*No Trump did not say that 9/11 was a conspiracy. Though given his unbridled penchant for spinning baseless conspiracy theories it would not have been a shock if he had. However, twenty-five years after the September 11 terror attack, there are a lot of Americans who still don’t buy the official explanation that it was an Al Qaeda engineered terror attack, masterminded by America hating Osama Bin Laden. Various polls since that hideous day have consistently shown that anywhere from one-third to one-half of Americans think the attack was a put-up job.
They insist it was part of a well-conceived, well-planned, diabolical, staged act. And that the government knew about it beforehand or that it was part of a plot to impose martial law on the country.
That is the more commonplace conspiracy theory. Some are far more bizarre.
Many Americans don’t spout the 9/11 conspiracy stuff in a vacuum. There’s a far greater pattern to the conspiracy game.
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A 2021 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core examined far-right QAnon conspiracy theories. The poll found that 15% to 20% of Americans and about one-third of Republicans believe every wacko conspiracy theory about the government. That figure has been consistent.
The main one is that it’s a controlled cabal of demonic elite Democrats who seek to robotize Americans behind a liberal, socialist, world government-dominated agenda. The popular term is that this is a Machiavellian “deep state” operation that is hard at work to attain the goal of total domination.
Much of the blame for this is dumped on the QAnon loons with an ample dose of nourishment from Trump and his boosters who fan their conspiracy theories about a presidential election supposedly being stolen. However, long before this bunch ever was hatched, there has always been a loud and pesky pack of professional conspiracy theorists who perennially see a sinister government hand behind any and every assassination, terrorist attack and even natural disasters.
As evidenced by polls through the years, the American woods swarm with groups that fervently believe that government, corporate or international Zionist groups busily hatch secret plots and concoct hidden plans to wreak havoc on their lives.
The Manchurian Candidate idea, popularized in books and countless movies and TV shows, has firmly implanted the notion that shadowy government groups routinely topple foreign governments, assassinate government leaders and brainwash operatives to do dirty deeds.
There are two other undeniable reasons that 9/11 conspiracy theories have so easily infected the popular imagination. Government agencies, such as the FBI, the CIA, and U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, with the connivance of presidents, have often played fast and loose with the law and the rules of democracy. They have spied on, harassed and jailed thousands of Americans, from Communists to anti-war activists.
The biggest, juiciest and most relentless target for government spymasters during the past decades has been African American political groups, from the moderate NAACP to the radical Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam.
The widespread disbelief that a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone in the murder of President John F. Kennedy has not dissipated one iota since that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. The literature disputing the lone nut finding on the assassination could fill up a small library.
Conspiracy paranoia got what undoubtedly is its biggest boost with Trump’s White House election in 2016 and subsequent defeat in 2020. He stoked the conspiracy flames on everything from Obama’s alleged foreign birth to the Russians allegedly helping Hillary Clinton in 2016.
His persistent jewel in the crown conspiracy rant is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by a vast conspiracy stage-managed by the Democrats and the media to oust him. He repeats the lie every time a microphone is stuck in his face or at a rally of his still massive packs of true believers
The voluminous ironclad proof that there was no conspiracy to defeat Trump has not meant a thing to the millions who still say the election was riddled with fraud and Trump won. Much of this conspiracy paranoia was on horrific display in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Polls show that many Republicans and many others buy the Trump conspiracy theory.
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the conspiracy theorists continue to busily spin their well-worn conspiracy myths. They continue to fall on fertile ground in some quarters because of government officials’ long and penchant for covering up and flat-out lying to the public about their misdeeds, conduct and spying.
Is it any wonder then that the 9/11 conspiracy pap remain alive and well?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, The Garbaging of America (Middle Passage Press)
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