Skeptic Project

Diane, you said something in the "different sectors of the 9/11 Truth movement" topic that I think warrants its own independent discussion. Since I'm tired of Austrian economics topics I'm going to go ahead and make it, booyah!

Just one point about the JFK assassination: Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the historians are 100% irrefutably correct, do you dismiss the vast number of people who believe otherwise as completely insane? Or are they just mistaken and perhaps in need of training in critical thinking?

The JFK assassination is fundamentally different than 9/11 Truth for two reasons. First, you have to be a lot nuttier to believe 9/11 was an inside job than you to do believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy, and second, JFK assassination theories (unfortunately) have mainstream cachet, which (thankfully) the 9/11 Truth movement does not and hopefully never will have.

Regarding JFK, the evidence shows very clearly that Lee Harvey Oswald did it, and that he acted alone. Like 9/11, there has never been a single credible shred of evidence of a conspiracy. (The best book ever written on the JFK assassination is also the most comprehensive, and that is Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History" which lays out the case very carefully and demolishes the CTs one by one--I highly recommend it). However, given the bizarre chain of events in that case, specifically Ruby's assassination of Oswald on Nov. 25, a considerable segment of the American public who never really delved deeply into the assassination was predisposed to think there was something "fishy" about it.

Despite that, JFK assassination was pretty fringe throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s--ironically, Jim Garrison's investigation in the late 1960s heavily discredited the conspiracy movement for over 20 years. Then in the early 90s, Oliver Stone met the JFK assassination crowd. When his movie came out in 1991, it pushed the CTs over the respectability line, and voila, suddenly JFK assassination conspiracies were mainstream.

This despite the fact that the movie "JFK" is to the JFK assassination what "Zeitgeist" is to 9/11--a tissue of lies, errors, distortions, omissions and misrepresentations that are grotesquely negligent at best and deliberately deceptive at worst. ("JFK" does, however, have one thing that "Zeitgeist" doesn't, which is artistic value as a piece of fiction entertainment standing alone from its historical accuracy. Merola wishes he was as good as Oliver Stone).

The point of this topic is not to debunk Oliver Stone's movie--if you're interested the best resource on the web is at this link: http://www.jfk-online.com/jfkmovie.html</p>

Now, about 75% of the American public believes JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy. There is still only a tiny minority of people, assassination buffs and CTs, who have ever actually read a book (whether pro- or anti-conspiracy) about the assassination. Surely a smaller percentage than 75% has actually seen the movie. But most ordinary people who don't delve deeply into the facts (or lack thereof, in the case of the conspiracy claims) simply regard JFK as more or less a closed issue. It's not that they examine the case, pro and con, and come to the conclusion that it must have been a conspiracy. It's just one of those things they accept without thinking about it.

This has not happened yet, and hopefully will never happen, with 9/11. Most people believe that Osama's hijackers did it, and those who don't are a small fringe minority who come to that conclusion after viewing or seeking out some source (Zeitgeist, Loose Change, Alex Jones, etc.) that expressly posits that belief. From a logical standpoint it's a much bigger stretch to imagine somebody put bombs in the towers, or even conspired to let the attack happen on purpose killing 3,000 innocent people, than it is to imagine there might have been another sniper somewhere in Dealey Plaza. The "woo" factor on 9/11 is a lot higher, which means both that 9/11 Truth has a much steeper hill to climb in order to achieve mainstream acceptability, and that those who do claim that 9/11 was an inside job have to jettison logic, reason and common sense to a much higher degree than is necessary to maintain that there was a second JFK shooter in Dallas.

That said, the JFK example demonstrates why 9/11 conspiracy theories have to be actively and aggressively combated. Debunkers and historians fell down on the job when it came to JFK. They didn't get the facts out there as front-and-center as they should have been, so they let a conspiracy theorist, Oliver Stone, frame the debate. Result? Now belief in a JFK plot isn't "woo" at all, even though it's as factually false as the idea of a 9/11 conspiracy. The true believers in 9/11 conspiracy will never be converted, but what we (debunkers) can do is make damn sure that the 9/11 Truth movement never achieves any degree of mainstream respectability, that it always remains marginalized, radical, fringe and loony, and that the public at large never sees 9/11 Truthers as anything other than irrational people who have abandoned logic and reason--which, in fact, they have.

This is why I give absolutely no quarter or sanction to 9/11 Truth beliefs, and why I never will. The worst thing we can do as a society is to let these loons f*ck up the history of 9/11 as badly as the history of the JFK assassination has been botched. Leave the Truthers to rot in their basements with their tinfoil hats and their Loose Change videos, but by all means we've got to keep their toxic distortion of history from poisoning rational discourse in the mainstream world.

So to answer your question, Diane, no, I don't regard the vast numbers of people who believe in a JFK assassination conspiracy as insane, or as irrational as 9/11 Truthers are by definition (though you will find some very loony JFK people as well--in fact Jim Garrison was one of the most loony). I'm doing my part to make sure that the nuttery inherent in 9/11 conspiracy beliefs never becomes mainstream and is never accorded any modicum of respect in any arena where the rational facts of history are discussed.

Oswald as the assassin doesn't seem so strange from hindsight. American culture produces a long line of loser guys who take out their frustrations on innocent third parties, from public figures to fellow students to women in health clubs.

Just to put Muerto's quote from me, in the other thread, into context:

I am certainly not advocating any JFK assassination conspiracy claims. My tentative tone on this topic stems from the fact that I have not studied it at all. In the absence of having studied it, I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to academic historians. I'm just not prepared to say I'm 100% certain that the academic historians are correct.

