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Category: Conspiracy theories

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Conspiracy theories Holocaust Psychiatry Psychology

Popular Mechanics on 9/11

Ever since in an article of a white nationalist blogsite I was called “a Jew” and that my “behavior indicates that he’s a Jew” (by “behavior” the author meant my criticism of the truther movement), I realized that truthers suffer from huge psychological issues. For example, a commenter in that article’s thread who has the Truth Movement as a sort of litmus test for what he believes is the true nationalist, stated that the other “‘WN’ bloggers… are probably posting from Tel Aviv.”

While demonstrating that I am not a Jew is quite easy in these times of DNA tests, what I found disturbing is the notion that those who strongly disagree with truthers must be Jews, or even conspiracists themselves.

The following excerpts, taken from James B. Meigs’ foreword and afterword of Debunking 9/11 Myths corroborate that truthers are a little paranoid to say the least. Meigs is, technically, our foe—he writes as if “racism” and “anti-Semitism” were something wrong. Nonetheless, I find his arguments demystifying conspiracy theories compelling (no ellipsis added):




Foreword

Popular Mechanics set out to investigate conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks in late 2004, just as those claims were emerging from the swamps of extremist websites and radical Islamist organizations. We had no idea how much trouble we were about to stir up. Our first magazine article on the topic, which appeared in the March 2005 issue, closely examined the major scientific, military, aeronautical, and engineering-based claims commonly cited as evidence that 9/11 was, as conspiracy theorists like to say, an inside job. Our investigation found no evidence in support of the conspiracy claims.

The article unleashed a flood of criticisms and accusations from those supporting such theories. These attacks ranged from the preposterous (it was said our magazine had published this investigation on orders from a cabal of Masons and Illuminati) to alarming (death threats were referred to our security department). Clearly, we had touched a nerve. The article quickly became the most widely read story in the history of Popular Mechanics’ Web site, with over 7.5 million views. (A detailed account of the reaction to our article, and what that reaction says about the conspiracy movement, can be found in the original afterword to this book on page 121 [see below].)

A team of Popular Mechanics reporters and editors then started work on a far more detailed book-length version of the report. By the time the first edition of this book was published in the summer of 2006, the 9/11 conspiracy furor was reaching a tipping point. The flurry of books on the topic had grown into an avalanche, with certain writers, such as former Claremont School of Theology professor David Ray Griffin, building a thriving cottage industry around the topic. Conspiracy fans had, with Orwellian overtones, taken to calling themselves “the 9/11 Truth Movement,” or simply “truthers.” Extremist talk radio programs such as The Alex Jones Show pushed the issue nonstop. And a video pastiche of conspiracy theories, a quasi-documentary known as Loose Change, was becoming an Internet sensation.

Popular Mechanics’ 9/11 project represented one of the relatively few attempts by mainstream journalists to grapple seriously with the conspiracy theory claims. So it was telling that most conspiracy theorists quickly decided that Popular Mechanics too was part of the conspiracy. In their minds, all our research could therefore be rejected a priori. We had run head on into a worldview that some experts call “conspiracism.” It is a mind-set that insists on reaching a predetermined conclusion regardless of what information is presented. Any facts that don’t fit the conspiracy paradigm need to be explained away. Since 2004, leading 9/11 theorist David Ray Griffin has written seven books and edited two others on the subject of 9/11. He devoted a chapter in his book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, to explain why, in his view, the 9/11 reporting by Popular Mechanics and other mainstream journalists is invalid.

Griffin’s book devotes many pages to the idea that Popular Mechanics and our parent company, the Hearst Corporation, are somehow implicated in the vast conspiracy he sees behind 9/11. He digs up century-old controversies and finds tenuous links between the magazine’s staff and various government officials. But he never explains how a magazine—much less a major corporation—could possibly convince its employees to help cover up the most notorious mass murder in our nation’s history. Popular Mechanics has close to 30 editorial staffers and dozens of freelance contributors. Does Griffin imagine that whenever we hire new editors I bring them into a secret bunker and initiate them into an ultraclandestine society for world domination? Why wouldn’t such prospective employees run screaming from our building? In the years since we began our work on 9/11 conspiracy theories, a number of our staffers have moved on to other jobs. What would stop them from revealing a conspiracy that, if true, would be one of the biggest journalistic scoops in history? Did we swear them all to lifetime secrecy? As with so many conspiracy claims, the whole elaborate fantasy becomes practically laughable on close examination.

