Getting a head start on all the ritual remembrances of 9/11, I pose this question:What do a neo-Nazi, a radical leftist, a former FBI bureau chief, and a high-ranking Reagan Administration economist have in common?
The answer: Some fucked-up analyses of the 9/11 attacks.
Makes me wonder whether the most poisonous fallout of those attacks was psychological. Was 9/11 so huge – like the Kennedy assassination – that many of us must reach beyond al-Qaeda to a more vast, more sinister conspiracy?
Blame the Illuminati... blame a Republican cabal... blame the Jews... Yes, the Jews! Now I can get my head around this thing!
I’ve gathered some audio bites reflecting the range of bizarre intellectual responses to 9/11. You can take it as entertainment... or as a depressing illustration of the design flaws of the human brain.
The speakers, pictured above, are (clockwise, from top left): William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (and now deceased); Ward Churchill, fake Cherokee Indian, proponent of “armed struggle” against “the system,” recently fired professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado; Paul Craig Roberts, syndicated columnist, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, architect of “supply-side economics”; and Ted Gunderson, retired FBI bureau chief, current full-time polymorphous conspiracy theorist.
We’ll begin with the Nazi – old-fashioned, reliable, easy to digest.
Within days of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, William Pierce, on his shortwave radio broadcast, delivered a speech titled “Provocation and Response.” To hear a 6-minute excerpt on my Vox blog, click here. It pays off with Pierce invoking the term “Final Solution.” (All roads lead there, I suppose.)
From far-right to far-left, we come to Ward Churchill, who is monstrous in his own way. He speaks with admiration for the 9/11 attackers! To Churchill, they were oppressed Third World people striking back at capitalist-imperialist America.
Churchill says the attackers earned “the dignity of dying on their own terms.” And Churchill expresses “disgust” at those on the left who condemn terroristic violence as immoral. Those who died in the Twin Towers he calls “little Eichmanns” who needed to be brought to justice.
Ward Churchill is a sick bastard.
Click here to listen to a streaming 7½-minute edit of his 2003 recording, “Pacifism and Pathology in the American Left.”
Now, Ted Gunderson... that’s a strange duck. A career FBI man, one-time Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office, Mr. Gunderson seemed to jump the rails while investigating (as a private detective) the famous Jeffrey MacDonald case. Somehow, Gunderson became convinced that there’s a vast Satanic underground network that links the CIA to widespread child abductions.
Oh... and he says the official story of 9/11 is bullshit. Gunderson even doubts that hijacked commercial airliners flew into the World Trade Center.
On June 27, 2007, Ted Gunderson spoke with Christian radio host Stan Johnson on “The Prophecy Club.” To hear a 3½-minute slice of it, click here.
Finally, we come to a real head-scratcher. Paul Craig Roberts has reputable mainstream credentials up the ying-yang. Former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal... affiliations with the Hoover Institution and the Cato Institute and other conservative think tanks.
Well, on July 19, 2007, Mr. Roberts appeared on the liberal talk-radio network – on Air America’s “Thom Hartmann Show” – and warned America about the next 9/11.
Yes, this former Reagan Administration official believes the Republicans will “orchestrate” another mass-casualty terrorist attack (or series of attacks) on U.S. soil... in order to maintain their grip on power.
It’s such a mind-boggling claim that I’m streaming a 14-minute chunk of it. Click here to listen. A couple of times, Roberts likens the “Bush regime” and its rhetoric to Nazi Germany.
(To download the entire show from an online archive maintained by the White Rose Society, hit this link.)
And now we return to our regular programming.
13 comments:
Regarding these four, I feel most compelled to rephrase Anthony Hopkins in Howards End. "The insane are insane. One is sorry for them, but there it is."
The world is full of dumb shits being dumb shits. They're better left ignored.
Gunderson even doubts that hijacked commercial airliners flew into the World Trade Center.
Oh? Can he tell me just what killed my cousin and the friends of my friends? Stupid bastard.
Tomorrow is the first time since the attack that I will work on a 9/11. I plan on hiding out in meetings all day away from any sort of commemorations and cow-orkers yapping about "Patriot's Day." Blech!
BTW, how is Churchill a "fake Cherokee"? Can he not prove he's part Cherokee, or is his connection too miniscule to count, or is he outright lying? He's definitely 100% asshole, though.
^ BTW, how is Churchill a "fake Cherokee"?
Two Colorado newspapers investigated his geneaology... because apparently he got hired to teach for diversity's sake. (No Ph.D., for one thing.) The reporters found nothing but white people in his family tree.
Dez, I'm so sorry for your loss.
What happened was the most senseless thing I've ever experienced in my life.
There is nothing that anyone can say that will explain or rationalize the events of that day.
It was an insane act of violence against innocent human beings and these guys all sound as crazy as the nutjobs who committed that crime.
Thank you, Susie. I keep thinking one day, it will get easier, and then the "anniversary" comes and...no. I don't know that I'll ever stop being angry about it.
Ward Churchill came out here to Hawaii to speak the week after the whole "Eichmann" thing came to light. I think he said it was his first public speaking gig since shit hit the fan. All I remember is he admitted he was a fake ass Cherokee, but said he was given honorary status because he and the chief we friends. Some shit like that. Anyway he was boring as all hell and spent the whole hour an a half blaming the media for "victimizing" his right to free speech.
Thanks, Angry Black Man. Yeah, now that the University of Colorado fired his ass, Churchill gets to be a free-speech martyr.
Funny how the truth about people can show in their voice. I hear the arrogance and malice in him when he talks.
IIRC, the only "official" acknowledgement of Churchill's heritage was, as Angry Black Man said, enrollement in the United Keetowah Band, was actually honorary. Bill Clinton's in the UKB.
My parents happen to be avid listeners to the Prophecy Club and tend to be believe most of their claims. Their credo is "tell others about our prophecies (they don't auger well for the US) and when they come to pass it would be proof of our legitimacy." I suppose the proof is in the pudding.
Come on Undercover, two newspapers, and what does a Ph.d have to do with serious scholarship. Do yourself a favor and check out from the library (and his books are in EVERY library) and read him and then base your judgment on the totality of his work. Perhaps the statement written about the little Eichmans was in bad taste but he is a serious scholar. I do not have time to go into it, but the Churchill incident is much bigger than Colorado.
Come on Undercover, two newspapers, and what does a Ph.d have to do with serious scholarship. Do yourself a favor and check out from the library (and his books are in EVERY library) and read him and then base your judgment on the totality of his work. Perhaps the statement written about the little Eichmans was in bad taste but he is a serious scholar. I do not have time to go into it, but the Churchill incident is much bigger than Colorado.
Do yourself a favor and check out from the library (and his books are in EVERY library) and read him and then base your judgment on the totality of his work.
So Ross, are you admitting that what Churchill said in the stuff UBM posted here is insane and vile bullshit, but that we should judge him on his other stuff?
Nobody twisted his arm. He said it and won't back away from it.
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