This series is based on experiences from 911 truth activism and reports from people I've met in the anti-war/peace communities. Regardless of what one may think of an activist group, there's never an excuse for criminal actions against activists. If a reader has an axe to grind with the premise of 911 truth, take it somewhere else—that is not the topic. Though the primary audience may well be people sympathetic to 9/11 truth, the topic is the sorts of–and possible organization of--disruption sincere people might encounter in activism, regardless of political interest. Anyone questioning my "angle" can take the time to read previous diaries. I've seen too many people's lives and families targeted(See: http://911blogger.com/... ) to argue with trolls on this subject.
Also at:
http://coljennysparks.blogspot.com/...
If this is it...
"...Girl don't try to make up phony reasons
I'd rather leave than never believe..."
~mixed feelings re:911truth
Part 2: Cults, cultures, LaRouche and 9/11truth
The words cult and culture have a common Latin root, cultus :care, adoration, from colere to cultivate.
Their definitions have some over lap:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/...
Relevant definitions:
c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization d : the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic
http://www.merriam-webster.com/...
Relevant definition:
5 a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b : the object of such devotion c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion
Thus a cult is not necessarily bad—its a synonym for fandom. But of course, thanks to criminal activities of phony religious organizations, the word cult is usually assumed to mean an exploitive organization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices could be, reasonably or unreasonably, considered strange.[1] The term originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of the 20th century, especially since the 1980s, and is considered subjective, and is a result of the anti-cult movement, which uses the term in reference to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and possibly dangerous.
Cult can be used fairly to describe any sub-culture ; as a pejorative term, cult can describe a dysfunctional, malignant and authoritarian subculture. This is relevant because there has been an on again off again attempt to paint the 9/11 truth movement as a malignant cult by detractors, particularly self appointed "debunkers". The rub is—there's a bit of truth to this idea.
Manufacturing Culture
There's a great book called Manufacturing Consent:
http://www.amazon.com/...
It analyses how news is reported and subtly spun to convince the mainstream culture of what is reasonable and normal. The result being the most outrageous actions come to be reluctantly tolerated with a shrug of "what can you do?" from the majority of progressives. I see it as a type of uber concern trolling: "Yes, its horrible what the CIA and Ollie North might have done, but we can't throw him in prison for the rest of his life and abolish the CIA—be reasonable." And people are convinced—in spite of glaring evidence of guilt to make "reasonable" concessions, until they've been reasoned out of taking ANY effective action.
This works especially if the manipulator plays to the target's sense of fair play, justice, "reason"--all the while manipulating the above in bad faith with the sole goal of evading responsibility. Good, kind, and otherwise intelligent people can fall prey to this tactic.
Early in the Bush years, the criticisms of blistering incompetence—coupled with a frustration of a feeble opposition party—led many progressives to be seduced by the sport of Bush Baiting, and chastened by fellow progressives as being inhumane and unnecessarily cruel. Predictably the right pointed to this as a sign progressives were full of hate and rage, and they(Republicans) were victims even though they were in the White House and had a majority. Boo hoo...
But the point is, by distracting from the valid criticisms of incompetence and moving the focus to alleged "hate", not only did progressive discussion become divided, but the real problem of how to confront bewildering incompetence –and putting pressure on Democrat politicians to do their job--fell by the wayside. Don't get me wrong—I see nothing wrong in abusing a political figure who deserves it. It when the activity becomes a substitute for effective action that its gone a bit far—or people have given up on effective action.
What does this have to do with the 9/11 truth movement? There are signs the 9/11 truth Movement was being shaped into a culture early on—a culture that would push people into habits of criticism without effective action, as well as other self defeating habits. Why do this? Because cultures are a very effective way of managing people indirectly. Once people accept the culture and identify with it personally, they have automatic initial responses to those who appear to threaten that culture. And if they don't pick up on the threat, real or otherwise, once informed about it, real or otherwise, they are inclined to go with the flow unless they have a good reason not to. Even if they don't agree, they're inclined to not challenge the situation unless they have opposing facts. Even then, they inclined to fade away and not say anything instead of rocking the boat. These people aren't stupid—they're just human.