The original Popular Mechanics article addressed 16 of the most common 9/11 conspiracy claims. The first edition of this book expanded that list by four, and added much more detail. As a result, many of the more adept theorists simply moved on to new theories, or shifted their focus to issues that our team had not covered as deeply. For example, at the time we published the first edition, there was still no definitive account of why World Trade Center 7—which was not hit by planes, only damaged by debris—also collapsed. Not surprisingly, as the truther community moved away from talk about missiles and pods, it began focusing obsessively on elaborate theories concerning WTC 7. (With the benefit of much more detailed engineering analysis, this edition addresses—and debunks—those WTC 7 claims in depth.)

It is hard to argue without facts. And yet that is the position in which 9/11 conspiracists increasingly find themselves. One by one, the key factual underpinnings of their theories have been demolished. But still they argue on, their passionate conviction undiminished.

In the end, the truther community’s tendency toward unintentional self-parody has perhaps done as much to undermine its credibility as has the work of Popular Mechanics. Just when the conspiracy movement seemed to be making real headway toward deeply influencing American culture, a funny thing happened: it began to turn into a punch line. South Park offered a brutal parody of the conspiracist worldview in an episode called “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce.” Comedian Jon Stewart started tweaking truthers on The Daily Show, at one point holding up a sign reading “9/11 WAS AN OUTSIDE JOB.” And, in a common-sense answer to the vast legion of conspiracy-oriented websites, an assortment of sharp, and often satirical, blogs has emerged to challenge the truthers on their own turf. In particular, the blog Screw Loose Change offers devastating analysis of the truther community, and links to point-by-point rebuttals to the claims advanced in Loose Change.

Of course, conspiracy theories involving 9/11 will never fully go away. And a book like this, no matter how widely reported or carefully updated, will never convince the most dedicated conspiracists. But, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is important to have a clear, objective, and thorough response to the consistently false and deeply malicious claims of the conspiracy movement.

New York City
2011

Afterword

On February 7, 2005, I [James Meigs] became a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for global domination. It was on that day the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics, with its cover story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, hit newsstands. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs—which calls itself the “9/11 Truth Movement”—was aflame with wild fantasies about me and my staff, the magazine I edit, and the article we had published.

We had begun our plunge down the rabbit hole. Within hours, a post on www.portland.indymedia.org, which claims to be dedicated to “radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth,” called me “James Meigs the Coward and Traitor.” Not long afterward, another prominent conspiracy theorist produced an analysis that concluded that Popular Mechanics is a CIA front organization. Invective and threats soon clogged the comments section of our Web site and poured in by e-mail:

YOU HAVE DECLARD YOURSELF ENEMY OF AMERICANS AND FRIEND OF THE MOSSAD!

In a few short weeks, Popular Mechanics had gone from being a 100-year-old journal about science, engineering, car maintenance, and home improvement to being a pivotal player in a global conspiracy on a par with Nazi Germany. Not all the responses were negative, of course. One visitor to our Web site, after plowing through dozens of angry comments, left a supportive post that included this astute observation:

Some people are open to any possibility, and honestly examine all evidence in a rational manner to come to a conclusion, followed by a moral evaluation. Others start with a desire for a specific moral evaluation, and then work backwards assembling any fact that supports them, and dismissing any fact that does not.

As the hate mail poured in and articles claiming to have debunked the magazine’s analysis proliferated online, we soon learned to identify the key techniques that give conspiracy theorists their illusion of coherence.

Marginalization of Opposing Views

The 9/11 Truth Movement invariably describes the mainstream account of 9/11 as the “government version” or “the official version.” In fact, the generally accepted account of 9/11 is made up of a multitude of sources: thousands of newspaper, TV, and radio reports produced by journalists from all over the world; investigations conducted by independent organizations and institutions, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, Purdue University, Northwestern University, Columbia University, the National Fire Protection Association, and Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.; eyewitness testimony from literally thousands of people; recordings and transcripts of phone calls, air traffic control transmissions, and other communications; thousands of photographs; thousands of feet of video footage; and, let’s not forget the words of Osama bin Laden, who discussed the operation in detail on more than one occasion, including in an audio recording released in May 2006 that said: “I am responsible for assigning the roles of the 19 brothers to conduct these conquests…”

The mainstream view of 9/11 is, in other words, a vast consensus. By presenting it instead as the product of a small coterie of insiders, conspiracists are able to ignore facts they find inconvenient and demonize people with whom they disagree.

