So Who’s Behind All These Conspiracy Theories?

My 9/11 blog post Five Years After was re-posted on LRC this weekend. The new version is substantially identical to the old one, except that it includes this additional paragraph:

The fifth anniversary was marked by commemorations amounting to an apotheosis of the American State, with endless images of waving flags, and endless posturing. The 9/11 attacks were repeatedly referred to as “the worst terrorist attack in history” (conveniently forgetting Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden …). The president spoke earnestly about children who “still long for the daddies who will never cradle them in their arms” (as though having one’s father killed was something only suffered, never caused, by Americans) and about “fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations” (as though ending lives abroad and destroying freedom here were the natural way to do this). “America did not ask for this war,” he proclaimed innocently, as though the terrorists’ actions were something other than a response to, and in large part a mirror image of, U.S. foreign policy in the years prior to 9/11.

I’ve received surprisingly little hate mail over this LRC post; but many readers have written (I’ve been away from email all weekend and so am just seeing their responses now) to ask me why I seem to accept the official governmental version of what happened, i.e., why I make no reference to the various 9/11 conspiracy theories. CONSPIRATORS!The simple answer is that while I’ve read and watched a number of presentations defending such theories, I’m simply not technically competent to evaluate them. When two purported scientific experts disagree as to whether, for example, a jet fuel fire could be hot enough to melt steel in the manner that is supposed to have occurred, I don’t see that I, who know nothing about jet fuel fires or the melting point of steel, am in any position to decide between them. (Nor, I suspect, are most of the people on either side of the controversy.) 

I accept the official story provisionally, as supported by the preponderance of the evidence I understand, but with no especial conviction. I’ve studied a few conspiracy theories closely enough to form a cautious opinion – for example, I think the official story on the Holocaust is pretty much correct, and that the official story on the JFK assassination is very likely wrong (though I have no one particular alternative theory I’m plumping for on that one) – but I don’t have the time or inclination to investigate every conspiracy theory closely enough to make an informed judgment, particularly if doing so involves mastering details of chemistry and structural engineering.

A word about conspiracy theories: I think there are two kinds of mistakes to make in regard to them.

One kind of mistake is to be overly dismissive of such theories. One often hears people say “oh, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories” – any conspiracy theories, apparently, as though “conspiracy” were a term without referents. But that’s pretty silly, for everybody is committed to recognising some conspiracy theories as true. For example, as conspiracy theorists rightly like to point out, the official story on 9/11 is as much a conspiracy theory as the dissident version; ditto for the Holocaust. The Manhattan Project, too, was a government conspiracy involving massive numbers of people, and yet kept successfully secret from the public in precisely the way that critics of conspiracy theories like to claim is impossible.

The opposite kind of mistake is to be too receptive to conspiracy theories. The core of this mistake is the assumption that the only alternative to conspiracy is coincidence – as when conspiracy theorists refer to their opponents as “coincidence theorists.” Thus when the number of suspicious correlations becomes too high to be plausibly labeled a coincidence, the conspiracy theorist infers deliberate coordination. But given the central role of invisible-hand explanations (both beneficent and maleficent ones – spontaneous order and spontaneous ordure) in social science, any approach to the explanation of historical events that limits itself to coincidence and conspiracy is pretty hard up for categories.

As I’ve written elsewhere:

Conspiracy theories should not necessarily be regarded as inherently suspect. After all, the greater the extent to which power is concentrated in a society, the easier it is to form an effective conspiracy (because the number of people that need to be involved to pull off a major change is smaller); so we should predict that more conspiracies will indeed occur in societies with centralized power. However, it is also true that incentive structures can coordinate human activities in ways that involve no conscious cooperation.
(“Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class,” pp. 331-2n.; in Social Philosophy & Policy 15. no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 303-349.)

In any case, as Brad Spangler recently pointed out, even if the official story on 9/11 is true – that is, even on the interpretation most favourable to those in power – the government is still largely to blame for the attacks. Even accepting its own official version, the government helped to provoke those attacks, was powerless to prevent them, and continues to provoke further attacks it would also be powerless to prevent – all the while using the whole cycle as a pretext for foreign wars and domestic oppression. The defendant may have committed crimes to which he hasn’t confessed; but those to which he has confessed are enough to hang him. 

