9/11

    As September 11, 2021 approached, there were many articles and programs about September 11, 2001. I watched none of the programs since I remember too well what I saw on that earlier date.  You likely have had enough of the 9/11 commemorations, so I will turn to a 9/11-related event that happened ten years ago in 2011 in London, Ontario.

   Perhaps I was prompted by the title of an article (cited below) which indicates that "False, Toxic Sept. 1l Conspiracy Theories Are Still Widespread Today", which caused me to wonder if that was true. If you are innocent of such matters, you should know that what you saw on 9/11 was not necessarily what was seen by many others. Or, that what was seen, has been explained in ways of which you may be unaware. There are those who believe, for example, that a plane did not hit the Pentagon and that the planes did not cause the destruction of the buildings in New York. Some of them are likely to live in London, Ontario. 

Conspiratorial Thinking Close By

   In early March of 2011 the Western News announced that "9/11 Truther Brings Message to Campus." Here is the description of the event:
“Niels Harrit, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, will offer a critique of the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Centres on Sept. 11, 2001, focusing on Building 7. Harrit published an article in 2009 about the discovery of nano-thermite, an incendiary and explosive, in the WTC dust. The free lecture takes place 7 p.m. today, March 3 in Social Science Centre, Room 2050. The lecture will be moderated by Dr. Paul McArthur, Western adjunct professor of family medicine.”

   I was not in London at the time and was sorry to have missed the talk, and I was surprised when I returned not to find any mention of it.  I was surprised because, even in 2011, universities were not generally welcoming places, and many speakers with, shall we say "eccentric" views, were being deplatformed. Apparently the talk was well-attended and no one objected. I, by the way, think it is a fine thing when notorious thinkers and obnoxious speakers are allowed on campus. 

   As the summary above implies, the collapse of the buildings was not caused by the airplanes. This is the view of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and apparently that view is still held in 2021. I am not sure what the attendees of the London talk believe now. It would be interesting to know. 

  A careful reader will have noticed that I said the talk was "well-attended", even though I was not there and found no accounts of the lecture. I have now found one, however, and it is provided by the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Back in 2011, the lecture at Western was one of several given on Canadian campuses and a full report is found in this post: "Nanothermite Co-Discoverer Adds Canada to Lecture Tour," Mike Bondi, PEng.  Here is the complete account about the event at Western.

At the University of Western Ontario in London, a city with a population of approximately 350,000 located about two hours west of Toronto, attendance for Professor Harrit’s talk was somewhere between 60 and 75 people, according to Dr. Sharon Baker, a palliative care physician and long-time London-area peace activist. Dr. Baker, who brought along her two teenage sons and one of their friends, and “hadn’t really heard of [WTC] Building 7,” was very affected by the presentation and felt compelled to do something.

The London event was organized by Dr. Paul McArthur, an adjunct professor of family medicine at UWO, and a practicing physician in Walkerton, Ontario. Dr. McArthur led the introductions, and before introducing Dr. Harrit, I presented a trailer for a documentary that is currently in production called “9/11 in the Academic Community” which is being directed and produced by Adnan Zuberi. In early production, the documentary will be narrated by well-known actor and 9/11 activist Ed Asner, and will feature a number of distinguished academics in Canada and the United States. The film will explore the difficulties faced by professors and students in broaching the subject of 9/11 within their respective academic circles. This documentary was inspired by a class in 2008 at the University of Lethbridge by Professor Anthony Hall that involved many academics in Ontario and discussed important issues surrounding the academy’s response to 9/11. Consisting of three parts – the nature and the dimensions of the taboo of expressing critical perspectives of the events of 9/11 in academia, scholarly scrutiny and the official reports, and ways activists might overcome barriers in academic institutions to examining this subject – the film will explore these issues through the experiences of university students, professors and presidents.

Professor A.K. (Kee) Dewdney remarked “Harrit gives a very methodical lecture, building his case like a lawyer and closing off the exits for deniers one by one. I had never heard such a damning discussion of the anomalies at the WTC and was especially pleased to think of the explanation of the very long time that molten material resided at the bottom of the ‘bathtub’ for weeks.” A graduate student who was reporting on the event and interviewed Dr. Harrit mentioned that in the past, she had experienced that “teachers aware of students who were promoting dangerous alternative theories of 9/11 were obliged to ‘report’ them.”