Argument by Anomaly

In an article about the Popular Mechanics 9/11 report, Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer makes an important observation about the conspiracist method: “The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking (as well as creationism, Holocaust denial [Post-script note of 2018: Presently I don’t believe this belongs to conspiratorial thinking] and the various crank theories of physics). All the ‘evidence’ for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy.”

A successful scientific theory organizes masses of information into a coherent, well-tested narrative. When a theory has managed to explain the real world accurately enough for long enough, it becomes accepted as fact. Conspiracy theorists, Shermer points out, generally ignore the mass of evidence that supports the mainstream view and focus strictly on tiny anomalies. But, in a complex and messy world, the fact that there might be a few details we don’t yet understand should not be surprising.

A good example is the conspiracist fascination with the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. Since the 47-story tower was not hit by an airplane, only by the debris of the North Tower, investigators weren’t sure at first just how or why it collapsed hours after the attacks. A scientist (or for that matter, a journalist or historian) might see that gap in our knowledge as an opportunity for further research (see “WTC 7: Fire and Debris Damage,” page 53). In the conspiracy world, however, even a hint of uncertainty is a chance to set a trap. If researchers can’t “prove” exactly how the building fell, they say, then there is only one other possible conclusion: Someone blew it up.

♣

My comment:

Meigs’ afterword goes on for other ten pages but the excerpts quoted above give the picture: a psychological analysis of the truther mentality goes to the core to understand the movement. For instance, this “Someone blew WTC 7 up” is exactly what I call “paleologic” modes of mentation, and illustrated it with a classic example by a psychiatrist: “If the Greeks are afflicted by epidemics, it is because Phoebus wants to punish Agamemnon.” (“Paleologism” is the subject of some chapters of my book.)

Re the Scientific American statement about “holocaust denial” cited above even Mark Weber, a revisionist historian and current director of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) who has authored over a hundred articles relating to holocaust claims, has acknowledged that “it cannot be disputed” that “millions [of Jews] were forced from their homes; millions lost their lives” (listen the April 25, 2012 “Mark Weber Report: Holocaust Deceit, Remembrance and Reality”).

Contrary to what WN truthers claim, I believe that rejecting 9/11 conspiracy theories, and seriously considering the new approach to holocaust studies represented by Irmin Vinson, Mark Weber and David Irving are the mark of the mature nationalist.

Categories
Child abuse Conspiracy theories Free speech / association Hojas Susurrantes (book) Lloyd deMause

Satanic Ritual Abuse

I don’t get Greg Johnson. Yesterday I tried to post the following comment in the most recent piece published at Counter-Currents (CC). The subject? Jewish ritual murders of cute, gentile kids!

I’ve not read much about blood libel, speciously called here “Jewish ritual murders,” but I was pretty involved in editing Wikipedia’s Satanic Ritual Abuse which I studied thoroughly some years ago: a clear case of moral panic where many innocent American adults were indicted in the 1980s as in the Salem trials.

The “About” page in my blog has me as a researcher and debunker of the famous “wall face,” paranormal appearances in a house in Spain. One thing is clear to me now that I’m starting to see that many white nationalists religiously believe in retarded theories that blame the Jews for everything (e.g., 9/11). Unlike me they have not subscribed the Skeptical Inquirer, attended the conferences of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), or read their Prometheus Books that debunk not only paranormal claims but blood libels as well.

And no: the CSI founders—I’ve met Paul Kurtz twice in the conferences and corresponded to Martin Gardner before he died—are not Jews.

Johnson deleted my comment. Why? Is he mad with me for my criticizing those homosexuals that post featured articles at his webzine (see my recent entries here and here)? But in my above comment I was not criticizing these guys. Nor was it another criticism of Johnson’s musical and movie tastes, about which I posted here quite a few entries by the end of the year.

