Type the words “9/11 conspiracy theory” into the YouTube search bar and people will line up to tell you what “really” happened.
There are countless videos of pundits like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson giving their passionate opinions, along with a seemingly endless collection of video accounts denouncing the CIA, the “deep state,” or the Illuminati. “Inside Jobs?” reads the thumbnail of one video, which has been viewed more than 500,000 times, before zooming in on footage of the two World Trade Center towers that caught fire on September 11, 2001.
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Twenty-five years after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing about 3,000 people, conspiracy theories remain strong. Rather, they just continue to pick up the pace and mutate. Once associated with eccentrics in tinfoil hats exchanging far-fetched theories from their mother’s basement, conspiracy theories have become an unpleasant part of our political culture since 2016, when “post-truth” was named Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, experts say.
In an era of “fake news,” with declining trust in traditional media and government, conspiracy theories, from QAnon to false claims that the 2020 US election was stolen, are increasingly colliding with mainstream politics, which helped fuel the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by disgruntled supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump. In recent days, a new wave of entirely unsubstantiated claims accusing Israel of involvement in the September 11 attacks has gained traction online, recycling old theories and riding a wave of contemporary anger over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and public perceptions of Israeli influence on American politics.
As a result, conspiracy theories have moved from the fringes of politics to the mainstream, offering false explanations for real-world anxieties and becoming increasingly used by far-right politicians as a tool to exploit discontent for their own political ends.
A magnet for conspiracy theories
Suspicion of the state is deeply rooted in American political culture. Decades before 9/11, unanswered questions about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy fueled a sprawling collection of theories about who was really responsible.
But 9/11 was different. The attack was broadcast live on television, making an event that caused extraordinary fear and anxiety a real-time spectacle for the world to see. Hugo Drochon, associate professor of political theory at the University of Nottingham, said the event was “instantaneous”.
“People saw it on TV,” Drochon said. “The United States was at the center of the world, and this was a huge shock. There was also the spectacle element of hijacking planes and crashing them into the World Trade Center. That defined a generation.”
Two wars followed this attack, further increasing distrust of the U.S. government. Less than a month after the September 11 attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan. In March 2003, the US-led coalition invaded Iraq on the (now disproven) claim that its leader, Saddam Hussein, possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” No such weapon was subsequently discovered.
After all, the lies told by the government fueled the rise of conspiracy theories, as the claims of weapons of mass destruction were widely viewed by critics.
“Lies breed distrust, and there is a correlation between distrust and belief in conspiracy theories,” Drochon said.
Furthermore, over the past quarter century, the way people consume information has also changed rapidly. The September 11 attacks were perhaps the first of their kind to unfold simultaneously in 24-hour television coverage and an emerging Internet culture.
“Early conspiracy theories appeared at the same time as cable news and rolling news,” lecturer and conspiracy theory expert David Robertson told Al Jazeera.
“In the case of 9/11, people were watching the coverage of the event as it happened. That created an opportunity for people to find obvious holes in the evidence and discuss them, especially with the growth of the Internet.”
Launched just four years after the attack, YouTube provided a new platform for those theories to grow and flourish. Films such as Loose Change, which allege that the attacks were orchestrated or “allowed” to occur by elements within the U.S. government, reach vast audiences online, while false claims that the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition have developed their own sprawling internet community.
“Post-truth” and fake news
“Conspiracy theories have always existed,” Drochon said. “What changed was the moment politicians started actively using conspiracy theories as political weapons.”
That moment came in 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning for his first term in the White House.
Trump had already built part of his national political profile by promoting the false “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama, America’s first black president, was not born in the United States and therefore ineligible to serve as president. Trump has repeatedly embraced or expanded on other conspiracy theories and conspiratorial claims since taking office. He promoted allegations that the “deep state” was working against him and expanded accounts associated with QAnon, a far-right political and conspiracy theory movement that emerged in the United States in 2017.
