A denunciation of Loose Changers
Jun. 10th, 2011 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyBecause it's been awhile since I've made this particular rant. You'll stop me if I repeat myself, right?
I am on several mailing lists that frequently clog my inbox with the same requests for endorsements, angry letters, forwarded articles, and demonstrations, talks, meetings, film screenings, and other events of interest to leftists. Most of these mailing lists started as Palestine solidarity listservs but somehow bred like rabbits on Viagra and expanded their topical range to be about anything vaguely left-leaning. The listserv rant is actually a separate rant; basically, these mailing lists are useless because I get the same forward from Al Jazeera ten times a day (protip: I have an app that brings Al Jazeera right to my Android! Like, the entire English language site. I don't need articles in my inbox too!) and the more frequently a subject line appears, the less I'm likely to actually open the e-mail. That goes double for the ones marked "URGENT."
But anyway.
I did open one of these e-mails today, since I knew it would piss me off. It was from Reel Activism, a well-named but apparently politically naïve film series at the Bloor St. United Church (that's the lefty church, for all you non-Hogtowners). Tonight's film is "Explosive Evidence," a film by, I shit you not, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The accompanying text was a spiel by a theologian named David Ray Griffin, and the introductory blurb mentioned an "important 9/11 conference to be held September 8th-11th in Toronto." Because, yeah. That's exactly what we need.
I believe that to the extent there is an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement in North America, the 9/11 Truthers need to be purged from it. They can be treated more gently at demonstrations than would, say, an infiltrating white supremacist group because they pose less physical danger, but they should not be allowed to march or appear on cameras with us. My intolerant stance comes as a direct result of Loose Changers hijacking legitimate political agendas with their fairy tales and making the rest of us look like moonbats. There are already plenty of people on the left who make the left look like moonbats; we do not need people who are not actually leftists to make us look more like moonbats.
While it's possible to believe a simple version of the conspiracy and a) be a leftist and b) not be an unmitigated moron, it's highly unlikely. The simple version is that highly placed people in the American government knew in advance that there would be a terrorist attack on September 11th and let it happen because they hate America, puppies, and rainbows. If you believe this, you're wrong, but given that there have been many government conspiracies that have turned out to be correct, I won't hold it against you.
The Truthers believe in more complicated conspiracy theories, though, which include things like controlled demolitions, false flag operations, Reichstag parallels, and so on. There is nothing particularly left-wing about their politics, other than that they generally are opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (you know, like that raging socialist Pat Buchanan). They're generally one-issue activists, but they show up at everyone else's rallies like a parasitic organism, mugging for the cameras and professing sympathy for causes that they know nothing about.
As I've said before, here are the things you have to believe in order to be a Truther:
1) The vast majority of engineers and architects are lying bastards.
2) Not only are they lying, they are lying about an event that directly caused the deaths of 3000 people and indirectly tens of thousands of more. So they are not just lying, they are actively evil.
3) A bunch of guys with commercially available video editing software and crackpot theories cobbled together from various internet sources, a large percentage of which were written by anti-Semites wearing tinfoil hats, are more trustworthy than Popular Mechanics.
4) Despite the existence of Wikileaks, and the difficulty of maintaining secrecy in an age of information overload, and the fact that the Bush administration is no longer in power, a cover-up is still possible and still effective.
5) The Bush administration was competent enough to pull something like that off and wasn't caught, except by Alex Jones.
You don't have to also believe that the Jews did 9/11, but it certainly helps. Here are some other things that Truthers seem to believe:
1) It actually matters. Assume that the Jews did 9/11, or Bush, or whatever. Assume that the truth gets out. How quickly do you think this will result in a withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan? If your answer is "with exactly the same haste as we are currently witnessing," you are correct.
2) 9/11 is the most important and awful thing to happen, ever. It's been over a decade. I realize America is entirely solipsistic and doesn't care about far more catastrophic tragedies in the rest of the world, but that doesn't really explain Canadian Truthers, of which there are apparently many.
3) Terrorist groups have no real reason to hate America. There is nothing about America's foreign policy that would make a bunch of people want to fly planes into buildings.
I get that demo marshals like big crowds, a substantial number of people on the left feel that Truther theories have a bit of credence, and progressives in general are a tolerant bunch that don't like to kick anyone out of meetings or silence anyone's voices but I'm pretty sure that there are others like me who don't come around to as many things because they're tired of demo detritus, marches that are off-message, and having their inboxes full of dogwhistle propaganda. The noise to signal ratio in the local activist scene is unacceptable.
