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The New York Times reported on Monday that Spike Lee is spending a lot of time on his new four-part HBO documentary series, New York Epicenters 11 / 9-2021½, to the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth group, which promotes the conspiracy theory that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition as part of a work inside.
About ten years ago, I interviewed the architects and engineers of 9/11 Truth founder Richard Gage on several occasions and attended one of his events for articles in Slate and Architect. Magazine. Gage is responsible for peddling some of the oldest and oldest lies about the 9/11 attacks, which is why I was surprised that Lee, HBO, and WarnerMedia could lend his group some time.
I had to see for myself how well Lee’s documentary actually promoted Gage’s fantasies, so I checked out a screener for Episode 4, which is due out around the 20th.e anniversary of the September 11 attacks. What I found was surreal and demoralizing.
Lee spends 30 minutes towards the very end of his series questioning arguments that have been debunked a thousand times. Specifically, it introduces a dozen conspiracy theorists and members of Gage’s group, including Gage himself, in an exchange with three credible scientists who investigated the 9/11 attacks in a teach controversy– a stylish format that presents the truth behind 9/11 as an open debate between two equally valid parties. In terms of conveying the facts, it’s a bit like presenting COVID-19 vaccine skeptics in a debate alongside Anthony Fauci, or deniers alongside the Simon Wiesenthal Center, or a clique of climate change skeptics at the alongside the authors of the United Nations IPCC report.
Unfortunately, it’s also clear from Lee’s presentation in the film, as well as his public statements, where his leanings on this “controversy” lie and where he wants audiences to land. In a New York Times interview published Monday, for example, Lee promotes previously debunked “evidence” of controlled demolition, such as “the amount of heat needed to melt steel, that temperature is not reached.” and “the way in which Construction 7 fell to the ground” was suspect.
In the documentary, Lee is presented with an explanation of the facts by Shyam Sunder, who led 200 scientists to examine the evidence from the 9/11 attacks to produce a three-year, $ 16 million investigation into the collapse of world trade. Center of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. When Sunder is done and says, “Hope that answers your question,” Lee laughs and responds, “Well, not really.” Interspersed in this part of the film, Gage and members of his group promote lies that buildings could only have been destroyed by controlled demolition, citing flawed premises regarding “jet fuel” and “evidence of” explosions, “and repeating the claim that” Building 7 is the smoking gun of September 11. Ultimately, Lee calls for a new Congressional investigation into how the towers collapsed. “I hope that maybe the legacy of this documentary is that Congress is having a hearing, a Congressional hearing on 9/11, ”he told The Times.
You might be wondering why it is important for Spike Lee to raise questions about the official 9/11 story, especially since most of the “evidence” he presents is perhaps the best known at this point. because of the teasing of teenagers from the mid -2010s.
But Lee and HBO give Gage and his conspiracy theories the biggest and most popular platform they’ve ever had, directing their viewers directly to a swamp of heinous and dangerous ideas: like other theorists. conspiracy, Gage does not stick to 9/11 alone. , and if Lee’s viewers follow Gage down the rabbit hole, they probably won’t either.
Gage, for example, considers himself an expert on the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, he has stated on various podcasts that COVID-19 is a ‘deep state’ ‘hoax’ and ‘false flag event’ that has been perpetrated by an ‘increasingly restrictive and tyrannical government that locked us in our own homes, and isolated us from each other with distances and masks, and poisoned us with vaccines that will kill us. Gage also claimed that “Bill Gates is a eugenicist” trying to “reduce the population” by doing “a good job with vaccines” because “his father was the head of the whole legal deal for Planned Parenthood.” Again, once people dip a toe into the swamp of conspiracy theories fever, they are often sucked all the way, with all the horrific consequences for society and public health.
But besides being a potential gateway drug for his ideas on COVID-19, Gage’s theories of 9/11 are dangerous in themselves. His elaborate plot would implicate almost everyone in the country as culpable criminals or gullible “sheep”. Mainstream media entities, such as HBO and WarnerMedia, are particularly culprits, which Gage says are implicated in the crime. Indeed, man tends to see anyone who disagrees with him about 9/11 as a likely criminal; when I interviewed him in 2011, he called for a “federal grand jury investigation” into Sunder himself.
When you listen closely to Gage and witness his events, other suspected criminals begin to emerge. Among them: the Jews. When I visited one of his group’s gatherings in 2012, he offered an open platform for attendees claiming “that our government and the government of Israel, the Israeli Mossad, could be responsible for the demolition of the Twin Towers.” . In a recent interview, Gage endorsed the ideas of a podcast host who said Israel’s use of COVID-19 passports means it “owns the database that collects all of our phone calls” and that “Israel benefited” from September 11 and “it’s pretty obvious who the real perpetrators were. In response to the podcast host essentially suggesting the Jews did it, Gage replied, “It’s not too hard to figure out. You just have to listen to really, really good people – your station, which I have heard many times, your TV or video presentations are amazing. The 9/11 truth movement is awash with this kind of anti-Semitism, and Gage apparently never disputes it.
Lee now points his viewers directly into the arms of Gage, whose most popular platform previously was the 9/11 conspiracy film. Small change, and which has never had the type of audience that HBO offers. That’s a shame; from what I saw, the rest of the documentary was poignant and quite good, touching on real systemic failures such as problems preventing 9/11 first responders from receiving the health care they need and even a authentic plot in which former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo covered nursing home deaths from COVID-19. Indeed, Lee himself recognizes the danger of conspiracy theories. about COVID-19 in episode 1 of the series, in a series of conversations with CNN national correspondent Athena Jones and epidemiologist Jacqueline Moline:
Jones: This is very concerning, because it’s just cooked, this idea that some people don’t think this virus is a real thing. They think it’s a hoax. They think it’s like the flu or a bad cold.
Lee: How? ‘Or’ What they think this?
Jones: They think this because they listen to the wrong people.
Moline: There are people who think the world is flat.
I asked representatives from HBO and WarnerMedia what they and Lee thought of Gage’s other ideas on 9/11 and COVID-19, why those ideas weren’t included in the film, and whether promoting the work of Gage could lead his viewers to “listen to the wrong people” on both disasters. As of Tuesday afternoon, they still hadn’t responded.
There is still time, however, before Episode 4 airs, for Lee to do the right thing by deleting the 30 minute section of the film, which is totally unnecessary for the true and important story that he does. told in the remainder of the episode – about the courage and health struggles of 9/11 first responders, so their audience won’t be bamboozled by 9/11 lies.
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