Since Majority Rights (MR) and The Occidental Observer (TOO) are two of the three blogsites that I advertise here, I find it a little embarrassing that, on the issue of the 9/11 attacks and the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden, quite a few commenters of those blogsites unabashedly embrace conspiracy theories.
I used to believe that those racially conscious were smarter than counter-jihadists. But on the topic of Al Qaeda, militant Muslims, bin Laden and 9/11 the curious reader will find much saner information in anti-Islamic sites, such as Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.
Although I have elaborated a dense psychological theory that purports to explain the conspiracist mindset, for the moment I will limit myself to reproduce a couple of my recent comments at a Counter-Currents article:
I came to the racialist camp from the counter-jihad movement. But before I entered it I subscribed the Skeptical Inquirer magazine; read lots of books published by Prometheus, and learnt how to think critically about crank claims.
In my previous comment at another C-C thread I implied that Occidental Dissent (OD) was not a very sane site. But now that in recent MR and TOO threads 9/11 truthers seem to outnumber the skeptics, I find it rather comical that at least OD has not succumbed to this nonsense.
But this is not the place to explain why some psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism; and that the development of conspiracy theories (CTs) violate both Occam’s razor and falsifiability. Suffice it to say that the conspiracy paranoia I see among those nationalists who are also 9/11 truthers is analogous to the denial of the genocide perpetrated in 1942-45 (I’d never use the word “holocaust” because I tend to avoid newspeak terms). It is also analogous to other CTs such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy (Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History is must reading here), the “staged” Apollo Moon Landings, or the sightings of Elvis Presley—a CT suggesting that, like some CTs on bin Laden, he is still alive.
Yes: Western elites lie to us 24 hrs/day. There’s no question about that. However, instead of denying the genocide of Jews I prefer to point out how Stalin’s Jews murdered more civilians than Himmler. Similarly, instead of blaming Mossad for 9/11 I would criticize the US government, both Bush’s and Obama’s, for its deranged Judeophilia and Islamophilia.
If meta-politics is paramount at this stage of the struggle, I’d venture to say that we badly need lots of Bugliosis and books like Reclaiming History, but this time about 9/11, in our (still embryonic) movement…
Interpolated note for this blog: Responding to a comment (“The Onion ran a piece that cracked me up, because it described something that I did years ago. The story was about an open-minded guy who realized how many years of his life he has wasted putting up with other people’s bullshit. Life is too short, and the cause is too important, to suffer kooks”), I wrote:
Twenty years ago I subscribed parapsychology journals. Since the contributors to these journals are usually people with PhDs, you cannot imagine how difficult it is to address the scholarly claims and find holes in the parapsychologists’ methodology.
Debunking crank claims demands incredible amounts of research and energy. This is why I believe that CSICOP’s approach is worth reviewing.
Individual CSICOPers usually focus on single fields of fringe claims. For instance, there are one or two researchers who spend their time researching, say, the pseudoscience known as UFOlogy (when I attended CSICOP conferences they were Phil Klass and Robert Sheaffer). In the case of parapsychology, the skeptical researchers were Ray Hyman and James Alcock, both psychology professors.
The same could be said of conspiracy theories. Bugliosi spent twenty years of his life researching and debunking the John F. Kennedy CTs. Obviously, however smart Bugliosi is, he could not handle, in addition to that field, parapsychology—however pseudoscientific it may also be. The same with Klass or Hyman: they could not have handled JFK CTs: they used to focus on either UFOs or psi claims respectively. Sometimes it even takes a single researcher to debunk a single “paranormal” case, e.g., Joe Nickell on the Turin Shroud. In my own case, I spent my time researching the Bélmez Faces. I started as a believer in 1991 and ended skeptic in 1995 (see my research mentioned, e.g., here).
Noam Chomsky complained about the amount of energy that it would take to debunk 9/11 CTs. He simply, and wisely, dismisses the preposterous claims. Of course, nationalists cannot waste their precious time “putting up with other people’s bullshit”, as you say. When I wrote that we need lots of Bugliosis I meant that sooner or later it will be pretty handy to get, under a single cover—like Bugliosi’s book on JFK—, a comprehensive and definite account on how silly 9/11 CTs were in the past.
I look forward for a definite, skeptical book on it (the one by Popular Mechanics was published in 2006).
20 replies on “Oh silly truthers…”
Nice article. I have also been shocked and a bit depressed at the influx of Conspiracy Theorists at TOO. I have also seen them invade Steve Sailer’s site to an extent. I think they just want to take advantage of whatever forum they have available.
But I must say the creepy paranoia along with the violent emotional reaction to anyone that questions them is disturbing. I think it runs the risk of tainting a movement’s reputation.
