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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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19 September 2010 By Denis G.
Rancourt
September 2010. This essay was
first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-we-love-to-hate-conspiracy-theories.html
Especially left and liberal
professionals and service intellectuals but also
right-wing members of the intelligentsia vehemently
attack and ridicule “conspiracy theories” such as the
present 911 Truth movement.
Why?
It’s as though power did not
covertly orchestrate its predation of us? Is that not
the modus operandi of power?
Is it so difficult to believe
that the complex and highly successful military attack
on US soil that was 911 (levelling three gigantic sky
scrapers, blasting a hole into the Pentagon, and
destroying four commercial jets and their passengers)
was not orchestrated by a religious zealot from a cave
in Afghanistan and executed by failed Cessna pilot
trainees with box cutters? Or that those who
measurably benefited in the trillions had nothing to
do with it?
What the hell? Not even
(admittedly rare) authoritative mainstream reports
seem to matter [1].
What ever happened to “war is a
racket” and “follow the money”?
In rigorous compliance with the
true meanings of academic freedom [2] and freedom of
the press virtually no academics or mainstream
journalists have made it their research to find truth
or to radically (at the root) question the
establishment version.
Indeed, all the major and
considered-radical academic pundits such as Noam
Chomsky and Ward Churchill, have actively avoided the
possibility that the 911 attacks could have been known
or aided from within the finance-corporate-military
complex.
What keeps them from crossing
that line? What makes them demean attempts to cross
that line? [3]
Similarly, even outspoken
dissident parliamentary politicians such as George
Galloway have ridiculed the concerns of 911 truthers
(at his last public talk in Ottawa).
Is such self and projected
censorship by star intellectuals only the result of
the fear of being mobbed by ridicule? Is asking these
questions in public fora so dangerous?
When barred and suppressed Afghan
Member of Parliament Malalai Joya was asked about 911
by a truther in Ottawa last year she replied that
those who sought answers in this matter should address
their questions to the occupiers of the White House.
To this writer’s knowledge, this is the furthest that
any politician has gone in this direction, coming from
“the bravest woman in Afghanistan” no less.
But what shocked the present
writer more is the derision to which was subjected the
truther at the Malalai Joya Ottawa event, at the hands
of an “activist” and “progressive” crowd.
INTELLIGENTSIA
SELF-DEFENCE
The intelligentsia appears to be
addicted to the illusion that it has a monopoly on
valid analysis and understanding. In order to preserve
this illusion and to protect its standing in providing
interpretations of the World, the intelligentsia must
limit the scope of all investigations to domains that
fall within its self-established interpretational
paradigms (right-left, power politics, geopolitical
chess board, corporate motives, etc.) and
self-established research protocols.
Those paradigms and protocols, in
turn, and the rigorously followed discipline of not
supposing the worst in one’s research stance, were
established in academia at the time when “academic
freedom” was being defined by the cornerstone
nineteenth century US battles for professional
independence in academia. The academics and society
lost that battle [2]:
“[T]he economists were the first
professional analysts to be “broken in,” in a battle
that defined the limits of academic freedom in
universities. The academic system would from that
point on impose a strict operational separation
between inquiry and theorizing as acceptable and
social reform as unacceptable.
Any academic wishing to preserve
her position understood what this meant. As a side
product, academics became virtuosos at nurturing a
self-image of importance despite this fatal limitation
on their societal relevance, with verbiage such as:
The truth is our most powerful weapon, the pen is
mightier than the sword, a good idea can change the
world, reason will take us out of darkness, etc.”
Academics and “radical
professors” train the intelligentsia…
And power owns the media.
TRUTH ABOUT
TRUTH
But much more importantly power
owns us, owns our jobs, owns students at school and
owns the homeless on the street, the First Peoples on
the reserves and the prisoners in the jails. As long
as we are owned, information about abuse of power is
irrelevant for social change.
This is the sociological fact
that the 911 Truth movement has failed to recognize
[4]. Truth will not set us free. Truth and information
do not lead to action. It’s not a question of how many
folks know the truth.
It’s only a question of what the
truth means in real terms to however few individuals
and will these individuals rebel, actually rebel and
individually take back power over their lives.
Contrary to the mantra of our
left academic idols, truth and research are not
threatening to power in a culture of subservience and
obedience. In such a culture, radical-in-thought
academics only stabilize the system by neutralizing
the more action-minded youth. [5]
In such a culture, the only truth
that is threatening to power is one that it perceives
as an attack on its self-image [6]. And, in such a
culture, psychological self-image arising from power’s
connection to the broader society is the only force
that can move power to constrain itself [6]. In this
measure, in the present culture, 911 Truth could have
an impact. In this way, some of the low-level actual
perpetrators and facilitators of 911 could eventually
be sacrificed in show trials or in mainstream smear
campaigns.
In conclusion, the intelligentsia
works at protecting itself (and by extension the
system) and therefore will be a visceral opponent of
911 Truth until it can integrate 911 Truth and
participate in neutralizing 911 Truth in order for
power to save face. Or, some citizens might actually
rebel? The extent and projection/potential of such
pockets of rebellion is the only force capable of
leveraging real concessions from power [7][8][9].
Endnotes
[1] “Major media articles on
9-11 raise questions” by Fred Burks, 2010, Want to
Know.
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/major-media-articles-on-9-11-raise-questions/
[2] “Some big lies of science”
by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-big-lies-of-science.html
[3] “Questioning Foundations:
An Interview with Denis Rancourt” by Michael Barker,
2010, Dissident Voice.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/questioning-foundations-an-interview-with-denis-rancourt/
[4] “911 Truth” by Denis G.
Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/03/911-truth.html
[5] “Against Chomsky” by Denis
G. Rancourt, 2008.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2008/07/against-chomsky.html
[6] “Psycho-biological basis
for image leverage and the case of Israel” by Denis G.
Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/psycho-biological-basis-for-image.html
[7] “On the racism and
pathology of left progressive First-World activism” by
Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-racism-and-pathology-of-left.html
[8] “Roundabout as
conflict-avoidance versus Malcolm X’s psychology of
liberation” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/roundabout-as-conflict-avoidance-versus.html
[9] “Murder and genocide are
natural, therefore rebel!” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/09/murder-and-genocide-are-natural.html
RELATED VIDEO REPORTS:
corbettreport.com: 9/11 Truth
is Still the Issue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiA3K8CGQ-0
TheRealNews: 9/11 Questions
Remain Unanswered
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0HJdvD6SJk
Denis G. Rancourt was a
tenured and full professor of physics at the
University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several
areas of science which were funded by a national
agency and ran an internationally recognized
laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading
scientific journals. He developed popular activism
courses and was an outspoken critic of the university
administration and a defender of student and
Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in
2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of
Israeli policy. [See rancourt.academicfreedom.ca]
EsinIslam.Com
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