An Inconvenient Truth (About 9/11)

[synthesis]

I apologize in advance if this seems intentionally provocative; that's not my goal. 9/11 was undoubtedly another atrocious episode in the recurrent Greek tragedy that is globalized capitalism. This is not a conspiracy theory, nor is it an assignment of blame; in my book, 9/11 is yet another outcome of global elites turning human beings into pawns on the chessboard of international imperialism.

But see if you can't mentally compartmentalize both the suffering and loss and the context in which they existed; see if you can, just for a second, forget about the unfortunate victims of the attacks as well as the victims of neo-colonialism whose agonized oppression provided the hijackers with an impetus and a justification for "asymmetric warfare."

If you can set all those terrible things aside, if you can view that day through the lens of an dispassionate observer, you arrive at an especially inconvenient truth:

9/11 was fucking awesome.

Okay, maybe you're not an American male like yours truly. Maybe you haven't been raised with a quasi-sexual attraction to buildings exploding violently. Maybe you're not like me. But admit this to yourself: If 9/11 was nothing more than the plot of a particularly high-budget action movie, you would have gotten at least little wet down there.

Unfortunately, the more I think about 9/11 these days, the more awesome it seems. I blame the American movie industry. Despite all my rationalized objections to capitalists glorifying political violence to advance their ulterior motives, despite everything I know, in essence I'm still fundamentally of the Die Hard generation.

We've been taught to love planes crashing into things, and we've been taught to love buildings collapsing in massive explosions. Again, remove the context and the suffering, and the combination of the two is nothing less than orgasmic.

I'm genuinely sorry to anyone I have offended. I didn't lose anyone close to me, so this is probably just a dick move on my part, but I had to get this off my chest. It's an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless.



http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/images/wtc9-11.jpg

[Kléber]

as well as the victims of neo-colonialism whose agonized oppression provided the hijackers with an impetus and a justification for "asymmetric warfare."
But there are many more working people in the oppressed countries who are suffering from US invasions&occupations that relied on this act of voluntarist insanity (that's assuming it wasn't A CONSPIRACY OMG) for their impetus and justification.

[whore]

http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/catalog/video.html

i like to watch the towers coming down. (warning site may be disturbing to many people. the video may also screw you up further tahn you already are. do not visit links within the site if urine drink is upsetting for you. not safe for work nsfw etc.)

[Bilan]

I didn't find it awesome, and I kind of find you repulsive for doing so.

[scarletghoul]

9/11 is just as tragic as any other loss of human life. however theres is a cool element to it, for anti-imperialists to blow up the heart of the system that is exploiting the third world.

[bcbm]

I didn't find it awesome, and I kind of find you repulsive for doing so.

they're not saying that the loss of life was awesome, they're saying that from an action movie sort of standpoint, it was awesome. big explosions, falling buildings, etc.

[RHIZOMES]

I was 10 at the time of 9/11 happening and I seriously felt like I was in some sort of action movie IRL

[synthesis]

I didn't find it awesome, and I kind of find you repulsive for doing so.

I completely agree; I'm repulsed by it, too. There is a part of my brain that is desensitized to violence and a part that is not, and unfortunately the former sometimes overwhelms the latter. The first time I ever saw someone get shot in front of me, I was shocked by how little emotional response I had to it. I did everything I could to help, but I felt disappointed in myself for not being overwhelmed by it. It's hard to explain.

Here's what I'm saying. People like me have, by and large, been force-fed so much media in our youth that conditions us to be awed by fantastical violence against "the enemy," out of context and without any ethical quandaries over the suffering that should be inflicted on them, that creates a sort of "blowback" which manifests in sentiments such as those I expressed above. What happens when empathy is predicated on concepts like nationalism and religion? What happens when those concepts evaporate?

[synthesis]

But there are many more working people in the oppressed countries who are suffering from US invasions&occupations that relied on this act of voluntarist insanity (that's assuming it wasn't A CONSPIRACY OMG) for their impetus and justification.

I don't know if I follow. Can you elaborate?

[RHIZOMES]

I completely agree; I'm repulsed by it, too. There is a part of my brain that is desensitized to violence and a part that is not, and unfortunately the former sometimes overwhelms the latter. The first time I ever saw someone get shot in front of me, I was shocked by how little emotional response I had to it. I did everything I could to help, but I felt disappointed in myself for not being overwhelmed by it. It's hard to explain.

Here's what I'm saying. People like me have, by and large, been force-fed so much media in our youth that conditions us to be awed by fantastical violence against "the enemy," out of context and without any ethical quandaries over the suffering that should be inflicted on them, that creates a sort of "blowback" which manifests in sentiments such as those I expressed above. What happens when empathy is predicated on concepts like nationalism and religion? What happens when those concepts evaporate?

wait someone got shot in front of you?

