It’s a bit shocking to me when I see people online putting 9/11 conspiracies in the same box as “MAGA” conspiracies (for lack of a better term, sorry).
For reference, I was 24 in 2001 living in central NJ. Even without social media or fake news websites or what cable news has become today, I have vivid memories of people having the firm belief that there was something up with the attack on 9/11. Was this just my social circle?
Jet fuel melting steel beams was one of the more fringe and unfounded (and quickly debunked) ideas but the rest of everything on that day was questionable. Tower seven falling, the missing plane debris at the pentagon and central PA, the military / president not responding to known threats, if a person with limited flight time could hit a tower, the fact that Bush attacked a country that had nothing to do with the event, and so much more are still, I thought, reasonable questions - especially when looked at together.
This is not about rehashing each theory. Or maybe it is? Have I missed that everything has been debunked?
I mean, I still believe 9/11 was an inside job or at least high level officials, including Bush, were aware it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. I thought this was still a common opinion of most or many Americans over the age of forty.
Aren’t we lucky to be living in the age of human history in which governments are good and honest? Not like those old, backwards governments in history books who would dress up their soldiers as the enemy’s and order them to do something heinous.
“It’s in the Bible”, is what my boss at one time believed.
I started there a few years after the events and wondered why this guy kept a 9/12 newspaper front page on display. I thought it was in poor taste but so be it. Eventually the topic came up and he started spitting out bible quotes to explain it all clear as day. He also laughed at dinosaurs!
Sadly, enough of the others there were bible toters too and did not disagree. I moved on before the Trump and covid fun began but I’m sure it was nuts.
That office changed me to my core. Seeing people living so deep in their own fantasy world that they would apply those fantasies to real world events was truly depressing.
These were professional engineers. Not kooks. My time there made me lose any respect for religion. Fanatics and conspiracy theorists are all attention seeking story tellers in need of gullible listeners.
From my understanding it’s pretty widely known that most intelligence agencies though something could happen but not the specifics, and chose not to act on that information or communicate with one another.
The exact reasons aren’t known obviously. My gut tells me incompetence/apathy from government agencies. That’s not a very cinematic or compelling answer, though, and I think a lot of people look for more interesting narratives.
Whenever a big tragedy like 9/11 happens, people tend to try and look for the Chekhov’s gun that shows a deeper meaning or dramatic orchestration. That’s just not real life though.
not in my circles. Certainly taken advantage of big time though with bad laws.
I still believe 9/11 was an inside job or at least high level officials, including Bush, were aware it was going to happen
Crazy talk. This was absolutely not a widely held opinion.
No, this was just your social circle. I know literally zero people who ever bought into any of that crap
So your evidence that it was only spoken about in my social circle is that your social circle didn’t talk about it?
No, that’s my evidence that it wasn’t ubiquitous and typical.
Maybe not just your social circle, but social-circle-specific.
Im so glad archive.org exists. People keep trying to change history when you can just go to archive.org and see all the real actions people took those days.
I knew a dude who swore up and down the jets had missile launchers on the front they fired just before impact.
I remember seeing that gif pretty much right after the attacks. I don’t know of it was fake or not but it did show the plane launch something into the building about a second before it hit.
I even remember the site I saw it on.
Seriously, it was pretty fringe to be openly truther back then.
It wasn’t till Obama that we started getting all these batshit insane morons on parade.
Birtherism really pushed it, but basically losing 2008 made the right desperate, they were willing to recruit from anybody, anywhere, right when social media started its upswing.
I think we can say most of our modern conspiracitardacy was fairly quiet till the social media wave.
That is not what I recall. What I do recall was both republicans and democrats having serious concerns that the government knew something we didn’t and that we were attacking a country for the president’s personal vendetta. This is based on my personal interactions with friends, family, and coworkers, as well as national and local news and newspapers. Granted, I’m from central NJ so perhaps we on higher alert and more “purple” than the rest of the country.
batshit insane morons
Was it birtherism or just Sarah Palin?
I think we can say most of our modern conspiracitardacy was fairly quiet till the social media wave.
I fully agree that social media has made things worse in this, and almost every, regard. Though, I’m trying to understand the mindset of Americans in 2001, not today, not post 2008.
