The Politics of 911 Truth

The politics of 911 keeps coming up in my posts. Two points keep getting made. One is that 911 Truth is fundamentally a cyber-phenomena outside reality.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152318

longfellow said:

But, for the most part, the hydra that is the 'truth movement' fails to deliver a coherent epistle cognizant of the facts so it's really not worth paying much attention to it. Did you ever note how '9/11 truth' disappears when you quit surfing the internet? That's because reality is anathema to fantasy.

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The other, for which I have no quote, is that 911 Truth is neither left nor right wing.

I disagree with both these points.

I belong to a lot of 911 Truth groups. While it's true that most are pretty dead, I have contacted several hundred members of various groups. 911 Truth may not be a very active part of their politics, anymore, but it fits in with a larger picture of government control.

While it's true that the pathetic 911 loosers we all have contact with are busy talking to themselves on the Internet, they are also busy creating an ideology that has a larger appeal. The whacko groups I'm involved with are abuzz with talk about thermite. I doubt most people in these groups actually believe it or care as much about it as they do about swine flu vaccine or health reform. They may ever reject it completely, but it contributes to the creation of an ideology.

For many years, the left has tried to craft a message that aspects of social life like class or gender transcend national or racial ideologies. The idea would be that if Klansmen could see that they were poor working-class just like the blacks they attack, they would unity. As we all know, the left has not been successful.

This wierd whacky idea that government is made up of people who are difefrent from you and me has been a much more significant unifier of left and right. 911 Truth is the official position of the Canadian Action Party whose current leader was the wife of one of the Canada's leading left-wing figures. It's also the position of some number of supporters of Ron Paul and, if we believe Chomsky, some large part of the left.

It's true that 911 Truth is non-partisan, but that's only because currrent interpretations of left and right don't fit into this emerging synthesis of politics against government.

Maybe JihadJane can elaborate. She's the one who said this gem:

JihadJane said:

In my opinion political literacy is far more important to understanding 911 than scientific literacy.

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What she meant by it, I have no idea. I'm not expecting her to explain herself any time soon.

At least she's honest. I wonder if she feels that way about cancer therapy?

scott.in.taiwan said:

For many years, the left has tried to craft a message that aspects of social life like class or gender transcend national or racial ideologies. The idea would be that if Klansmen could see that they were poor working-class just like the blacks they attack, they would unity. As we all know, the left has not been successful.

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I disagree, The presence of the left has promoted Liberal Democracy and it is just about stopping the ultimate defeat of Liberal Democracy by Capitalism. The success of the Left was and is the Liberal Democracy we have enjoyed.

I can't think of a single concession that the ruling class has made that has not been given up without a fight.

That is more a topic for the Politics forum I think but, I couldn't let that statement go unanswered.

releaseeabode said:

I disagree, The presence of the left has promoted Liberal Democracy and it is just about stopping the ultimate defeat of Liberal Democracy by Capitalism. The success of the Left was and is the Liberal Democracy we have enjoyed.

I can't think of a single concession that the ruling class has made that has not been given up without a fight.

That is more a topic for the Politics forum I think but, I couldn't let that statement go unanswered.

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9/11 truth has nothing to do with truth, and everything to do with world view, politics, and ideology. Your choice of words (ruling class) says more about this than any dissertation by any scholar. You'll have to forgive me if I remind you that not all rational, compassionate, thinking, world-aware people happen to share your world view.

releaseeabode said:

I disagree, The presence of the left has promoted Liberal Democracy and it is just about stopping the ultimate defeat of Liberal Democracy by Capitalism. The success of the Left was and is the Liberal Democracy we have enjoyed.

I can't think of a single concession that the ruling class has made that has not been given up without a fight.

That is more a topic for the Politics forum I think but, I couldn't let that statement go unanswered.

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This is a particularly leftist interpretation of the left. Milton Friedman and others would argue that our ability to enjoy Liberal Democracy has come from the wealth and power that market capitalism has generated. I think this is crap, though. Nor is it partticularly relevant to my point.