Manufacturing Culture is an effective way of using people's humanity as a weapon of disinformation.
There are parallels with Authoritarian cults, but a manufactured culture is not identical. To completely control someone in a cult you have to control their living situation. Only a handful of people involved in the Truth Movement fit this description; I'll cover them later. However many techniques proper cults use to control people or discourse have been observed in 911Truth:
[Techniques I've observed or have been documented by others are underlined and/or bold]
1 Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members. 1
_______________________
2 External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior. 2
_______________________
3 Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s); amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed. 3
_______________________
4 Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts. 4
_______________________
5 Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or "fundamentalism;" hostility towards relativism and situationalism. 5
_______________________
6 Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones. 6
_______________________
7 Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden. 7
_______________________
8 Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members. 8
_______________________
9 Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups; amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners. 9
_______________________
10 Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups. 10
_______________________
11 Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s). 11
_______________________
12 Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers. 12
_______________________
13 Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts. 13
_______________________
14 Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s). 14
_______________________
15 Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories. 15
_______________________
16 Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s). 16
_______________________
17 Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s). 17
_______________________
18 Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain. 18
_______________________
Found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
What many people miss is these exact same techniques are used by self identified "debunkers" to control members of the ultra rationalist sub-cultures like those found at JREF.
Watch this video on cults and judge for yourself how many manipulation techniques you've observed or been exposed to in Truther or Debunker subcultures:
http://www.youtube.com/...
The biggest difference between dangerous recognized cults and this observed manufactured culture in 911 Truth, while both demonize and vilify people who have left groups with valid criticisms, recognized cults tend to prefer those people were brought back where they can be controlled, the manufactured culture would prefer those people to stay way, presumably because, unlike the proper cult, they know they don't have the resources to completely control ever aspect of people's life. Its safer for people running the show for critics to be kept out, and if possible, not acknowledged. Most of the time this is effective in making the critic give up on the Truth Movement, which by this time has become synonymous with this manipulative artificial culture. In the case of the debunker sympathetic ultra rationalist who has legitimate criticisms of his/her own side, they quickly learn to "not go there" or risk being labelled as a stupid irrational person.
Many of us took umbrage at the idea smear against 9/11 truth as a cult—especially considering how dishonest and transparent the attempt was:
Dazzled by Disinfo: 911cultwatch.org.uk
http://truthaction.org/...
Not only did they link to Nico blog as a top resource(until they were shamed into removing it)--a bizarre thing for a "debunker" operation to do--but makes perfect sense if they were part of the disruption/stalker machine. They also linked to the Screw Loose Change run by two hardcore republicans, with a right-wing agenda clear to anyone who reads their personal blogs.
brainster.blogspot.com
thechiefbrief.blogspot.com
These people are often the first to leap on what the perceive as cult behavior and cult connections, at it is clear in context they mean this as a destructive cult, not a sub-culture. There is in reality no truth to the idea truthers as a group belong to an authoritarian destructive cult—BUT there are indications the small group of disruptors/stalkers might belong to such an organization attempting to manufacture an authoritarian cult-like culture inside the 911 truth movement and the supposed debunkers knew about it all along.
Lyndon Larouche and 9/11 Truth
What follows will come as a shock to many people, particularly the Webster Tarpley fans, especially fans of his 9/11 theories—they aren't Tarpley theories at all. They're Lyndon Larouche's 9/11 theories.
From
http://laroucheplanet.info/...
LaRouche was the very first public figure to challenge the story that the 9/11 attacks were done by Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
While interviewed by Dr. Jack Stockwell, he was commenting live during the attacks against the Twin Towers:
Stockwell: [...]And that is that the Arabs don't have the ability to pull something of this level off. You feel pretty strongly about that?
LaRouche: I know that. I know the Arab governments. I've been talking to them directly or indirectly over some period. At least, the key ones. And they don't want this kind of thing. But I know who does want it.
Stockwell: Alright. Now, you were talking about possibly the idea of the Israeli government --
LaRouche: Or certain factions within it.
