Sunday, July 06, 2008

The Independent on the BBC WTC7 Special

A short but excellent article, the author of which is very familiar with the truther mindset, so he obviously is in on the conspiracy.

Imagine an infection that actually feeds on the only antibiotic available to counter it and you have some measure of the problem in dealing with conspiracy theories. When conspiracists encounter solid evidence against their favoured scenario, they have only two options available to them. They can compromise their religious belief in the narrative they've constructed, or they can simply enlarge it, extending the conspiracy so that, amoeba-like, it absorbs this irritating foreign body and digests it whole. Almost invariably, they choose the latter, and The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – the Third Tower, a film about the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7, offered several choice examples of the process. What conspiracists believe about Building 7 is that it was deliberately destroyed, brought down by a pre-planned explosion so that the evidence proving government complicity in the events of 9/11 would be shredded. They base their conviction on footage of the collapse, in which it does indeed look as if the building has been brought down by controlled demolition. They then shore up this ill-informed impression with oddities picked from the rubble of that day – passing remarks, inaccuracies in the news coverage, fragments of debris – all of them carefully sifted and separated from their context so that their larger meaning is obscured. And woe betide you if you suggest that the resulting collage is implausible in any way.

And he obviously is aware of what their response is going to be, with this parting comment:

Incidentally, if you're minded to send me a long email denouncing my gullibility and directing me to websites offering incontrovertible proof that Dick Cheney did it, don't bother. As you may already have guessed, I'm in on it, too.

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