This article is a follow up to Intellectual Ignorance: Non-Interventionists and the Left's Genocide Denial Problem
I will never forget the date of April 15th, 2013. It was a day in which my perception of the world - and my own sense of security - would be changed forever.
I was a 12-year-old kid at the time, in the midst of my first year of middle school. Not only had the long-awaited April vacation arrived, but we had just welcomed a new dog into the family.
I live in Massachusetts, just outside of the city of Boston. If you know anything about Boston, you know that, every year on Patriots' Day, the city hosts the Boston Marathon. It's not just a race - it's a celebration of our city and our culture. It's one of the ways we express pride in our city, set aside our differences, and band together as one community.
But, on April 15th, 2013, the day's festivities were shattered in an instant when two pressure-cooker bombs exploded at the finish line on Boylston Street, killing three people and wounding over 264 others - many of whom lost limbs.
I saw the immediate coverage of the aftermath on live television. I was in shock. Of course, I knew this was an act of terrorism. Everybody knew. But I had never, ever imagined that terror would one day strike Boston - the city where I was born and raised. The events of April 15th, 2013, forever shattered that sense of security that I had lived under.
But there is something else I remember about that day. Even before the smoke cleared, and even before the bodies were cold, the rats began to emerge from the sewers of the internet. In the midst of this tragedy, Boston's dignity came under assault from conspiracy theorists, convinced that the bombing was a "hoax" and a "false flag" staged by the US government. Notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones took to his radio show "Infowars" to accuse the US Navy Seals of staging the bombing and spraying "fake blood" on the sidewalks.
Both bombers - Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar "Jahar" Tsarnaev - were later identified and apprehended. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police in Watertown, while Dzhokhar was wounded and captured after a long standoff - a standoff I watched live on television. But even after the bombers were identified and captured, the conspiracists and "skeptics" continued to flood the internet with vile lies, claiming that Dzhokhar was "framed" by the FBI as a "patsy". And when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arraigned in June, 2013, a small group of protesters demonstrated outside the courthouse, spreading conspiracy theories and proclaiming Tsarnaev's innocence.
From the beginning, I was appalled by the conspiracy theorists. What could possibly make someone claim that the worst act of terror in Boston's history was nothing more than a "hoax"? How could someone see the carnage and devastation wrought by these terrorists and think that this was fake?
Unlike true, science-based skepticism, conspiracy theories always have an underlying agenda. They always have a narrative to push. And, throughout my many years of studying and analyzing conspiracy theories, there is one constant that I have found is shared almost universally by conspiracists across the political spectrum - be they on the far-left or the far-right.
Almost every single conspiracy theorist is - in one form or another - rabidly anti-war. Of all the many conspiracy theorists - from Alex Jones on the far-right to Jimmy Dore on the far-left - the one thing they all have in common is strict non-interventionism and anti-globalism.
Come on, Suzuki, you might be thinking. Of course you'd say this. We all know how much you hate non-interventionists. And you might be right. I must admit that I come at this with a clear bias. I am ardently opposed to non-interventionism, and I make no secret of it either. But I also come at this issue with universally-accepted facts and knowledge - facts and knowledge which non-interventionists have constantly either downplayed or outright denied.
9/11 Truthers
On September 11th, 2001, America saw firsthand the horrific devastation of international terrorism. 19 Islamic terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and deliberately crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Two iconic skyscrapers were totally destroyed, America's top military base was crippled, nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were killed, and the United States as a nation was forever changed.
The attackers belonged to Al-Qaeda, an international Islamist terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden and based out of the Taliban-held Afghanistan. This was not the first time Bin Laden had struck against America, but this was his most devastating attack - and the first major attack to take place on American soil.
But before the wreckage at Ground Zero had even cooled, conspiracy theorists took to the internet and the streets to spread their lies and propaganda. They claimed that the 9/11 attacks had been a "false flag" by the US government. It was all a big conspiracy.