A theme that ran throughout the tour is the notion that “9/11 is key.” Of Harrit and Grumme, Dr. McArthur remarked that “we are all humbled and inspired by the pair of you, a real team – bringing your own talents to the cause of truth and justice, even beyond the 9/11 issue (though it is KEY).” It was interesting to note that during Dr. Harrit’s tour of Canada, the nanothermite paper he authored with eight other researchers was not available on the Internet for a period of at least a few days. Whether this was mere coincidence or not, one can only speculate.

   Careful readers from the London area will have recognized the name of one prominent London family in the account above.  Professor A.K. (Kee) Dewdney was in attendance and he was (and perhaps still is) an active 9/11 denier. He used to live around the corner from us here in "Old South" and may still be close by. I would have been afraid to approach him in any case, since he was a professor and my knowledge of nanothermite is slim. 

   I first learned of Professor Dewdney in the book: Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.  I learned more from Among the Truthers, where this is found on p. 89: 

   "Of all the 9/11 conspiracy theories I have encountered, perhaps the most elaborate is that of Alexander Keewatin Dewdney, a retired Canadian mathematician, who believes there were no Arab hijackers on September 11, 2001: The passengers of the four planes were killed using sarin gas, and the planes were flown into their targets by government-programmed computers.

   Among the many inconvenient facts casting doubts on Dewdney's thesis are the various telephone calls from passengers on the hijacked 9/11 aircraft to their loved ones. And so, Dewdney has made it his life's work to prove that the people who originated these calls actually were actors and actresses pretending to be hijacked victims. Dewdney has even gone up in rented aircraft with a bag full of cell phones so that he can prove to the world that the alleged phone calls never took place."

   Although the summary provided by the Architects & Engineers suggests that professors and students can face some difficulties when broaching the subject of 9/11 within their respective academic circles, they apparently didn't face any when they visited campuses across Canada. I find that odd, given how ''touchy" those on campus are, and were even then. If the buildings were destroyed from within, then who did it? Some of us think the buildings were destroyed by terrorists and airplanes. Others, twenty years after the event, are still arguing about whether the Jews or Bush and the neocons, brought down the buildings and whether those in the U.S. government knew about what was going to happen or made it happen. I fear that the answers are whatever you want them to be and depend upon which channel you watch or what you choose to read on social media.

Sources: 
   If you are not a "Truther" and do not think 9/11 a "False Flag" operation, these resources will be of interest.

"9//11 Conspiracy Theories" Wikipedia.
   The article is thorough and well-arranged. If you need more:

"How 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Fueled the War on Reality: Twenty Years After Osama bin Laden Terrorized the United States, Evidentiary Thinking is Under Attack From the Inside."
Opinion by Kate Woodsome and David Byler, Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2021
Discusses a film by Evan Laine and Raju Parakkal. 
"When terrorists flew two jetliners into the World Trade Center on a clear blue morning 20 years ago — and a third plane into the Pentagon — Americans’ belief that they were invulnerable to attack was shattered. That belief, of course, was false. The War of 1812. Pearl Harbor. We’d been attacked before. But not while we had such a modern, well-funded military and intelligence networks. The system failed us — a reality too stressful for many Americans to bear. Evan Laine, a former trial lawyer-turned-academic whose home city — New York — was attacked, believes that people carrying the stress had two options. They could accept that the system failed us, or change the narrative. He eventually paired up with political economist Raju Parakkal to study what motivated people to change the narrative, i.e., believe in conspiracy theories blaming George W. Bush for 9/11 instead of the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks....In this short film, Laine and Parakkal reflect on why people are inclined to adopt a narrative unsupported by evidence. Their explanation draws a chilling line between 9/11 “trutherism” and the “Big Lie” of 2020."

