[WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

Wed Dec 13 01:28:32 UTC 2006

On 13/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We might disagree on the reasons behind the reasons, but as far as I
> > can tell nobody with a full deck seriously believes that the WTC and
> > Pentagon attacks were anything other than terrorism.
>
> There was a poll a couple of years ago which found that 40% of the
> population of New York City thought that there was something that had been
> covered up about the official 9/11 story, though support for the individual
> specific conspiracy theories was lower.

Mmmm... but how many of those thought that what had been covered up
was embezzlement in the rebuilding contracts, or another couple of
intelligence screwups that never made it to the public record?

See, with something like... oh, like the Apollo claims, it's binary.
You claim they landed, or you claim they didn't. One side conspiracy
theorists, one side pretty much the official line. If you're on the
not-hoax side, then it's exceptionally rare for you to quibble with
the "official story" - or, if you do, you contextualise it as part of
a historical discussion, "hey, this new document suggests we've had X
wrong all along" and not as Something Smells Fishy Here, "hey, this
new document exposes the official coverup of Y". Details don't
desperately matter; indeed, hoax proponents with greatly differing
reasons behind their beliefs seem to coexist happily.

Whereas, with this, the fundamental event is accepted as having
happened by all sides (mostly, anyway, but I suspect those who deny it
aren't usually in New York), so the theories become ones of
explanation, which are by their nature much more complex and diffuse.
You have a hundred points in the "official story", and each conspiracy
theory contests or reinterprets some of those points whilst accepting
others*.

Contesting any of those points by definition means you're disputing
the official story, saying it concealed the truth (or just never found
it), but not all of them immediately produce a "conspiracy theory"; it
depends on the spin you put on it as much as anything. There are
people who believe the fourth plane was shot down by the CIA to panic
people - and people who believe it was shot down by a fighter, in a
panic, and hushed up afterwards to avoid a lynching.

The two happily coexist in disagreeing with the government line -
"fourth plane shot down!" - but wildly diverge on having a conspiracy
theory - "CIA Terror Campaign!" vs. "Hijacked Plane Accidentally
Downed". The open question is just how much of the 40% consists of
each side... and that depends entirely on your original poll. Ho hum.

> That many people thinking there's something conspiratorial going on
> terrifies me, for one, but it is a real issue...

It really is a pity they didn't ask for details, even try to
categorise it. There's the germ of a really interesting oral history
project there, come to think of it; wonder if anyone's doing that?
"Memories of 9/11" won't be in short supply, but contemporary theories
might...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

* I don't think it's possible to have a conspiracy theory which
explicitly rejects every point of the official story - it'd be "All
quiet in the Western Hemisphere", which won't sell many books...