Planes hadn't brought down the World Trade Center, they said. Jet fuel didn't burn hot enough to melt the steel beams. Clearly, they claimed, controlled demolition charges placed by the government had taken the buildings down. And what about World Trade Center 7, which collapsed despite having no plane hit it? Obviously, they said, that building was also brought down in a controlled explosion, probably to destroy evidence of the conspiracy.
The Pentagon, the conspiracists added, hadn't been struck by a hijacked commercial jet. No, clearly the Pentagon had been struck by a cruise missile, and the government had covered up the attack and made it LOOK like a plane had hit the building.
And why would the US government stage such an attack on their own country? What purpose did it serve for the government to kill 3,000 of their own citizens?
Well, for many so-called "truthers", these attacks were staged in order to justify a US invasion of Afghanistan (and later Iraq), so that the "establishment" could obtain oil from countries which had refused to submit to "US imperialism".
German politician Andreas von Bulow - who heads the anti-war Social Democratic Party - is one such conspiracy theorist. In his book The CIA and 9/11, von Bulow accused the Bush administration of staging 9/11 in order to provide the US with a reason to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Such claims have been repeated by non-interventionists such as Alex Jones (whose 9/11 conspiracy theories have made him infamous), Paul Joseph Watson, and Jimmy Dore.
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| 9/11 truthers believe that the US government either staged the September 11 attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. A vast number of these "truthers" are also ardent non-interventionists, and claim that the attacks were "staged" as a pretext for "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq. (These theories are too numerous to debunk here, but for those interested in seeing a thorough refutation of 9/11 conspiracy theories, please check out the book "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts", by Popular Mechanics.) |
Many 9/11 conspiracy theorists made no attempts to conceal their anti-war motivations. "The war-free period between Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. ended abruptly on September 11, 01. The genocide of 3,000 Americans [...] set the stage for the invasion of Afghanistan", read an article in the conspiracy-oriented magazine Criminal Politics, which accused the 9/11 attacks of being "staged" by "Zionists". "Then using the excuse of destruction of biological and chemical agents and/or regime change - 160,000 troops were sent to Iraq. The 2nd Iraq war has been extremely successful for Israeli interests."
And David Duke - the former Ku Klux Klan leader and notorious white nationalist - echoed similar conspiracy theories on his website, writing that "the Zionists" were working with "Jewish news producers and editors" in order to cover up Israel's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. He concluded: "Our press was unanimous in backing the neoJewishcon [a portmanteau of "Jewish" and "neocon"] lies and hustled America off to this war [in Afghanistan] for Israel."
Non-interventionists have always stated that they are opposed to any US military action overseas UNLESS the United States is directly attacked. 9/11 was that exception. It was a direct attack against American citizens on American soil, by agents of a foreign terrorist group that were being harbored by a hostile regime.
This attack not only demanded, but necessitated a military response. Non-interventionists could no longer claim that intervention wasn't necessary. Our country had been attacked. This fit the single exception they had previously said would necessitate military action. This was no longer about being the "world's police". This was now about national security and the safety of the American people.
Now, to be fair, at this point, most non-interventionists agreed that America had to respond militarily to this attack. Even they realized that inaction was no longer a viable option. When the proposal to invade Taliban-held Afghanistan went through the US Congress, it passed almost unanimously, with only one congressperson voting against the measure.
But other rabidly anti-war isolationists simply could not accept that action was necessary. Rather than actually do anything in response to the attack, they were far more content to dismiss it as a "government conspiracy" designed to justify further "regime change wars" and "imperialism".
And their revisionism of 9/11 was only the beginning.
Ghouta, Gas, and Gaslighting
Since it peaked between 2006 and 2012, the 9/11 truth movement has mostly faded into the background. But it would be wrong to assume that the conspiracy theorists have themselves fallen into obscurity.In the past, 9/11 conspiracy theorists preached their propaganda in order to prevent US intervention abroad. Now, they have shifted their focus to ending US intervention abroad, again by citing more half-baked conspiracy theories.
