9/11 conspiracy theorists are, unfortunately, a rather common breed, especially considering they come from all political ideologies. Websites like Prison Planet don’t help, especially when they bill themselves as reporting the truth. I’m rather fond of saying that truth requires proof. Half-assed theories aren’t proof. Of course, linking to things like this on the main page of the site doesn’t help when it comes to credibility.
Anyways, who exactly is Alex Jones? He’s best known as a conspiracy theorist who runs a radio show and the aforementioned Prison Planet (I’m not giving that site the pleasure of a link). In fact, I’d say he’s one of the most vocal opponents of the official version of the events of 9/11. As for his political ideology, he’s a paleoconservative. Think Rush Limbaugh but worse. He’s so extreme it scares me to think people actually believe what he says. Now, I don’t mind conservatives, but when anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, willingly believes that the government of the United States launched missiles at its own buildings (including a government one, containing key members of the Defense Department), killed 2000 of its own civilians (2000 less people paying taxes), and yet was unable to whack the most vocal conspiracy theorists (such as the maker of Loose Change), I tend to think they’re a little crazy.
What really got me this time was a Jones-led attack on a Wikipedia editor, Morton Devonshire, who allegedly deleted 9/11 Truth Movement related articles and basically covered up any “truth” Jones and his comrades put up on Wikipedia (the article is a couple months old, but it was brought up in a more recent Wikipedia discussion). Interestingly enough, Morton isn’t an administrator, which means he has no power to delete articles. He can propose and request deletion, but he doesn’t have the last say.
The article Jones co-wrote is filled with juvenile attacks on Morton, including accusations of trolling and claims that his existence is “stunted and worthless,” among other ad hominem attacks. What a perfect way to show people you hold the superior moral ground… They also incorrectly quote Wikipedia policies (please note Alex, articles don’t necessarily need a discussion to be deleted; if they’re pure bullshit or nonsense, no discussion is needed). But what takes the cake is Jones’ encouragement of his readers to vandalize Morton’s user page. Justification of how crazy these truthers are? I think so.
I find it interesting that anyone who disagrees with the conspiracy theorists is brainwashed, a neo-con, or too stupid/blind/Republican to accept the “facts.” Granted, most people (myself included) consider conspiracy theorists to be gullible nutcases who just want to believe that their government is actually capable of pulling off the worst terrorist attack in the United States with no one spilling the beans about it. Considering the type of “facts” these people generally come up with, it’s a wonder anyone actually believes them. For every bit of proof they come up with, a simpler and more reasonable explanation can be given. Remember Occam’s Razor, people.
Take, for instance, the BBC reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it actually collapsed. Conspiracy theorists say the BBC knew beforehand because the collapse was pre-planned. A more reasonable explanation is that the reporter got bad information. Someone thought the building collapsed and relayed the (false) information to the reporter. This happens all the time in news.
Or how about how everyone pulled out of WTC 7 before it collapsed? Conspiracy theorists would tell you, again, that the collapse was pre-planned and that explosives were used. This is based on a radio message by Larry Silverstein, owner of the property, who said “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it,” in regards to WTC 7. The conspiracy take is that Silverstein admitted to giving the go ahead to demolishing the building, since “pull” is industry jargon for demolishing a building. Why would Silverstein do this? Insurance fraud. Building goes down; he gets the money. However, a simpler explanation is that Silverstein was talking about pulling the fire department operation trying to extinguish the flames in the building. Silverstein was not a demolitions expert, so why would he use demolitions jargon? It’s reasonable to assume that he thought the building was a lost cause, so he would rather everyone get out of the building instead of them being caught inside when it eventually collapsed. A more in-depth explanation is available here.