Anyway, the key here is that most of these people could care less about White interests. And sadly, the normal people spend oceans of time dealing with their “false flag” theories.
Yes, Bill: and I think that both the admins of TOO and MR are blundering in this case.
Just like the true believers who cling religiously to interpretations of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident as being a massive, governmental cover up for an actual extraterrestrial visitation—a cover up involving several republican and democratic presidencies, from Truman to Obama!—9/11 truthers resort to hysterics when confronted. Obviously, what we are dealing with is a childish faith, not reason.
Too bad that white nationalism is plagued with this disease…
If we take Truther, Birther, and Deather conspiracies as seriously as we take the critical research on racial differences and Jewish influence, who’s to blame our enemies and the general public for doing likewise?
Excellent point.
It’s interesting how Marine Le Pen has shown in France that a non-insane person can exercise benevelont dominance over fringe elements, without resorting to the dangerous expedient of Buckley style mass purges, but so far nothing like this has happened in America.
I realize there may be other people in the FN who may be better on the issues than Marine, but ideological strength combined with a beta attitude toward insane people is something worse than useless.
There are only two rational options:
1. Suppress neo-Fascists (or Truthers, etc).
2. Be a neo-Fascist (or Truther, etc) yourself.
Anything else just makes you look both weak and disingenuous.
Well, the problem is that the counter-Jihad movement is often embarassingly pro-Jewish, and the WNs are often embarassingly pro-Muslim. They think accordingly to the axiom “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, which is flawed in relation to logic, common-sense and reality of the world. The former try to rationalize every wrongdoing of the Jews, while the latter do their best to absolve the Muslims of any wrongdoing. And it’s somehow funny that counter-Jihadists are right about the Muslim threat, while WNs are right about the Jews as a toxic element in a Gentile society. Yet the axiom “The enemy of my enemy…” blinds them. It will be one of the most difficult tasks of a pro-White movement to bring these two camps together (of course, excluding both Jews and Muslims – even atheist Muslims – from such a debate, because they will promote their own agenda). I don’t know why it’s so difficult to grasp that Muslims are guilty for 9/11, and at the same time Jewish influence on our societies should be completely annihilated.
Your comment is so good that I have just quoted it at TOO, here.
@ “I don’t know why it’s so difficult to grasp that Muslims are guilty for 9/11, and at the same time Jewish influence on our societies should be completely annihilated.”
Those commenters at TOO and MR haven’t done their homework. Solzhenitsyn said that people tend to believe that life is too simple, like fictional novels: the good guys vs. the bad guys. Black and white. As simple as the level of a Hollywood script that every housewife can understand.
Reality of course is altogether different. After I read The Gulag Archipelago I realized how silly those black-and-white approach to human history is.
I don’t think anti-truthers have much to worry about, since the election of Barack Hussein Obama II has robbed the 9/11 Truth movement of much of its momentum.
I think the worry isn’t that the 9/11 Truth movement will catch on, but rather that associating White Advocacy with the 9/11 Truth movement is counterproductive.
Still, you make a cogent point about the election of Obama taking the wind from the sails of the Truther movement.
@ Nice article. I have also been shocked and a bit depressed at the influx of Conspiracy Theorists at TOO. I have also seen them invade Steve Sailer’s site to an extent. I think they just want to take advantage of whatever forum they have available.
Doubt it.
I was a “Truther” before I was a White Nationalist. In fact, one could say that accepting such drastic, life altering facts is what enabled to eventually abandon my racial liberalism and come around on the J.Q. as well.
Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging (Full Movie)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU
I put the above here just to give you pause, because I knew it would be a serious consideration for you.
I break with you regarding conspiracies from the aspect that I don’t see them as true or false. I see them as irrelevant.
Like danielj above, is it by only one path by which we seek the truth? That truth being the 14 words. To artificially consign our cause to dualistic existence is limiting, rather than building. It is the same as HW’s false dichotomy of the Vanguard vs. Mainstreamer. We need both, and all.
The best hope we have (as the powerless few that we are) is to extract from every branch of the vine. I am opposed to any cutting of branches, and I hope the above explains why.
I wouldn’t shun a single White Man who defines himself and his motivation under the various heterodoxies of contemporary, post-modern, liberal society.
Can we afford to? Are we not then accessories to the same sin that the ruling liberal orthodoxy promulgates against us?
Your Friend, Mike
Although the video was made by the Church of Scientology’s CCHR, a “church” that I have thoroughly debunked in Spanish (here), most of the video is nevertheless accurate: the interviewees aren’t Scientologists after all but mental health professionals.
