the long shadow of 9/11 conspiracy theories

The attacks united many Americans in their grief and anger, but “Loose Change” addressed the discontented.

“It was the lightning rod that caught the lightning,” Rowe recalls. He hoped the documentary would lead to a serious reexamination of the attacks. Rowe, who lives in Oneonta, New York, has no regrets about the documentary and still ponders the events of 9/11, but says he is deeply concerned about what 9/11 conspiracy theories have revealed about the corrosive nature of Internet disinformation.

Twenty years later, the skepticism and suspicion first revealed by the 9/11 conspiracy theories turned into cancer, spread across the internet, and were fueled by pundits and politicians like Donald Trump. One hoax after another has emerged, each stranger than the next: that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Pizzagate. QAnon.

“Look where you are – you have people storming the Capitol because they think the election was a fraud. You have people who are not going to get vaccinated and they are dying in hospitals,” Rowe said. “We’ve gotten to the point where information is actually killing people.”

Había, claro, teorías de conspiración antes de que ocurriera el 11 de septiembre: el asesinato de John F. Kennedy, el alunizaje, el supuesto accidente de un UFO en Roswell, Nuevo México, in 1947. Y el interés del país en las teorías alternativas y marginales estaba en aumento antes del 11 de septiembre, exemplified for the series “The X-Files ” (” Los expedientes secretos X ”) of the decade of 1990, con sus lemas “La verdad está ahí afuera ” y “Don’t trust anyone.” But it was September 11 that heralded our current era of suspicion and disbelief, and revealed the Internet’s ability to catalyze conspiracy theories.

“Conspiracy theories have always been with us, and the only thing that has changed is the way to share them,” says Karen Douglas, professor of psychology at the University of Kent in England, who studies why people believe in such explanations. “The internet has made conspiracy theories more visible and easier to share than ever before. People can also quickly find other like-minded people, join groups and share their opinions.”

Conspiracy theories on the attack and its aftermath also gave early exposure to some of the same people touting hoaxes and unfounded allegations about COVID-19, vaccines and the 2020 election, including Alex Jones, the Trump-backed InfoWars editor, who accused the United States of planning the bombings and said the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. Jones was co-producer of the third edition of “Loose Change”.

Polls show that belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories peaked in the years immediately following the attack and then waned. Later polls show that a small percentage of Americans still have doubts about the official explanation for the attacks.

It is not surprising that these opinions persist or that they have diminished over time. Shocking and sudden events often spawn conspiracy theories as people collectively struggle to understand them, says Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida School of Law who has studied the history of conspiracy theories in the United States. United. .

“A plane crashing into the World Trade Center? Crashing into the Pentagon? Looks like something out of a movie,” Fenster says. “It just didn’t look like an actual event; and it’s when you have a huge freak event, like this, that conspiracy theories sometimes crop up. ”

Before the internet, conspiracy theorists relied on books, pamphlets, and the occasional late-night TV show to defend their beliefs. Now, they can exchange theories on message boards like Reddit, post videos on YouTube, and gain new converts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The first known 9/11 conspiracy theory came just hours after the attack, when a US software engineer emailed an Internet forum asking if the towers had been knocked down by a controlled detonation. .

Twenty years later, a YouTube search for 9/11-related content returns millions of results.

Thousands of videos focus on conspiracy theories. That’s a lot, but the grandfather of modern conspiracy theories has been overtaken by newcomers: a Google search for “9/11 conspiracy theory” returns over eight million results, while a search for “Covid conspiracy theory” shows more than triple.

Tech companies say they have done their best to limit the spread of false information about 9/11. YouTube has added links to 9/11-related videos from reputable sources. Facebook says it added fact checks to several viral 9/11 hoaxes, including one that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not a plane.

For many young Americans who came of age after September 11, the Internet is the first place they turn for information about the event. 9/11 is not systematically taught in schools – some districts require it, while others barely mention it or ignore it altogether.

False claims about the attacks often surface at the National 9/11 Museum and Monument, which provides educational services to visitors and students across the country. Such cases provide an opportunity to discuss the facts of what happened and the many investigations that followed, according to Megan Jones, senior director of educational programs at the monument.

“We now have a generation with no memories of 9/11, so it’s important to share the stories of what happened,” Jones said.

False claims about the 9/11 attacks have never been the threat now attributed to disinformation about Covid-19 or the 2020 US election. But even supporters of 9/11 conspiracy theories say questions about what happened paved the way for the mistrust and anxiety behind today’s conspiracy theories.

“The danger is that once you have this distrust of authority and government, you find yourself in a dangerous place,” says Matt Campbell, a British citizen whose brother died at the World Trade Center September 11th. Campbell believes the towers collapsed after a controlled demolition and he is calling for a new UK investigation into his brother’s death.

“If you think everything they’re telling you is a lie, then it goes off: ‘It might be true, it might not be true, whatever,” said Campbell.

On a large scale, the mistrust underlying such beliefs can become dangerous when they begin to divide a society or when they are exploited by a political leader or an external adversary.

“It is generally the case that the people who feel excluded from power are the ones who have engaged in conspiracy theories,” Fenster says. had the White House – was the main disseminator of conspiracy theories. ”

At first, 9/11 conspiracy theories were popular with some liberals who disliked former President George W. Bush or who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pero después de que Barack Obama will convirtiera in presidente, las afirmaciones falsas sobre el 11 de septiembre comenzaron a ganar popularidad entre algunos conservadores que las citan como un ejemplo del trabajo del “Estado profundo” (“Deep State ” o” Estado dentro of State”).

Two years before winning her seat in Congress in 2020, Georgian Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said she doubted a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. Last year, she admitted she was wrong and tried to deflect the blame by saying that the onus is on the government to disseminate misinformation.

“The problem is, our government is lying to us a lot to protect the deep state; sometimes it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not,” he tweeted.

Ben Crew is a screenwriter who produced a video that debunks many popular 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s also started a project in which he travels the country and collects personal stories of 9/11, with the goal of getting at least one story from each of the 50 states.

Crew hears plenty of conspiracy theories – claims a missile hit the Pentagon, claims the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the one that crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Were empty.

He says almost everyone he interviews sees 9/11 as a turning point in American history, the start of a wave of anxiety and fear that for many people has yet to reach its peak.

“Looks like there’s a chance everything’s going up in flames now,” Crew said. “Nine to eleven lit this.”