In the face of new anti-war insanity as illustrated by the intention of activists to cage military recruiters in the near future and the recent bombing of a New York recruiting station, it is easy to forget the 9/11 truther movement. Actually it is very easy to forget them, since they haven’t been able to accomplish anything worthy of coverage for a few years now beyond getting their hindquarters handed to them by Bill Maher and former President Clinton. And while these were both incidents that managed to worm their way into the traditional news cycle, they did nothing to advance or even espouse the truther message to the general public. If anything, these events increased the animosity and ridicule that the movement faces. Why is this?

There are two answers that may very well be connected to some degree. The first is that 9/11 is no longer fresh in the minds of the public, the force of time that encourages a lull in support for anti-terrorist activities and support for the war has affected the truthers. American apathy to the terrorist attack is understandably creeping in after five or six years. To put it more plainly, from a vaguely leftist almost middle-of-the-road perspective: even if you were inclined to believe that fearmongering was going on, you were never really inclined to believe that we murdered our own countrymen, and now you aren’t even very fired up about disliking George Bush, so you certainly aren’t more interested in hearing about conspiracy theories from annoying people.

The second explanation is that truthers have recently begun targeting high profile left-wing politicians. This has come about because their more publicized past efforts targeting the traditional contemporary enemies of the left, George Bush and the like, have failed to do anything but stall the movement. So now we’ve seen the truthers turn on the left-wing politicians that they might’ve been inclined to previously support because in their minds these individuals haven’t done a damned thing to stop the real 9/11 “criminals”.

What is the result of this? The same high profile left-wing personalities who largely ignored the truthers in the past out of a combination of ignorance to the extent of their dementia and a quasi-acceptance of any group that was out to destroy George Bush are now denouncing them. And given the well-known liberal bias of the mainstream media, if your cause was already a loser to begin with and if your antics might begin to hurt the Democrat party, then you can kiss the lightest hint of coverage they’d been offering you goodbye. By biting the hand that reluctantly had been offering them a few table scraps here and there, the truthers have been tuned out by most people; not just the American public, who has never bought into their delusions, but by the media elite who once found them as a coverable distraction as well.

Any way you cut it, it spells disaster for the truthers. They will always exist, as any conspiracy theory put forth continues to linger in cyberspace, but given that they never had a factual foundation to stand on, and their usefulness to the media as a curiosity is long since expired, the truthers will probably be relegated to the toilet basin of history after George Bush leaves office (unimpeached and unimprisoned, by the way) in 2009.

So why is this little diversionary case study relevant to us today? The truther tale, their accelerated downfall after widening the subjects of their criticism, might offer a bit of a blueprint to the path that anti-war activism takes in the next few years. I’ll reiterate this caveat before going further: it is entirely possible, and respectable, to be against the Iraq war or the Global War on Terror. I am not making any sweeping policy position comparisons between the truthers and the anti-war crowd.

What I am saying is that we’ve seen the anti-war crowd begin to get angry after being discarded by the Democrats in the wake of their 2006 Congressional victories. The Democrats promised the far left that we’d be getting out of Iraq and that if they had the reins of power again, all those dastardly Bush counterterrorism policies would be dust. It hasn’t happened, and the anti-war crowd now is starting to see that the Democrats really are just the same political animals that they’ve always been. The evidence of the anti-war liberal base being utterly used by the Democrats is far more impressive and obvious than the weak smattering tacit approval that some Democrats favored the truthers they knew to be kooks with in the past.

So what is the result of this non-movement on the anti-war front by the elected Democrat majorities in House and Senate? The same thing that happened when everyone decided to ignore the truthers: the offended party started aiming its smears at a wider audience. We’ve had Code Pink disrupt Democrat-led proceedings, picket Nancy Pelosi, and condemn Bill and Hillary Clinton among other things. The Democrats have begun to get just the lightest taste of their own medicine. If that sort of buffoonery won’t be tolerated by the establishment left, then there is no way in hell that the Democrat Congress can continue to associate itself with any cause that might even hint that violent or physical action is acceptable in opposing the war. Dittos for open denouncement of the military, though this will be tolorated to a much higher point than the hints of possible anti-war action as was seen during the Vietnam war.

If you think I’m far overreaching, you should research the threats against recruiters further. We can all hope that the anti-war movement, what is left of it, soundly and swiftly rejects any aggressive tactics that its more radical elements might carry out, but we cannot assume that more violence will not occur. Given that this might be the way things are heading, a disaffected anti-war crowd’s fringe becoming more overtly volatile and violent after being ignored, it will be interesting to see if their fate will ultimately mirror that of the truthers: irrelevancy. Even if the majority of cooler heads prevail, as we hope happens, will the anti-war crowd find themselves alienated to the point of obscurity given their recent assaults on Democrats?

Still other aspects haven’t followed the model of what happened to the truthers. Principle among them the subject of media support. The media remains firmly against the Iraq war and most action taken to defend America against terrorism in a global context as put forward by the Bush administration. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, even if it hurts America.

It is encouraging that we now have signs that the American public has begin to reevaluate the choruses of we’re all doomed! they have been bombarded with from the mainstream media and the anti-war crowd for the last five years. The Surge has made more than a dent in public perception.

If you want to see a glimpse into the downfall of the truthers, Screw Loose Change has a video detailing the flop of Loose Change: Final Cut.

Then again, maybe it won’t even matter, if the Democrats continue to eat themselves to death in the presidential primaries.

In fact, as I was writing this, the anti-war left got louder in admitting what they believe.

In the recent political battle around the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley there has been much confusion around the concept or slogan of “supporting the troops,” but opposing the unjust wars of the Bush regime. Many who oppose the Bush regime wars also say they “support the troops.” Let me say it straight out—I do not support the troops and neither should you. It is objectively impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight.

…If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also objectively support U.S. hegemony in the world. I believe that the vast majority of people who say they support the troops do not wish to support U.S. imperialism, but that is what they are really doing by putting forth the slogan of “support the troops.”

We need to oppose the recruitment of men and women into the military. We need to support resisters within the military who have realized what they are doing and now choose to resist the role of the U.S. military.

…We need to expose that those in the U.S. military are trained to be part of a “killing machine.” While not every member of the military is an individual murderer, they are all part of a system that commits war crimes, including aggressive wars, massacres, rape, and other crimes against humanity, all in the service of U.S. imperialism. The bottom line is that even if these people are relatives or friends, you can not support the troops without also supporting the objective role that these troops play in the imperialist system.

A crackup may indeed be under way.

Update 10:50AM CST:

Gateway brings word of a DNC video contest. Maybe there is hope for the kooks to continue after all.

Update 1:15PM CST:

Laughing Wolf at BLACKFIVE smells Vietnam in the air.

QandO thinks the previously offered admittance (see excerpt above) of not supporting the troops might contain some buried gold.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 8:59 am and is filed under 2008 Race, 9/11 Conspiracies, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Terrorism.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.