I wrote the above comment because, due to my experience with CSI, on these subjects—claims such as the ritual murder of children and adults—I am far more knowledgeable than the common nationalist. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Just to give you a bit of the flavor of the mendacity of these claims, this is what I wrote in my book Hojas Susurrantes, which precisely deals with child abuse, the subject I’ve researched most in my life:

Satanic Ritual Abuse

The confusion of my feelings about [Lloyd] deMause—lucubration such as [the above] are psychobabble but deMause’s authentic discoveries are the great lighthouse for the humanities—moved me to annotate each cognitive error I encountered in his legacy.

In 1994 deMause devoted more than a whole issue of his journal to one of the scandals originated in his country that destroyed the reputation of many innocent adults: claims of multiple victims, multiple perpetrators during occult rites in daycare centers for children, known as “Satanic Ritual Abuse” or SRA. I was so intrigued by the subject that, when I read deMause’s article “Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children” I devoted a few months of my life to research the subject by reading, printing and discussing in the internet: material that would fill up the thickest ring-binder that I possess. I also purchased a copy of a book on SRA published by Princeton University. My objective was to ascertain whether the man whom I had been taking as a sort of mentor had gone astray. My suspicions turned to be justified, and even worse: by inviting the foremost believers of SRA to publish in his journal, deMause directly contributed to the creation of an urban myth.

The collective hysteria known as SRA originated with the publication of a 1980 sensationalist book, Michelle Remembers. Michelle claimed that Satan himself appeared to her and wounded her body, but that an archangel healed it. In the mentioned article deMause wrote credulous passages about other fantastic claims by Michelle, and added that the people who ran certain daycare centers in the 1980s put the children in boxes and cages “as symbolic wombs.” DeMause then speculated that “they hang them upside down, the position of fetuses” and that “they drink victim’s blood as fetuses ‘drink’ placental blood,” in addition to force children to “drink urine” and “eat feces as some do during birth.” DeMause also referred to secret tunnels that, he wrote, existed beneath the daycare centers: “They often hold their rituals in actual tunnels.” In fact, those tunnels never existed. In Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History, published in 2006, professor David Frankfurter wrote about deMause’s article: “In this way a contemporary writer can assemble a theory of ritual power to explain rituals that have no forensic evidence.”

This is the sort of thing that, in Wikipedia’s talk page about psychohistory, culminates with rants like the one that I rescued before another editor deleted it: “Don’t ever listen to this lunatic!” (deMause). It is true that Colin Ross is another gullible believer of SRA, as seen in a book in whose afterword Elizabeth Loftus disagrees with him. But since the mid-1990s the phenomenon was discredited to such degree that sociologists, criminologists and police officials recognized what it was: a witch-hunt that led to prison and ruined the lives of many adults. The movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial, sponsored by Oliver Stone and based on the most notorious of these hunts, sums up what I mean. Using invasive techniques for adults in the interrogation of little kids, therapists of the McMartin case and other kindergartens obtained confessions full of fantasies: that the children had been abducted and taken through a network of tunnels to a hidden cave under the school; that they flew in the air and saw giraffes, lions and the killing of a rabbit to be returned to their unsuspecting parents in the daycare center. Kyle Zirpolo was one of the McMartin children. A twenty-nine in 2005, several years after the trial, Zirpolo confessed to reporters that as a child he had been pressured to lie:

Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn’t like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. It was really obvious what they wanted… I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do.

In its heyday in the 1980s and early 90s, and in some ways similar to the Salem witch trials of 1692, SRA allegations reached grotesque levels. Proponents argued that an intergenerational group of families raised and kidnapped babies and children in an international conspiracy that had infiltrated the police and the professions of lawyers and doctors. Conspiracy theorists claimed that the FBI and the CIA were involved to discredit the veracity of the phenomenon. The allegations ranged from brainwashing and necrophilia, kidnapping, sexual abuse and child pornography, to black masses and ritual killings of animals and thousands of people every year. In the McMartin case they talked about children washed away when the perpetrator pulled the toilet chain taking them to hidden rooms where they would be molested; orgies in carwash business, and even flying witches. Needless to say, no forensic evidence was found to support such claims.