[synthesis]

wait someone got shot in front of you?

Yeah, it didn't have anything to do with me, though. It was a robbery gone wrong. Someone was picking up a large deposit from the post office in the building I was working in, and some other people wanted it. I didn't know anyone involved.

[Honggweilo]

I was 10 at the time of 9/11 happening and I seriously felt like I was in some sort of action movie IRL
i was like 13, i just had an apathetic "wow" reaction and i could remember that i was only a bit dissapointed that i could never see the biggest building in the world IRL again :lol:..

[Pirate Utopian]

I was 10 and was just out from school and my mom calls and tells me to put on the news and all I thought was "oh news, how boring" and then went on to inane cartoons.

[RHIZOMES]

i was like 13, i just had an apathetic "wow" reaction and i could remember that i was only a bit dissapointed that i could never see the biggest building in the world IRL again :lol:..

It felt like I was in that typical "random people from all over the world look in horror at the news" scene, and we were the "random NZ countryside hick school" segment of it.

[Chambered Word]

http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/catalog/video.html

i like to watch the towers coming down. (warning site may be disturbing to many people. the video may also screw you up further tahn you already are. do not visit links within the site if urine drink is upsetting for you. not safe for work nsfw etc.)

'If you are a minor, click here' <links to disney.com> I lol'd.

Can't be arsed watching it right now, what is it anyway?

[AntiReactionZero]

I find the explosions exhilarating. :D

[whore]

'If you are a minor, click here' <links to disney.com> I lol'd.

Can't be arsed watching it right now, what is it anyway?
a video clip for a song. basically pornagraphic, a man watching the towers coming down, and masturbating.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well, yeah it was "awesome" in the sense of creating a sense of awe. 10 people called me that morning to tell me to put on the news and I put it on and saw the first towner on fire and I was kind of like - oh someone put a bomb in there, why the fuck are people waking me up and telling me to watch this. Then they said a plane hit it... then a minute later another plane hit the other tower. Crazy. It's such a bizarre sight, I can understand why there is a tendency for some people to believe that it had to be a conspiracy of some kind - they are wrong, but I can understand why people might be drawn to those ideas.

It was hard to process. I called work to see if people were coming in (it seems silly now because I was living in LA at the time - I just didn't want to commute for an hour just to find out that work had been canceled). For the first few hours I just kind of sat at work not doing anything because it was such a strange thing to be at work when nobody was going outside or driving on the freeways. As soon as the initial shock began to fade, I realized that all the movement work I was involved in at the time had probably just ended (I was correct - I had a coalition meeting that night). Then I began to worry about who the US would bomb in response, would there be a crack-down on radicals (I just joined a socialist group two or three weeks before).

Now I just think about that day and how it felt in relation to all the 9/11s the US military causes every month with their drone airplanes and bunker-busting bombs and so on.:crying:

Oh - another crazy and disgusting thing about that morning is when I was commuting to work on a strangely empty 10 freeway in LA, there was a huge banner that someone had attached to one freeway overpasses that said something like "Palestinians did this, kill them all".

[Chambered Word]

I was 10 and was just out from school and my mom calls and tells me to put on the news and all I thought was "oh news, how boring" and then went on to inane cartoons.

I was around that age. At the time I was pissed off because a movie was meant to be on but instead the news had come on instead.


a video clip for a song. basically pornagraphic, a man watching the towers coming down, and masturbating.

Sounds lulzy. Ever watched BME? I'm convinced it's amongst the worst shit you could possibly find.



Oh - another crazy and disgusting thing about that morning is when I was commuting to work on a strangely empty 10 freeway in LA, there was a huge banner that someone had attached to one freeway overpasses that said something like "Palestinians did this, kill them all".

:mad:

[bcbm]

a video clip for a song. basically pornagraphic, a man watching the towers coming down, and masturbating.

didn't that video come out like the same day as the attacks?

[scarletghoul]

h9yvb03R2qs

[Manifesto]

I was eight when it happened so I don't remember much but I was told about what the high school did to tell the students and this is what they said "There was a plane crash, your parents are fine thats all." what the hell is that?

[cb9's_unity]

The original post could have been worded significantly more sensitively. To a certain extent I understand what your saying, however your childish phrasing of things creates more offense than cause to think about your point concerning desensitization.

Also this quote is a bit concerning
however theres is a cool element to it, for anti-imperialists to blow up the heart of the system that is exploiting the third world.

