We Must Not Give Up

The 9-11 Truth Movement Is A Waste Of Time

From the afternoon of the attack til now, I’ve been convinced that the official line about 19 hijackers was BS. Watching the news coverage from my job at Bank of America, I saw them broadcast the names and photos of the 19 that afternoon. Since this was a logical impossibility, having the photos and IDs of the hijackers so quickly, I knew that there was a scam in the works. Many smaller pieces of evidence since have only reinforced the power of common sense exercised the day of the event. I don’t claim to know who did what or any of that unified conspiracy knowledge stuff peddled by some that lays blame at the feet of this or that international cabal. It was an inside job and a coverup which means that powerful people were and still are involved.All of that being said, something else is also as obvious as the fact that the attacks were an inside job. The 9-11 Truth Movement is a colossal waste of time and energy. Things like this, coverups of this magnitude are rarely uncovered. This isn’t my opinion, this is a fact. And perhaps I shouldn’t have written that because that’s not the most important thing. The important thing is that even if it was uncovered, it wouldn’t matter. No one would believe it. This is as obvious as was the fake nature of the attack and subsequent coverup.

This country is collapsing and has been for some time now. Economically, militarily, socially. These are not new revelations. Anyone that has been following the deconstruction of the manufacturing sector for the past 30 years knows this. Or anyone that has ever examined white privilege and white racism must at least have a hint regardin the US’ cancerous social decay. And militarily, well the military has become an almost complete mercenary outfit. With much of it contracted out to outright mercenary gun-for-hire agencies and most of the remainder professional gun for hire types who will follow much any order, no matter how immoral or illegal. So the country has long been in decline. The 9-11 Truth Movement people are generally underdeveloped and quite naive politicos–I shouldn’t even call them politicos because the problem is that they have a very limited understanding of what politics, the economy of power, even is. And the way that they are conducting themselves in the wake of 9-11 is all the evidence one needs to prove my charges against them.

The 9-11 Truth Movement is almost completely white and male.

This isn’t to say that non-whites don’t get 9-11. We do. In my opinion, much more often than do US whites (on percentage). But the nature of the 9-11 Truth Movement makes it so that no actual organizing can or will happen around it. When I say the nature or character of the movement, I’m referring to its singularity of intention, purpose and focus. Most of the white men occupying the 9-11TM space are folks that haven’t been really political before in their lives. Everyone has opinions so this isn’t to say that they haven’t been thinkers, quite the contrary. There is a lot of interesting thought, investigation and analysis in the 9-11TM. But politics, inevitably is about action and the progressive political actors (speaking in groups,now) in the United States for the past century have not been white males. White males, as a group have not, in significant percentages, been involved in any mass movement in the past century.

This is not my opinion. This is a fact. And if anyone sees this as being incorrect I would love to see the evidence and hear about the historical movement that I missed. So this is the correct context through which to understand the white and male composition of the 9-11TM. As a group of people with no historical movement experience and no willingness to (as a group) embrace the parallel struggles of historically oppressed sectors of the US population. This aspect of the character of the 9-11TM is, in the end, what makes it a complete waste of time. It alienates groups of people, oppressed groups, by focusing narrowly on 9-11 (and perhaps abolition of the Federal Reserve, lol) and either ignoring altogether or at best prioritizing lowly, historical struggles against the same oppression represented by the attacks of 9-11.

Initially, I found myself in the ranks of the 9-11TM. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that the alienating nature of this group, if I allowed myself to become too closely associated with it and consumed by it, would be of hindrance to political work I do in other arenas. Not because of the label of conspiracy theorist or other slanders. Black people have been dealing with that garbage from white America for a hundred years. Literally. So not because of that but because the 9-11TM is seen as a movement led by white guys who don’t get the intersectionality of oppression, folks that think the world will move on whatever issue they decide to take up this year. That is not how the economy of power operates. That is not how politics works. We need a real movement.

Real movements understand the nuances of the issues of the people composing the movement. The 9-11 truthers, again mostly white guys, are far, far, far from understanding this. They think that if they can shout loud enough, proving that 9-11 was an inside job, people, the masses is the term they use, will rise up and see the system for what it is. This approach taps into the same naivety expressed by the ‘Who-Shot-Kennedy’ crowd. This sophomoric approach represents not a break from the oppressive nature of politics in this society but is a reinforcement and affirmation of the blinders of privilege, the reason the white 9-11TM can’t break out of the rut it finds itself in. And the reason most of the white guys that read this will simply dismiss all that I have to say.

I am enraged about 9-11. But I’m also enraged that 4-5 million people have died in the past 6 or 7 years in the wars being fought in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the world doesn’t give a shit. I’m enraged about those millions of lives too. I’m enraged that 3 and 4 year old kids from South and Central America are hiding in the Georgia woods because immigration officers have kidnapped their parents from work, effectively orphaning these invisible children. I’m enraged about that. Grady Memorial Hospital here in Atlanta is being starved of funds and then ‘rescued’ by the same people that were starving it, so that they can take over the operation of it and cut off services benefiting the downtown Atlanta (mostly black) poor. They are doing the same thing to Grady that they do to public education. The same thing that they are doing to MARTA. The same thing that they have done to every public institution in the South since the 60s when integration meant those institutions had to serve non-whites as well. So I’m enraged and spittin mad about a lot of things. The intersection of all these things and many more issues is the only place that we will forge the movement that will bring about substantive change in all these areas.

Until the white guys constituting (and dominating) the 9-11TM understand this at a gut level, it will remain the movement hardly worthy of the name and a colossal waste of time.