After the legal catastrophe that McMartin and several other cases represented, small children have not been questioned with the aggressive techniques that led them to fantasize so wildly. Nowadays there is no witch-hunting going on in the U.S., UK or Australia caused by coercive techniques of fanatics that induce either false memories or outright lies (like Zirpolo’s) to please therapist and parent. However, despite the consensus in 21st century’s sociology and criminology—that SRA was a case of moral panic about which there is no forensic evidence—, deMause did not change his view. The work that describes his thinking more broadly, The Emotional Life of Nations published in 2002 and recently translated into German, contains a brief passage where he still regards SRA as something real.

Is my criticism of homosexuals who, in my humble opinion, ought not be featured at CC enough reason to suppress legit commentariat on unrelated subjects, such as SRA or the so-called “blood libel”?

Suppose that a causal visitor hits CC today and, erroneously, gets the impression that all white nationalists believe in these literally medieval rumors about the Jews. Wouldn’t this automatically disqualify CC to the eyes of our skeptical visitor? Wouldn’t this turn out into a psychological stumbling block for our visitor to become familiar with the more sober, legitimate criticism of the Jews, such as the work of Kevin MacDonald?

With my single comment I tried to balance a bit the gullibility of the editor, author and commenters. No kidding: I was trying to do some good public relations for CC after reading that ill-researched piece.

And this is what I got.

Categories
Conspiracy theories

Greg Johnson on 9/11

Life is short, and our struggle is long. I am a serious man, and I do not have time for things that do not matter, like arguing about thermite and disappearing airplanes with trolls, hoaxers, and well-meaning dupes. I call “Bullshit,” and I am leaving it at that. The people who have the maturity and self-confidence to do the same, and walk away from this circus, are the kind of people we need to make headway. —G.J.

The latest article by Greg at Counter-Currents explains from another point of view what I’ve tried to say in the last two entries with regard to my concerns about extreme credulity in the nationalist movement:

cc

I wish I had an arresting “what I was doing when the twin towers were hit” story. But the truth is that I had slept through the whole thing. The night before stayed up into the wee hours reading Savitri Devi’s The Lightning and the Sun (I had just found a copy of the unabridged version). I first heard around 3 pm when an Aryan barbarian from Alabama (nobody you would have heard of) called me to ask me what I thought.

“About what?”

“Terrorists hijacked two jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers, then the towers collapsed.”

“Yeah, sure . . .” I said, as I flipped on the TV (I still had TV then) and saw the second tower collapsing in slow motion. My first thought, I am ashamed to say, was of the huge Miró tapestry I had once seen in one of the lobbies. Then, with horror, I realized I had been there. This could have happened to me! I thought of the terror of the people in the airplanes and the buildings. For the rest of the afternoon, I was glued to the TV.

That evening, I went to the regular Tuesday evening “hate dinner” in Atlanta. Instead of the usual eight or ten people, there were more than twenty. Quite frankly, there was a good deal of gallows humor and Schadenfreude around the table. One person quipped that at least this would get Chandra Levy off the news.

We had all pretty much concluded that the hijackers were Muslims who had targeted us because of the US government’s slavish subservience to Israel and our domestic Jewish community. There was also a consensus that 9/11 was a superb opportunity to awaken our people on the Jewish domination of American foreign policy and the Jewish question in general.

But the public was pretty much already there. Later in the week, Tom Brokaw reported that NBC and Reuters announced that 2/3 of Americans polled believed that we had been attacked because of Americas close ties with Israel. I wondered how (not if, just how) the establishment would spin this.

The answer was soon to come when the New York Times found a “face” to put on a position held by 2/3 of the American public. They went to West Virginia to the “compound” of “neo-Nazi” Dr. William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, who was of the opinion that 9/11 took place because of Jewish domination of American foreign policy. The Times, in short, sought to marginalize a mainstream position by linking it to a marginal figure.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not blaming Dr. Pierce for anything, certainly not for representing the opinions of 2/3 of the American people. I blame the whole political mainstream for failing to represent us. Apparently every politician and political commentator knows that pandering to the Jewish minority is always more important than pandering to the American majority.

Still, 9/11 was the occasion for my first attempts at open white advocacy under my own name. And I know that I was not alone. I also know many people whose first racial awakening came from 9/11.

We all had high hopes. I was very encouraged when I learned of the arrest of Israeli spies who were filming the attack on the World Trade Center and celebrating. Then I heard that a large Israeli spy network had been arrested, including people who had been shadowing the 9/11 hijackers. There was also the story of a text message sent by Odigo, a text-messaging company in Israel, warning of the attack. Carl Cameron began piecing the Israel connection together for FOX.