Anti-imperialists didn't blow up the towers. Followers of the prophet Muhammad, a man who conquered a significant portion of Arabia, flew those planes. They were fighting for the advancement of extremist Islam and 72 virgins in heaven.

Hopefully I just misunderstood what your said.

[synthesis]

The original post could have been worded significantly more sensitively. To a certain extent I understand what your saying, however your childish phrasing of things creates more offense than cause to think about your point concerning desensitization.

Sure. The sentiment itself is fundamentally childish, which is why I posted it in Chit-Chat. But remember that our desensitization occurred in our childhood. There will always be that side of my brain that will see shit blowing up and think, "Awesome!"

Our collective numbness to violence is often used to promote, justify and defend imperialism. I simply thought it was interesting that in my case, it worked in the opposite direction.

And of course it was offensive. In reality, however, what damage is done? It is also offensive when Muslims are universally portrayed as bloodthirsty terrorists, but this portrayal has the capacity to foster widespread apathy about, or even support for the subjugation of Palestinian, Iraqi, and Afghani civilians to colonial hegemony. Which is worse?


Anti-imperialists didn't blow up the towers. Followers of the prophet Muhammad, a man who conquered a significant portion of Arabia, flew those planes. They were fighting for the advancement of extremist Islam and 72 virgins in heaven.

Hopefully I just misunderstood what your said.Well, Islam was progressive for its time, but that's a different discussion. Your analysis of their motives isn't wrong, it's just half the story, and you're leaving out the good part. True, the hijackers were working in the name of radical Islam, and they did believe that they would be rewarded in Heaven.

They were also anti-imperialists. Radical Islam is what Marx described as "nationalism of the oppressed," in the sense that the Islamic world is perceived as one nation under foreign hegemony. The hijackers were inspired by the ideology of radical Islam, but they were motivated by Western neo-colonialism.

When you hear them complain about "infidels on holy grounds," remind yourself that they're really just angry about the fact that the Saudi ruling class is in America's pockets, that the IDF can massacre Palestinian civilians on a whim, that their local despot is consolidating his authority with Western guns and funding.

It doesn't mean we should support them. It just means that we have to beware of what I call "Hitchens syndrome" - the conviction that "radical Islam" is a greater threat than neo-colonialism and that therefore the latter is "the lesser of two evils," when, in fact, the latter is simply the progenitor of the former.

[RHIZOMES]

\Anti-imperialists didn't blow up the towers. Followers of the prophet Muhammad, a man who conquered a significant portion of Arabia, flew those planes. They were fighting for the advancement of extremist Islam and 72 virgins in heaven.

Hopefully I just misunderstood what your said.

They flew the planes because they were angry at US imperialism and framed their anger in fundamentalist religion terms. It wasn't to "advance extremist Islam", you must watch too much bourgeois news.

EDIT: Also what Kun Fana said.

[Wanted Man]

Anti-imperialists didn't blow up the towers. Followers of the prophet Muhammad, a man who conquered a significant portion of Arabia, flew those planes. They were fighting for the advancement of extremist Islam and 72 virgins in heaven.

Fucking ragheads, eh?

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

I'm confused. Taliban was responsible for the attacks and had anti-imperialist motivations? Is the claim being made here, by some, that the religious rhetoric does not reflect legitimate viewpoints in the organization? The religious angle is simply a method of communicating a message metaphorically, in some way? That seems very hard to believe.

I don't see how the 9/11 attacks are cool examples of Anti-Imperialism. They blew up a building that triggered widespread panic, the infringements of freedom, and the invasion of the Middle East. Great job... I guess.

I can see how it is cool in some respects, if one ignores the loss of life. Ward Churchill has an interesting line. I do, however, find it very difficult to defend the Taliban within my cultural context, at least.

[synthesis]

Sure, let's get serious.


Taliban was responsible for the attacksA: No. To my knowledge, the Taliban was not directly involved in the planning or execution of the attacks. The pretext for invading Afghanistan was that the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden, in the context of the Taliban's history of condoning and encouraging mujahideen training camps on their territory.


and had anti-imperialist motivations?A: Yes. The attackers perceived the act as one of asymmetric warfare; the real target was the American economy, meaning that the dead civilians were just collateral damage.

Again, the only proper way to analyze the modern global trend of "radical Islam" is as an alternate form of anti-colonial nationalism. The Taliban, in turn, were a brand of Pashtun nationalists who used radical Islam as a means of gaining support from external organizations in their struggles against competing warlords and rival political groups.