Lately, the focus of these isolationist conspiracy theories has been the country of Syria, where for nine years a sectarian civil war has torn the country apart. Syria is currently ruled by the Assad regime, as it has been since 1971. The current Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has been accused of horrific war crimes against civilians since the conflict began.
In 2013, in the Syrian city of Ghouta, nearly 1,700 civilians - many of them women and children - were killed when numerous rockets containing sarin gas were fired at rebel-held positions. The gas attacks were described as crime against humanity by numerous NGOs and human rights groups - including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the United Nations - all of whom concluded that the Assad regime was the culprit.
Numerous activists urged US President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria. A red line, they said, had been crossed. Chemical weapons had been deliberately used against civilians by the Assad regime. This was no longer a political conflict - this was a humanitarian catastrophe that demanded action. President Obama agreed, and, in a speech following the attack, he laid out the groundwork for a humanitarian intervention in Syria.
"We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these [attacks] out", President Obama commented in an interview with PBS Newshour. "And, if that's so, then there needs to be international consequences".
But just as soon as the news of the chemical attack hit the press, the anti-war and non-interventionist crowd again emerged from their sewers to spew baseless conspiracy theories. Anti-war protesters took to the streets, the airwaves, and the internet to defend Assad from culpability and claim the chemical attack was a "false flag" designed to draw America into another "regime-change war".
A group calling itself "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS) sent an "open letter" to Obama which claimed that "the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident [...] and that British intelligence also knows this".
The letter went on to accuse CIA director John Brennan of "perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, and perhaps even you".
The letter went on, laced with thinly-veiled anti-Semitic undertones, to accuse those calling for intervention in Syria of being "Americans who lobby for Israeli interests" and that "Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area".
When the BBC pressed VIPS for their sources claiming the attack was staged, VIPS not only cited a publicatin from Infowars, but also cited a denialist article entitled "Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?", which was authored by a certain Yossef Bodansky - himself a friend of Bashar al-Assad's uncle.
Other anti-war conspiracy theorists flocked to the internet with more vile smears - many of them laced with blatant antisemitism.
Conspiracy theorist John Friend published an article in which he called the Ghouta attack a "false flag" and stated "Israel and the organized Jewish community have made it abundantly clear that they want the US to destroy yet another country on behalf of global Zionism".
J. Bruce Campbell, an editor for the conspiracy-oriented Veterans Today magazine, pressed the idea further, commenting "Everything we've seen was based on Jewish lies designed to take over the Middle East [...] and this is the purpose of these bogus chemical attacks."
And anti-war conspiracy theorist Christopher Bollyn wrote an incendiary post on his blog, entitled "Will Congress Betray America for Israel", in which he claimed the gas attacks were a "false flag" and hearkened back to 9/11 conspiracy theories:
"The fact that the same tactic of deception that was used after 9-11 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq is being employed, once again, by the very same people, to drag the United States into yet another ill-advised war in the Middle East strongly validates my thesis that 9-11 was a false-flag terror operation, designed and carried out by Israeli military intelligence and Zionist fifth columnists [...] to bring the U.S. military into the region to support Israeli hegemony and advance the extremist Zionist notion of Greater Israel", Bollyn wrote.
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| Anti-interventionist protesters hold conspiratorial signs during an anti-war rally outside the White House in 2013. Following the poison gas massacre in Ghouta, many non-interventionists claimed the gas attack was a "false-flag" and a "lie" designed to draw the US into another war. |
Ultimately, Congress voted not to intervene in Syria, and Assad faced virtually no consequences for the chemical attack, other than being forced to promise to destroy his remaining chemical weapons stockpiles.
But, in 2017 and 2018, chemical weapons would once again be used by Assad against Syrian civilians. And, as before, non-interventionists would flock to his defense with more conspiracy theories.