Ah, busting myths is fun. And rather easy once you get the hang of it. The problem is getting conspiracy theorists to listen to you. I’ve tried, and let me tell you, it’s not easy. As Alex Jones showed, dealing with critics is not a strong point of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Prove them wrong (or simply disbelieve them) and they just attack you, usually with completely false accusations. I’m not a neo-con. I’m not being paid by CENTCOM. Heck, I’ve even asked questions on 9/11 Truth forums (and got blasted for not blindly believing everything Loose Change said). Believe me, I’ve examined the evidence. And I think it justifies the official account. If you think that’s wrong, prove to me that Popular Mechanics and National Geographic (among other groups) are being bribed by the government to support their version of events. Show me how the NIST’s scientific data is wrong.
Theories are easy to formulate. Proof is simple to fabricate. But solid, incontrovertible proof…now that’s harder to come by, isn’t it? I guess I just need to remember that there will always be people who simply want to believe that there is always some evil New World Order behind everything that happens.
EDIT: I find it interesting that a good deal of the comments on this appear to be from anonymous people intent on insulting me without actually trying to prove that I’m wrong. While I encourage everyone to feel free to post intelligent, informative, and useful comments, I’ll be forced to invoke Benford’s law of controversy if people continue to post rhetoric.
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Thank you for writing this. I am unfortunately a child of an empty nester who has sold his soul to Alex Jones and pushes DVD’s on me every time I visit. It’s his new religion. Like you said, there is no reasoning with him. And he cant agree to disagree, it is his life! Alex Jones has torn up my family. I’m trying to do research to include in my ultimatum letter to my dad. If you know of any other links that expose Alex Jones please help.
What is bumburbia?
Cody & Adam:
I’m a regular guy. A small business owner who mostly lurks around reading various new sites and opinions via this crazy AL Gore invention. I seldom post to anything I read, but I found this site by googling the words “Alex Jones wrong”. I wanted to get others points of view on a guy I’ve been listening to off and on for several years (daily since the beginning of October ‘08). I used to check in from time to time to the opinions of what I have come to think of as sort of a worse case scenario guideline for what my may lie ahead. I do not think of myself as someone who would ever call in and claim to have “woken up” like I have noticed a lot of the callers on his show do. In fact, I have always thought of Alex Jones as a bit of a nutcase. But, I have a soft spot in my heart for him. Maybe it is because I’m around the same age as him or because I grew up in rural Oklahoma – so I have an idea of where he is coming from. Granted his logic is sometimes flawed (when there wasn’t enough security at the borders he claimed we were letting these illegals in and now that they are beefed up the New World Order is keeping us in), but I like his passion. And, in light of the recent bail out, economic meltdown, etc. Alex Jones is like listening to a preacher against “the man”. He has even been referred to as the tip of the spear for the fighters of the New World Order. Is he a nutcase? Maybe. What is the definition of nutcase? Dictionary.com defines nutcase as someone deranged and possibly dangerous. Is this Alex Jones? Well, that seems pretty subjective. Does anyone have proof? Certainly there is a possibility? But how probable is it that Alex Jones is a nutcase? Before Alex Jones there was a guy named William Cooper that was the so-called tip of the spear. If you never heard of him, he has quite an interesting story. Another guy with an interesting story linked to Cooper is Wayne Bentson another interesting story. So, I guess the point to what I want to say is there is a difference between possible and probable. There is a also a difference between rational and empirical. The Rationalist starts with a self-evident fact (a starting premise) and then deduces other facts from that. Since Descartes was certain that he existed, he tried to logically deduce other facts from that starting-point. The Empiricist works in the opposite direction: observations of some event are collected and studied, and the underlying fact is induced from them. Isaac Newton watched an apple fall from a tree, and watched the moon circle the earth, and he inductively arrived at the law of gravity from these starting-points. He didn’t start with the idea of gravity: he ended up there from observation. All of this deals in probability. Is it possible that I’m just part of the matrix or an alien computer writing crazy messages on a time space machine in mind – if I agree that anything is possible it never ends. Is Alex Jones a nutcase? Yeah, probably ;-)
Alex Jones (AJ) is not insane. He is a misleading capitalist. One glance at his advertisement riddled website should be proof enough for my assertion. His message is disturbing though.