6 Responses to So Who’s Behind All These Conspiracy Theories?

  1. Stephen Carville September 20, 2006 at 6:59 pm #

    I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering (Cal Poly 1978) and 13 years subsequent experience in Aerospace and Metallurgy. I am not an expert on structural building design but I beleive i know enough about metals and metallurgy to recognize some of the BS surrounding the collpase of the towers.

    The structural steel did not have to melt to bring down the towers. It only needed to reach the critical temperature where it effectively loses it’s load bearing ability. For the steel in the WTC this was about 1000F (540C). IIRC, even the 911-truth folks allow 800F to 1500F for the fires. Because ordinary office fires can reach this temperature even without kerosene as an accellerant, steel columns have to be insulated. In the case of the towers both abestos and another type of insulation (the name escapes me) were used and both were rated to provide four hours protection. However, this assumes the insulation was intact.

    Given the design of the building, the outer aluminum supports would have offered little resistance to the plane. It is reasonable to accept that there was sufficent energy in the intitial impact to blow away a significant amount of the insulation on inner columns allowing the steel to be directly affected by the fire. I don’t know of way to prove it (tho simulations show it happening that way) but, if that is what actually happened and the fire directly affected the steel, the amazing thing is the buildings stayed up as long as they did.

    The collapse of towers one and two were top to bottom. This is not typical of a controlled demolition as the 911-truth folks try to claim. A simplified version of blowing a tall building is: The building is rigged so the first set of charges cut support to the outer wall which then try to collapse inward. Then charges cut support at the base causing the core to try and topple but the inward falling walls constrain it. The result is the building collapses from the bottom up onto it’s own foot print. The towers all collapsed straight down but this the only similarity I see to commercial demolitions.

    The collapse of WTC-7 is often presented and being impossible. Since it was closer to a ground up collapse it does more closely resembles a controlled demolition. The usual argument is that the fire was not extensive enough to damage the structure enough to cause a collapse. However, if you look carefully you will notice that the 911-truth folks only show you images of the North and East side of the tower. Find an image of the South side and you will see at least 20 floors of the building were fully involved before the collapse. The fire was far more extensive than the 911-truth folks would like you to believe.

  2. Jeremy September 29, 2006 at 1:24 pm #

    Thanks for addressing this, Roderick. You’ve pretty much said exactly what I was trying to say in two of my essays on conspiracy theory (here and here). I keep trying to drive home to people that the logical stance for the citizen without security clearance or other supernatural access to information is to keep an open mind and not jump to any conclusions. The sad reality of our culture is the expectation that there are certain conclusions to which one is almost compelled to jump, and many who find this obscene rebel by jumping to the opposite conclusion.

    On a fundamental level though, there’s a certain healthiness to maintaining the outlook that we are an overmanaged and underempowered society. Given that and the level of secrecy in said management, it’s no wonder conspiracy rumors thrive. The key is to get people to think it all the way through instead of stopping at the dramatic details. I think we live in danger of conspiracies far too public and in our face to make hay about secret operations.

  3. john writter October 3, 2006 at 9:32 am #

    Fact:
    Who gave weapons to Saddam – CIA (Regan Era)
    Who created Taliban — CIA (to fight with Russia)
    Were people dying in Iraq before Bush wasted billions in war games (NO)
    Who got the most benefit out of WTC destruction — Bush, Halliburton, Dick Chenny, and Isreal
    Did Bush lie about the facts —- Yes
    Did Bush killed thousands of innocent people including his own troops — Yes

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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    […] For more on conspiracy theories, consult Roderick Long. […]

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    […] I first began blogging on the first anniversary of 9/11, and over the succeeding years I’ve blogged a fair bit about 9/11 – how it shows both the power and the impotence of the state; how it feeds the Higgs cycle of ratcheting intervention; how the pre-9/11 mindset is the only realistic one; how it illustrates Aristotle’s superiority to both Seneca and D. H. Lawrence; and how both the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their critics are confused. […]

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