And yes: biological psychiatry is a scandal. I have written a huge text on this subject (in Spanish, here). This is another subject about which nationalists are totally clueless: the psychiatry that is taught in all universities is a pseudo-science. I demonstrate this apparently extreme claim in a short English article (here).
Changing subjects, I never said that we must shun a conspiracist. I only believe that the vanguardist / mainstreamer analogy is inaccurate. If Hunter Wallace wants to join the Republican Party I won’t object. But I do object, for the reasons expressed by Matt Parrott (recently, here) that truthers are making our movement look as foolish as “Hunter” being hunted by Imm.
Your friend, Cesar.
It depends on the kind of conspiracy talk they are engaging in. We just need to tailor our message on the fly and “become all things to all men” just like Saint Paul. Proselytizing for the cause requires improvising, subtlety and adaptation.
Giving people links to lists of architects and engineers that don’t believe in official story isn’t the same thing as giving them a link to the Eric Hufschmid or French Connection site.
I have declined to answer the last reply addressed at me at TOO. These truthers are so far gone that I feel I am talking to real paranoiacs.
I mean, literally. In his latest post a TOO commenter added a link that I checked up. It was about a PhD celebrity in the truther movement who has taught courses including experimental stress analysis, engineering mechanics, mechanics of materials and strength of materials testing. However her credentials, she claims that WTC was demolished by… “Star Wars Energy Weapons”! In her video presentation she showed clips from the Hiroshima bombing, claiming that something analogous was used to demolish the buildings at the World Trade Center.
Jesus.
Here in Mexico I have regular contact with truly paranoid people, for example, another woman who believes there’s a great conspiracy to poison her and that there are electronic devices to spy on her. She once believed that I was part of that conspiracy! Of course, I always scold her every time she involves me in her grand conspiracy theory.
As I said to Matt Parrott at a The Occidental Quarterly thread yesterday (see link above), I see not much difference between classic, psychiatric cases of paranoia and conspiratorial paranoia. No: I don’t have time to research the 9/11-truther movement as an expert on that subject. But I can say this: We will never get our ethno-state if we cannot overcome this sort of dissociative regression back to “paleologic” modes of thinking (cf. my book The Return of Quetzalcoatl).
Time to scold the “truthers”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntcdkgy3emc&feature=related
I’ve always understood the main counter-claim of the 9-11 Truth movement to be that nanothermite was used in the destruction of the towers and that it was actually found in the rubble. The laser beam shit is a distraction.
I’m not sure why you are having trouble distinguishing between serious and unserious claims coming out of the Truth camp.
I think you’ve adopted the right track ignoring the unserious, but I think you’ve adopted the wrong strategy by ignoring the serious.
Despite all this, it is definitely the wrong move for TOO to waste time on this. Let the 9-11 people do 9-11. It is definitely lowering the quality of the site. In fact, opening the site for comments did it in.
Chechar said I find it a little embarrassing that … quite a few commenters of those blogsites unabashedly embrace conspiracy theories
‘Conspiracy theory’ being understood to mean not the reasonable: an explanation of events entailing a conspiracy between individuals (this being a perfect description of the official narrative of 9/11), but rather the tendentious: the suggestion that the individuals involved in the given conspiracy may have included people it’s socially awkward to accuse, one’s own government, Jews, mainstream media, etc. Oh, how embarrassing …
I subscribed the Skeptical Inquirer magazine; read lots of books published by Prometheus, and learnt how to think critically about crank claims.
You do not demonstrate that ability here, the very opposite in fact — you are the one guilty of uncritically accepting ‘conspiracy theories violating both Occam’s razor and falsifiability.’
I would call this article poorly reasoned but in fact it’s totally unreasoned. You ask us just to take your word for it — all the ideas you choose to label ‘conspiracy theories’ are not worth thinking about.
Statsaholic said: I think the worry isn’t that the 9/11 Truth movement will catch on, but rather that associating White Advocacy with the 9/11 Truth movement is counterproductive.
9/11 truth is already bigger than race and nation truth. I was pleased to see TOO engage with the 9/11 issue because it’s part of the broader cultural dialogue and race and nation sites report increased traffic for posts that deal with movies, current affairs, popular controversies etc. Also, the question is important and intimately linked to ethnopolitics, immigration, globalism vs. nationalism, core issues for sites like MR and TOO.
danielj said: I was a “Truther” before I was a White Nationalist. In fact, one could say that accepting such drastic, life altering facts is what enabled to eventually abandon my racial liberalism and come around on the J.Q. as well.
