I am becoming disappointed with the white nationalist movement. If I were editor of any of the main nationalist blogsites, I’d be collecting lots of articles debunking the 9/11 conspiracy theories endemic in the movement. What we got instead is feminized timidity in face of the macho vehemence manifested by many truthers within the movement. Below I cite two of my recent comments of my previous entry, and another at Counter-Currents:
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I am not a believer of the “official version.” I am a skeptic of extreme claims that violate Occam’s razor intuitively.
Why I cannot be blamed that I am a believer of the official version? Because exactly ten years ago I listened a radio program in Mexico City. A commentator explained with vivid detail (in Spanish of course) that he was sure that Osama bin Laden orchestrated the attacks.
Take note that the US government had not made any official pronouncement when I listened the program. The Mexican commentator was so convincing that I’ve not changed my views since then. Which means that I didn’t get my POV from the US government, but from a known reporter outside the US with zero connections to the US establishment.
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There’s something I call “intuitive Occamism”, which means that the majority of sane westerners have an in-built Occam’s razor without any need to study philosophy of science. It’s sheer intuition.
Such intuition works marvelously with conspiracy theories. Most reasonable people reject aprioristically the claims which advance a multiplicity of entities unnecessarily: for instance, the conspiracy theories about the UFO Roswell incident, the “faked” moon landings of the 1960s and 70’s, etc. The right hemisphere of their brains intuitively tells them that all of these theories are grossly violating Occam’s razor, yes even 9/11 theories that strain our credulity way beyond its breaking point.
The problem is that many other westerners lack this in-built intuitive Occamism in their cognitive process (something I call humoristically “antediluvian regression” or a regression to paleologic modes of thinking—cf. the first part my online book). That’s why I advice those nationalist truthers who are really honest to forget 9/11 for a while and study Bugliosi’s enormous study debunking the JFK conspiracy theories. The process of thoroughly refuting the other conspiracy theory that duped millions of Americans in the previous decades is good school to understand the Principle of Parsimony for those that, for one reason or another, lack intuitive Occamism.
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There’s a book published last month that I recommend, the revised and expanded edition of Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories (which includes rebuttals on claims about Building 7) by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, with a foreword by James Meigs.
If you [James O’Meara et al.] have already listened to the attorney of these crackpot theories, the logical step now is to listen to the prosecutor. It’s not logical—as every single nationalist truther I’ve met in the net does—to listen the “attorney” and, as a member of the “jury”, leave the room every time the prosecutor talks in order to avoid the most elemental cognitive dissonance.
Postscript
I cannot be as demanding as to request nationalist truthers to read the 2011 book which cover appears at the top of this entry before considering angrily jumping on this thread and scold me for not believing in “The Truth.” However, if any of you wants to comment here I’d recommend at least to read the couple of Amazon reviews of that recently published book or this TV interview with one of the editors. Also, please watch this documentary that features several key individuals of the truther movement as well as the more rational responses by those skeptical of your “Truth”.
I am fed up to try to reason with those nationalists who have forfeited every single presentation of the prosecution side…
7 replies on “A flaw in the white nationalist psyche”
It’s to be expected. When one realizes that things taken for granted to be true for most of life in fact aren’t true, it’s a normal (though not sane) reaction to suddenly start doubting everything else. Sanity would involve getting over that, or not going into it in the first place.
Mangan disbelieving in the HIV/AIDS causal relationship is another example. There’s plenty of evidence in favor of it, the points against it are always circumstantial and never address why the specific positive evidence is incorrect, but you can’t argue on a logical basis with him about it – he simply will not address the matter, he just keeps returning to bringing up the doubts without any regard to their relevance to the overall logical case. ConSwede does the same. Exactly what your prosecutor example is getting at.
This is a recurring theme in the odyssey of my life.
When I challenged my teacher (his photo here) of Eschatology, a sort of branch of Christian Science, that his paranormal healing dogmas simply don’t hold up, my criticism was ignored. (He would forfeit medical check ups and suffered an horrible cancer for more than four years that killed him…)
Years later I tried to communicate with my editor John Beloff, retired professor of Edinburg University, that some skeptics of the paranormal were right and parapsychologists wrong about magic tricks. In his last book he mentioned the work of the parapsychologists, but omitted any mention of the debunking by magicians. I gave up parapsychology a year before Beloff died.
