Tag Archives ⇒ World Trade Center towers

Big Lies & Mass Hysteria

September 11, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It was Adolf Hitler, the world’s most notri­ous dic­ta­tor, who told us that The great mass of peo­ple … will more eas­i­ly fall vic­tim to a big lie than to a small one.

And it is in the vein that I will pass along the lat­est poll by MS-NBC, that has found that 70% of Amer­i­can peo­ple think Hus­sein and 9/11 are linked. This is per­haps the biggest lie of my life­time. I fear for the very soul of my nation, that so many of my fel­low Amer­i­cans would deny all evi­dence to allow them­selves to go along with this myth. There has been no evi­dence of any con­nec­tion. Most of the hijack­ers were Sau­di nation­als, opposed to the U.S.-backed rul­ing Sau­di fam­i­ly. Al Qae­da is a group of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists trained in part with CIA mon­ey who have always been opposed to the sec­u­lar social­ist regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein. There’s no mys­tery who the hijack­ers were or why they chose the U.S. as their tar­get. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aren’t need­ed to explain the events of two years ago.

So why then do we believe Sad­dam blew up the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers? Maybe there are too many of us who love our lives of con­ve­nience, who love our big cars, our big homes, our opu­lent lifestyles and maybe we know that deep down our lifestyle is based on con­trol of Mid­dle East oil. Or per­haps Sad­dam Hus­sein has become the demon we pour all our world­ly fears and guilt into, so that we think all the world’s trou­bles must come from him.

What­ev­er the rea­son, the results are a kind of mass hys­te­ria. Sev­en our of ten Amer­i­cans believe in a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so divorced from any evi­dence that his­to­ry sure­ly pre­pares to mock us. Every so often I’ll read of the out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries run­ning through the Arab world — like the one that the planes were manned by Israelies and that all the Jews who worked in the tow­ers were warned not to come to work — and I’ll won­der how a peo­ple could live in such a state of unre­al­i­ty. But then I see American’s myths: just as incred­i­ble, just as based on our own demons. We have based a war and a for­eign pol­i­cy on the boogie-men of our sub­con­sciences. We have killed for our fears. What if we were to wake up to real­i­ty: could we still jus­ti­fy the war and occu­pa­tion of Iraq with the impe­ri­ous­ness and sure­ty that we’ve shown so far?

Insuring Violence Never ends

August 22, 2003
· Martin Kelley

“Bill Hobbs”:http://hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106139209827725521 chal­lenged Non​vi​o​lence​.org about the recent lack of con­dem­na­tions of Pales­tin­ian vio­lence. It’s a fair cri­tique and a good ques­tion. For the record, Non​vi​o​lence​.org agrees with you that bomb­ing bus­es is wrong. Hamas should be con­demned, thank you. Of course, Israelis build­ing in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries is also wrong and should also be con­demned. The zealots in the con­flict there demand that every­one take sides, but to be paci­fist means nev­er tak­ing the side of evil and always demand­ing that the third way of non­vi­o­lence be found.
The Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have so much in com­mon. Both are a historically-persecuted peo­ple with con­test­ed claim to the land. The war between them has been large­ly fund­ed and egged on by out­side par­ties who seem to have a vest­ed inter­est in the vio­lence con­tin­u­ing ad infini­tum. Both sides chron­i­cle every bus bombed and bul­let fired, using the out­rage to ral­ly the faith­ful to fresh atroc­i­ties. Blogs like Bill Hobbs’ and orga­ni­za­tions like the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment help insure that the bomb­ings will nev­er stop. Caught in the mid­dle are a lot of naive kids: sui­cide bombers, sol­diers, and activists who think just one more act of over-the-top brav­ery will stop the violence.
The war in Israel and Pales­tine will only stop when enough Israelis and Pales­tini­ans declare them­selves trai­tors to the chants of nation­al­is­tic jin­go­ism. We are all Israelis, we are all Pales­tini­ans. There but for the grace of God go all of us: our hous­es bull­dozed, our loved ones killed on the way to work.
Once upon a time we in Amer­i­ca could think that we were immune to it all; the idea that we’re all Israelis and Pales­tini­ans seemed a rhetor­i­cal stretch. But I was one of the mil­lions who spent the night of 9/11/01 call­ing New York friends to see if they were safe (I was on my hon­ey­moon and was so shak­en that one of my calls was to an ex-girlfriend’s par­ents; my wife grace­ful­ly for­gave me). On that day, we Amer­i­cans were deliv­ered the mes­sage that we too are com­plic­it. We too must also declare our­selves trai­tors to our coun­try’s war mytholo­gies and start being hon­est about our his­toric com­plic­i­ty with war. As a peo­ple, Amer­i­cans weren’t inno­cent vic­tims at either Pearl Har­bor or the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers (though as indi­vid­u­als we were, which is the point of non­vi­o­lent out­rage of nation­al­is­tic vio­lence). every blog post com­mem­o­rat­ing a vic­tim­hood, whether in New York City or Tel Aviv, sup­ports the cause of war. I will not con­demn every act of vio­lence but I will con­demn the cause of vio­lence and I will expose the mytholo­gies of war.