A sombre anniversary, and reason for hope

Where I live, the day is shaping up to be just like that fateful morning nine years ago: warm and clear, without a cloud in the sky.


Mohamed Atta, the reputed mastermind of the simultaneous attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers in New York city, damaged the Pentagon in Washington, and nearly obliterated the White House or Congress (but for the intercession of the last passengers on the last flight, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania), had just passed his thirty-second birthday, when he commenced the day’s events by apparently steering the American Airlines jet into the north tower of the World Trade Centre.


Last evening, the History cable channel broadcast a re-enactment of the “last journey of flight 111", which Atta and his conspirators seized control on 9/11. Prior to that programme, was another one on 9/11 conspiracy narratives, which I only caught the end of. In the period after September 11, 2001, I was naive enough to consider it impossible for anyone to believe that the attacks were result of an “inside job” (for, of course, 9/11 was the result of a conspiracy).


The first such narrative I encountered was sometime during 2002. These threatened to go mainstream by about 2005 and ‘06. I am pleased though, that such conspiracy fables are being relegated to the fringes, where they belong. On the programme last evening, for example, one of these fabulists was interviewed. This individual defended himself against charges that he was a lunatic, by reference to Galileo Galilei, who, the fabulist claimed, “was persecuted for believing the world was round when everyone else believed it was flat. However, a few years after his death, everyone came to believe as he did, that the world was round.”


I think something similar has happened with the Kennedy assassination conspiracy narratives, which were widely believed at one time (indeed, such “theories” were accepted by a U.S. congressional committee), but have also been relegated to fringe. I view this as a triumph for the value of free inquiry and debate. The over-class has for many years — just like all elites do — derided liberty of speech, hiding behind the excuse that “hate” speech is harmful to “vulnerable” parts of society. In reality, of course, they want no one to debate the policies and programmes they wish to impose on the rest of us.


I came to despise the conspiracy fabulists both of the 9/11 and Kennedy-assassination school, and how they came to affect public debate. But as one of those people that the over-class labels a “free-speech absolutist” (that is, someone who actually believes in freedom of speech), I never felt moved to call for these sorts of ideas to be proscribed. And, in spite of the delusions shared by many of the fabulists, that both November 22, 1963 and September 11, 2001, initiated a “fascist takeover”, the conspiracy-narrators were allowed to say what they wanted. Guess what happened? They and their “theories”, by being openly debated, were proven to be lacking.