It’s a bit shocking to me when I see people online putting 9/11 conspiracies in the same box as “MAGA” conspiracies (for lack of a better term, sorry).
For reference, I was 24 in 2001 living in central NJ. Even without social media or fake news websites or what cable news has become today, I have vivid memories of people having the firm belief that there was something up with the attack on 9/11. Was this just my social circle?
Jet fuel melting steel beams was one of the more fringe and unfounded (and quickly debunked) ideas but the rest of everything on that day was questionable. Tower seven falling, the missing plane debris at the pentagon and central PA, the military / president not responding to known threats, if a person with limited flight time could hit a tower, the fact that Bush attacked a country that had nothing to do with the event, and so much more are still, I thought, reasonable questions - especially when looked at together.
This is not about rehashing each theory. Or maybe it is? Have I missed that everything has been debunked?
I mean, I still believe 9/11 was an inside job or at least high level officials, including Bush, were aware it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. I thought this was still a common opinion of most or many Americans over the age of forty.
I still do, at least when it comes to the pentagon. There was also evidence of high frequency trading that occurred right before the attack.
I was 31 when the attacks happened.
While I do think that there was an awareness that an attack was possible, or even in the works. I sincerely doubt that anyone truly thought that 3 airplanes were going to be flown into buildings on that day and one crash in a PA field. The US had the attitude that we were isolated and well defended enough that such attacks were unthinkable. The complete one sidedness of Gulf War 1 really gave the US an out of proportion notion of being invulnerable. Even though the WTC was bombed 9 years prior, two years after the end of GW1.
Conspiracy denotes malicious intelligent intent. The reality is closer to stupidly complacent. Sometimes the two are hardly indistinguishable.
For the first few weeks, everybody wanted answers, and when people don’t get answers, we make them up.
I remember hearing and seriously considering nearly all of the theories you mentioned, but as we started to get more answers, most people just forgot about, or stopped listening to the conspiracies.
Unless, of course, you were DEDICATED to one of the conspiracies, and surrounded yourself with like minded people who dismissed any evidence that went against their beliefs. Much like MAGA when you mention all the evidence that Trump lost the last election, or committed over 34 felonies.
most people just forgot about, or stopped listening to the conspiracies.
This is what I think happened. People just stopped caring and defaulted back to “trusting the government” or were distracted by other things like the war in Afghanistan and the 2008 financial crisis.
In my mind, these theories were still prevalent for at least a few years after the attacks. And now, 20 years later, people forgot so much that they’ve accepted that only weirdo internet trolls believe in these fringe theories.
In hindsight, there were signs that could have prevented or lessened the damage of 9-11, had we taken them seriously, but you never know which leads need to be seriously investigated, and which are baseless.
Bush didn’t do 9-11. In an alternate timeline, it could have been prevented, but the systemic failures that allowed it to happen were more than we can put on any person or dept.
I still believe 9/11 was an inside job or at least high level officials, including Bush, were aware it was going to happen
Crazy talk. This was absolutely not a widely held opinion.
From my understanding it’s pretty widely known that most intelligence agencies though something could happen but not the specifics, and chose not to act on that information or communicate with one another.
The exact reasons aren’t known obviously. My gut tells me incompetence/apathy from government agencies. That’s not a very cinematic or compelling answer, though, and I think a lot of people look for more interesting narratives.
Whenever a big tragedy like 9/11 happens, people tend to try and look for the Chekhov’s gun that shows a deeper meaning or dramatic orchestration. That’s just not real life though.
“It’s in the Bible”, is what my boss at one time believed.
I started there a few years after the events and wondered why this guy kept a 9/12 newspaper front page on display. I thought it was in poor taste but so be it. Eventually the topic came up and he started spitting out bible quotes to explain it all clear as day. He also laughed at dinosaurs!
Sadly, enough of the others there were bible toters too and did not disagree. I moved on before the Trump and covid fun began but I’m sure it was nuts.
That office changed me to my core. Seeing people living so deep in their own fantasy world that they would apply those fantasies to real world events was truly depressing.
These were professional engineers. Not kooks. My time there made me lose any respect for religion. Fanatics and conspiracy theorists are all attention seeking story tellers in need of gullible listeners.
A lot of people made fun of those theories and sarcastically pretended to believe in them. Maybe that’s what you remember. Our human memories are not very reliable.