I'll have more to say later.

Just one point about the JFK assassination: Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the historians are 100% irrefutably correct, do you dismiss the vast number of people who believe otherwise as completely insane? Or are they just mistaken and perhaps in need of training in critical thinking?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/falsememory/</p>

false memory

anticultist wrote:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/falsememory/</p>

false memory

Very interesting article, and thanks for sharing it, but what's its relevance to this thread?

Muertos wrote:

The JFK assassination is fundamentally different than 9/11 Truth for two reasons. First, you have to be a lot nuttier to believe 9/11 was an inside job than you to do believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy,

With this, I do not agree at all.

From my own point of view, a fundamental difference between the JFK assassination and 9/11 is that 9/11 was a much more complex event, some aspects of which (e.g. goings-on in the intelligence agencies) are inherently murky. Thus, it seems to me, 9/11 naturally lends itself to more speculation.

and second, JFK assassination theories (unfortunately) have mainstream cachet, which (thankfully) the 9/11 Truth movement does not and hopefully never will have.

Actually, it would seem that belief in some form of U.S. government complicity is quite popular, especially in countries outside the U.S.A., judging by various opinion polls reported in the Wikipedia article on 9/11 opinion polls. Admittedly, outside the 9/11 Truth movement itself, LIHOP seems to be a lot more popular than MIHOP, whereas the reverse is true within the 9/11 Truth movement.

But it seems that MIHOP is starting to get popular too now, even here in the U.S.A. A recent Angus-Reid poll reports that "Only 15 per cent of respondents think claims that the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition are credible." ("Only 15"? 15% is actually higher than I expected.) According to the Angus-Reid poll, "In addition, 15 per cent think United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down, 13 per cent believe no airplane actually crashed at the Pentagon, and six per cent agree with the claim that no airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center and that the images seen on television were altered." (WTF??? I would have expected no more than 1% of the general populace, at most, to believe in no-planes-at-the-WTC claims. THAT really is completely nutty.)

Dunno how reliable this poll is. It will be interesting to see if the results are confirmed by other polls.

Leave the Truthers to rot in their basements with their tinfoil hats and their Loose Change videos.

They're not. A lot of them are out on the streets once a week, or at least once a month, distributing those videos on DVD's, and/or handing out pamphlets, and in some cases holding public showings of those videos in parks or rented theaters. And, judging by the Angus-Reid poll, it would seem that their efforts are succeeding.

You've got a lot of work to do. I would suggest that you watch your rhetoric and avoid giving your opponents ammunition to discredit you as irrationally biased or intellectually dishonest. For example:

or as irrational as 9/11 Truthers are by definition

Since when was any viewpoint irrational "by definition," other than perhaps a viewpoint that was explicitly anti-rational?

aaronmhatch wrote:

Biased sample, eh?

Perhaps. I did say I don't know how reliable the poll is. And that result does seem very strange to me.

But there does seem to be a pattern of lots of different polls showing lots of believers in some form of U.S. government complicity, and an even larger number believing in a government coverup of something pertaining to 9/11, not necessarily outright complicity. The latter belief is completely mainstream.

By all accounts Trutherism is (fortunately) a dying movement. Aside from the nutbars that cling to their ridiculous theories there aren't a lot of people out there still hawking 9/11 Truth. The portrait you paint of "the 9/11 Truth movement is a snowball inexorably gathering mass!" is remarkably similar to the line Truthers themselves push whenever they try to use polls to convince people that their bizarre claims have some sort of mainstream acceptance.

When was the last time you saw a Truther on CNN or ABC News? Aside from Jesse Ventura and Willie Nelson, who the public (rightfully) regard as nutbars, recently appearing on Larry King Live, where are all these Truthers popping up on TV and media appearances? Hell, Dylan Avery can't even get on TV in the US anymore. He's been doing interviews in France.

"Denouncing believers as "crazy" serves only to make the denouncer look biased and untrustworthy."

Oh, okay. So in order to prevent myself from appearing biased and untrustworthy, I need to stop shouting "crazy!" and make nice when people spew shit like this.
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2855198&postcount=686 (That's Anders Bjorkman, named "Petitioner of the Month" by Richard Gage's Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth)

Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kske8e4OUS4 (some 9/11 "activists" ambushing the Utah AG)

Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH9meDbrlP8 (9/11 family member pushing WTC7 demolition claims and Silverstein's "Pull It!" quote)

Or this: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-459844559898426929#23m50s (Gage and his infamous falling boxes)

I'm biased and untrustworthy by calling this stuff bullshit, which is exactly what it is?

>> By what accounts, for example?

I don't know if anyone has any real demographics, but I definitely sense truthers on the decline, even though other conspiracy beliefs are on the rise. I don't have any evidence, personally, it's just a feeling.

To Edward:

What you're probably sensing is that fewer people on the Internet are spending a lot of time talking about 9/11 now that Bush is no longer in office. The Alex Jones crowd, for example, is now more interested in bashing Obama.

Nevertheless, the two major 9/11 Truth movement groups here in New York are still quite active, as far as I can tell.

And, in my experience, among the people I run into in various contexts, there still seems to be a steady increase in the number of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job.

"The GLBT rights movement has succeeded at one hell of a lot of things!"

And it owes absolutely none of those successes to you. I've certainly never heard of you or your organization.