands—yet exactly what happened remains in dispute. The Warren Commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald, fellow traveler of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, shot Kennedy with a cheap Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The commission found that Oswald, who two days later would be murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, acted alone.

Yet, as with so many such events, there is the sanctioned history and the secret history—players hidden from view. In the Kennedy murder, the involvement of shadowy organizations like the Mafia and the CIA came into question. This way of thinking came to challenge the official narrative put forth by the Warren Commission. It is not exactly clear when the grassy knoll supplanted the sixth-floor window in the popular mind-set. But now, four decades after Dallas, it is difficult to find anyone who believes Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.

But if Oswald didn’t kill the president, who did? So 11/22 remains an open case, an open wound.

Now here we are again, contemplating the seemingly unthinkable events of September 11. An official explanation has been offered up: The nation was attacked by the forces of radical Islam led by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda jihadists. Again, this narrative has been accepted by many.

But not all.

The article makes a great point that this it the first major conspiracy theory of the internet age, and how the internet is perfect for conspiracy theories, where one link leads to another and before you know it, you can’t weight the legitimacy of the website you’re on. Rumors are allowed to spread like wildfire, and chain letters go through so many mailing lists that you don’t know the original Sender.

The article tries to truly understand the mindset of a conspiracy theorist — What causes one to search for the “truth,” and how these seemingly normal people become so enraged by their own cause. The article writer is sympathetic to the conspiracy theorist, and points out that, if nothing else, they seem to be more concerned with finding out the facts than those in our own government.

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