But then Jewish power intervened. The spies were released and sent home. Cameron’s investigation was quashed and his stories pulled. And the United States went to war. First in Afghanistan, which was at least connected with Al Quaeda, then with Iraq, which was targeted because of Israeli interests, not American interests. It was child’s play, really, for the Jews. Organized Jewry had already brought the United States into World War I and World War II.

I think that the most reasonable account of 9/11 is the following.

Nineteen Muslims armed with box cutters hijacked four airplanes, crashing two of then into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania for reasons unknown.

The government of Israel had been shadowing the hijackers and clearly had advance knowledge of the attacks. Reliable Israeli agents in the US government may also have had advance knowledge. But no attempt was made to warn the American government to stop the attacks. 9/11 was allowed to happen because the Jews needed a new Lusitania, a new Pearl Harbor, as a pretext to bring America into a new war or wars in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf. Iraq, Syria, and Iran were at the top of Israel’s hit list. So far, they have had to settle for Iraq. Afghanistan, from a Jewish perspective, was a mere distraction, although it certainly eases the road to war with Iran.

The conclusion and practical implications could not be clearer: Israel is not our friend. American Jews, who if forced to choose between serving US interests or Israeli interests, would overwhelmingly choose Israel, are not our friends either. America’s Jewish community is the reason why US foreign policy is conducted for Israeli, not American interests. If America is to prevent another 9/11, we must break the power of American Jewry over our political system. But that will not be possible without addressing Jewish power in the media, the economy, academia, and all realms of culture. Jews need to be excluded from all channels of powers and influence in our society. And the only practical way to accomplish that is to expel them as a community from the US. And naturally we should send back our Muslims while we are at it.

On 9/12, some two-thirds of the American public already agreed with part of that message, and they certainly would have been willing to hear more. But White Nationalists did not have the money, the talent, the infrastructure, or the organizational maturity necessary to make our message competitive with the Jewish angle. Our people had the ears to hear, but we could not get our message out.

Ten years later, we are in essentially the same position. Yes, there are new webzines, new publishers, and new podcasts. But there have also been considerable losses. William Pierce died and the National Alliance is a shadow of its former self. National Vanguard has collapsed; its excellent webzine is gone; and Kevin Strom has been essentially silenced. American Renaissance has been pretty much driven out of the conference business. And so forth.

It has been worse than two steps forward, one step back, because that presupposes marching in one direction. The course of our movement, however, more resembles a jitterbug contest or a mosh pit. With a trajectory like that, it is impossible to calculate progress. But overall I am optimistic, because in my experience, the average age of people in our movement is far lower and the average quality is far higher than ten years ago.

As for the 9/11 “conspiracy” theories, I have three thoughts.

First, from a purely pragmatic point of view, the 9/11 account I have outlined above is far superior to any of the more complex theories, because it supports every practical consequence that we want, and it has the added advantages of being based on easily verified facts and being easy to explain.

Second, from a rational point of view, most of the conspiracy theories violate basic principles like Occam’s Razor, namely that the simplest explanation of a given fact is to be preferred. Generally people lead with their strongest arguments, but nothing I have seen makes me want to inquire more deeply. It is laughable, for instance, that people who claim that no planes hit the Pentagon or crashed in Pennsylvania don’t feel a need to explain what really did happen to the airplanes. And as for the claims that the twin towers were brought down by explosives, well doesn’t that seem like overkill? Sure, it looks spectacular on TV. But crashing jetliners into the buildings would have been sufficient to achieve any of the posited motives, from starting a war to totaling the buildings for insurance purposes.

Third, because 9/11 right on its surface is so damaging to Jewish power, and because the official American story (they attacked us because they hate our freedoms) is so absurd, and 2/3 of the public knew it, I believe that the enemy felt the need to create a disinformation campaign that would taint even the most cautious and rational critiques of the “official story” with the stench of lunacy. Because the net effect of all the excited talk about disappearing airplanes, controlled demolitions, and false flags manufactured at the highest levels of the US government is that even reasonable alternatives to the official story are dismissed as just more internet conspiracy crankery. Well, maybe that’s what we are supposed to think. Maybe this is the real “false flag.”

