Former PBS broadcaster Bill Moyers, with all his
influence and prestige, publicly derided 9/11 truth activists, and
supported the official myth in a speech he gave in New York on January
27, 2011.
It takes patience, and a "readiness to own thyself mistaken," as Thomas Carlyle said, to dig through the facts and evidence before arriving at the truth of what really happened on September 11, 2001. I thought Moyers would be more open-minded and sympathetic, but he's made an ignorant judgment about the movement for 9/11 truth and accountability. I feel let down because I admired Moyers. It turns out most journalists can't handle the truth about 9/11. Oh well. I have new heroes now: Paul Craig Roberts, William Cooper, David Ray Griffin, Alex Jones, Richard Gage, Bob McIlvaine, the list is endless. I hope Moyers rejoins the list in the future.
Although I understand that people
deny a painful truth because it undermines their core beliefs about the
world, and damages their self-esteem, I'm still surprised that
intelligent and genuinely independent-minded individuals can't accept
the fact that the Bush administration completely lied about 9/11. Our
supposedly best journalists and reporters, who constantly talk about
democracy, free speech, and the need to resist power, and who endlessly
quote Orwell, are not only nowhere to be found when it comes to speaking
the truth about 9/11, but they arrogantly mock the individuals who are
simply asking for a new investigation.
Like
other prominent journalists and reporters, Chris Hedges and Robert Parry
among them, former PBS broadcaster Bill Moyers is shockingly dismissive
of the evidence that undercuts the official story about 9/11 which has
been painstakingly gathered by 9/11 truth activists, professional
architects and engineers, citizen journalists, and regular individuals.
In a speech given at a convention held by History Makers in New York on January 27, 2011, Moyers said that the 9/11 truth
movement is not based on the truth but disinformation and conspiracy
theories. He ignorantly refers to 9/11 truth activists as "truthers." Here
is an excerpt from the speech:
Disinformation is not unique to the right, of course. Like other journalists, I have been the object of malevolent assaults from the "9/11 truthers" for not reporting their airtight case proving that the Bush administration conspired to bring about the attacks on the World Trade Center. How did they discover this conspiracy? As the independent journalist Robert Parry has written, "the truthers" threw out all the evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement, from contemporaneous calls from hijack victims on the planes to confessions from al-Qaeda leaders both in and out of captivity that they had indeed done it. Then, recycling some of the right's sophistry techniques, such as using long lists of supposed evidence to overcome the lack of any real evidence, the "truthers" cherry-picked a few supposed "anomalies" to build an "inside-job" story line. Fortunately, this Big Lie never took hold in the public mind. These truthers on the left, if that is where GPS can find them on the political map, are outgunned, outmatched and outshouted by the media apparatus on the right that pounds the public like drone missiles loaded with conspiracy theories and disinformation and accompanied by armadas of outright lies.
George Orwell had warned six decades ago that the corrosion of language goes hand in hand with the corruption of democracy. If he were around today, he would remind us that "like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket," this kind of propaganda engenders a "protective stupidity" almost impossible for facts to penetrate.
But you, my colleagues, can't give up. If you do, there's no chance any public memory of everyday truths - the tangible, touchable, palpable realities so vital to democracy - will survive. We would be left to the mercy of the agitated amnesiacs who "make" their own reality, as one of them boasted at the time America invaded Iraq, in order to maintain their hold on the public mind and the levers of power. You will remember that in Orwell's novel "1984," Big Brother banishes history to the memory hole, where inconvenient facts simply disappear. Control of the present rests on obliteration of the past. The figure of O'Brien, who is the personification of Big Brother, says to the protagonist, Winston Smith: "We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." And they do. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Truth destroy the records of the past and publish new versions. These in turn are superseded by yet more revisions. Why? Because people without memory are at the mercy of the powers that be; there is nothing against which to measure what they are told today. History is obliterated.
By
quoting Orwell, you would think that Moyers would understand that using
the labels "conspiracy theories" and "9/11 truthers" to bat away and
delegitimize other human beings represents "the corrosion of language"
that Orwell warned about. How did the label "conspiracy theory" enter
the popular lexicon in the first place, anyway? It surely benefits the
war criminals in power in Washington when journalists like Moyers and
Parry use the label "conspiracy theorist" to put down activists and stand beside the official lie that Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden carried
out the 9/11 attacks. It seems like Moyers, Parry, and other journalists
are putting themselves inside a bubble of "protective stupidity,"
making it "almost impossible for facts to penetrate."
Has Moyers watched the collapse of Building 7? Has he read the books on 9/11 by David Ray Griffin? Has he interviewed Richard Gage of Architects And Engineers For 9/11 Truth? What kind of research has he done on the subject? Or is he just talking out of his ass?
If Orwell were alive today, he would not mock 9/11 truth, but research all the evidence, and then let it all hang out.
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