"False, Toxic Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theories are Still Widespread Today," David Byler and Kate Woodsome, Washington Post, September 10, 2021. 
"The facts of Sept. 11, 2001, are uncontested: Terrorists hijacked four jetliners, flew two into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, while passengers on the fourth plane helped crash it in Pennsylvania.
After the attacks, conspiracy theories spread quickly. By the middle of George W. Bush’s presidency, a third of the public either believed that the U.S. government assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them.
Today, 9/11 conspiracy theories remain widespread: 1 in 6 Americans think Bush administration officials knew about the attacks and intentionally let them happen so they could wage war in the Middle East. Others go further, arguing that the government planned and executed the attacks.
These groundless theories — commonly known as “Trutherism” — raise important questions. How does a conspiracy theory take hold? And why, 20 years after the attack, does it endure?

"How the 9/11 Attacks Helped Shape the Modern Misinformation, Conspiracy Theory Industry," PolitFact. From the Poynter Institute.  Here is the synopsis they provide:
IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT
*The sudden terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to defy explanation and occurred just as the internet started to boom. That combination spawned various conspiracy theories and made them accessible in new ways.
*The attacks also fueled distrust in government and fears of real and perceived enemies. Experts said the feeling of lost trust and security likely made some Americans more susceptible to conspiracy theories about 9/11 and other topics.
*One key accelerator of the 9/11 truth movement was an amateur documentary released online in 2005, which created a template for future videos, such as “Plandemic.”

"Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11," by Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty.
From the Pew Research Center. 
"The enduring power of the Sept. 11 attacks is clear: An overwhelming share of Americans who are old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Yet an ever-growing number of Americans have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or not yet born."

"Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories: With the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaching, we recommend sources for better understanding 9/11 and its aftermath. This week: seven resources that debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories." Blog Post by James M. Lindsay and Anna Shortridge, September 1, 2021. From the Council on Foreign Relations. 

"9/11 Conspiracy Theories Debunked: 20 Years Later, Engineering Experts Explain How the Twin Towers Collapsed,"  .September 8, 2021.From: The Conversation: (Academic rigour, journalistic flair.). 

"How a Viral Video Bent Reality: The Opening Moments of "Loose Change;" A Conspiracy Film Energized the "9/11 Truther" Movement. It Also Supplied the Template for the Current Age of Disinformation." New York Times, Sept. 12, 2021. 
But millions of Americans were seduced. After watching it, they disappeared down rabbit holes and emerged days or weeks later as, if not full-fledged 9/11 truthers, at least passionate skeptics. They had opinions about obscure topics like nano-thermites and controlled demolition, and they could recite the melting temperatures of various construction materials. Some believed the government was actively involved; others merely thought Bush administration officials knew about the attacks in advance and allowed them to happen.
Today, the Sept. 11 truther movement is often mocked or reduced to a sad historical footnote. It’s easy to forget how successful it was. More than 100 million people watched “Loose Change,” by its director’s estimate, making it one of the most popular independent documentaries of all time. And while conspiracy theory videos now routinely go viral, “Loose Change” was an early example of the internet’s ability to accelerate their spread.
What I found, in short, was that 16 years after its release, “Loose Change” is still bizarrely relevant. Its DNA is all over the internet — from TikTok videos about child sex trafficking to Facebook threads about Covid-19 miracle cures — and many of its false claims still get a surprising amount of airtime. (Just last month, the director Spike Lee drew criticism for indulging Sept. 11 conspiracy theories in a new HBO documentary series.) The film’s message that people could discover the truth about the attacks for themselves also became a core tactic for groups like QAnon and the anti-vaccine crowd, which urge their followers to ignore the experts and “do their own research” online.

If you now wish to read an entire book on the subject, see Jonathan Kay's, Among the Truthers: A Journey through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground.

Post Script:

   Those who witnessed the event will soon be gone and, as we have seen, the testimony of the witnesses varies. Currently, many distrust the government, even more the media and somewhere on social media one can find exactly what it is one wants to believe. Besides, we are now not only entitled to our own opinions, but as well to our own facts. One only hopes that things will have changed considerably before the historians arrive.

The Bonus:
   At the risk of leading some of you to the dark side, I will provide here a link to a video of the charismatic and convincing Professor Harrit from the website TRUTH COMES TO LIGHT: "World War III Started 20 Years Ago:" The Psychological War on Humanity - From 9/11 to Covid - 19."