Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot [Or: When France went nuts]

The NYT - Front Page (online) ^ | June 22, 2002 | ALAN RIDING

[summer]

June 22, 2002 - The NYT, Front Page

Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot [OR: When France went nuts]

By ALAN RIDING


The new, best-seller French author.


PARIS, June 21 - Even before the fires were extinguished at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, conspiracy theories began flooding the Internet. A few quickly spilled out of Web sites and were widely circulated by e-mail before fading into oblivion. One, however, has taken on a life of its own in France. It was turned into a book that has become the publishing sensation of the spring.

In the book, "L'Effroyable Imposture," or "The Horrifying Fraud," Thierry Meyssan challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He claims the Pentagon was not hit by a plane, but by a guided missile fired on orders of far right-wingers inside the United States government. Further, he says, the planes that struck the World Trade Center were not flown by associates of Osama bin Laden, but were programmed by the same government people to fly into the twin towers.

What really interests him, though, is what he sees as the conspiracy behind these actions. He contends that it was organized by right-wing elements inside the government who were planning a coup unless President Bush agreed to increase military spending and go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq to promote the conspirators' oil interests.

To achieve their goals, the theory goes, they blamed Osama bin Laden for Sept. 11 and later broadened their targets to include the "axis of evil," centered on Iraq.

The 235-page book has been universally ridiculed by the French news media, while its arguments have been dismantled point by point in "L'Effroyable Mensonge," or "The Horrifying Lie," a new book by two French journalists.

A Pentagon spokesman said, "There was no official reaction because we figured it was so stupid."

Yet in the past three months, Mr. Meyssan's book has sold more than 200,000 copies in France, placing it at the top of best-seller lists for several weeks. Foreign rights have also been sold in 16 countries (a Spanish version is already on sale), and Mr. Meyssan traveled to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in April to present his arguments at a local university.

The book's French publisher, Éditions Carnot, said it would release an English version in the United States in July.

Mr. Meyssan said in an interview that he was surprised his book had so far provoked no major debate, but he was convinced that his message was being heard.

"Two-thirds of the hits on our Web site come from the United States," he said. "I'm not saying all my readers agree with me, but they recognize that the official American version of the attacks is idiotic. If we can't believe the official version, where do we stand?"

It is nonetheless puzzling why so many of the French have been willing to pay the equivalent of $17 for "The Horrifying Fraud." Is it a symptom of latent anti-Americanism? Is it a reflection of the French public's famous distrust of its own government and mainstream newspapers? Or has the French love of logic been tickled by the apparent Cartesian neatness of a conspiracy theory?

Certainly, after Sept. 11, some leftist intellectuals suggested that the United States had invited the attacks through its support for Israel. Others recalled that Islamic militants had been financed and armed by the United States to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's. Yet, in this case, Libération and Le Monde, left-of-center newspapers with no love for the Bush administration, have led the assault on Mr. Meyssan's book.

"The pseudotheories of `The Horrifying Fraud' feed off the paranoid anti-Americanism that is one of the permanent components of the French political caldron," Gérard Dupuy wrote in an editorial in Libération. Edwy Plenel, news editor at Le Monde, wrote: "It is very grave to encourage the idea that something which is real is in fact fictional. It is the beginning of totalitarianism."

Guillaume Dasquié and Jean Guisnel, the authors of "The Horrifying Lie," favor a different explanation for the book's success. They write of France's "profound social and political sickness," which leads people to embrace the idea "that they are victims of plots, that the truth is hidden from them, that they should not believe official versions, but rather that they should demystify all expressions of power, whatever they might be."

Still, even if some French are susceptible to conspiracy theories, few had heard of the book until March 16, when Mr. Meyssan appeared on a popular Saturday evening television program on France 2, a government-owned but independently run channel. In the program, Mr. Meyssan was allowed to expound his theory without being challenged by the host. In the two weeks that followed, his book sold 100,000 copies.

Mr. Meyssan himself seems an unlikely purveyor of tall stories. A 44-year-old former theology student, he dabbled in leftist politics before forming a political research company, Réseau Voltaire, or Voltaire Network, in 1994.

The company's Web site (www .reseauvoltaire.com) adopted specific causes, like fighting homophobia and opposing Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front. Its investigative methods seemed thorough and objective.

In person too, Mr. Meyssan, a slim, wiry man with short hair and penetrating eyes, comes over as both serious and rational.

French journalists who had given some credibility to his Web site were all the more surprised, then, to find him building a vast conspiracy theory around the fact that photographs of the Sept. 11 attack showed no airplane parts in or near the smoldering gap in the Pentagon. This became the departure point for his book.

The line of reasoning that follows is a case study in how a conspiracy theory can be built around contradictions in official statements, unnamed "experts" and "professional pilots," unverified published facts, references to past United States policy in Cuba and Afghanistan, use of technical information, "revelations" about secret oil-industry maneuvers and, above all, rhetorical questions intended to sow doubts. At the end of each chapter, Mr. Meyssan presents his speculation as fact.

To gather his evidence, he worked mainly from articles, statements and speculation found on the Internet. He did not travel to the United States to interview any witnesses. Indeed, he dismisses the accounts of witnesses to the crash of the American Airlines Boeing 757 into the Pentagon.

"Far from believing their depositions, the quality of these witnesses only underlines the importance of the means deployed by the United States Army to pervert the truth," he said.

His "truth" is that no Muslims took part in the attacks "because the Koran forbids suicide." To his original claim that the Pentagon was bombed from the inside, he has now added his conviction that the building was struck by an air-to-ground missile fired by the United States Air Force. "This type of missile, seen from the side, would easily remind one of a small civilian airplane," he said.