Unfortunately, I have a couple of a friends that have recently taken up his cause. They portray themselves as skeptics, but as the old saying goes they, “have embraced certainty.” I don’t believe that the majority of his followers are crazy. However, I do feel that these people are simply looking for something to belong. In this case, it is a social club with a founding motto of, “The misinformation, no science, agenda pushing assholes!”
Most people become excited when they inform others of extreme events/experiences. Most of the time, those events/experiences may be something like, “Hey man, I went skydiving this weekend, and it was awesome! Let me tell you all about it!” I am not discrediting adrenaline junkies. For the most part, people want to be looked up to, and for those few people that feel they can no longer impress their peers with self accomplishments, they reluctantly resort to paranoia. Enter Alex Jones.
Alex Jones knows exactly what I am talking about. He has acted upon a financial opportunity to fill the void in the lives of these “event-less” people. AJ gives them something powerful to talk about, and through their discussions, they feel powerful and in charge. It is no secret that the majority of Americans are politically ignorant. So when AJ’s minions assert his wacko conspiracy theories backed by poorly researched data, the debate seems be credible.
I understand that listening to these morons can be VERY upsetting, but you have to remind yourself that the world is full of stupid people. As long as people like AJ pander to them, the “stupids” will always comprise the majority.
So for all of you in the majority, visit his website and support his capitalist pursuit. Purchase all of his endorsed products/survival gear and prepare for the day when the werewolves, global elites and whatever the hell else is supposed to take over…dummies!
^Dave,
I’m not saying that Alex Jones is completely wrong. For all we know, he may actually be right on a lot of things that he brings up.
What we have to remember is that there are two sides to every coin, and that no matter what we think, there are always going to be factors that can prove us wrong.
Am I saying that conspiracy theorists are right? No, but I’m also not saying that they’re wrong either.
What I’m saying is that we as American need to keep an open mind about things.
We need to remember to that we can never jump to conclusions to quickly, because there may be a truth that we cannot see.
Am I saying Alex Jones is right with everything he says? No, in fact, there are a lot of things that he has said that I could prove wrong.
However, I still keep an open mind about things, and still listen to what people like him have to say.
I think what people like Cody need to do is remember that no matter how much they think something is wrong, they should always say in the back of there heads that what they hear may have some truth to it.
Finally, I was beginning to believe the skeptics and critical thinkers were all out to lunch on this stuff. Alex Jones is, in my opinion, incredibly paranoid, delusional, gullible, uneducated and utterly insane.
I wonder if he really believes every word that comes out of his mouth? My hypothesis; Jones uses the generally credulous audience that loves conspiracy theories and other such non-sense, to unload those terrible movies he makes. This doesn’t necessarily mean he is just a showman or secretly doesn’t believe his own rhetoric. It just seems he’s got a lot of stuff to sell (his films, quack medicine, survivalist food stuffs etc.)
Really, the Alex Jones stuff is low hanging fruit when it comes to debunking.
It is sort of funny how conspiracy “nutcases” are always bunched up with the NWO stuff and vice versa.
The trends we see currently regarding the redistribution of wealth and power are not surprising at all. I highly recommend reading Noam Chomsky’s books in that regard. What it comes down to is removing the workers rights and unions that were created in hard struggles. Chomsky calls this a “Rollback” (essentially to feudal times).
The group of the most powerful families/individuals on the planet clearly will act in self-interest. Going by Occams Razor this should be obvious, since humans tend to act egoistic. Here I am obviously implying that these people firstly, are not acting altruistic, and secondly will not retire from pursuing their interests. All this should be rather obvious.