Enough already.
I am on several mailing lists that frequently clog my inbox with the same requests for endorsements, angry letters, forwarded articles, and demonstrations, talks, meetings, film screenings, and other events of interest to leftists. Most of these mailing lists started as Palestine solidarity listservs but somehow bred like rabbits on Viagra and expanded their topical range to be about anything vaguely left-leaning. The listserv rant is actually a separate rant; basically, these mailing lists are useless because I get the same forward from Al Jazeera ten times a day (protip: I have an app that brings Al Jazeera right to my Android! Like, the entire English language site. I don't need articles in my inbox too!) and the more frequently a subject line appears, the less I'm likely to actually open the e-mail. That goes double for the ones marked "URGENT."
But anyway.
I did open one of these e-mails today, since I knew it would piss me off. It was from Reel Activism, a well-named but apparently politically naïve film series at the Bloor St. United Church (that's the lefty church, for all you non-Hogtowners). Tonight's film is "Explosive Evidence," a film by, I shit you not, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The accompanying text was a spiel by a theologian named David Ray Griffin, and the introductory blurb mentioned an "important 9/11 conference to be held September 8th-11th in Toronto." Because, yeah. That's exactly what we need.
I believe that to the extent there is an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement in North America, the 9/11 Truthers need to be purged from it. They can be treated more gently at demonstrations than would, say, an infiltrating white supremacist group because they pose less physical danger, but they should not be allowed to march or appear on cameras with us. My intolerant stance comes as a direct result of Loose Changers hijacking legitimate political agendas with their fairy tales and making the rest of us look like moonbats. There are already plenty of people on the left who make the left look like moonbats; we do not need people who are not actually leftists to make us look more like moonbats.
While it's possible to believe a simple version of the conspiracy and a) be a leftist and b) not be an unmitigated moron, it's highly unlikely. The simple version is that highly placed people in the American government knew in advance that there would be a terrorist attack on September 11th and let it happen because they hate America, puppies, and rainbows. If you believe this, you're wrong, but given that there have been many government conspiracies that have turned out to be correct, I won't hold it against you.
The Truthers believe in more complicated conspiracy theories, though, which include things like controlled demolitions, false flag operations, Reichstag parallels, and so on. There is nothing particularly left-wing about their politics, other than that they generally are opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (you know, like that raging socialist Pat Buchanan). They're generally one-issue activists, but they show up at everyone else's rallies like a parasitic organism, mugging for the cameras and professing sympathy for causes that they know nothing about.
As I've said before, here are the things you have to believe in order to be a Truther:
1) The vast majority of engineers and architects are lying bastards.
2) Not only are they lying, they are lying about an event that directly caused the deaths of 3000 people and indirectly tens of thousands of more. So they are not just lying, they are actively evil.
3) A bunch of guys with commercially available video editing software and crackpot theories cobbled together from various internet sources, a large percentage of which were written by anti-Semites wearing tinfoil hats, are more trustworthy than Popular Mechanics.
4) Despite the existence of Wikileaks, and the difficulty of maintaining secrecy in an age of information overload, and the fact that the Bush administration is no longer in power, a cover-up is still possible and still effective.
5) The Bush administration was competent enough to pull something like that off and wasn't caught, except by Alex Jones.
You don't have to also believe that the Jews did 9/11, but it certainly helps. Here are some other things that Truthers seem to believe:
1) It actually matters. Assume that the Jews did 9/11, or Bush, or whatever. Assume that the truth gets out. How quickly do you think this will result in a withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan? If your answer is "with exactly the same haste as we are currently witnessing," you are correct.
2) 9/11 is the most important and awful thing to happen, ever. It's been over a decade. I realize America is entirely solipsistic and doesn't care about far more catastrophic tragedies in the rest of the world, but that doesn't really explain Canadian Truthers, of which there are apparently many.
3) Terrorist groups have no real reason to hate America. There is nothing about America's foreign policy that would make a bunch of people want to fly planes into buildings.
I get that demo marshals like big crowds, a substantial number of people on the left feel that Truther theories have a bit of credence, and progressives in general are a tolerant bunch that don't like to kick anyone out of meetings or silence anyone's voices but I'm pretty sure that there are others like me who don't come around to as many things because they're tired of demo detritus, marches that are off-message, and having their inboxes full of dogwhistle propaganda. The noise to signal ratio in the local activist scene is unacceptable.
Enough already.
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Date: 2011-06-11 09:32 pm (UTC)GODMarxHitlerRichard NixonBatman to test your commitment to the Cause, man.