9/11 Truthers on the left vs 9/11 Truthers on the right- which side is more vocal?

[Scott Sommers]

The only reason that is true is because the left owns the White House and half of Congress. I don't think that it's so much growth by the right as it is the left retreating (albeit quietly so as to not embarrass themselves anymore that they already have) from 9/11 truth. That makes the loons on the right stand out more than they did when the left wing Bush hate machine was turned up to 11.

Sure. If Sarah was in the White House, things might have been different. But she's not. Instead, it's a black American who's talking about public health care.

The right wingers/"Libertarians" were always there and probably started it but they were soon overtaken by the left. There's a reason that 9/11 truth started to die off in 2007 and pretty much disappeared in 2009 and it isn't because any of the facts on the issue had changed dramatically, because they didn't.

I addressed this in part of my earlier posts. The average age of a member of We Are Change is 27. Many are still in high school and college. While it is correct to say, as many JREF members do, that "9/11 truth started to die off in 2007." One of my main points is that the idea of a government-run plot to explode the WTC buildings with thermite -- or however they did it -- is now part of a much larger understanding of the USA among people who have nothing to do with the 911 Truth-sorts-of-things that the JREF monitors. By my estimate, there would be tens of thousands in the USA (this is far less than 1% of the population) alone who are part of this weird world.

So sure, you are absolutely correct that 911-conspiracy-type-ideas have survived on the Right in some sort of messed up natural selection. But you are wrong that the idea is disappearing. It has metamorphosized into a belief system that's not entirely recognizable to someone looking for the old hippies ranting about peak oil and that draft dodger Cheney. You gotta look in different places for these people. Now they're hanging out under moldy rocks with the slugs and the parasites. There's still lots of them, but now they look like slime molds and tapeworms.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

There has always been a very small portion of American society that want to embrace anything that allows them to think that the government is out to get them, nothing new there. There's no reason to think that 9/11 truth would be excluded from this line of thought. What I was saying is that they were always there but the signal (irrational left wing Bush hatred) to noise (right wing big government hatred) ratio has changed in the past 4 or so years allowing the right wingers to appear to be growing in numbers while in reality they are just better heard due to less interference from the left and their membership numbers are fairly static.

As some people grow out of it new ones fill in the void. If this weren't true then the average age should be much higher. No?

 

[Dave Rogers]

While everyone agrees on Newton's Laws,

Not round here they don't. This is Net Force = Zero territory, remember.

Dave

 

[Scott Sommers]

There has always been a very small portion of American society that want to embrace anything that allows them to think that the government is out to get them, nothing new there. There's no reason to think that 9/11 truth would be excluded from this line of thought. What I was saying is that they were always there but the signal (irrational left wing Bush hatred) to noise (right wing big government hatred) ratio has changed in the past 4 or so years allowing the right wingers to appear to be growing in numbers while in reality they are just better heard due to less interference from the left and their membership numbers are fairly static.

As some people grow out of it new ones fill in the void. If this weren't true then the average age should be much higher. No?

I don't think I've said anything so far that would address the issue of how old or young 911-conspiracy-type-folk should be. I have very clear understanding of this, but there's nothing here so far, I think, that would have anything to do with that. In my opinion, the average age would be low and not high. 911 occurred in 2001. I believe that some large portion of those involved in this 911-conspiracy-type-stuff are young people who became involved sometime after the attacks. They have not had enough time to get old. Many appear to be fairly recent in their acceptance of messed up Truther thinking and probably became involved during the last few years.

I calculated ages based on several different kinds of samples of 911-conspiracy-type-folk. While some would be older people who have been involved in messed up thinking even before 2001, my samples did not find a lot of these. My calculation is a mean average. The range on the lower side of the curve is pretty much only 10 years (17-27), where as the higher side of the mean, the range is 27 to 44. As a result, my samples are highly skewed to the left. 62% of my sample is under 27.3 years of age and only 8% are over 40. The modal age for this sample was 22. I was also able to calculate the average for participants in the 2009 We Are Change-sponsored 911 memorial demonstration in NYC. This calculation produced numbers almost identical to the numbers above.