Now, the interesting thing with all this is that with all the transnational companies and their economical power, governments have less and less leverage to stand up to corporate interests. (It’s the good ol’ “give us tax cuts or we will relocate to [insert cheap labor country here]“-Game)
This is an incredibly effective method to weaken (and eventually destroy) worker unions and worker rights in the so called first-world countries. People are accepting the gradual process of giving up more and more of their rights/benefits/medical insurance/retirement in order to not lose their job.
Notice how the government is effectively powerless and has to give in to this pressure that the transnational companies (TNC) apply.
(It’s a fallacy to expect a government being able to create jobs)
Most of the trading that is done each day doesn’t constitute actual trade but rather internal trading operations of TNCs. This is actually an oligopoly on a global level.
One thing that I came across here is the fear of loss and social decline being used as a method to have people/workers accept a lower wage and less benefits. (A little bit more each time)
This is where the 9-11 event comes into play. In the course of just a couple years a massive number of governments of the western hemisphere were making new “Security”/Anti-Terror Laws that are cutting into the rights of millions of people. In addition you are welcome to buy the current edition of the Amnesty International Annual Report on Human Rights and read up on how many countrys were passing new laws and also have gotten out of international human rights treaties/agreement.
Many if not all of those legislations would not have been accepted by the populations of the countries before 9-11. After 9-11 people were naturally shocked and outraged and biggest of all: They were deeply afraid. That’s why they were accepting the quickly passed laws that cut into their rights. Most of the laws of course are aimed at personal privacy rights and weakening them.
I realize that this article focuses on AJ being described as a nutcase. While I agree that he seems to go overboard at times with some of his ideas, his main points about NWO are not that far off. The problem is that most people mistakenly believe that the NWO consists of people from the government who in their view also “executed” 9-11 which of course doesn’t make sense.
What does make sense however is that there are interests at work here that stand to gain influence over this.
Which is the Surveillance Industry (huge already) as well as Weapons Production and Trade. In addition a nice frame was constructed to strip workers/humans of even more rights.
Chomskys Books on the topic are definately worth a read. (Especially when you read one from about 10+ years ago and are able to see what really happened in the past decade)
Cheers…
Well, I have only recently been introduced to Alex Jones, the man [not personally]. I have visited his web sites before when taken there via a Google search, but did not know the name of the web site owner until I got involved in a debate with a friend who supports Alex Jones and his radical ideas.
Before I go on, let me say that even before I knew Alex Jones owned the websites, I discredited almost everything that I found on his web sites fairly easy. You ask me about ANY subject Alex Jones (or others like him, or his supporters) state as truth, and I will be able to easily prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that his theories don’t even substantiate the title of theaory, rather, false hypothesis. Much of the stuff can be proven wrong by using the VERY SAME evidence he uses. [Example: He claims that the government is creating internment camps for civilians, and shows pictures of razor wire & chain link fences. What he fails to mention is that the fencing he is showing the picture of if OLD, RUSTED, and DILAPITATED wire that was, in fact, used for the internment camps to house the Japanese-Americans during WW-II.]
There are too many of his theories to mention. As for the 7 WTC collapse, I have been a firefighter for 23 years, and, what most people fail to mention is that, the word “pull” is ALSO a firefighting term meaning to pull all personnel from a building due to immenent danger of some kind. Considering that Silverstein was talking to the fire chief, it stands to reason that the term “pull” was in reference to pulling the firefighters. ALSO, if you watch the COMPLETE video of the collapse of 7 WTC instead of the edited version that Alex Jones provides, you will see that all firefighters were “pulled” from the building immediately following the conversation in which the term “pull” was used, and 7 WTC fell on its own, without the help of explosives.
