Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly. Notably, there wasn't a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which could all too easily have happened. And while GW Bush was a terrible president, to his credit he tried to calm prejudice, not feed it 2/— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) September 11, 2020
One thing I’ve always wondered is, why did all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists never once put forth the obvious proposition; they simply asked their Wahabi-contras to do it, then preceded to attack an Arab nationalist government (Baathist Iraq), and a thinly veiled Pashtun nationalist one (Taliban’s Afghanistan)? Instead we’re treated with ideas of flying holograms and bombs planted in basements.
I was active in student organizing just a few years after 9/11, and dealing with these people was a nightmare. I couldn’t ever tell if they were just stupid, or if the government was paying them to show up to events they didn’t organize to scream this garbage. I’m sure it was a mixture of both. Many of them seemed to sincerely believe that if the majority of the “American” population came to accept the idea, they would just spontaneously overthrow the government. Now the 9/11 conspiracy, in one form or another, is the most widely believed conspiracy theory in the world, with the majority of the planet accepting some version of it, and guess what? Nothing changed because of it.
One thing I’ve always wondered is, why did all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists never once put forth the obvious proposition; they simply asked their Wahabi-contras to do it, then preceded to attack an Arab nationalist government (Baathist Iraq), and a thinly veiled Pashtun nationalist one (Taliban’s Afghanistan)? Instead we’re treated with ideas of flying holograms and bombs planted in basements.
I was active in student organizing just a few years after 9/11, and dealing with these people was a nightmare. I couldn’t ever tell if they were just stupid, or if the government was paying them to show up to events they didn’t organize to scream this garbage. I’m sure it was a mixture of both. Many of them seemed to sincerely believe that if the majority of the “American” population came to accept the idea, they would just spontaneously overthrow the government. Now the 9/11 conspiracy, in one form or another, is the most widely believed conspiracy theory in the world, with the majority of the planet accepting some version of it, and guess what? Nothing changed because of it.