The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11
: There’s a most disturbing trend in European media: giving attention — and thus credence — to the conspiracy crackpots, the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers, who are trying to argue that 9/11 was not a terrorist attack but was, instead, some gigantic plot by the U.S. government, the Israeli government, the British government, and whoever else Europeans happen to dislike these days.
It’s sick enough that these people exist. It’s sicker still that they write books that get bought. It’s sick beyond tolerance that once-credible media outlets give them attention.
: The latest: Der Spiegel’s cover story this week puts the burning Twin Towers on their head with a cover story that asks: “Were the attacks on New York and Washington the biggest act of terrorism in history — or a gigantic plot by the secret services? Conspiracy theorists are writing bestsellers with their alleged evidence, and already a fifth of Germans believe their half-truths.”
As Eamonn Fitzgerald points out, this is a most cynical act: The editors of Der Spiegel cloak their story in doubt — but if there’s so much doubt, why is this a story, why is it a long story (14 pages of solid text on my printout), and why is it a cover story?
I couldn’t bear to translate the whole thing but from what I read, it’s enough to make me suggest that we all buy European tinfoil futures. Fitzgerald has more about the list of “authors” the magazine promotes:
And as Der Spiegel doesn’t want to be left behind in this race to the bottom, it joins a growing list of charlatans doing a steady business pawning their fabrications to a credulous public. Leading the field is Thierry Meyssan, the crackpot French author of The Horrifying Fraud, which posits that a missile fired by the military itself hit the Pentagon on 9/11. His horrifying, but successful, fraud was the inspiration for Mathias Br
