Is the 9/11 Truth Movement a Different Tea Party?

I just stumbled onto an alarming chunk of propaganda. This may have been going on for some time but I just noticed it today.

The 9/11 Truth Movement is being thrown into the same crazy pile where the Tea Bagger-Birther-Death Panel people fester.

Steve Pizzo, one of the 3 authors of the Pulitzer nominated “Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans” (Absolutely Great Book BTW), sends out daily email missives. In today’s Humor edition:

WHEN YOU KNOW YOUR HUBBY HAS BEEN GOING TO TOO MANY TEA PARTY RALLIES:

Hmmmmmmm.

Last February Syndicated columnist Jonathan Kay wrote an exclusive piece for newsweek.com.

Black Helicopters Over Nashville – Never mind Sarah Palin and the tricornered hats. The tea-party movement is dominated by conspiracist kooks.

“This world view’s modern-day prophets include Texas radio host Alex Jones, whose documentary, The Obama Deception, claims Obama’s candidacy was a plot by the leaders of the New World Order to “con the American people into accepting global slavery”; Christian evangelist Pat Robertson; and the rightward strain of the aforementioned “9/11 Truth” movement.”

That same month Rich Karlgaard wrote in his blog, Digital Rules at Forbes.com, “Tea Party Truthers Are Neo-John Birchers.”

“ … Debra Medina got on the phone with Beck, she did so presuming a friendly interview. And that is what she got, until Beck asked Medina if the rumors were true that Medina was a “9/11 Truther”–someone who believes that the U.S. government was involved in the September 2001 attacks.

A layup, an easy denial, but Medina muffed it.

… logic says one of two things must be true. Either Medina is herself a 9/11 truther. Or she is a greasy politician and knows that within her base of Tea Party supporters, there is a subset that thinks the U.S. was complicit in the murder of 3,000-plus Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Also in February The New Yorker published “The Movement” written by Ben McGrath. He writes, “… As spring passed into summer, the scores at local Tea Party gatherings turned to hundreds, and then thousands, collecting along the way footloose Ron Paul supporters, goldbugs, evangelicals, Atlas Shruggers, militiamen, strict Constitutionalists, swine-flu skeptics, scattered 9/11 “truthers,” neo-“Birchers,” and, of course, “birthers”—those who remained convinced that the President was a Muslim double agent born in Kenya.”

This is weird. The Tea Party People, especially Glenn Beck, denounce the 9/11 Truth groups but there seems to be an effort underway to conflate the two movements.

Why anybody would try to do something like that?

Oh … I dunno … maybe if people who demand accountability are lumped in with a mob of crazy racist dumbasses by MainStream Media the credibility of The Accountability People is cut off at the knees.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/02/how-popular-is-the-tea-party-movement/

The Tea Party People are in the minority. From Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress, “The number of Iowans who like the tea party movement is smaller than the number of Americans who want marijuana legalized or the number of Americans who believe the government has had secret contact with extra-terrestrials.”

But how many Americans doubt The Official Story regarding the events of September 11, 2001?

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.cfm

In 2004 a Zogby International Poll showed, “Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and “Consciously Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General.”

Two years later …

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14026

“More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”

MainStream Media is making sure that the majority of Americans believe that demanding a real investigation into what happened 9 years ago is as crazy as demanding to see Barack Obama’s real birth certificate.

And getting over that hurdle is as easy as flapping your arms really fast and flying to the moon.

Is the 9/11 Truth Movement a Different Tea Party? July 23, 2010