Khan Shaykhun: Poison Gas and Isolationist Ignorance
The first attack came on April 4th, 2017, when Syrian regime aircraft dropped barrel bombs loaded with sarin gas onto the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria's Idlib province. The gas attack killed more than 89 people and injured over 500, making it the deadliest poison gas attack in Syria since the 2013 Ghouta incident.
Unlike in 2013, the US government conducted retaliatory missile against a Syrian military airbase in response to the poison gas attacks. For the first time, the international community had responded to Assad's war crimes. But, with the retaliatory airstrikes also came a flood of backlash from the anti-war and non-interventionist crowd. And with that backlash also came a fresh batch of half-baked conspiracy theories seeking to absolve Assad of any blame and justify a maintained non-interventionist foreign policy.
Even though numerous investigations by the United Nations concluded that it was the Syrian regime that had carried out the strike, the anti-war crowd was reluctant to accept these conclusions.
Within hours of the attack, the hashtag #SyriaHoax began trending on Twitter as conspiracy theorists sought to discredit the attack as a "false flag" staged by the "Deep State" to draw the United States into another "regime-change war".
"They're doing it again. They're trying to do a false flag gas attack so the United States bombs, which we're doing.", commented left-wing radio host and outspoken non-interventionist Jimmy Dore on his radio show. "ISIS was just hanging on barely and their only hope was to draw the United States into the Syrian conflict so they did another false flag gas attack".
Right-wing conspiracy theorist James Allsup repeated similar sentiments on Twitter, and, like Dore, he used his conspiracy theories to push a doctrine of non-interventionism.
"The footage of 'Syrian bombing' you're seeing is staged", Allsup tweeted. "False flags meant to garner US support for war w/ Assad."
Even elected US representatives peddled in baseless conspiracy theories about the attack in order to justify their non-interventionism. Representative Tulsi Gabbard expressed "skepticism" about the UN's conclusion that Assad had been behind the attack, and - further proving the non-interventionist motivations behind her baseless conspiracy theories - decried the US's military response as an "escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war".
Gabbard wasn't alone in her unfounded skepticism. Representative Thomas Massie condemned the possibility of US intervention in Syria, and claimed - without providing any evidence - that "frankly, I don't think Assad would have done that", adding that intervention would "aggravate" the situation and hinting that anti-Assad rebels may have staged the attack.
When a Syrian activist group known as the White Helmets provided video evidence of the aftermath of the chemical attack, they, too, became targets of the non-interventionist conspiracy theorists, who baselessly smeared them as "terrorists" with links to Al-Qaeda and the "MSM [mainstream media] agenda".
Conspiracy theorist and outspoken non-interventionist Vanessa Beeley (who actually blocked me on Twitter!) wrote an article in which she called the White Helmets "terrorists in white hats" and "agents of war" working on behalf of the US government and NATO as "crisis actors" in order to foment a pro-intervention mentality in the West.
Beeley's supposed "evidence" that the White Helmets are "terrorists" is limited to asserting that, since the White Helmets work in areas of Syria held by opposition forces (some of whom admittedly do have links to Al-Qaeda), therefore they must be linked to Jihadists.
Jimmy Dore also engaged in a smear campaign against the White Helmets on his radio show. "Everything you're being told about Syria is a lie. Everything. Fucking everything. The White Helmets are fucking liars. It's all a lie.", Dore snarled over the radio. "The White Helmets are Al-Qaeda."
When journalist Shane Bauer criticized Dore for peddling in baseless conspiracy theories and denying obvious war crimes by the Syrian government, Dore responded by calling Bauer a "pro-war CIA plant" who was "paid to lie by the CIA about Syria" to "[smear] anti-war progressives" - further revealing the conspiratorial undertones in Dore's non-interventionism.
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| Non-interventionists protest following US airstrikes on Syria in response to the Khan Sheykhun chemical attack. Notice the blatant conspiratorial tone of the "wag the dog" poster - a reference to a famous 1997 film in which war crimes are staged by the US government in order to justify intervening in a war. |
The response to the Khan Sheykhun attack revealed the true toxicity of the conspiratorial "anti-war" and "anti-imperialist" movement. But it certainly wasn't the last. In 2018, another humanitarian catastrophe in Syria would once again propel non-interventionist naysayers to the forefront.
