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.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    9/11 in itself would not be as sketchy if they did not use it as pretext to force through a ton of privacy violation laws which just so happened to be ready and only needed an excuse. And invade the middle east with a convenient pretext. And the FBI having advance warnings about 9/11 which were ignored.

    I don’t care about whether it was jet fuel or pre planted explosives. 9/11 was used as an excuse to invade countries which we now know had nothing to do with it. And at the time the government knew they were lying about those countries complicity. So I still believe there is more to the story than what is made public.

  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    There was a conspiracy involving 9/11, but it had nothing to do with secret thermite demolition or Israel or holograms or any of that nonsense. People were rightfully questioning how these hijackers were able to enter the US and stay under the radar while training for and executing the attack. We now know that Saudi officials helped them.

    It’s also worth noting that the Bush family has very, very deep ties to Saudi Arabia, which may have affected the investigation and how information concerning Saudi complicity was handled.

    • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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      7 days ago

      This exactly. It represented such a huge intelligence failure that it’s very hard to believe that it wasn’t allowed to happen to create an argument for war, that and it kinda rhymes with another (arguably preventable) event in history that was used to create a pretext for war… Pearl harbor. IMHO that was justified though, Nazis being pretty bad and all.

      Also tower 7 seemed very sketchy, and I never believed that there was a whole plane’s worth of rubble at the Pentagon.

      The Patriot act was also a product of that, which if you’ll recall is part of what Snowden uncovered.

  • Roldyclark@literature.cafe
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    7 days ago

    In my circle yeah we all said Bush did 9/11. Was def taken as fact by edgy skaters/stoners who watched a lot of early YouTube.

  • ⚛️ Color 🎨@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • Rolder@reddthat.com
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    I’ve always thought the conspiracy theories like “Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams!” Were just memes, personally

    • treadful@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      I think to the majority they were. But as with most online jokes, sometimes people believe them.

  • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • pricecheck@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    “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.

  • It’s not accurate to say Afghanistan had nothing to do with it. The Taliban government were directly helping to hide Bin Laden after the fact, and obviously it was not going to do anything to stop violent extremism, rather it was going to reward and encourage it.

    I didn’t support it when it started, and I certainly didn’t support all twenty of the years we spent there, but I believe now that the decision to overthrow the Taliban at least initially was the right one. Maybe some people in Washington pushed and went along with it as a handout to the oil and defense industries, but I think most of the legislators went with it because they truly believed, as I do, that overthrowing the Taliban and helping the people build a new state, with real institutions, was a path towards securing lasting human rights to millions of people. No religious dictatorship can grant human rights, it’s not theirs to give.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    You aren’t imagining things. People got caught up in the weird details, the fact that the plane meant for the white house just happened to not reach its destination (even though George W. Bush who was president at the time was in Florida anyways), the supposed untrustworthiness of the US government (staging terrorist attacks to garner support for things wasn’t even a new feature among American agencies, though all confirmed proposals had been rejected by the president), the fact this resembles something out of Nero Caesar’s playbook (which would make the whole thing kind of well-established at this point), and the fact that Osama Bin Laden’s response message to Americans was “released” just before the next election (almost like they were trying to then garner support for an election).

    Seek out reasons to conspiracy-theorize though and you will find an Achilles Heel one out of ten times, and people here conjure them at a megafactory’s pace. Raising an eyebrow towards the conspiracy theorists is the fact the circumstances from the Middle Eastern perspective that led to the attack though, as well as the fact there even was direct acknowledgement by Osama Bin Laden and later their hosts in Pakistan at all, make it so that, even if it had been American agents who carried it out, it still might as well have been carried out by Osama Bin Laden by some form of proxy/tribute (in other words, his nation made it impossible to say they hadn’t looked forward to overseeing it, and from a war standpoint it would have been an act of war in a way either way, plus there are the witness accounts of the plane passengers, like we should ignore those), and it skews matters that both planes and buildings in New York City were not built to code (absolutely every liberty was taken even considering the more lenient building code at the time, for example the stairs were like motel stairs and the anti-fire system was inadequate), which throws a wrench into discussions of architectural physics (of note, I consider it odd people use physics to determine the suspects, that’s more of something that merely makes one wonder the “how” about something we all know physically happened).

    Rule of thumb, when people go about this, I would think one should think in terms of a court of law. You’re a prosecutor making a case against or in favor or a suspect. Are you going to say “look at the physics of something that clearly happened, that doesn’t look right” or “but Emperor Nero did it” or “the person I’m accusing has a track record” or “some things seem awfully convenient”? Maybe you would, but that’s you, and testimony would become your nightmare. Also note that I’m sure nobody is saying agnosticism isn’t completely possible, even though people would think “alright, either you think they did this or that person did it”.

  • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • oxjox@lemmy.mlOP
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      7 days ago

      I’d be curious to know how some of your friends and family responded to the shot taken at Trump’s ear.

      • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        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.

  • LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
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    5 days ago

    Aren’t we lucky to be living in the age of human history in which governments are good and honest? Not like those old, backwards governments in history books who would dress up their soldiers as the enemy’s and order them to do something heinous.

  • palebluethought@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    No, this was just your social circle. I know literally zero people who ever bought into any of that crap

    • oxjox@lemmy.mlOP
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      So your evidence that it was only spoken about in my social circle is that your social circle didn’t talk about it?

      • palebluethought@lemmy.world
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        No, that’s my evidence that it wasn’t ubiquitous and typical.

        Maybe not just your social circle, but social-circle-specific.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • oxjox@lemmy.mlOP
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        7 days ago

        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?

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Well, this one is real

      Bush attacked a country that had nothing to do with the event

    • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
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      I knew a dude who swore up and down the jets had missile launchers on the front they fired just before impact.

    • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
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      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…