A response to Charlie Booker by another Guardian journalist.
We clearly see they are trying to engage the truth movement openly now
to win them over to a new version of imperialism as they will be
dumping the 'war on terror' pretty soon...
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Who knows what happened on 9/11?
Wide-ranging conspiracies do take place, whether you or I, or Charlie
Brooker, are inclined to believe it or not
All comments (312)
* Dan Hind
*
o Dan Hind
o guardian.co.uk,
o Thursday July 17, 2008
o Article history
Earlier this week Charlie Brooker generated the largest number of
online responses to an article in the history of Comment is free. His
theme was conspiracy theory in general and the 9/11 conspiracy
theories in particular =96 and it collected more than 1,700 comments.
Brooker thinks conspiracy theories console those who find reality too
dull and complicated without the garnish of a hidden agenda: "Embrace
a conspiracy theory and suddenly you're part of a gang sharing
privileged information; your sense of power and dignity rises a
smidgeon and this troublesome world makes more sense, for a time."
Brooker's line belongs to a mini-genre of attempts to explain the
public's willingness to entertain conspiracy theories in psychological
terms. Indeed he is very close to that stern rationalist Melanie
Phillips, who has decided that, in the absence of religion, conspiracy
theories satisfy "our desperate need to make order out of chaos".
The conspiratorial world view does have its consolations. But so does
Brooker's. There's a certain pleasure and drama in declaring that the
world is driven by incompetence and error, and that things are more or
less as they seem. You can preen yourself on how well-adjusted you
are, how you haven't fallen for that stuff about lizards, or
Illuminati. You have learned to live without magic. You're saying "I
don't believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories", but you are signalling
that you are sceptical and rational and that you don't have personal
hygiene issues. There's a psychological pay-off for both the cock-up
and the conspiracy theory of history.
Our willingness to entertain conspiracy theories is doubtless
influenced by our life experiences. A man in his 20s with time on his
hands is more likely to be drawn to the wilderness of mirrors that
surrounds that death of John Kennedy than a successful columnist in
his 30s.
But this is beside the point. Wide-ranging conspiracies do take place,
whether we are inclined to believe that they do or not. It might well
be consoling to believe that the CIA plots the overthrow of unhelpful
foreign regimes. But it is also true. To insist that, say, the CIA had
nothing to do with the fall of Guatemalan leader Jacobo =C1rbenz in
1954, or the overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973 might feel
terrifically sensible and sane =96 we can't always be seeing the hidden
hand of the CIA, there's no call for reductionism. It is also, you
know, wrong.
What happened on 9/11 is, in the end, a matter of fact =96 whatever our
worldview might incline us to consider plausible or possible. The true
author****p of the attacks is as difficult to establish as anything
else about the world of international terrorism and espionage.
For myself, I have no idea what happened, because I have no more idea
of how the business-intelligence-political nexus works than I have
about what chess grandmasters are up to when they are staring at the
board, looking all thoughtful.
The attacks on the US on September 11 2001 were part of a web of
events that interconnect with oil, drugs, money, organised crime,
imperialism, existing institutions and us. And religion, and a lot
more money.
It might feel wise and sensible to declare that any explanation that
differs from the official account requires hundreds of impossibly
tight-lipped bureaucratic killers. But that presupposes that we know
how the world works, and we don't.
Maybe the 9/11 attacks were all about a small team of terrorists who
managed to hold it together in a world otherwise characterised by
crossed wires and blundering incompetence. But I don't know, and nor
does Charlie Brooker.
The most im****tant conspiracy theory about 9/11 rarely gets mentioned
by writers like Brooker and Phillips. In the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq the White House made every effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-
Qaida. Far from being a production of what commentators like to call
the tinfoil hat brigade, this particular paranoid fantasy emerged from
the work of a highly focused and skilled group of people.
They worked in secret to manipulate the American and the global public
and we can trace the impact of the efforts over time. So here is a
(true) conspiracy to promote a (false) conspiracy theory. The White
House's psy-war operatives were doubtless a professional and measured
lot. I am sure that they knew how to behave in socially appropriate
ways and enjoyed their work. They also helped pave the way for an
illegal war in which more than half a million people have died.
There's a 9/11 conspiracy theory hard at work, right there. It doesn't
matter what sort of person you are, whether you are coolly rational or
groping around for meaning in an indifferent world, America's spooks
conspired to stampede the public into war on a false prospectus.
Some of the same people are now working hard to convince us that Iran
poses an unacceptable threat to the peace-loving nations of the world.
If they can they will use conspiracy theories of various kinds to do
it, all the while acting conspiratorially. So it is hardly surprising
that people =96 intelligent, level-headed people =96 are willing to
believe that sophisticated conspiracies exist and that they are
sometimes extremely im****tant drivers of events. Given that they
demonstrably do exist.
And while elements in the American state angle for another war in the
Middle East, Melanie Phillips and Charlie Brooker will doubtless
continue to heap scorn on an irrational public. Which seems a little,
well, paranoid, under the cir***stances.
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