My point is that not about what the left did but what the recent discourse of the left has been. There is no doubt that part of this discourse, beginning even with Karl Marx, is that large and diverge segments of society share interests. I could endless cite left-wing scholars and political leaders on this.

This discourse has not been actualized. Increasingly, its actualization seems impossible. It no longer seems impossible, though, that a right-wing discourse of shared class interest could be successful.

How's that?

The older "Truthers" tend to be from the far left of the political spectrum; they're the remnants of the paranoid left that coalesced around the JFK/RFK/MLK conspiracy theories. But it's important to stress far left; we're not talking liberal or left-liberal here. Jeff St. Claire, the publisher of CounterPunch, estimated that about half of his readers were 9-11 Truthers; CounterPunch is mostly for old Communist Party members.

The younger "Truthers" are what I would classify as "survivalist" or extreme libertarian; hence their support for Ron Paul and Alex Jones.

I'll say it again. The "Truth" movement began as a far left wing hit specifically against GWB. LIHOP and MIHOP both point to this. It was then picked up by the far right (the black helicopter over my house crowd) because they like to have validation for their paranoias. The far left then started to drop it once their guys started to take control in 2007 (House and Senate) and almost completely dropped it once Obama came into office.

What's left are the extreme left and the extreme right. Both are anarchists at heart but for different reasons.

Sam.I.Am said:

What's left are the extreme left and the extreme right. Both are anarchists at heart but for different reasons.

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Yup. Extremism, no matter which ideological aisle it's on, does indeed not ROCK.

scott.in.taiwan said:

This is a particularly leftist interpretation of the left. Milton Friedman and others would argue that our ability to enjoy Liberal Democracy has come from the wealth and power that market capitalism has generated. I think this is crap, though. Nor is it particularly relevant to my point.

My point is that not about what the left did but what the recent discourse of the left has been. There is no doubt that part of this discourse, beginning even with Karl Marx, is that large and diverge segments of society share interests. I could endless cite left-wing scholars and political leaders on this.

This discourse has not been actualized. Increasingly, its actualization seems impossible. It no longer seems impossible, though, that a right-wing discourse of shared class interest could be successful.

How's that?

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I think we are reading off the same page, I agree that the unity of the Working Class has not been achieved. I was only wanting to make clear that because, the Left has yet to find a way to unite the working class either within the Capitalist system or by overthrowing it, it does not mean that it has failed politically. Those that called victory over Socialism at the end of the Cold War were foolish. There is a post agrarian proletariat the size of which the world has never seen being created in China and India.

I don't think that "911 Truth" was ever seriously considered as a force capable of uniting the left but, I do take your point that it fits neatly into the box labelled "Don't trust the Government".

For me, a right wing discourse of shared class interest is already being successful, it is called Capitalism and it is globally uniting the ruling classes more effectively than the Comintern ever could with the Working Classes.

releaseeabode said:

There is a post agrarian proletariat the size of which the world has never seen being created in China and India.

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I am not a socialist. I live with that "post agrarian proletariat" and they are not at all the way that Western leftist have described them. There's no left-wing revolution in China and there never has been.

releaseeabode said:

I don't think that "911 Truth" was ever seriously considered as a force capable of uniting the left but, I do take your point that it fits neatly into the box labelled "Don't trust the Government".

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This is not what I meant to say. What I meant is that 911 is part of a belief system that has a much more unifying potential - at least among white American-type folks - than the idea that access to financial or social capital does. It has wider appeal and is more attractively presented to undecided citizens. Whether anyone believes it or not is not important as it contributes to a more holistic belief system.

releaseeabode said:

For me, a right wing discourse of shared class interest is already being successful, it is called Capitalism and it is globally uniting the ruling classes more effectively than the Comintern ever could with the Working Classes.

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I am not a socialist. For the people I live with, money means democracy and freedom. Despite what the anti-trade demonstrators will tell you, people here want development and global trade. Where I am, what we can get comes from you guys. My wife grew up in a house without electricity. Global trade was a drag for her parents, but there's no one in my world that doesn't want the WTO. A little off topic though.