Douma: Watching the World Burn
On April 7th, 2018, the Assad regime crossed the line again. 49 people were killed and hundreds were injured when two Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs filled with chlorine gas onto the city of Douma, Syria. Following the gas attack, the United States, UK, and France launched retaliatory missile and airstrikes on Syrian military targets.
But, with the strikes also came a huge backlash from non-interventionists on the left and right-wing. And, with these non-interventionists also came a fresh batch of conspiracy theories devoted to absolving Assad of all wrongdoing.
On Fox News, Tucker Carlson - a popular conservative commentator with a history of pushing isolationist and white nationalist rhetoric - immediately criticized the US military response to the gas attacks, and even questioned whether the gas attacks actually happened.
"We should be skeptical of this, starting with the poison gas attack itself", said Carlson. "All the geniuses tell us that Assad killed those children. But do they really know that? Of course they don't really know that - they're making it up."
Other online conspiracy theorists shared Carlson's sentiments. Notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes parroted Carlson's conspiracy theories and repeated his mantra of non-interventionism, saying "The Deep State is currently attempting to lie us into another Coalition war in the middle east."
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| On Twitter, congressional candidate Dean McGonigle spread conspiracy theories about the Douma gas attack being "fake" in order to justify his support of a non-interventionist policy towards Syria. (This supposed photographic "evidence" of the White Helmets "faking a video" is actually taken from the filming of a movie set, and had absolutely nothing to do with Douma attack) |
Left-wing conspiracy theorists also rallied to the defense of Assad. Jimmy Dore again took to his radio show to spread conspiracy theories. "Right now we're on the brink of World War III, it looks, over another false flag attack", Dore commented on his show. When others accused Dore on Twitter of being an Assad apologist, Dore continued to spew conspiracy theories, accusing his detractors of being "paid shills" and "al-Qaeda supporters".
Elected officials like representative Tulsi Gabbard also peddled in more conspiracy theories following the airstrikes. In fact, Gabbard's campaign website has an entire section devoted to absolving Assad of wrongdoing in the Douma attack, with the page stating, baselessly, that "there is evidence to suggest that the attacks may have been staged by opposition forces for the purpose of drawing the United States and the West deeper into the war".
As they did in 2017, the OPCW conducted an investigation into the attack on Douma. Their final report concluded that the poison gas used in the attack was chlorine, which had been fired from air-delivered canisters. They also concluded beyond any reasonable doubt that the perpetrator of this attack was the Syrian government.
But when the report was released, the conspiracists, instead of accepting the report's conclusions, attacked the veracity of the report itself. When a supposed "whistleblower" emerged to claim that the "original report" (which supposedly exonerated Assad) was "redacted", the conspiracy theorists jumped on the opportunity to discredit the veracity of the chemical attack.
For instance, the rabidly anti-war website "World Socialist Web Site" published an article which claims the whistleblower's report proves the attack had been "staged", and that the OPCW "concocted propaganda" to "support the war".
The "redacted report" that WSWS claimed had been "leaked" was a dubious engineering report which claimed that the OPCW relied on images taken of the aftermath of the attack rather than physical evidence (an utterly false claim).
This report came from a group calling itself the "Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media", which was founded by a certain Piers Robinson. Robinson is not a scientist, nor does he hold an engineering degree. Furthermore, Robinson is a frequent contributor to RT - a Russian-government run news channel - and the Russian government has been a major supporter of the Assad regime, both militarily and politically.
The supposed OPCW "whistleblower" himself also lacks significant credibility. A Bellingcat investigation found that much of the whistleblower's allegations - such as the claim that the chlorine evidence at Douma came from "household bleach" - were "flawed and hugely overstated".
