Saturday was the 9th anniversary of the World Trade Center attack. Most people — including me — accept the account of 9/11 involving 19 Muslim radicals who hijacked four planes and crashed them into buildings. But a large portion of people believe either the 9/11 attacks were an inside job by the government, or that the government conspired with or purposefully allowed Al-Qaeda to attack us.
Conspiracy theories are prevalent because they make us feel better about the horrific event. I know this may be counter-intuitive — believing that our government killed its own citizens is a frightening thought — but I think most of the people who believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theory feel comforted by the idea that it took an entire coordinated government to pull off such an attack. It is much more unsettling to think that only a few deranged people could wreak so much havoc upon the world.
One popular purveyor of wacko theories is right-wing radio host Alex Jones. ABC’s Nightline recently interviewed Jones — which was the first time I had heard of him — and they claimed that he has an audience of over one million listeners a day and even more who watch his YouTube videos. Jones believes that the government is behind 9/11 and that Obama is also a part of a tyrannical world government cabal. An even more out-there conspiracy theorist is England’s David Icke, who believes that the world is secretly run by shape-shifting reptilian creatures from outer space. You would think these people would have been assassinated by now if their conspiracies were even half accurate.
This obsession with conspiracy is not a new phenomenon. For decades, citizens have been debating the truth about the Kennedy Assassination. A Gallup poll from 2003 reported that only 19 percent of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. What really ignited the conspiracy movement was the Watergate Scandal which was a bona-fide conspiracy. Because of Watergate and Vietnam, most people lost faith in government and began to look for other instances of conspiracy. What is ironic is that the Watergate cover-up was rather inept and concerned a minor crime compared to assassination or terrorism.
The idea that 9/11 was perpetrated by our government has surprisingly caught on. The YouTube documentary ‘Loose Change’ has over 4 million views and similar videos regarding the ‘9/11 Truth’ movement have over eight million views each. A Scripps-Howard poll from 2006 reported that 37 percent of Americans they surveyed believe that our government at least assisted in the 9/11 attacks. ‘9/11 Truth’ has almost become common belief among many college students today. These beliefs are not only false, they are dangerous. Skepticism about our government is healthy but if you beleive they are ‘psycho killers’ — as Alex Jones does — then the next logical step is violence against that government.
Conspiracy theories are an aftershock of the traumatic event. The believer just can’t understand how fragile our world actually is and has to invent a grand narrative with super-villains and a gullible populous. In this new narrative, the believer is the hero, the only one who can see through the lies to grasp the truth. It might be exciting and sexy to believe in nefarious conspiracies, but this temptation should be resisted. If you focus your intellect on inside jobs or reptilian leaders, you miss the real issues and problems with our world that can be tackled.
