If political leaders are so easily taken in by a pernicious global myth about 9/11 because of the sheen of respectability lent to it by Griffin's books, one could hopefully look to firefighters, who are generally practical, sensible people, for reassurance about the truth of the official account of 9/11. This hope is dashed, however, by the testimonies about explosions in the TwinTowers by dozens of firefighters, some of whom Richard Gage heard Griffin discussing on that interview in 2006. New York firefighters lost 343 of their own on September 11. The members of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth are demanding the investigation and prosecution of those involved in arranging explosions, destroying evidence, and orchestrating a cover-up.
One thing bringing Griffin to the attention of the editors of the New Statesman may have been the selection of his seventh book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, by America's foremost book trade reviewer, Publishers Weekly, as its Pick of the Week on November 24, 2008. This honor, which is bestowed on only 51 books a year, perhaps increased the sheen of respectability these editors attribute to Griffin's books.
And, if the New Statesman did its homework in researching its #41 position, it would have found that Griffin was nominated in both 2008 and 2009 for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The decision of the New Statesman to include Griffin on the list of people who matter today does make sense, therefore, insofar as it was saying that the movement he represents is important. This way of understanding it was, in fact, Griffin's own, as soon as he learned about the article. In a letter to fellow members of the 9/11 truth community, he said: We should take this [New Statesman] article as a reluctant tribute to the effectiveness of our movement.(3)
Does the 9/11 Truth Movement Promote a Pernicious Myth?
My second questions is: On what basis could the New Statesman editors justify their claim that this 9/11 truth movement promotes a myth - a pernicious one at that?
To call it a myth implies that it is not true. But why is it pernicious?
If the New Statesman were a right-wing magazine, we could assume that it would regard the 9/11 truth movement's central claim that the US government carried out, or at least colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war as pernicious because it seeks to undermine the imperialist wars justified by 9/11. But surely the left-leaning New Statesman does not share that view.
The word pernicious might simply mean that the myth that the US government carried out, or at least colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war, is too morally repugnant to accept. But that gut reaction does not bear on the truth or falsity of the possibility, especially in light of all the morally repugnant things carried out by the Bush-Cheney administration that have already been publicly documented.
More likely, the New Statesman shares the view of left-leaning intellectuals, such as Alexander Cockburn and George Monbiot, that the 9/11 movement is distracting many left-leaning people from dealing with truly important issues.
However, would many people who regard 9/11 as a false-flag operation in which forces within the US government orchestrated the attacks to have a pretext for, among other things, going to war against oil-rich Muslim countries - consider the attempt to reveal this truth a distraction from important issues? Surely not.
For the Statesman to call the central claim of the 9/11 truth movement pernicious, therefore, seems to be simply another way of calling it a myth of saying that it is false.
If so, the question becomes: On what basis would the editors of the New Statesman argue that the position of the 9/11 truth movement, as articulated in Griffin's writings, is false?
I will suggest a possible way they could do this: They could use the pages of their magazine to explain why the cumulative case Griffin has constructed against the official story is unconvincing. To assist them in this task, I have provided below a summary of some of the main points in Griffin's case, with page references to his most comprehensive work, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited (2008), and his most recent book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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