The conspiracy around 9/11 was that the government knew more than they were telling us. That perhaps they were well aware of the event, possibly took part in it, and/or used it to manipulate public sentiment for invading Iraq for no other good reason or perhaps (ok, this I admit is crazy) setting up a new world order where we give up our rights for the sake of “national defense”. There would be no Wikileaks if there was no 9/11.
I admit this are a bit fringe-sounding but we were all aware of this back then. Didn’t most people believe there was some plausibility in these theories?
Don’t most people today believe the government knows more about 9/11 than they’ve told us?
we were attacking a country for the president’s personal vendetta
This had nothing to do with 9/11. Invading Iraq was much later. You’re conflating the two.
“Bush did 9/11” is crazy talk. “Bush invaded Iraq because he wanted to get back at Saddam Hussein and make money for Halliburton” is not.
If it’s your understanding that Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2002 “had nothing to do with 9/11”, you are grossly mistaken.
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ243/PLAW-107publ243.pdf
My brother in christ, I’m not talking about the pretext the government used to attack Iraq. I’m talking about the fact that the two things had nothing to do with each other.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The fact that the government used that as a pretext doesn’t magically link the two things.
I see.
Iraq - the country, had nothing to do with 9/11 - the attack.
Not, Iraq - the invasion of, was disassociated with 9/11 - the attack or national moment.I mean, 9/11 and Iraq are indeed magically linked, thanks to Bush. “Magically” is actually a great word to define the link between the two. Look - Cheney just pulled a Saddam out of a Bush!
Yeah it had something to do with it in that it was used as an excuse to invade iraq - not in that iraq had any legitimate ties to 9/11.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/9-11-and-iraq-the-making-of-a-tragedy/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-speech
Well, this one is real
Bush attacked a country that had nothing to do with the event
Well, yeah. That’s not really in the same category or ever really disputed
I can’t say this was super prevalent in my social circle at the time in the suburbs of Boston. The only part of it that some people sorta didn’t exclude was the possibility that Flight 93 was shot down and we weren’t being told.
Yeah, I didn’t necessarily believe that, but I figured if they did, that was understandable in the circumstances.
I certainly heard a lot of conspiracy theories at the time, but I didn’t know anyone who believed them. But I don’t and didn’t really hang out with the type of people that believe stuff like that in general. My friends and family are generally empirical evidence people, logical thinkers rather than emotional.
I’d be curious to know how some of your friends and family responded to the shot taken at Trump’s ear.
I would assume reasonably and reservedly, rather than jumping the gun. It’s certainly how I responded. Not sure what you really mean to ask though.
I’ve always thought the conspiracy theories like “Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams!” Were just memes, personally
I think to the majority they were. But as with most online jokes, sometimes people believe them.
In my circle yeah we all said Bush did 9/11. Was def taken as fact by edgy skaters/stoners who watched a lot of early YouTube.
And with good reason. It didn’t help that Dubya was a sketchy sob!
Loose Change comes to mind.
IYKYK.
Never known a real person to think it was an inside job, just internet whackos…so yea same as the Maga crowd - or any other whackjob conspiracy like flat earth, big foot, vaccines cause autism…
Central NJ - it’s so close… so to me its no surprise ppl are speculating and then that transitions into conspiracy theories that are perceived as fact.
Idk, I am similar to OP I think? From my perspective and memory, almost all of my social circle has some amount of confusion about different parts of the whole attack. Like how the fuck building 7 fell like it did or various aspects of the pentagon plane, or how we ended up in all the countries we did after the attack. But no, they weren’t “truthers” spewing these theories on Facebook or accusing some single government authority as the ones behind it.
There is some evidence to suggest that the Saudis were involved in setting it up. Beyond that, there were endless conspiracy theories, none of which were widely believed. I’ve talked about it with a lot of people over the years and have yet to meet a single conspiracy theorist. The vast majority have never believed in a 9/11 conspiracy.
Not some evidence, clear and convincing evidence.
The problem is that the “Saudi” government is literally composed of competing factions of slave owning inbred cousins.
So saying the Saudi government was involved isn’t as clear cut as it sounds for the proposes of adjudicating any “punishment”.