To put it another way, most of the people I could find were in high school on September 11, 2001. They are relatively recent converts to this kind of messed up thought. Like Brooke Kelley, whom I described above (who is NOT counted in any of my samples), most appear to be young kids looking for a cause. I suppose in the 60s, they might have joined SDS or something like that.

I did find some evidence that people who get responsible jobs drop out of these groups, but for reasons that will be more obvious if you read my article, that's not a real possibility for most of these folks.

 

[Brainster]

As I've said before, it's a generational thing. Truthers over 40 skew left while those under 30 skew right. Because the media tend to associate age with responsibility, the more visible face of Trooferism is Leftist: Webster Tarpley, David Ray Griffin, Kevin Barrett, Jim Fetzer, etc. On the Right, only Alex Jones has the credibility with the media (as compared to real credibility) to get much visibility.

But more important, both sides skew wacko. You won't find a lot of support for Alex Jones among mainstream conservatives; his brand of libertarianism/survivalism is a fringe element. Ditto with Mike Malloy and his loopy brand of leftism.

 

[dc1971]

Isn't Alex Jones a right wing-nut?

He talks a lot about the government coming to take his guns away... so...

 

[missandybrown]

Why do you keep calling it a cult??

 

[sheeplesnshills]

What do you all think- as of 2010, do the far left or far right Truthers hold the reigns of power and influence within their cult?
Which side will be the first to implode?

I don't they have the mental ability to be making political choices any more rationally than they make their twoofer choice. They likely simple latch onto the first one that catches their attention. And ultimately if you go far enough left you end up on the right.

And I don't think they will implode...simply move on to other CTs........

 

[000063]

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

Or has someone made that joke already?

 

[Myron Proudfoot]

Alex Jones most definitely IS right-wing. Anti-immigrant, anti-taxes, anti-big government, anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, anti-AGW.

You, again, are wrong. Very very wrong.

He also got his start promoting the "Clinton Death List" and the usual John Birch militia black helicopter stuff.

 

[DC]

i am not sure if AJ has a political side, he seems more like a flag in the wind, changing to wherever the market to sell his garbage is bigger.

 

[uke2se]

Why do you keep calling it a cult??

Because it bears all the hallmarks of being a cult.

 

[Scott Sommers]

i am not sure if AJ has a political side, he seems more like a flag in the wind, changing to wherever the market to sell his garbage is bigger.

You obviously haven't been keeping up on this one. I don't know if it's here or in another thread, but we have answered this already. AJ is clear about which party he supports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_(radio_host)

In early 2000, Jones was one of seven Republican candidates for state representative in Texas House District 48, an open seat swing district based in Austin, Texas. Jones stated that he was running, "to be a watchdog on the inside.

 

[uke2se]

I figured Jones for a Ron Paul supporter.

 

[MrFliop]

In the last election almost every truth movement leader(Alex Jones, Jesse Venturea, Michel Chossudovsky) who supported a candidate endorsed Doanld Trump. And most truther(and truther leaning) websites supported him as well.

 

[Scott Sommers]

In the last election almost every truth movement leader(Alex Jones, Jesse Venturea, Michel Chossudovsky) who supported a candidate endorsed Doanld Trump. And most truther(and truther leaning) websites supported him as well.

I don't hate to say this,....I have been saying since 2010 that politically, Truthers are right-wing Republicans. The hard-core producers of Truther ideology may think that Trump is just as likely to be a servant of the super-secret global government, but the distributors (such as AJ) and consumers of Truther crap are dominated by Republicans.

None of this should be surprising. The Republican Party is build on conspiracy theory. After all, it's not just the current president who thinks that Obama's an African refugee.