Yea, I was reading across three broad areas: the money question, race-realism, and revisionism (9/11 / Waco / OKC / holo / 90’s wars etc.). When I found the approved version of events relating to these subject areas so poorly supported and, in fact, easily refuted, it certainly made it much easier to embrace a proscribed worldview, nationalism.
But in partial defence of Chechar’s prejudice, I suppose there are real mental cases out there who were made so by ‘such drastic, life altering facts.’ Certainly on sites devoted to one or other unorthodoxy you do see monomania, paranoia, outright nuttiness.
I’ve always understood the main counter-claim of the 9-11 Truth movement to be that nanothermite was used in the destruction of the towers and that it was actually found in the rubble.
Really the 9/11 truth movement is defined by having scientifically examined the conventional narrative and found it wanting. That’s what 90% of the independent research has been about in the first decade of 9/11 revisionism. Competing alternative theories such as Steven Jones’s WTC-nanothermite claim vs. Judy Wood’s WTC-directed energy claim, or the planes / no planes debate, or ‘let it happen’ / ’made it happen’ are really supplementary. The basic and unifying theory of trutherism is that the official story is proven bullshit. And it certainly is. People like Chechar who dismiss out of hand the idea that all isn’t as we were told simply don’t know what impossible things they are preferring to believe in.
Fellist,
As far as I know none of the best minds in white nationalism—Pierce (who died after 9/11), MacDonald, Johnson, O’Meara, Parrott, Trainspotter, Wandrin to mention a few—have endorsed any of the several 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. It’s so silly that I have elaborated a psychological theory about why some people would believe such a thing, as you can see in a few of my replies to Eurodale whom another commenter called “Bub” in one of the TOO threads where the truthers hijacked the debate. You are wrong when you say that my skeptical abilities (if we take “skepticism” as CSICOPers understand it) are not demonstrated here. This very year an issue of the Skeptical Inquirer with an article on conspiracy theories shows a 9/11 photo on the cover, and my position goes with the line of the majority of that group of skeptics (even if some of them are kikes).
I understand that a few months ago there was a real storm at Stormfront about 9/11 with more than a thousand comments. I’ve not reviewed that thread but you might want to take a look at it.
Before I came to the racialist camp I used to read lots of skeptical literature. If you would leave aside for the moment 9/11 and study, say, Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History on the John F. Kennedy assassination, you will see more clearly our point of view. The same with the other conspiracy theories such as the “staged” Apollo Moon Landings or the 1947 UFO “landing” at New Mexico. (On the other hand, real conspiracies where the Jews are guilty are obvious, as you can see in the two videos of my most recent entry.)
Once you grasp how imaginary conspiracies violate Occam’s razor and the principle of falsifiability you won’t spend more time in still another CT research project. I would go further and say that believing in all those conspiracies is a flaw of the human mind, what I call “antediluvian regression.” To explain it would be complex but I sketched my POV in that TOO thread against “Bub”.
The experience I’ve had with other conspiracy theorists unrelated with 9/11 is that their own pet CT is a matter of serious, visceral faith. Rational arguments, like those in the Wikipedia article I linked above, make no dent and won’t make any dent in their minds, ever: just as when recently I tried to explain the “Baron” that there was indeed a Jewish problem neither he nor Fjordman answered a single of my arguments.
I would recommend to you: (1) trying to address the criticism on the 9/11 CT of the above-linked articles and (2) polling the best minds in the WN movement to check and see how many believe that the Jews orchestrated the attacks.
Anyway: I won’t discuss the matter further. Not here or in other blogs. To do that I’d have to embark seriously on this field of research. And after the years I spent in researching the Turin Shroud, the Bélmez faces, parapsychology and psychiatry (my conclusion is that all those fields are pseudoscientific—see e.g., my article on psychiatry) I am pretty done with these projects.
I am more than fifty years now and my time of researching silly theories is way, way over. However, I believe that all those years, from 1989 to 1995 when I seriously studied pseudoscientific and crank theories, or psychiatry from 1998 to 2004, were well spent.
Good luck with your efforts to find the truth about 9/11.
White Nationalism needs to distance itself from Truthers as much as possible, which, in fact, all the WN or Race Realist sites I am aware of, have done. I never see anyone in the WN movement take these claims seriously, it is only highly energetic anonymous posters.
It is tempting to engage them, to try and show them the errors in their thinking. They seem like possible allies. But I am afraid this is not true – they would be horrible allies. So, I think WN needs to find a way to make these people feel like they do not have a natural home among us.
With regard to TOO, I think it was a mistake for it to run an article about a 9-11 conspiracy theory about a year ago – obviously it encouraged them. And while I think secret activity obviously goes on, I cringe whenever any article at TOO uses the term “false flag”.