LaRouche interviewed by Dr. Jack Stockwell, September 11, 2001
http://laroucheplanet.info/...
LaRouche first called it a coup d'etat, an "inside job" with the help of the Israeli Mossad, and then blamed his "usual suspects", the Zionists:
"Under no circumstances, LaRouche assesses, could the attacks of Sept. 11 have been organized and directed by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda apparatus, based out of Afghanistan. [...] LaRouche also emphasizes that the recent years' massive Israeli espionage against and covert-operations penetration of the United States—including the U.S national security and military institutions—may suggest a more direct Israeli involvement in the military coup activities that facilitated the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. [...] This apparatus is part of the "Mega" network of prominent wealthy North American Zionists led by Edgar Bronfman, Ronald Lauder, Michael Steinhardt, et al., who are the leading promoters of Ariel Sharon's suicidal war drive, and who wish to draw the United States into that effort to assure a global conflagration on a scale of the First World War or worse." "Lyndon H. LaRouche Exposes Sept. 11 Coup-Plotters: "Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sept. 11th"", by Jeffrey Steinberg, Press Release, Jan. 2002
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/...
Israel/Mossad are behind 9/11 and the drive of the Bush administration to invade Iraq:
"Lyndon LaRouche reports that there is now firm evidence that the ongoing drive to induce President George W. Bush to launch a war against Iraq, is a 1996 Israeli government policy that is being foisted on the President by a nest of Israeli agents inside the U.S. government. This Israeli spy network inside the United States was unable achieve their objective until President Bush was entrapped by the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and the falsified accounts of those events provided by this foreign intelligence apparatus, and lured over to their policies. Lyndon LaRouche demands to know: Is this not the motive that explains the who and why of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? LaRouche demands an immediate Congressional investigation, to help purge the U.S. government of this foreign intelligence apparatus, which attempted, with the 9/11 events, to seize control over U.S. foreign policy." (source: "The Pollard Affair Never Ended!" (press release), EIR, Sept. 8, 2002 )
http://www.larouchepub.com/...
LaRouche calls "9/11" an incident
http://www.larouchepac.com/...
LaRouche and Osama bin Laden's friends:
On the role of Jeffrey Steinberg in the spreading of this "blame the Jews" 9/11 Conspiracy Theory into the Arab world:
Jeffrey Steinberg, an editor of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.'s Executive Intelligence Review,[20] who has appeared on Al-Jazeera and whose articles are regularly translated into Arabic by the Saudi daily Al-Watan claimed to be the one who uncovered the "Israeli spy ring" that was later used by the Arab media. [21] From: "The Events of September 11 and the Arab Media: The New Antisemitic Myth"; September 13, 2002; MEMRI
http://memri.org/...
More on Steinberg here(Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11 by Chaim Kupferberg)
http://globalresearch.ca/...
LaRouche 9/11 Conspiracy Theory has also been relayed by an "ex-member"; Webster Tarpley (Website at http://www.tarpley. net/)
Tarpley has a history of tarting up Larouche drivel into something that passes at first glance as rational:
The ever-obliging Webster Tarpley, who at least had the advantage of knowing Latin, prepared a totally specious speech to "prove" Lyn's thesis that Latin was a fascist, imperialist linguistic construct.
When Lyn stutters and stammers incoherently about "But polluted with a certain number of Latin loan words, which were the technical terms, like equus and [cavallo?]--difference," he's referring to one of Webster's key "proofs" that the Romance languages descended, not from Latin, but from Italian, and that Italian did not descend from Latin.
That "proof" was the fact that the French word for horse is cheval; the Italian, cavallo; the Spanish, caballo. But, said Webster triumphantly, the Latin word for horse is equus. Therefore, we see that French and Spanish (and Portuguese and Romanian) are derived from Italian, not this fake language Latin.
Of course, Webster did not bother to tell his glazed-eyed audience that, just as English has more than one word for horse (horse, steed, nag, courser, etc. etc.), so does Latin. Guess what one of those words is? Caballus. The Latin word for horseman is caballarius--suspiciously like, for example, Spanish caballero, or French chevalier.
