If this had been a music thread, where I was saying that all hip hop was shit after "36 Chambers" I would rightly have been taken to task for making a sweeping generalisation. But by page 8, people would have posted about a whole bunch of links to hip hop tunes to prove me wrong.
On this thread, the only thing the pro-CS people have posted about as a concrete example is this:
But 911 was a conspiracy, so of course there are lots of books about it. Murderers conspired to blow up planes and buildings.Are you saying that the alternative theories have too much weight, or money? I think you are bigging them up out of proportion. With your talk of icebergs. I think you got lost on the internet.
Yes, 911 was a conspiracy by Al-Qaeda to kill American people by running planes into significant buildings. We can get bogged down by semantics about whether or not that is still a theory.
The conspiracy theories I am talking about are the alternative explanations which involve explosions inside the building, the planes being a mirage, the deaths of thousands of people somehow being directly ordered by the american government etc. A subcultural field which thrives on coming up with the most "creative" and wide ranging explanations as possible.
And so to Hillsborough. Hillsborough was a conspiracy between elements of the ruling class (top cops, politicians, the media) to demonise working class football fans in order to obscure the police and Hillsborough ground management's culpability in the death of nearly 100 innocent football fans.
The painstaking quest for justice by the victims' families has taken nearly 30 years.
The question for you lot is, would the approach taken by 911 truthers, illuminati chasers, David Icke lizard cabal types, etc have helped or hindered the campaign for justice?
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark which is that Sufi and Luka love the idea of being all renegade and want there to be a thriving zone of mad ideas that make fusty old rationalists very uneasy. But they can't post any concrete examples of conspiracy theories (as they are widely understood) or theoreticians, or websites. Because they know that either these things are a load of bollocks or that they are connected to some properly dodgy shit.
Luka asked me upthread whether I was doing anything about this. And the answer to that is having this discussion is doing something about it. And despite all the teenage whining about shutting down discussion and censorship, this is actually quite a good grown up discussion where people can't just say "well that's just your opinion maaaaaaaan".
I also support the following organisations who I believe are explicitly or implicitly trying to counteract bullshit conspiracy theorising:
Rationalist Press Association
Humanists UK
Novara Media
Housmans Bookshop (by buying books there, but also through helping to fund their renovations a while back)
None of this lot are perfect.
Also if I am out and about and I see a 911 truther sticker on a lamp post or in a pub toilet I tear them down as I would with a fash sticker.