Categories
Conspiracy theories

A flaw in the white nationalist psyche

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:

*   *   *

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.

*   *   *

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.

*   *   *

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…

Categories
Conspiracy theories Holocaust Israel / Palestine

9/11: White nationalist paranoia





“We believe whatever we want to believe”

—Demosthenes




Further to my May 7, 2011 piece “Oh silly truthers…”

In the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks I am becoming increasingly disappointed with the irrational will to believe whatever we want to believe in the nationalist movement.

I’d be delighted that Mossad, the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, orchestrated the attacks. That could certainly boost legitimacy to our agenda among non-nationalist whites. But my cognitive processes are not dissociated enough from reality to make such a gigantic leap of faith and dismiss all evidence to the contrary.

My field of expertise is not racialism or politics but deep psychology, especially the trauma model of mental disorders caused by poor parenting. How did I become dragged into that field? It’s a long story. But for the moment let me confess that I am a triple apostate: since my teenage years I gave up Christianity, then a cult, Eschatology, and finally a pseudoscience, parapsychology (for a brief summary see here). The whole spiritual odyssey to give up faith in these beliefs destroyed my life, as many other lives are being destroyed among those who fall in destructive cults as a defense mechanism resulting from a failed intent to escape from the abuse at home.

That’s why I am indebted to Paul Kurtz, Ray Hyman, James Alcock and many other skeptics of the paranormal who taught me how to think critically about extreme claims, whether religious, paranormal or conspiratorial. The last time I saw them, in a 1994 Seattle conference, I had the pleasure to experience a handshake from Carl Sagan, author of The Demon-Haunted World, a book that encourages laypeople to learn critical thinking. During that event I also attended a conference debunking the conspiracy theories about the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Hadn’t all of these skeptics vaccinated my mind against magical thinking I’d still be immersed in it. Unfortunately, only through a dark night of the soul it’s possible to realize that we believe whatever we want to believe, and that those beliefs are not always rational or based on fact. Which means that the truthers in the nationalist movement won’t ever make an honest effort to listen the other side: they are forfeiting their dark night.

I gave up paranormality after more than fifteen years of belief in the paranormal precisely because at one point of my live, from 1990 to 1995, I made a serious effort to listen to those skeptical scholars who held diametrically opposed views of my cherished beliefs. Many white nationalists are not that honest; not even close to a mile. They won’t ever use such amount of time to listen to the other side.

Not all white nationalists are truthers of course (see e.g., this splendid summary by Ted Sallis published yesterday on how America became a madhouse after 9/11). But a substantial segment of the nationalist population believes in nuts like those ridiculed in this video.

Let me recontextualize what I’m trying to say. I admire Hitler and the Nazis. For Third Reich sympathizers like me the big question is, Were Jews slaughtered in World War 2? If Irmin Vinson’s approach to the so-called holocaust represents a quantum leap forward from mere denialism, a denialism almost ubiquitous in white nationalism, I believe it’s high time to apply the same flawless logic to the tragic events of a decade ago.

But most nationalists are no match to Vinson’s honesty…



Postscript of September 14

A featured author is now saying at Majority Rights that because I wrote this entry I must be… a Jew! After days of controversy he clings to his belief. He supports the claim that I am Jewish on the basis… of my criticism of the truth movement!

Well, this is magical thinking to be sure, or the deductive fallacy to use more academic language.

This is how paranoids and paranoiacs reason: If something major happens in the political world (e.g., the assassination of a president; an Islamic terrorist attack) there must be a conspiracy involving someone in the American government. If a critic is skeptical of any of these conspiracy theories, he himself must be part of the conspiracy (e.g., a Jewish blogger pretending to be a non-Jew).

Naturally, since paranoid modes of thought are endemic at Majority Rights I won’t ever comment there again. But I decided to write this postscript to show how this affaire corroborates my view that there is indeed a flaw in the white nationalist psyche.

Fortunately, not every nationalist suffers from paranoid delusions, as proven in the Johnson article that I republished here, and in the comments by Matt in this entry’s thread. It’s a pity though that those who subscribe to Aristotelian modes of thought are a minority in the movement.

Categories
Conspiracy theories Turin Shroud

Oh silly truthers…

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:


Cesar Tort at 33I 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).