Mr. Drochon said Mr. Trump’s appeal to people who repeat conspiracy theories has energized a new electorate of people who have traditionally been less involved in politics. “Trump energized those kinds of voters. Certain people who had never voted before were coming to vote. We saw the same thing with Brexit,” Drochon said, referring to the UK referendum (also in 2016) in which more than half of voters chose to leave the European Union.
At the same time, the relatively new social media ecosystem has changed the speed and scale at which such claims circulate. “Social media allows conspiracy theories to spread and makes them more visible,” Drochon said.
“Relatedly, you have politicians who use that theory. That creates a vicious cycle. Because politicians repeat the theory, it gets more attention, and then people take it more seriously because it seems to explain political developments like Trump.”
As fake news somehow became gospel truth, President Trump’s fervent “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) voter base repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread election fraud hurt the 2020 presidential election. On January 6, 2021, a mob of President-elect Joe Biden’s supporters stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. QAnon images and slogans were visible in the crowd as they entered the building.
This episode demonstrated that conspiratorial claims circulating online can be amplified by those at the highest levels of political power and fuel real-world political action. “People could use them for nefarious purposes,” Drochon noted. “They become a threat when the most powerful political actors adopt them.”
How did the 9/11 conspiracy theory become popular again?
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Donald Trump is once again at the center of American politics, attempting to retell his version of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Speaking at a memorial event this week, the president claimed firefighters had removed him from Ground Zero and said he had arrived with other personnel to assist in rescue efforts as nearby buildings threatened to collapse. “Two firefighters, big, strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world, grabbed me by the armpits and said, ‘Get out of here,’ and they literally cheered me up,” the Republican president claimed.
This wasn’t the first time Trump has inserted himself into the 9/11 narrative or made controversial claims about the attacks. In November 2015, ahead of his first presidential campaign, Trump claimed to have seen “thousands” of people cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed in Jersey City. No evidence has ever emerged to support this explanation.
In September 2019, President Trump shared a false video of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar dancing on the anniversary of 9/11, writing, “The new face of the Democratic Party!” The footage was actually from a Congressional Black Caucus event held on a completely different day.
Several people close to President Trump are also promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene once questioned whether a third 9/11 plane hit the Pentagon in Alexandria, Virginia, killing nearly 200 people in addition to those in New York City. Green later admitted that this claim was false.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has become a prominent ally of Mr. Trump, shared a video describing 9/11 as an “inside crime.”
Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist and founder of the right-wing platform Infowars who was lavished on by President Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, was ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution to the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which he claimed was a hoax. He has also long promoted the claim that the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed in a “controlled demolition.”
Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential broadcasters on the American right, has also repeatedly questioned the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center.
More recently, Carlson’s focus has shifted to another element of the 9/11 conspiracy theory: claims that Israel was involved.
“We declassify the 9/11 files, and everyone on the Internet was like, ‘Oh, those dancing Israelis. They did it. Israel predicted 9/11.'” Text messages were sent to Israel warning of 9/11. All of that is true, by the way,” Carlson said in March.
His argument is that Israel may have had an incentive to draw the United States into the Middle East conflict and withhold information about the attack to serve Israeli interests. The claims are unsubstantiated, but that hasn’t stopped influential figures on the American right from taking full advantage of them. And it shows how conspiracy theories can change depending on the politics around them.
As support for Israel plummets among Americans amid the genocidal war in Gaza and the war against Iran, some political analysts point to Carlson as an example of how people on the right are changing with Israel. Carlson, who built much of his career on Fox News defending Israel, dramatically pivoted as anger over U.S. support for Israel grew.
And with conspiracy theories already deeply embedded in much of the MAGA movement, Carlson is increasingly channeling his genuine grievances about Gaza into unsubstantiated claims of Israeli involvement in 9/11, claims that are likely to find a receptive audience among the conspiratorial elements of Trump’s base.
“Conspiracy theories have always represented a potential threat, but that threat is especially visible at this time because those who promote conspiracy theories are not just on the fringes,” Drochon said.
“Some conspiracy theorists are some of the most powerful people in the world.”
