9-11-konspirationer – sammensværgelser og sludder

En læser kritiserer os i en kommentar for ikke at have en side om “sandheden” om 11. september 2001.

Nåja, jeg har da ellers skrevet lidt om det, se f.eks. her og her.

En nylig diskussion på iNorden førte mig frem til en artikel af den britiske aktivist George Monbiot, som jeg synes, siger det rimeligt klart:

To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever…

The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the “9/11 truth movement” is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward’s fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don’t have the stomach to engage in real political fights.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the “truth” movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don’t exist, they can’t fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.

Som Monbiot påpeger, er dette sludder ikke blot ørkes- og nyttesløst, det er også skadeligt, fordi det lægger gift for enhver seriøst arbejdende opposition. Hvilket er trist, ikke mindst, fordi der faktisk er mere end rigeligt af reelle ting at protestere imod.

Sandheden om Bush-regeringen, Al-Qaeda, Irak og Afghanistan er faktisk slem nok, som den er. Vi behøver ikke drømme umulige sammensværgelser op i tilgift.