HOWEVER, for arguement’s sake, let’s say that 7 WTC was deliberately demolished. WHO CARES?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Look at what had already happened earlier that day. Would YOU want to enter 7 WTC after that? I know I wouldn’t. So… If it hadn’t fallen on it’s own, I’d certainly HOPE they would demolish it for public safety’s sake. However, ALL of the evidence, including video evidence that CANNOT be refuted, shows that 7 WTC collapsed all on its own, without the assistance of any explosives.
in my opinion the most sensible and realistic post on here is by CONUNDRUM….why?… because he is judging this situation by its most serious and what should be (to even the most stupid and naive “critic” of aj) implications to the american public…and that is the way your being manipulated,by engineered world events,to happily accept a life of more stringent regulations nd much less freeedom….some of what aj says is rather sensationalistic but his take on NWO is,in my opinion,backed in all likelyhood, fact.
I’m not here to attack things, simply to ask questions.
I do want to note one thing ov this article. Occam’s Razor is not some infallible truth. Just because an explanation is simpler does not make it true. Occam’s Razor states that the explanation making the fewest assumptions is likely correct.
This is directed to Walt…
You state that the term “pull” is also a firefighting term. Unless Silverstein was documented stating firefighting OR demolition it cannot be sure what he meant. Either one is a fair assumption. And ov course if he had decided to pull, as in demolish, the building the firefighters would most likely leave the building as not to be crushed. That’s only logic… The point is, you have made just a big an assumption as the so called
Anyways, to get to the main point I am here to make.
I want to say… why not? I personally find it absurd to think that we live in some perfect world, or a perfect time, where our government could do no wrong.
Looking back at history, corruption in government is a common theme. My question to you is, what makes it any different in today’s time?
People seem to be brainwashed into thinking that we are perfect. People have an unfounded patriotism for a country that has done little to nothing for them and will stand up for it for anything. I realize that you are going to note my use ov the word “brainwashed,” but I feel there is no better word.
Why are we the “greatest country” on the earth? When was that decided? I would like to state that I am not from another country and my parents did not teach me to think like this. I got into many arguments with my father when he would hear how I think.
Continuing… This is a country which dropped bombs on civilians. Whether or not it is justified is not the point. Just as George Carlin pointed out about rights… If you really believe you have rights look up the Japanese Americans in WWII… That shows what the government thinks ov your rights. Innocent until proven guilty? This is a country that has tested drugs and such on citizens. Don’t believe me? Look up Project Paperclip, Project Artichoke, MKULTRA, MKNAOMI, and many more ov this type. There are so many I do not want to list. The projects are all related to each other. Another example… the Tuskegee Institute, … in fact just go to this page for a short review ov some ov the things this perfect country has OFFICIALLY done. My point in showing this is to get people to realize that we are not some perfect GOD ov a country, and innocent in the world. We have done just as much wrong as every body else.
http://www.geocities.com/athens/oracle/4809/gov.html
In a country that has unclassified things like this, is it really such a jump in logic to think they would knock a couple buildings down? This is a country that has killed MILLIONS worldwide, including citizens (Atomic Bombs anybody?) yet it is absurd to think it would kill 3000 ov its own? What is the difference than 3000 in this country and 3000 in another country? What do the 3000 honestly mean to the people who would have planned the attack?
The article mentions taxes… they don’t care about money. They can just print more up. Do you not believe the Federal Reserve is the cause ov our financial problems? Now the mainstream media is starting to jump on that idea.
I’ve heard Glenn Beck talking about the Federal Reserve, saying the exact thing that the “nut job” conspiracy theorists. It seems like every day I hear people in the mainstream news saying things like, “these guys would have been nut jobs a few years ago, but now they have a case.”
I know my comment is a little jumbled. I’m done typing… I hope people at least think about this. It is absurd that we are in some perfect time/country where this sort ov thing cannot happen. It’s happened many times in history.
Well, I’d like to thank everyone for their comments, but considering this article is almost two years old, I’m closing the comments. My views regarding conspiracy theories and the like have changed considerably since I wrote this article, and I don’t want to deal with everyone assuming I’m still the same as I was back in September 2007. Any comments on unrelated posts regarding this article will be deleted.