Conspiracies have been around as long as there have been governments to question. The majority are baseless, founded in evidence that is taken out of context and distorted. It is frightening how many people will watch one person's version of the truth and not think to question it. There are people who take the facts out of context and form these theories, and the people who will mindlessly follow them. There are also those, though, who will take it as a personal challenge to debunk these theories, and in doing so, will actually learn through others distortions of the truth.
This first video is the shorter of the two, at just under 2 minutes long. It is also the least credible of the two. The narrator of the video makes no claim to support his credibility, and the clips that are shown are blurry and hard to view. Only in the first video clip is the “flash” easily visible, the other slips being in black and white and grainy almost beyond recognition. This immediately discredits his main point, that the flash is viewable from all angles, as it is too hard to tell if it really is or not.
Most comments on YouTube, especially those on a controversial video such as this, are frequently in agreement with the video shown. Reading the comments on the videos is an interesting way to see the reactions of the viewers, and it is startling how many people will watch a clip of a video on YouTube and take it for absolute fact. The majority of the comments on this video, however, are calling the creator out on a baseless theory. When reading through the comments, we can see that most people agree that it was not a bomb that hit right before the plane did.
The second video, however, is longer, of higher quality in general, and comes from a better known, although not necessarily credible, source. In the video of a segment of Canada's “The Hour” they put forth the theory that it was an American missile that hit the Pentagon, isntead of the plane that the government claimed hit it. However, they lack any substantial evidence. In the end, all they have is a small, blurry video where they tell the audience something is happening, but it is clearly hard to make out anything at all. The video they show is no more than a few seconds long. The host also mentions that drills had been going on, but the unfortunate reality is that drills are just that, drills. They can attempt to paint a picture of a real crisis situation, but there is very little that can be prepared for to such a perfect degree as the show would like the audience to imagine, especially not something as large, traumatic and infrequent as a terrorist attack the size of 9/11.
They also bring on a guest interview- Dylan Avery of the infamous 9/11 conspiracy video “Loose Change.” They use Avery as a source, and take his opinions as more fact than opinion, although they fail to show how Avery is a credible source, other than making a movie that was originally supposed to be a fictional creation.
In the end, Avery himself fails to give any logical reasoning for this attack. He does not put any motive behind the United States shooting a missile at the Pentagon. He has no explanation for the disappearance of the passengers. He says he doesn't believe that they were “paid off,” but by bringing this up at all he is putting doubts into the minds of the people watching. After this, he goes on to talk about the World Trade Center, and World Trade Center building seven, which has no logical link to the theory that the Pentagon was attacked by the United States, and he speaks about this for longer than he did about the Pentagon.
In the final words of this clip of Canada's “The Hour,” the host goes on to speak about the people who believe and don't believe: “I know there are a lot of you out there who totally buy it, and I know there are a lot of you out there, maybe not as many, who don't buy it at all.” By saying this he is immediately alienating the part of the population who does not agree with this poorly backed up claim. It is a subtle form of coercion, saying that those who don't agree are fewer in numbers than those who do agree, and since there are more who think it's true it must be. But there is no evidence that it is true, and there is no evidence that there are fewer people who don't believe this theory than there are people who do believe this theory. To the very last he is making false implications.
The comments on this video lean more to the side of believing the video than the first set. One of the posters takes the dangerous plunge into the land of reason, and asks a question: “can any of you conspireraters give me scientific proof to back your theories up and dont say watch loose change or give me a link tell me with hard scientific evidence and what it is to prove those theories right.” Although not eloquently put or grammatically correct, this person raises a valid point. None of the comments in the first three pages cite any real evidence. There are a few links, but nothing that relates to this alleged attack by the United States on its own people.
What needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that majority of the people who watched these videos did not comment. Most people who watched either video have probably already pushed it to the back of their minds. Some people will never believe these videos without proper evidence, as common sense dictates that these are just silly conspiracies.
However, there are some people who will watch a conspiracy theory video on YouTube, or read an article in a radical magazine. The fact that there is no evidence is only a minor detail to them. These are the people who are unhappy with some aspect of the government, or of their own lives, and they turn to radical fabricated stories that take facts and evidence drastically out of context. These people could be searching for answers that they believe the government is hiding from them, or they could be using these conspiracy theories to further personal, unfounded prejudices that they feel the need to justify through radical ideas. Perhaps some of these people even suffer from paranoia. Whatever the case may be, they deny evidence and logic, and it is a difficult task to counter an argument where the initiator refuses to look at the full picture.
On the other hand, while the majority of conspiracy theories are ludicrous, they do have the advantage of keeping the government and the population on their toes. Although the ideas are radical, it keeps the country asking questions. A country that stops asking questions and trusts its government implicitly is a country that is living in naivety. There are scandals and corruption in every government, even in ones that are democratic. Though many of these people are raising points that will more than likely never be taken seriously, and many more are only taken seriously by a handful of uneducated people, it forces us to ask other, more logical questions, and it also instills a certain curiosity.
If we feel compelled to hunt down the true facts ourselves, if even to debunk a baseless conspiracy theory, then we are educating ourselves on topics that we do need to know and understand. These conspiracy theories lead to both ends of the spectrum, the initial negative side of those who take the theories as fact, and the positive side of those who do their own, non-biased research and learn from the absurdity of others.