They indirectly originated in the determination of the U.S. to turn Afghanistan into "the Soviet Vietnam" by supplying mujahideen groups with weaponry ($3 billion worth) during the Soviet invasion. When the Soviets left, the bitterly divided country turned inwards and basically turned into a fiefdom of warlords. Osama bin Laden, at the time a key figure in the anti-Soviet resistance, swore that the Americans were next. Again, you can't separate "political Islam" from politics.


Is the claim being made here, by some, that the religious rhetoric does not reflect legitimate viewpoints in the organization?A1: No for 9/11. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. The viewpoints are designed by their conditions: the corruption of the Saudi elite, the brazenness of the Israeli military, and the various secular dictatorships whose very existence depended on the West at one point or another.

A2: Yes for the Taliban. They used Islam to consolidate their authoritarianism, not the other way around.



I don't see how the 9/11 attacks are cool examples of Anti-Imperialism. They blew up a building that triggered widespread panic, the infringements of freedom, and the invasion of the Middle East. Great job... I guess.Well, they perceived it as one battle in a war that had already started by that point. That's pretty crucial.

[Stand Your Ground]

I didn't find it awesome, and I kind of find you repulsive for doing so.
Agreed. There was no need to kill all those people. We need to end capitalism but not by bloody explosions.

[CH405]

I apologize in advance if this seems intentionally provocative; that's not my goal. 9/11 was undoubtedly another atrocious episode in the recurrent Greek tragedy that is globalized capitalism. This is not a conspiracy theory, nor is it an assignment of blame; in my book, 9/11 is yet another outcome of global elites turning human beings into pawns on the chessboard of international imperialism.

But see if you can't mentally compartmentalize both the suffering and loss and the context in which they existed; see if you can, just for a second, forget about the unfortunate victims of the attacks as well as the victims of neo-colonialism whose agonized oppression provided the hijackers with an impetus and a justification for "asymmetric warfare."

If you can set all those terrible things aside, if you can view that day through the lens of an dispassionate observer, you arrive at an especially inconvenient truth:

9/11 was fucking awesome.

Okay, maybe you're not an American male like yours truly. Maybe you haven't been raised with a quasi-sexual attraction to buildings exploding violently. Maybe you're not like me. But admit this to yourself: If 9/11 was nothing more than the plot of a particularly high-budget action movie, you would have gotten at least little wet down there.

Unfortunately, the more I think about 9/11 these days, the more awesome it seems. I blame the American movie industry. Despite all my rationalized objections to capitalists glorifying political violence to advance their ulterior motives, despite everything I know, in essence I'm still fundamentally of the Die Hard generation.

We've been taught to love planes crashing into things, and we've been taught to love buildings collapsing in massive explosions. Again, remove the context and the suffering, and the combination of the two is nothing less than orgasmic.

I'm genuinely sorry to anyone I have offended. I didn't lose anyone close to me, so this is probably just a dick move on my part, but I had to get this off my chest. It's an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless.

(9/11 pic)



Obvious troll is obvious.

[synthesis]

Agreed. There was no need to kill all those people. We need to end capitalism but not by bloody explosions.

Well, bloody explosions will probably be involved somehow, but that's not the point. 9/11 was only "awesome" from the perspective that committing acts of mindless violence without concern for human suffering is "awesome."

But that is exactly the perspective that Hollywood forced down our throats as children. We are only outraged by violence when it happens to someone with whom we sympathize, identify, or empathize.

Subsequently, when social constructions like "the nation" begin to deteriorate as their moral legitimacy is called into question, we are left with only two options: to empathize with people simply because they are human, or to have no empathy at all. Consciously, I have chosen the former, but in my subconscious mind, the latter still holds some degree of power.

[Stand Your Ground]

Well, bloody explosions will probably be involved somehow, but that's not the point. 9/11 was only "awesome" from the perspective that committing acts of mindless violence without concern for human suffering is "awesome."

But that is exactly the perspective that Hollywood forced down our throats as children. We are only outraged by violence when it happens to someone with whom we sympathize, identify, or empathize.

Subsequently, when social constructions like "the nation" begin to deteriorate as their moral legitimacy is called into question, we are left with only two options: to empathize with people simply because they are human, or to have no empathy at all. Consciously, I have chosen the former, but in my subconscious mind, the latter still holds some degree of power.
Yes I agree America is a sick and violent nation but it's one thing to enjoy it in a fantasy movie and something entirely different to enjoy it when it happens in real life.

[synthesis]

Yes I agree America is a sick and violent nation but it's one thing to enjoy it in a fantasy movie and something entirely different to enjoy it when it happens in real life.

But that's the point. For a child, that line can be blurry at best.

[Tablo]

Violence in American television reminds me of the theater in 1984 where all the party members thought the killing was hilarious.

I'm not laughing.