They're worse than Truthers. I have spoken to organizers of the pro-Trump group the Proud Boys and women in their support groups who still insist that Pizzagate is real. I have seen Proud Boys facebook profiles that have gang stalking groups listed as likes. If you ask hem directly about their interest in conspiracy theory, they just deny it, but they have all the signs of hard-core conspiracy theory. Asl see this link.

An aide to a Republican - REPUBLICAN - Florida state representative was fired after he began spreading the idea that shooting victims at Parkland were crises actors.

There are all sorts of Republicans. John McCain is a Republican. I doubt there're any Truthers on his staff. But there's a kind of young Republican orbiting around the administration of Donald Trump that sees in the Republicans a place where their nut bar ideas are real political opinions.

And don't forget, Michelle Bachmann says that vaccination is dangerous.

 

[benthamitemetric]

I think hardcore conspiracy theorists generally come pretty evenly from the far sides of both conservative and liberal thinking. These days we have a president who peddles in conspiracy theories as flippantly and carelessly as Alex Jones, which I think has (unfortunately) amplified the right wing conspiracy theorists in the national conversation, but there are plenty of leftwing truthers, conspiracy theorists and other woo-peddlers out there. Just browse the 911truth or conspiracy subreddits for a few days and you will see the two sides butt heads pretty often. At the end of the day, those who believe fervently in conspiracy theories have a monological fixation on distrust for "mainstream" institutions and authority, and that fixation is not ideologically dependent and can resonate with both leftist and rightwing world views.

 

[Georgio]

I think hardcore conspiracy theorists generally come pretty evenly from the far sides of both conservative and liberal thinking

I agree; with more left leaning ones it's that 'they' are trying to take our 'rights', and with the right leaning ones it tends to be more that 'they' are trying to take our 'freedoms' (or turn frogs gay ) and each side thinks the 'they' is the other side. I've been reading loads of political discussions lately and you'll constantly hear how 'the right' or 'the left' are slowly eroding this or that right or freedom. What unites the two sides is that neither can accept the idea that there might (that's might) not be a shadowy, ill defined 'they' who are perpetually trying to **** them over. I blame Hollywood films (and I actually mean that); think of any big movie you like and 100% of the time it includes a vague threat to everyone's safety that is apparently defeated before being implied that it may not have been defeated so we all have to stay vigilant in case the threat returns. It's a constantly repeated message that affects everyone, regardless of political leanings.

 

[JSanderO]

It appears that the common meme among truthers is their complete distrust of the mainstream media, the status quo, the system and so forth. They are anti establishment whether coming at from the right or left. Most believe that there is an unseen cabal with uber power pulling the strings and putting out false narratives constantly.. hence why they call themselves "truthers"... believing they are about the "real" truth, not the "fake news". Trump is all about calling what he doesn't like or agree with, fake news. Truthers love this because it is exactly what they have been going on about for years. We were lied to... told a false narrative... but they know what actually happened of course. Their MO is to find what they perceive as any inconsistency or unexplained element. And they pounce on this as "proof" that the entire "mainstream" narrative collapses.

One of their main themes is that the event was far too complex for it to have been done by a bunch of terrorists operating out of caves. But it actual fact the hijacking of planes and flying them into very easily seen huge targets on a day of unlimited visibility was quite simple, low tech and at the time easy to pull off. The fact that their operation was so low tech made it rather difficult for our intelligence services to identify it in advance or who the hijackers were. Of course once it happened they figured out from the airline manifests it was the "arabe/moslems" on board. But none of them would be persons of interest unless they had been involved in suspicious activity prior to 9/11. But to truthers this defies credulity.

 

[Venom]

and let me again point out that the "cave dwelling Arabs" theme is a racist fiction created by Truthers. These were college educated smart, practical guys who happened to embrace Islamic extremism. It sounds like a very right-wingy thing to say, but clearly nobody has a monopoly on ethnic prejudice and some left-wingers who want to absolve Al Qaeda of responsibility will invariably invoke that stereotype as well.

I think most of those caves they imagine these terrorists dwell in are actually the rocky hideouts seen in pictures of Afghanistan/Pakistan.