See what I mean? It is believed that Latin got the word caballus from Gaulish--a Celtic tongue--from whence it passed through to the Romance languages.
Well, you get the idea. Webster was intellectually dishonest in his speech because he was trying to curve-fit to prove Lyn's ridiculous point.
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/...
A revealing statement[bold mine]:
Lyn goes to jail and the org withers away as many people leave, barely with the shirt on their back. We hook up with a Scientology offshoot in the Christic Institute and see that there is money to be made in now attacking the right wing, which we were always accused of working for. IRan Contra gives us an idea, so we now move towards our version of the left.
Among the Hollywood liberals who we attacked like clockwork was Ed Asner and his PAC. Asner was one of our main enemies in the past.
Bush and Cheney come to office which gives us new life as these guys are the new Anti Christ for the left. Lyn proclaims that Bush Sr. put him in Jail while Clinton set him free to save humanity.
Time can make people forget things and lo and behold, Ed Asner gives Lyn a few hundred bucks and shows up at a campaign meeting in Ca..
Since many Hollywood people live in fantasy land, Lyn's fantasies are streamlined and the org purges its history and starts over with LYM. A project is carried out where members in certain areas quietly leave the org and turn up in positions of either journalists for a few papers like Le Monde and The Nation. Other people set up their own traveling road show and hit the jack pot using Larouche and the org's lunacy without naming Lyn. Webster Tarpley and Bill Endghal do this full time.
http://forum.laroucheplanet.info/...
What does this mean for the 9/11 Truth movement? Several things:
- Webster Tarpley's theories are Lyndon Larouche's theories
- any fan of Tarpley's theories are actually fans of Larouche's theory, though they may not know it.
- by promoting LaRouches 911 theory, Tarpley is almost certainly still part of the of the Lyndon Larouche PAC
- and by extension has those resources to draw of to help him in his "mission".
- If there is organized activity to manipulate the 9/11 truth movement via cult-like manipulations, the Larouch PAC is the most likely source.
6: Endorsing Webster Tarpley is endorsing Lyndon Larouche
Some people may not understand why this is a bad thing. "Yeh, the guys a nutter, but maybe he's right about some things." Maybe, but its not responsible to promote a source that is dishonest and draws its support from a a criminal organization who takes a mafia approach to handling critics:
http://www.lyndonlarouchewatch.org/...
http://lyndonlarouche.org/...
http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/...
[9/11truth isn't Larouche's only "project". You'll find many instances of racist/offensive material directed at Obama originates with Larouche's—attempts to undermine real critics of Obama?]
http://washingtonindependent.com/...
Putting the Kennebunkpost Hoax into perspective:
www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/21/143911/917
Just because 9/11 was not done by "the Arabs" does not mean it was done by "the Jews", or even Israel. And for the rare sincere Truther, who is NOT a-Nazi wannabe and who believes there's value in researching possible Israeli involvement, they'd do themselves a favor to NOT use sources from a political cult leader implicated in murder. Nor would they want to associate themselves with the criminal cult tactics used by fake truthers and debunkers alike in the wake of the Kennebunkport Hoax.
In closing be aware: there is a malignant artificial culture infecting the 911 Truth movement. It has been there from almost day one, and overlaps (as much as it can get away with) genuine activism. It plays off of your justified fears, gains trust appealing to truths you know, takes advantage of your sense of fair play and free speech to try to convince you to discard intellectual discrimination and critical thinking skills. A person started out researching 9/11 and find themselves surrounded by people pushing the New Lizard World Order run by Jews that used Directed energy space beams on 9/11. And no closer to either understanding what happened or a new investigation. It sounds insane, but this happens. Good, kind, and otherwise intelligent people falling prey to ignoring and/ or excusing the worse theories and/or behavior because of their investment in the culture. It takes a serious shock for many of them to snap out of it—unfortunately for many that wake up call comes in the form of vicious cult-like harassment when they refuse to toe the party line agenda, that's more interested in promoting Jews/alien/space beam rubbish than justice for the victims of 9/11.
Next:
If this is it..Part 3: Kennebunkport and WQ2RX: past and future attacks in 9/11Truth