Vdare says the “official story” of the 9/11 attack is a lie

In a long article at Vdare, Paul Craig Roberts, a regular writer at that site and close friend of its editor, Peter Brimelow, argues that the flames started by the explosion of the airliners as they crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center could not have weakened the structural steel and caused the buildings to fall. Therefore, continues Roberts, in addition to the planes flown by Muslim hijackers, there had to have been explosives planted inside the buildings set to go off shortly after the planes crashed into them, a fact that the U.S. government has been furiously covering up for the past eight years, because it was the U.S. government itself, led at the time by George W. Bush, that planted the explosives, organized the 9/11 attack, and worked in concert with Muhammad Atta, Khalid Sheik Muhammad, and Osama bin Laden to carry the attacks off.

Isn’t it great the way Vdare not only serves as the cutting edge of the immigration restriction movement, but also keeps finding new ways to raise the profile of the restrictionist cause so that more and more of America’s best minds will be drawn to it? Who but Peter Brimelow could have thought of the genius stroke of combining immigration restrictionism with 9/11 Trutherism, as a way of bringing restrictionism from the margins of politics into the American mainstream?

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Sage McLaughlin writes:

The man is positively demented. Here’s his comment on the health care debate from his loony column at Taki’s Magazine:

“The only way to reduce the cost of health care is to take the profit and paperwork out of health care.”

He means this quite seriously. Literally, just like, that, take “the paperwork” out of health care. As if the main problem were the excessive paperwork rather than the government regulations that creates it, as if any arrangement or solution could possibly eliminate paperwork anyway, and as if the mere existence of profits were the reason for high costs, which are distinct concepts that only economic illiterates use interchangeably. His thesis is that Obama’s real game is to stuff the pockets of the private insurers (!), and that the Democrats are really just in league with the private sector trying to boost their profits. Thus, he says, “The private sector is no longer the answer because the income levels of the vast majority of Americans are insufficient to bear the cost of health insurance today.” Look for no treatment by Roberts on why costs are so high, or what it can possibly mean to say that “the private sector is no longer the answer,” as though simply abolishing the private practice of medicine and insurance will make costs plummet (by fiat, one supposes).

What is it about putatively conservative outlets like Vdare and Takimag? Why give such deference to a writer who is so completely around the bend? That such a fiscal ignoramus could ever have served in the Treasury is downright appalling, and a reminder that achieving high office doesn’t necessarily have much to do with a man’s competence or even his sanity. It really does show how shameless these paleo outlets can be, giving space to any comer with a resume, some literacy, and the requisite hatred of George W. Bush. Link here:

LA replies:

You write:

“What is it about putatively conservative outlets like Vdare and Takimag?”

I believe your premise is wrong. They are NOT conservative by any definition. They are nihilist and anarchist. They feel that America is gone so far in leftism and diversity that it is beyond saving, and so they have given up on America, given up on common American standards, and their political discourse consists largely of throwing bombs at a society from which they have already emotionally withdrawn and to which they feel no essential loyalty. This explains Brimelow’s publication of MacDonald and Roberts, and Taki’s publication of Roberts. Also, Roberts’s Truther column has been posted at Patrick Buchanan’s website as well.

This ultimate direction of paleocons is not new. It was outlined early in the history of Chronicles when it gradually became clear that (contrary to what I and many other readers had thought) the paleocons did not believe in the traditional American constitutional order that has been undone by 20th century statism. No. They believed in the Confederacy. They were against everything America has been since 1865. Since they were already hostile to the America Lincoln saved, how could they feel any loyalty to today’s America?

Not all the people we’re talking about are Confederacy champions. But the fundamental stance of reactive hostility toward America, and of a resulting moral nihilism, affects all of them.

Sage McLaughline replies:

As far as the taxonomy goes, I know you like to break things down into smaller philosophical niches, like nihilist and so forth. Would you say that Vdare and Takimag are at least what one might describe as “rightist”? Sometimes the term conservative is a useful synonym for rightist, but it does introduce some problems when you’re dealing in this context, with people who are actually hostile to America. Anyway, they claim to be conservative, and in some vague way it’s just to call them conservative, but you’re right that they don’t actually like America much.