The only conspiracy that I or people I know may have given credence to is the idea that people high up in the House of Saud knew about, condoned and/or funded the attacks.
And there’s actual evidence that it’s not just a theory.
not just a theory
You mean like gravity?
I have vivid memories of people having the firm belief that there was something up with the attack on 9/11. Was this just my social circle?
“Conspiracy” covers a lot of area.
There’s people that think explosives were planted because “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” and they’ve always been ridiculed.
There are people that look at facts that the different intelligence agencies had all the information to put it together, but due to Dick Cheney requiring each agency only report to him, he was the only one that saw every piece of the puzzle and would have known enough to stop it. GW didn’t even know enough, because Cheney was the only one talking directly to GW.
So some people have always thought Cheney (whether on his own or not) allowed 9/11 to happen to justify the wars he started under Regean and HW to continue indefinitely.
There’s people who claim Israel funded and caused it, when there isn’t really any evidence.
There’s people who claim Israeli spies were caught celebrating… But that was undocumented immigrants celebrating they got the day off work.
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/who-were-the-dancing-israelis-of-9-11-c7f9b960
That’s how conspiracy theories spread.
They took a kernal.of truth and build on it till it becomes something completely out of control.
Immediately after 9/11 everyone had questions and that’s 100% normal, I think that’s what you’re remembering.
It’s not the same as insisiting an unfounded conspiracy theory was true based on spurious evidence.
Thank you for the most thoughtful and direct answer.
No, this was just your social circle. I know literally zero people who ever bought into any of that crap
Seriously, it was pretty fringe to be openly truther back then.
It wasn’t till Obama that we started getting all these batshit insane morons on parade.
Birtherism really pushed it, but basically losing 2008 made the right desperate, they were willing to recruit from anybody, anywhere, right when social media started its upswing.
I think we can say most of our modern conspiracitardacy was fairly quiet till the social media wave.
That is not what I recall. What I do recall was both republicans and democrats having serious concerns that the government knew something we didn’t and that we were attacking a country for the president’s personal vendetta. This is based on my personal interactions with friends, family, and coworkers, as well as national and local news and newspapers. Granted, I’m from central NJ so perhaps we on higher alert and more “purple” than the rest of the country.
batshit insane morons
Was it birtherism or just Sarah Palin?
I think we can say most of our modern conspiracitardacy was fairly quiet till the social media wave.
I fully agree that social media has made things worse in this, and almost every, regard. Though, I’m trying to understand the mindset of Americans in 2001, not today, not post 2008.
The conspiracy around 9/11 was that the government knew more than they were telling us. That perhaps they were well aware of the event, possibly took part in it, and/or used it to manipulate public sentiment for invading Iraq for no other good reason or perhaps (ok, this I admit is crazy) setting up a new world order where we give up our rights for the sake of “national defense”. There would be no Wikileaks if there was no 9/11.
I admit this are a bit fringe-sounding but we were all aware of this back then. Didn’t most people believe there was some plausibility in these theories?
Don’t most people today believe the government knows more about 9/11 than they’ve told us?
we were attacking a country for the president’s personal vendetta
This had nothing to do with 9/11. Invading Iraq was much later. You’re conflating the two.
“Bush did 9/11” is crazy talk. “Bush invaded Iraq because he wanted to get back at Saddam Hussein and make money for Halliburton” is not.
If it’s your understanding that Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2002 “had nothing to do with 9/11”, you are grossly mistaken.
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ243/PLAW-107publ243.pdf
My brother in christ, I’m not talking about the pretext the government used to attack Iraq. I’m talking about the fact that the two things had nothing to do with each other.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The fact that the government used that as a pretext doesn’t magically link the two things.
I see.
Iraq - the country, had nothing to do with 9/11 - the attack.
Not, Iraq - the invasion of, was disassociated with 9/11 - the attack or national moment.I mean, 9/11 and Iraq are indeed magically linked, thanks to Bush. “Magically” is actually a great word to define the link between the two. Look - Cheney just pulled a Saddam out of a Bush!
Yeah it had something to do with it in that it was used as an excuse to invade iraq - not in that iraq had any legitimate ties to 9/11.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/9-11-and-iraq-the-making-of-a-tragedy/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-speech
I knew a dude who swore up and down the jets had missile launchers on the front they fired just before impact.
I remember seeing that gif pretty much right after the attacks. I don’t know of it was fake or not but it did show the plane launch something into the building about a second before it hit.
