Contemplating Conspiracy: Part 3 — Pulling Down and Propping up the Tower
‘Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they are part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.’
Internet meme
The Tower is the 16th card of the Tarot deck. Its image is a depiction of a tall tower being struck by a bolt of lightning. The lightning dislodges a crown that had been sat atop the structure; whilst simultaneously setting the building on fire. People leap from windows in terror.
Symbolically, The Tower is representative of anything we build up and think of as solid; anything we come to depend upon. This could be a career, a relationship or a world-view. The Tower represents our thoughts about that thing, more than it does the thing itself. We are so sure of them, we cap them with the crown of truth.
The lightning bolt is totally unpredictable, emerging out of nowhere as if being thrown from the realm of the gods. It dislodges the crown, removing our certainty and causing our solid perceptions to burn before us.
Conspiracy theories can clearly play this role, acting as a lightning bolt that brings devastation to a previously unquestioned world-view. The fires they set off can reduce all we thought we knew to ash, requiring us to rebuild in some new fashion, hopefully with a more solid foundation.
I’ll illustrate this with a — not atypical — but particularly instructive example.
Around ten years ago I attended a conference on conspiracy theory, hosted by the British Humanist Association. It was a fascinating event, largely due to the rarity of being in a room with an approximately fifty-fifty split of people with completely opposing world-views. I should write more on this another time, for now however the relevant part is the conversation I struck up with the man next to me during the lunchtime sandwich queue.
He told me how he’d been a completely normal person with a completely conventional mindset, until the day he saw a video of the collapse of Building Seven. For those that don’t know, Building Seven was the third tower to collapse as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks. It did so in spite of not being hit by an aeroplane, rather it was struck by falling debris from the other two towers, which initiated office fires ostensibly leading to its collapse. The nature of that collapse, in addition to the fact it happened at all, have led many to assert it was in fact brought down by pre-planted explosives. Those doing the asserting are not just randoms on the internet either, many scientists and engineers have weighed in on the topic (I even attempted to interview one of them). You can see for yourself here, this is basically the same video the fellow I’m describing watched.
My lunch-queue friend described how his whole world-view had been shattered in an instance of seeing the building’s collapse presented as a controlled demolition. He described how he stood looking at the screen saying over and over to himself: ‘That’s a controlled demolition… that’s a controlled demolition… that’s a controlled demolition!’ The implications were overwhelming — everything he thought he knew about the world had just gone into freefall.
Doubtlessly if I’d heard him describe his new world-view — the new tower he’d built up — I’d have agreed with him on some things and not on others. The possibility also exists that, rightly or wrongly, at some future point he may come to think differently about Building Seven, concluding that it was brought down by office fires after all. Major aspects of his new world-view might still remain, absent the catalysing event which allowed them to form.
None of this should be surprising, it’s the effect we would expect conspiracy theories to have. What’s interesting then, is when they do the exact opposite; when conspiracy theories are employed to reinforce consensus reality — to prop up the tower. Let’s take a look at how this works.
Around the five year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, FOX News invited economics Professor Morgan Reynolds on, as a representative of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Professor Reynolds is an advocate of the no planes theory of 9/11; essentially stating that no Boeing aircraft crashed at any of the four sites that day, rather we were treated to either holographic imagery or faked video footage. He cites absence of wreckage and impossibility of aluminum planes penetrating steel buildings in support of this position.
Now let’s be generous and acknowledge at least the possibility that Professor Reynolds is correct. After all, I can’t prove the planes weren’t holograms. It remains the case that the no planes theory represents the most fringe and far out aspect of 9/11 research. I could name twenty people, easily, who would be capable of providing a more grounded and erudite criticism of the U.S. Government’s account of 9/11 — inclusive of the possibility of an inside job. Yet surprisingly those people don’t make it onto FOX News, instead they select guests who present fantastical accounts of holographic planes.
This approach crosses the political spectrum: over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow plays a similar game, choosing to focus on equally fantastical claims of missiles being attached to the bottoms of the planes, as a way of dismissing anyone questioning the 9/11 narrative. She additionally contends that the people asking these questions also believe the Boston Marathon Bombing and Sandy Hook shooting never took place, further tarnishing their collective reputation.
And so this is how the game is played: when points are raised that bring the foundations of The Tower into question, conspiracy theories can be employed as a way of dismissing them through association. To take another mythical metaphor: it is as if the boy who declares the emperor to have no clothes is dismissed because somebody else in the crowd shouts that, in addition to being naked — he is also an aardvark.
It would be wrong to say that this propaganda is only a one way street, coming only from the top down. Whilst FOX and MSNBC do doubtlessly dupe their viewers — the viewers themselves are often willing dupes. Not wanting to think their governments are capable of evil on such a scale, it is reassuring to have their favoured media outlet inform them that they have tested such claims and found them to be bunk.
Given that this dynamic doubtlessly benefits elements within governments, we may speculate as to their role in creating them. For example; as employees of the CIA’s bin Laden tracking unit were protecting two of the hijackers of Flight 77 from arrest, then they doubtlessly benefited from conspiracy claims that no plane hit the Pentagon. No plane means no hijackers means no problem. When the people propagating these theories are themselves intelligence agents, we might ask the deeper question.
Whilst I’ve focused on September 11th as an example, this dynamic is of course not limited to it. From 7/7 to the Boston Bombings, serious questions about the state’s relationship to terror are covered up by conspiracy theory. The most recent example of this is of course Covid 19. Criticism of government policy regarding lockdowns, vaccine safety and compulsory masks, can all be avoided by claiming anyone opposed thinks the virus doesn’t exist and the excess deaths are all due to 5G radiation.
I do not think the solution to this problem lies in action, but rather recognition. If the points I am making here are new to you then you will doubtlessly see this dynamic playing out from now on. The term limited hangout refers to an intelligence agency releasing some information about an event, but in a distorted way, to prevent a deeper truth from emerging. The CIA finally ‘admitting’ that Frank Olson had lept from a window after taking LSD was a limited hangout to cover the fact they’d had him murdered, for example. Perhaps we need a catchy term for an exaggerated hangout, to describe this phenomenon of avoiding deep questions by associating them with fantasy. Suggestions on a postcard please.
