Are Truthers' accusations against Silverstein based on latent anti-Semitism?

I guess conspiracy makes strange bedfellows. Some people simply refuse to come right out and condemn those in their own ranks who are ignorant racists, even though those people put their entire movement in a bad light, simply because they are 'truther' brethren.

One would think that in a movement that draws crazies like a candle draws moths the few sane people would be distancing themselves like crazy.
 
Arus808 said:
Truther have to accept the fact that many of the "talking points" originated from Holocaust deniers and jew haters.
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Yup, and you get some who embrace theories because they are anti-semitic and some who embrace them and just ignore the roots ('my enemys enemy is my friend', 'any port in a storm' and all that)
 
adversity1 said:
I quickly debunked all his WTC1 and 2 points and then he came around to 7 and said 'the Jewish family that owned those towers made millions off of that'.
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Here in the NYC suburbs, I had a friend, a grand-mother, who never gets in to Manhattan and like everyone and can barely use the Internet, pop out with "did any Jews dies in WTC"? It was when Rudy was running for the "The President of 9/11" and we were in her kitchen talking about Rudy.

It's in the water.
 
Nice that the two so called truthers have avoided answering the question although they have both taken part in this thread and both claim that it is "debunkers" that are anti-semitic. Glad they will not denounce the rabid anti-semitism of a few. Guess that means I have 2 more to put on ignore...
 
I think a good case study is David Icke. Now by all indications he actually believes in Reptilian aliens, but it is so tied into old anti-semitism that he has followers who take talk of reptilians as sort of a "wink wink, nudge nudge" referring to Jews.

So people in the movement might be ignorant, but a lot that comes out in regards to Silverstein, Rothschild, etc is clearly anti-semitic; even if those who push these theories want to ignore it. So my answer is yes, it is latent anti-Semitism.
 
Is there an equivalent to the Godwin, for when people bring anti-Semitism into an argument? If not, can I call it a Schnitzel?
 
While there is plenty of anti semitism in the truth movement (especially in the roots) I would suspect if Mr Silversteins name was O'Donnel or Stromboli the theories about pull it would still be there.
It just so happens the owner of WTC 7 was Jewish.
There is no lack of hate for Guiliani , Cheney or Bush in the truth movement.
 
BenBurch said:
It was pointed out to me just now that there might be an irrational and genocidal hatred of Israel distinct from the irrational and genocidal hated of jews.

Comments?
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Bearing in mind Israel only exists because of acts carried out by Western governments, and their continued support, it is hardly surprising they have few fans in the East, is it?
 
Ragnarok said:
Bearing in mind Israel only exists because of acts carried out by Western governments, and their continued support, it is hardly surprising they have few fans in the East, is it?
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The land Israel was given didn't belong to the East. It was a British Colony.
 
I'm not 100% convinced on this one. I'm a staunch leftist, and the first to condemn those who conflate criticism of Jews (or more specifically Israel) with anti-semitism. Nobody can deny that the two cross over, but nobody can deny that it is sometimes used as a mindless (and distressingly effective) debate closing tactic.

There undoubtedly is a seam of quite virulent racism in the truth movement. You can see it in every statement of incredulity over the "cave dwelling" terrorists capabilities, and you can see it in the fixation over Silverstein.

But there is a danger of confusing the causal relation here. Remember always that somebody who believes in the 911 stuff has some pretty messed up standards of evidence going on already. They are exposed to the anti-semitic hysteria, and already primed to believe that our culture has fallen into a delusory post-modern consensus reality, that standard media and academia are ranged firmly against the forces of truth and light. This will lead a disproportionate number of them into anti-semitism without any need for an inherent connection between the two positions; they simply share a common disdain for mainstream belief.

They aren't prone to anti-semitism because they're truthers - they're truthers because they've lost faith in the fundamental honesty of our culture, and they may become anti-semites for the same reason. There is no more of a direct causal relation here than there is between trutherism and belief in Area 51.

That said, there is clearly a pattern, whereby anybody who seeks a sinister Svengali, a behind the scenes boogeyman, will probably pick a Jew. People in the West are sadly culturally primed for this, and mud sticks to other mud. It's awful, but it's the basic witch-burning group dynamics of human psychology, and I don't think there's lots you can do about it. It's an indelible stain written into the very fabric, perhaps even of hominids, rather than whoever you think of as the narrower 'us'.

Declared interest: My truther friend, who got me into debunking 911, and indirectly brought me to this site, has now gone full blown Holocaust revisionist. I am deeply saddened - not because we were especially close (there's only so many times you can tell a Marxist he has too much faith in the American government before he stops listening to you :)), but because he, through it all, had a spark of intelligence and wit that I found beguiling. I now fear he is lost, perhaps even forever, to a dark road, and only he can decide to come back.
 
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BenBurch said:
It was pointed out to me just now that there might be an irrational and genocidal hatred of Israel distinct from the irrational and genocidal hated of jews.

Comments?
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I think it would be quite possible to have an irrational hatred of Israelis while being indifferent to non-Israelis Jews.

I was reading a discussion at 911Oz today where someone seemed (if my interpretation is correct) to blame Zionists for 9/11 but thought that Christian Zionists dominated the 'plot'. So it might even be possible to have an irrational hatred of Zionists seperate to Jews or Israelis. I could find a link but it would mean wading through their cesspool again.

I think the same person made some comment about how the Arabs blamed for 9/11 were just goat molesters (or some such insult); which displays admirably evenhanded racism.
 
DavidJames said:
Sorry, but this logic is no different then the CTists. No doubt there are anti-semitic CTists, but we don't do the cause of skepticism any favors by making such claims without evidence. The same goes for those who want to lay this at the feet of "leftists".

We demand evidence by the CTists to support their claims, I suggest we ask no less of ourselves.
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Not so strangely, this rational post went almost completely unnoticed. This should have ended this ridiculous thread.
 
"Blow up the building" is now, not the "demolition slang," but the common sense, meaning of "pull it"?

Sorry, no. If I were to hand my wife (the ultimate arbiter of common sense in my family) a detonator switch that she knew was wired to a building completely prepped for demolition, and said, "Okay, honey, the best thing to do now is pull it," she'd say, "Do what, now? What am I supposed to pull on? There's just this button. Do you want me to blow up the building now or not? And by the way, shouldn't I be standing over there where you are instead of under the building?"

(Just kidding about that last part. She'd never fall for the old stand-under-the-building-while-setting-off-the-detonators trick. That's why she's in charge of the common sense in the first place.)

As an explanation for the Truthers' collective and individual dogged insistence that Silverstein must be guilty of something, anti-semitism seems to be the one that best fits all the evidence.

Note that there are probably many cases where certain Truthers have no particular feelings about Jews (and will deeply resent any assertion that they do), but deliberately use arguments that they know will appeal to others who do. That too is a form of anti-semitism, and one that is, at best, no less vile than "honest" hatred.

There is another possibility that must be factored in, however, which is class resentment. Silverstein is seen as a 9/11 victim of sorts. He was more directly and personally involved than, say, the CEOs of the airlines and the large corporations who lost offices and staffs in the Towers, or the (faceless, it seems) managers of the Port Authority. Yet he largely escaped harm. He lost a great deal of money, but because of his many resources he was not made destitute or even put out of business. The only buildings most of us have interest in is our own domiciles and if they burned down we would either be out on the street or struggling to rebuild while making ends meet on insurance payments. Any personal anguish Silverstein might have gone through is invisible to us; we see only that he appears unaffected and that seems unfair somehow.

I don't think that alone explains it, but it probably works in concert with the anti-semitism, to greater or lesser degrees in different individuals.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
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