I even remember the site I saw it on.
Im so glad archive.org exists. People keep trying to change history when you can just go to archive.org and see all the real actions people took those days.
Well, this one is real
Bush attacked a country that had nothing to do with the event
Well, yeah. That’s not really in the same category or ever really disputed
So your evidence that it was only spoken about in my social circle is that your social circle didn’t talk about it?
No, that’s my evidence that it wasn’t ubiquitous and typical.
Maybe not just your social circle, but social-circle-specific.
The only thing I remember people being remotely close to believing was that Bush was so incompetent that he allowed a terrorist attack to happen.
It’s not really a theory that Bush was an incompetent fuckwit, but it’s highly debatable if they knew enough to stop it.
highly debatable if they knew enough to stop it.
Well, the theory that was floated at the time was that they didn’t want to stop it. The very fringe suggested it was entirely planned by the US. They (Bush et al) knew this would provoke our military and provide an excuse to attack the Middle East. To finish was Bush senior didn’t.
Again, I don’t really want to get down a rabbit hole of validating theories. I want to know if others recall this being a national conversation or if it was just the hundreds of people I knew and news outlets I was watching.
In my mind, it’s not that the intelligence community had indisputable evidence that said “these people are going to hijack these plans at this time and simultaneously crash them into these buildings”…but moreso “there is chatter about an upcoming attack involving hijacked planes” but they didn’t have enough to act on it.
Now…with that part said, I 100% fully agree that this attack was used as a blank-check excuse to invade the Middle East carte clanche.
True. What ultimate came out of the event was the revelation that our intelligence communities were siloed from each other. This (embarrassing) point of failure may aid in explaining some of the questions in regard to preparedness.
I definitely remember some people screeing about Bush and Cheney wanting it, but IIRC, everyone was treating it like suspicion at most.
The Epstein conspiracy theory was accepted FAR more readily, but then that’s basically guaranteed to be true to some degree, even if it was truly just the jailors being incompetent fuckwits that wanted to take justice in to their own hands.
I certainly heard a lot of conspiracy theories at the time, but I didn’t know anyone who believed them. But I don’t and didn’t really hang out with the type of people that believe stuff like that in general. My friends and family are generally empirical evidence people, logical thinkers rather than emotional.
I’d be curious to know how some of your friends and family responded to the shot taken at Trump’s ear.
I would assume reasonably and reservedly, rather than jumping the gun. It’s certainly how I responded. Not sure what you really mean to ask though.
If you mean about conspiracy theories, I can pretty much assure they waited to see what was actually the case rather than believe the first thing they heard.
not in my circles. Certainly taken advantage of big time though with bad laws.
The conspiracy is that the Saudi’s funded it and the families of 9/11 are still going after them so I guess it’s not a conspiracy. The stuff they found was pretty fucked up and deserves more investigation. Remember Bush protected Saudis and outed CIA agents probably to protect his obvious incompetence.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/11/us/9-11-families-saudi-arabia-lawsuit/index.html
so I guess it’s not a conspiracy.
It’s not a theory* it is a conspiracy.
As I mention above, the central power in SA needs us to keep other regional powers at check and the Wahhabi in power.
Even if government officials where involved on the attacks, that would be against the direct interests of the Saudi Crown.
In all cases, 9/11 was stated by the perpetrators to be used as an attempt to take the US out of SA (sacred land for Muslims) and every one had allegiances with either the Muslim Brotherhood (and through it Iran), Al Qaeda or, like in Bin Laden’s case, both.
This guy though fell from grace and started his campaign against the US during the Iraqi invasion, when the king and government decided that his plan of fighting with faith wasn’t as sensible as US tanks and planes.
In fact he tried to convince the Saudi scholars to issue a fatwa against the US deployment, but they preferred to keep their necks.
What I’m trying to say is, the SA government is a cruel, despotic and brutal regime but had little to no benefit from aiding in 9/11. Did they fuck up? I guess royally so, but I don’t see why would bite our hand.
Then again, I know nothing…
There are many people who like to fill in the gaps of things they don’t understand with conspiracy theories. It takes some degree of understanding of physics to understand why the buildings collapsed in the manner that they did, why hollow aluminium airliners accelerating to extreme speeds imposed so much damage to the buildings, and also why there is typically less aircraft wreckage to be found when especially high speed crashes are involved.
In your case, it’s probably just your social circle as none of my friends believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories.
