Are Any 9/11 Conspiracy Films Plausible?
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, I've received a steady, unsolicited stream of books and DVDs that purport to reveal What Really Happened on September 11. None of them have come close to convincing me that George W. Bush and his neocon cronies were either evil or, more important, smart enough to have orchestrated the terrorist attacks on the United States. Perhaps that's because I'm one of the media gatekeepers that the "9/11 truth movement" is fond of blaming for its lack of visibility and credibility. (According to Barrie Zwicker's Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11, Mother Jones is part of the "phony 'left' media" co-opted by the "diaboligarchy.")
But I've held on to my growing library of 9/11 skepticism both as an artifact of an unpopular delusion and a guilty pleasure. In spite of my shadow-government puppet masters, I find the "Truthers'" mix of feverish delusions and all-American idealism oddly entertaining.
So when a couple of feature-length 9/11 conspiracy movies recently landed on my desk, I felt a twinge of anticipation. The Reflecting Pool and Able Danger are, as far as I can tell, the first thrillers inspired by Truther theories. Maybe, I thought, these films would have a dash of paranoid style. And just maybe they'd have what's missing in the online hall of mirrors that spawned the 9/11 truth movement—coherence.
These films are another sign of the endurance of the biggest conspiracy theory since—pick your favorite—the CIA/the Mafia/Castro killed JFK. September 11 truthiness will be one of the many bad hangovers of the Bush years. A 2006 Scripps Howard poll found that 36 percent of Americans think the government was somehow behind the attacks. Significant numbers also subscribe to the Truthers' various hypotheses for how it all went down: 16 percent said that the World Trade Center was actually destroyed by hidden bombs; 12 percent said the Pentagon was not hit by an airplane, but a missile. (The survey did not tally the popularity of other nuggets of —Truther lore, such as the idea that 7 WTC was purposely demolished, that Flight 93 was shot down, that Mohammed Atta was a patsy, or that no planes hit the twin towers.) A handful of celebrities—Rosie O'Donnell, Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson—have recited parts of the Truther catechism. There is 9/11 conspiracy folk music (Jesse Goplen's "Controlled Demolition") and hip-hop (Mos Def and Immortal Technique's "Bin Laden," which declares, "Bush knocked down the towers"). But the closest thing to a breakout work of pop culture is Steve Alten's The Shell Game, a Clancyesque thriller in which neocons try to best their 9/11 scheme by detonating a suitcase nuke in Los Angeles and pinning the blame on Iran....
Read entire article at Dave Gilson in Mother Jones (Sept-Oct. issue)
But I've held on to my growing library of 9/11 skepticism both as an artifact of an unpopular delusion and a guilty pleasure. In spite of my shadow-government puppet masters, I find the "Truthers'" mix of feverish delusions and all-American idealism oddly entertaining.
So when a couple of feature-length 9/11 conspiracy movies recently landed on my desk, I felt a twinge of anticipation. The Reflecting Pool and Able Danger are, as far as I can tell, the first thrillers inspired by Truther theories. Maybe, I thought, these films would have a dash of paranoid style. And just maybe they'd have what's missing in the online hall of mirrors that spawned the 9/11 truth movement—coherence.
These films are another sign of the endurance of the biggest conspiracy theory since—pick your favorite—the CIA/the Mafia/Castro killed JFK. September 11 truthiness will be one of the many bad hangovers of the Bush years. A 2006 Scripps Howard poll found that 36 percent of Americans think the government was somehow behind the attacks. Significant numbers also subscribe to the Truthers' various hypotheses for how it all went down: 16 percent said that the World Trade Center was actually destroyed by hidden bombs; 12 percent said the Pentagon was not hit by an airplane, but a missile. (The survey did not tally the popularity of other nuggets of —Truther lore, such as the idea that 7 WTC was purposely demolished, that Flight 93 was shot down, that Mohammed Atta was a patsy, or that no planes hit the twin towers.) A handful of celebrities—Rosie O'Donnell, Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson—have recited parts of the Truther catechism. There is 9/11 conspiracy folk music (Jesse Goplen's "Controlled Demolition") and hip-hop (Mos Def and Immortal Technique's "Bin Laden," which declares, "Bush knocked down the towers"). But the closest thing to a breakout work of pop culture is Steve Alten's The Shell Game, a Clancyesque thriller in which neocons try to best their 9/11 scheme by detonating a suitcase nuke in Los Angeles and pinning the blame on Iran....