9-11 Truth in the Age of YouTube

It's been seven years since 9-11, and the country is of two minds about what happened that day. Most still blame Osama bin Laden, but a 2006 Scripps-Howard poll found that 36% of Americans think it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that elements in the government either allowed the attacks to happen or carried out the attacks themselves. A Zogby poll from that same year showed that 42% of us think there's been a government cover-up.

That's a lot of Americans. Where are we getting these ideas? There are well-documented books on the subject (David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor is a good one), but I believe what really swayed the populace was the arrival in 2005 of YouTube. Millions of us have seen online videos that question the government's story. If you have 2 minutes, This is an Orange brilliantly addresses the issue of believing your own eyes versus believing what you're told. If you have an evening, check out 9-11 Mysteries.

It's revealing that 9-11 was immediately characterized by our leaders as an act of war rather than a crime. As such, it was never properly investigated as a crime. The buildings' steel, instead of being treated as evidence, was hastily shipped overseas for recycling. People heard explosions in the buildings before they fell, which would be evidence in a criminal investigation, but it was disregarded in the rush to war.

The way each building fell straight down into its own footprint looked exactly like controlled demolition and not at all like a natural collapse. In the absence of demolition charges, the law of conservation of momentum would predict a collapse to one side, seeking the path of least resistance, not straight down through the path of greatest resistance. This picture shows six natural collapses from an earthquake in Taiwan.  None fell straight down.
I would show examples of steel-framed highrises that collapsed from fire rather than earthquake, but there are no examples. That has simply never occurred, anywhere in the world -- unless you count the three on 9-11.

Besides the symmetry of the World Trade Center collapses, their speed suggests professional demolition. All three fell at near-freefall speed, meaning the top of each building hit the ground about as fast as an object dropped from that height falling through air. For that to happen, the massive steel frames of the towers would have had to provide no more resistance than air. That condition is approximated by the synchronized charges of a controlled demolition, but could not occur just from the heat of fire weakening the steel.

The mainstream press showed no inclination to investigate any of this. Perhaps it was prevented from doing so. In any case, independent researchers took up the challenge. Before the internet, they would have had trouble finding an audience. In the YouTube era, the potential audience is enormous, and unlike TV there is no network censorship of political content. Note that YouTube did not exist in 2001. Whoever planned the fiery spectacle of 9-11 did not anticipate instant on-demand access to video of the buildings falling too fast and politicians contradicting themselves.

Today 9-11 Truth is in a state of media half-life. In the online universe, the genie is 100 percent out of the bottle. In TV-based reality, dissenting views are hidden or marginalized. This is done using three strategies. The first is the ability of the powerful to control the discourse by acting like there is no issue. One example would be the government's 600-page 9-11 Commission Report omitting any mention of World Trade Center Building 7. Another would be the near-total news blackout of 9-11 Truth issues on TV. Television news still functions as the arbiter of truth for most Americans, so the networks pretending there's no controversy is very effective.

When someone breaks through and raises a pointed question about the official story, Strategy Two kicks in, which I call "How dare you!" The idea here is that to even formulate such a question is shameful, not just incredibly tacky but an insult to the memory of those who died. How does wanting the actual killers brought to justice dishonor the victims? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, but you hear this sentiment again and again. The third strategy is simple name-calling, generally asserting insanity. The cuter the name (e.g. "barking moonbat"), the more convincing this is supposed to be.

All these control strategies are designed to short-circuit rational discussion, because the official story doesn't hold up if calmly tested against competing hypotheses.

Surprisingly, 9-11 Truth isn't really a left-right issue. The "patriot" wing of the Truth movement is full of conservatives and ex-military. Many are offended by the portrayal of our armed forces as too incompetent to stop a Boeing 757 from hitting the Pentagon almost an hour after the first plane struck in New York. Our jet fighters are ready to take off at a moment's notice, and they can fly approximately three times faster than a 757. It's like a car not being able to catch a bicycle.

Just as there are right-wingers who support 9-11 Truth, the airwaves are full of comfortable "gatekeeper liberals" who can be trusted to ignore the issue or ridicule those who try to expose it.

What you never see on TV is serious 9-11 researchers given time to explain the merits of the controlled demolition hypothesis. When you have seen that online, as more and more of us have, television's unquestioning promotion of the official story can feel a bit Orwellian.