I had no idea that Buchanan was posting Truther literature now. It is some tragedy to see him going so completely over the precipice. Buchanan was a man I liked and admired for a long time. In fact, I must admit that I clung to that admiration longer than I should have, until quite recently really, because of my ancient wish that he had won the Republican nomination back in the day. I still do think conservatism in America—and perhaps even Buchanan himself—would have been completely different and much more potent had that happened. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Anyway, I don’t think that their nihilism is a consequence of their stance toward America. I think it’s more the other way around. Or maybe both things are the product of intense despair. But that’s probably too shadowy for me to untangle in any useful way.

LA replies:

No doubt Buchanan would say the same thing as Brimelow, that he doesn’t endorse the column, he just automatically publishes all of Roberts’s syndicated columns … which, of course, comes to the same thing. No one is requiring him to publish it. He chooses to publish it.

You know where I found out about this? At Little Green Footballs. I saw some link to LGF, I forget where, talking about how Johnson seemed to have become a full-time searcher out of haters and racists. I went to LGF, and it’s true, Johnson has become a full-time campaigner against all conservatives, all of whom are unprincipled crazy lying haters. He is so reactive that he writes this:

Watch as the same people who loudly supported the Patriot Act for years suddenly start to find things wrong with it: Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions.

Here is his item on Buchanan and the Truther column.

Now featured at the official website of Pat Buchanan: a bizarre screed reposted from the racist site VDARE, by paleocon wacko Paul Craig Roberts, promoting the 9/11 Truth movement: Why Propaganda Trumps Truth « Patrick J. Buchanan—Official Website.

Yes, really. This is how bad it’s getting. A man who appears frequently on television representing the “conservative” viewpoint, a man who Sean Hannity has called “the great Patrick J. Buchanan,” is promoting Trutherism.

Will the people who screamed for Van Jones’ resignation based on unsubstantiated accusations that he was a Truther now scream just as loud about Pat Buchanan?

Not a chance.

Not that being attacked by Johnson is a problem for anyone. As evidence of his overall politics, notice that Johnson denies that Van Jones signed the Truther petition, a fact that even Van Jones’s own defenders did not deny. So Johnson is simply mad. Yet he’s still popular. His overnight open thread has 699 comments. Since his website originally arose to prominence by being anti-jihad, and he’s now become anti-anti-jihad, one wonders if any of his commenters have made the transition with him, or whether they all left and have been replaced by Daily Kos and Huffington Post types. I’m not interested enough to find out.

Mike Berman writes:

It is my understanding that PCR and Peter Brimelow are not just merely friends. Correct me if I’m wrong but I was told that PCR got PB his job (I forget if it was at Forbes or the current one at MarketWatch). The point is that Brimelow is beholden to PCR in a way that may or may not be conflicting with his own principles.

LA replies:

We’ve been through this before. Nothing and no one is forcing Brimelow to do anything. He publishes all of Roberts’s columns because he chooses to. Period.

Tim W. writes:

Sage McLaughlin got it right when he called Roberts demented. Note that Roberts cites the millions of unburnt pieces of paper (business papers, etc.) scattered about by the collapse of the towers. He wonders how fires hot enough to melt steel could leave paper uncharred. As if the entire 110 floors of both towers were in flames! The fires were confined to the immediate floors where the planes hit. The intact papers were from countless file cabinets and desks on the many floors the flames never reached before the collapse of the buildings

It seems that Roberts’ only function at V-Dare is to undermine the other writers. When Jack Kemp passed away, Roberts wrote a glowing obituary to him even as other V-Dare regulars were bemoaning his open borders advocacy. V-Dare has been publishing some fine columns on Obamacare, but now Roberts essentially calls for socialized medicine, and they print it.

Brimelow supposedly feels an obligation to print Roberts’ junk since he’s a friend. But a real friend wouldn’t demand that a website owner print material that undermines the reason for his site’s existence.

LA replies:

I also noticed the unburnt paper argument and was going to mention it, I’m glad you did. But to give a flavor of the mind of the sick individual whom Peter Brimelow FREELY CHOOSES TO PUBLISH, let’s quote it:

I have asked on several occasions and have never had an answer, which does not mean that there isn’t one, how millions of pieces of unburnt, uncharred paper can be floating over lower Manhattan from the destruction of the WTC towers when the official explanation of the destruction is fires so hot and evenly distributed that they caused the massive steel structures to weaken and fail simultaneously so that the buildings fell in free fall time just as they would if they had been brought down by controlled demolition.

What is the explanation of fires so hot that steel fails but paper does not combust?

People don’t even notice the contradictions….

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2009 08:11 AM | Send