Their final report concluded that "a 'false flag' attack would have been extremely complex to plan and execute", and that the OPCW's official conclusion was "entirely consistent with scores of other attacks that have been recorded in Syria".
But, of course, the publication of this report only made Bellingcat the target of the conspiracy theorists. They flocked to Twitter, accusing Bellingcat of being "war propagandists" who were "paid by NATO" to support "regime change wars".
Even in the face of glaring scientific evidence to the contrary, these same conspiracy theorists still continue to push the false narrative that the chemical attacks in Syria were staged to justify "regime-change wars", and anyone who disagrees with them is branded as being part of the conspiracy.
Some people, it turns out, can never change.
Conspiracy Theories and Non-Interventionism: Ingrained Laziness
I've studied conspiracy theories for well over five years now. I've studied who propagates them, what they claim, and why they claim it. But I didn't realize until very recently that all conspiracy theorists share something particular in common. No matter what ideology these conspiracy theorists belong to - be they liberal, conservative, communist, fascist, libertarian, neo-Nazi - they ALL share one thing in common: they are rabidly anti-war and non-interventionist.
I have thought long and hard about why this is the case, and I think the reason why these conspiracy theorists are all non-interventionist actually stems from something ingrained in our very human nature: Laziness.
Laziness, more than anything, is what fuels conspiracy theories.
Why would someone claim that the shooting at Sandy Hook was a "false flag"? Because, if they accept the fact that the shooting occurred, the next logical step would be having to do something to prevent future gun violence. It's much easier to pretend the shooting never occurred, because that would mean they don't have to work to fix the problem of gun violence.
Why would someone claim that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job"? Because, if they accept the fact that a foreign terrorist network struck against America, that would necessitate a US military response to that terrorist group overseas. It's much easier to claim that the US government staged the attack to justify invading Afghanistan, because then they wouldn't have to support carrying out a thorough military response in order to preserve national security.
Why would someone claim that the Boston Marathon bombings were a hoax? Because, if they accept that a pair of lone-wolf terrorists were able to flawlessly carry out an attack on American people, it would necessitate initiating investigations, trials, and a revamping of national security tactics. It's much easier to claim the attack was a "false flag", because then they wouldn't have to actually do anything in response to it.
And why would someone claim that the gas attacks in Syria were "false flags" designed to encourage more "regime-change wars"? Because, if they accept the fact that a brutal dictator committed egregious crimes against humanity against his own people, that would necessitate a proper military response in order to prevent such atrocities from being performed again. It's much easier to dismiss the attacks as "hoaxes" by the "deep state", because then they wouldn't have to do the work necessary to eliminate those responsible for such reprehensible war crimes.
The fact that so many conspiracy theorists are non-interventionist only scratches the surface of the issue. The root problem goes beyond foreign policy. It stems from human laziness itself. It is human nature to look at a problem and find the easiest solution possible to it. But the easy solution isn't always the right solution.
When conspiracy theorists deny the existence of war crimes in Syria, or claim that the US government staged 9/11, they don't make the problem go away. They don't do anything to solve the problem. They just ignore it. They pretend the problem isn't there because they aren't willing to do the work necessary to solve it.
Ignorance, as the old saying goes, truly is bliss. But reality isn't. There are very real problems that we have to deal with every day, and all of those problems require reality-based solutions. It is a fact that Al-Qaeda launched a devastating attack against America on September 11th, 2001. It is a fact that the Syrian government is committing the worst war crimes imaginable against innocent civilians. It is a fact that such evil and terror and inhumanity exist in this world. That is not up for debate. The only question is: are we willing to do anything about it?
I choose to align myself with the reality-based world. I see the world for what it is. I don't argue with the facts presented before me. I see real-world problems for what they are, and I advocate for real solutions to them.
But people like Jimmy Dore, Alex Jones, Vanessa Beeley, Tucker Carlson, and so many other isolationist conspiracy theorists - people who prefer to remain ignorant in the face of glaring reality - they are part of the problem that people like myself have to fix.
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