[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...It’s one of the safest positions to take among those who are critical of 
power ... it’s treated rather tolerantly by power centers ... It’s diverting 
enormous amounts of energy away from the real crimes of the administration, 
which are far more serious. Suppose they did blow up the World Trade Center? By 
their standards, that’s a minor crime. Increasing the threat of nuclear war and 
environmental disaster is a far worse crime, which might lead to the extinction 
of the species. Take the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon. Or look at what they’re 
doing to working people in the United States ... They’re committing real crimes, 
and there is very little protest about it ... so much potential activist energy 
is directed into 9/11 discussions. From the point of view of power centers, 
that’s great. We’ll give these people exposure on C-SPAN and have their books 
right up front at the local bookstores. A pretty tolerant reaction ... you don’t 
get the kind of reaction you do when you really go after hard issues."

	Noam Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories:

First of all, I don’t think much of those theories, but I am bombarded with 
letters about this subject. It’s not only a huge industry but it’s kind of a 
fanatic industry. Many other people think I ought to change my priorities. But 
of the couple of hundred letters I’m getting every day, the flood that’s really 
abusive, which says, “It’s your responsibility to set this as your highest 
priority and to drop everything else,” is coming from the “9/11 truth” people. 
It’s almost a kind of religious fanaticism.

There are some questions you have to ask. One has to do with the physical 
evidence. There are the unexplained coincidences, personal accounts, and so on, 
which don’t amount to much. That’s found in any complex world event. With regard 
to the physical evidence, can you become a highly qualified civil and mechanical 
engineer and expert in the structure of buildings by spending a couple of hours 
on the Internet? If you can, we can get rid of the civil and mechanical 
engineering departments at MIT. Why go to the university? If you really believe 
any of this evidence, then there is no easy way to proceed. Go to specialists 
who can evaluate it. You may have found one physicist somewhere, though as far 
as I know no one has been willing to submit anything to a serious peer-reviewed 
journal. But that aside, you can go to the civil and mechanical engineering 
departments. Maybe the “9/11 truth movement” believes they’re all in on the 
conspiracy. If it’s that vast, we may as well forget it. These people claim that 
they’re afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s one of the safest 
positions to take among those who are critical of power, as anyone with 
experience in these matters knows. If fact, it’s treated rather tolerantly by 
power centers.

Which takes us to another question. Why is this discussion of 9/11 treated so 
tolerantly? I suspect people in positions of power like it. It’s diverting 
enormous amounts of energy away from the real crimes of the administration, 
which are far more serious. Suppose they did blow up the World Trade Center? By 
their standards, that’s a minor crime. Increasing the threat of nuclear war and 
environmental disaster is a far worse crime, which might lead to the extinction 
of the species. Take the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon. Or look at what they’re 
doing to working people in the United States. We can go on and on. They’re 
committing real crimes, and there is very little protest about it. One of the 
reasons—not the only one, of course—is that so much potential activist energy is 
directed into 9/11 discussions. From the point of view of power centers, that’s 
great. We’ll give these people exposure on C-SPAN and have their books right up 
front at the local bookstores. A pretty tolerant reaction. We sort of say we 
think it’s a bad joke, but you don’t get the kind of reaction you do when you 
really go after hard issues.

So yes, it’s a terrible drain of energy away from much more serious problems. 
And I don’t think the evidence is serious. I don’t think the people who are 
presenting the physical evidence are even in a position to evaluate it. These 
are hard technical questions. What doesn’t seem to be understood is that there’s 
a reason scientists do experiments. They don’t just take a videotape of what’s 
happening out the window. The reason is that what’s happening out the window 
involves so many variable that you don’t understand what you’re getting in this 
complex mess. You can find all kinds of unexplained coincidences, apparent 
violations of the laws of nature. Even with controlled experiments, there are 
plenty of problems. You read the letters column of the science journals, you 
will find countless examples. So the fact that you’re finding out this happened, 
that happened, and so on, doesn’t mean anything.

The “Who benefits from 9/11?” argument has little force. I think in my first 
interview after 9/11, I made the not very brilliant prediction that every power 
system in the world would immediately exploit this for their own purposes. So 
Russia will step up its atrocities in Chechnya, Israel will in the West Bank, 
Indonesia will in Aceh, China in western China. In the United States, it was 
exploited, as we know, but also in ways that weren’t very well advertised.

Source: Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a Changing 
World, (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2007), pp. 35-37.