Then I entered the skeptical movement (CSICOP, renamed CSI). I presented a paper to Paul Kurtz, the founder, and to Kendrick Frazier, the editor—both whom I know personally—arguing that bio-psychiatry doesn’t fulfill Karl Popper’s criterion of hard sciences. They ignored it and instead published an article promoting the fraudulent ADHD diagnosis.
Then I entered the field of those who criticize psychiatry and side the child during conflicts with his/her parents (since child psychiatrists make a living out of the fees of the parents, they usually side the perpetrators in cases of parental abuse at home). But after some years of discussing with these “defenders” of children rights I discovered that they freaked out every time I mentioned that Muslims treat their children far worse than we westerners do.
Then I came to the counter-jihad camp. But these guys freaked out (you know the Gates of Vienna affaire) when I dared to raise the most important Jewish question.
Then I came to the nationalist camp. But many of them become upset when skeptics disbelieve their 9/11 “truth” or disagree with their denialism of the fate of the Jews in the great war.
It looks I am condemned to deal only with books in the solitude of my room…
Find a good woman, have some kids, teach them to think.
I am becoming pretty much convinced that the best way to create an appropriate society is to actually build it from the ground up, including the people. Others can accrete to it once there is something coherent and self-sustaining, but there has to be that initial group standing independently and doing well at it.
Meh.
You’re not alone, it’s just that your opponents are louder.
Our corner of the ideological realm contains two groups which only superficially agree with one another: the shrewd skeptics who’ve arrived at this worldview through patient and thorough analysis and the paranoiacs who’ve arrived at this worldview through having a conviction that a powerful and sinister force is out to get them…then settling on the Jews as the best candidates for the job of being out to get them.
What the Jews are doing is close enough to what fictional aggressors do in paranoiac fever dreams that the phenomena are bound to overlap in the imaginations of our comrades. That’s one reason why KMac is such an asset, as he coherently and comprehensively grounds us in the most predictive model of Jewish behavior…the best model for developing an effective defensive response.
If I didn’t think it would distract you from more important work (like translating CofC into Spanish), I would encourage you to translate more of your psychiatric work. While I would find it interesting, it’s probably of little utility, as I believe their problem is generally congenital and the optimal solution is wiping the spittle off my face with a napkin and carrying on with my work.
@ “You’re not alone”
Of course I’m not alone, Matt 🙂 One of the differences of the sanguine character (like mine) is the emotional, often hyperbolic twist (“I’m alone”) in some of our phrases that contrast sharply with the more phlegmatic, and discrete character of Anglo-Saxons. But when I visited Italy the explosive Mediterranean character shocked me. I thought all people were quarreling on the streets of Rome, but that was precisely the common dynamics: and it’s not considered rude.
@ “as I believe their problem is generally congenital…”
What problem? Clinging to crank theories or classic mental disorders (schizophrenia, depression, manic swings)? Both have a largely psychogenic cause, despite the somatogenic dogma we hear every day from biological psychiatrists. A small part of my psychiatric stuff is already translated to English though.
Proving any given theory about 9/11 is hard. But disproving them is usually easy.
For example, the conspiracy theory that proposes that WTC 7 collapsed due to fire is easily disproven by using high school physics.
Then use logical deduction to narrow down the range of the possible.
The truth is what remains after eliminating the impossible.
You speak of Occam’s Razor, and intuitive ideas of what is credible.
Well, we are asked to believe that the only three skyscrapers to ever collapse after catching fire, did so on that day in the same small area. We’re asked to believe that three skyscrapers were destroyed by two planes.
Finally, we’re asked to ignore the question, “who benefits?” (or “who had a motive?”) which is one of the first things that a police detective asks. The other things the detective asks are “who had the opportunity?” and “who had the means?”
Osama bin Laden didn’t have the means to make WTC 7 drop like a stone, period, regardless of motive. The people who had the security contract for the complex did have the means.
Perhaps you missed this:
https://westsdarkesthour.com/2015/09/11/on-911-truth/