Now, if KSA wasn’t the lynchpin of America’s Middle Eastern security apparatus, and viewed as integral to the entire American imperial project, then the US Security State’s response would have likely been much different.
Whom in the Saudis wanted to take such a risk? I mean the Wahhabi needs us to keep the cash and weapon flow going if they want to keep in check their rivals.
I’m not disagreeing, just want to understand their motivations.
After all, Bin Laden was not Wahhabi at all, at odds with the Royal Family and had an upbringing at Muslim Brotherhood camps, which at the end of the day are managed by Iran, one of the main powers in the region and the biggest threat to SA.
In that regard, intentionally or not, Bin Laden strategy would weaken SA, which fits with what the Brotherhood wanted and ultimately fits with Iran’s regional objectives. But I can’t see how someone in power would want that unless they had pretensions to the crown, or rather following the Iranian philosophy, a possible republic’s government.
I’ve talked about it with a lot of people over the years and have yet to meet a single conspiracy theorist.
These theories were floated, with legitimacy, on local and national news, at the time. Not in the sense of, “it’s theorized that there were antifa plants at Jan 6” but “look here at this video and you could see how some implosion experts are saying this is the pattern for a scheduled building collapse”. They were interviewing people in manhattan who had concerns about a government coverup.
At the time, the regular news (before it got ridiculous) was pulling together all these theories and presenting them together. It was overwhelming that there was much more to this event. And it seems to have all been forgotten.
There are many people who like to fill in the gaps of things they don’t understand with conspiracy theories. It takes some degree of understanding of physics to understand why the buildings collapsed in the manner that they did, why hollow aluminium airliners accelerating to extreme speeds imposed so much damage to the buildings, and also why there is typically less aircraft wreckage to be found when especially high speed crashes are involved.
In your case, it’s probably just your social circle as none of my friends believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories.
I still do, at least when it comes to the pentagon. There was also evidence of high frequency trading that occurred right before the attack.
There are a few conspiracy theories remember hearing a lot about (aside from steel fuel melting jet beams and tower 7) that I never quite followed up on. If know of evidence debunking these please share…
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CIA confiscating Security cam footage from a gas state across the street from the Pentagon which shows an American cruise missile hitting it instead of an airplane.
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No plane debris found at the Pentagon
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That entire wing of the Pentagon which was hit was “conveniently” closed for renovations
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No plane debris at the crash site in PA, which is said to have went down because the pilots bravely crashed on purpose to thwart the terrorist plans
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The owners of the twin towers updated huge insurance policies the day(s) leading up to 9/11.
The jet fuel burning steal beams is an interesting one. I remember, perhaps weeks after the event, if not days, scientists being interviewed on national news explaining the science about this and being very clear that this was certainly plausible - it wasn’t just the jet fuel but the surrounding materials and chimney like effect of the building which increased the fire’s temperature (don’t quote me on these details).
How it became the most prominent conspiracy theory is wild to me. Not dissimilar from a random xenophobic Facebook post about illegal immigrants eat pets becoming a major talking point during a presidential debate. Or how it was verified that the 2020 election was the most secure in our nation’s history yet more than half of Americans believe voter fraud is a serious threat.
As you’ve pointed out, that’s just a fraction of the “coincidences” surrounding this event. Individually, I could understand they’d be forgotten or swept under the rug but as a whole, it’s just a lot of stuff to swallow if you want to believe the “official” report. At the same time, I acknowledge that for this many “coincidences” to be planned out would probably be impossible to cover up.
In comparison, consider what’s know and still covered up about the JFK assassination. This is relatively small potatoes in scale compared to 9/11.
How it became the most prominent conspiracy theory is wild to me.
Every word in “Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” is a single syllable. Very easy to rattle around in an empty head. I mean, heck, it’s still rattling around in mine…
What’s the point of the government hijacking three airliners but then deciding to use a cruise missile on the Pentagon? The explosive dynamics of a cruise missile and a giant hollow tube which carries people are different and both look nothing alike.
Luck.
Flight 93 left wreckage when it crashed. The FDR and CVR were located around 20 feet/6 meters underground. The reason the parts are small is because the plane was put into a nose dive at a steep angle and crashed with a very high amount of force.
Coincidence. It’s a building which would be one of the first targets for a major terrorist attack.
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