In response, Mr. Dasquié and Mr. Guisnel said they traveled to Washington and interviewed 18 witnesses to the Pentagon crash.

They also have named experts explaining how the Boeing 757 could disappear inside the crater caused by the impact. Further, they identify several people mentioned only by their initials in Mr. Meyssan's acknowledgments, including a French Army officer currently on trial for treason and a middle-ranking intelligence officer.

The book has proved to be a windfall for Mr. Meyssan's publisher. More accustomed to publishing marginal books on subjects like the "false" American moon landing in 1969 and the latest "truth" about U.F.O.'s, Éditions Carnot can now boast of its first best seller.

Further, confident that this conspiracy theory will endure, Mr. Meyssan and Carnot have just published a 192-page annex, with new documents, photographs and theories. They call it "Le Pentagate."

[Prodigal Son]

No, I mean for her to actually come out and say a plane didn't hit the Pentagon.

[Lazamataz]

At this point, anything more out of her would be overkill.

The world already knows she's a moron. And those that don't, are themselves, morons.

[walden]

The left is already self-destructing. This kind of crap is just evidence of that. I think the loonier it gets, the better things will be for the world in general. And, 200,000 books sold is not a valid representation of French public opinion overall. In fact, all of the people of Europe are more conservative than their leaders. But, this kind of blatant anti-Americanism does serve to put the pervasive low-grade anti-Americanism of the EU and various European countries' leadership in a different perspective (in the same way that low-grade anti-semitism looks different in the context of blatant anti-semitism). From that standpoint, this kind of crap is a very good thing.

[Tribune7]

Good points

[jimtorr]

http://www.homestead.com/Smoki nBulldog/files/french_disaster _3.JPG

I love that grapic. However, it would probably drop almost straight down, or tip slightly to the right. Going to the left like that makes a better picture, though.

[jimtorr]

Ummm, that should read "graphic". I don't know what a "grapic" is. Maybe it's some sort of a grape flavoring?

[johnny7]

My uncle Steve had a standard comment about the French.

“I have no use for them.”Now uncle Steve never traveled to France so he only got the diluted version.

Here to say that French Americans are good Americans... as long as they don't boast of Frances history from 1940-present

[Prodigal Son]

You might be right about trolls spreading the disinfo, but that'd mean there are a lot of trolls over there because they have some pretty intense discussions about it. Even their long time hardcore members believe that Bush/Cheney really knew what was up before hand and let it happen. It's only their small fringe of nuts that don't believe the plane hit the Pentagon. But the one crazy notion sort of leads right into the next doesn't it? If you're schizophrenic enough to believe those attacks were just part of the "Bush/Cheney evil plot to take over the universe" (which most of the posters at DU do believe- including their esteemed member William Rivers Pitt) then believing the plane didn't hit the Pentagon isn't such a biiiggg stretch of the imagination.

Keep in mind- DU is a website where you can regularly read opinions like "Abortion should be legal right up to the moment the umbilical cord is cut". Think about that for a minute. The baby is laying there on the delivery table with umbilical cord still attached and some of these psychos think that it is just okey dokey to kill it.

The whole thing about the Left is they have always believed in ideas that can't be backed up or made to happen in reality. A "Living Wage" is one such idea. "Oil is evil" is another. The Global Warming Scare Campaign is yet another. Thinking of the Left as just another or different slant at politics is wrong and naive. The left is where the irrational folks congregrate. A rational belief system leaves them befuddled- they can't make heads or tails of such concepts as freedom, personal responsibility, actions have consequences...

The Left don't actually have a political platform- it's more like a list of whiny complaints that you'd expect to hear from a 3 yr old child. They get votes not by having a plan and executing it, but by complaining about the way the rational side does things and demanding that it be done differently (without offering a real solution). They come in and preach from the caboose and claim they are driving the train like Clinton did. The Left have always been what was left over after rational people created a working system. The only folks who can't function properly in a rational world are irrational people and this is the Left- the "can't make heads nor tails of it" crowd.

It is no surprise to me that they are easily led on by this type of insanity- they are the same crowd that would always get fooled by the "Free Beer Tomorrow" sign.

[Alas Babylon!]

Here's the Real Deal.

Laz, LMFAOLy!!!!!

Folks, go to the link on # 20! It is parody of the first order, and puts thse kooks exactly where they belong.

How did I miss this in 1999?

[Lazamataz]

It took me a little time to compile 'A Theory'. Glad you like it.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yeah, I wanted to BUMP it, but it's still locked. When will John Rob finish is integration of the old posting system with the new? The 9/11 conspiracy theorists need to read it!

[Teacher317]

EVERYTHING tilts left in France... even their radical Right-wing! =^)

[Drango]

Do you know why the French lost in the World Cup?

When the half time gun went off, they surrendered.

[nravoter]

This French author's entire premise is absurd. It'd be like saying a large portion of the French government in the '40s was in cahoots with the Nazis and...

As you were.

[LibKill]

Sacré bleu! Je déteste les Français!

[peteram]

This excerpt is insightful:

Guillaume Dasquié and Jean Guisnel, the authors of "The Horrifying Lie," favor a different explanation for the book's success. They write of France's "profound social and political sickness," which leads people to embrace the idea "that they are victims of plots, that the truth is hidden from them, that they should not believe official versions, but rather that they should demystify all expressions of power, whatever they might be."

[summer]

Re your posts #2 and #23 as to the actual ratio of people in France who bought this book and made it a best seller, and the total number of people in France.

Good points. You're right. Thank you. I was way too quick to cave in here, all because I see this article on the FRONT PAGE of the NYT! But, you have brought me back down to earth. Seriously. Thanks again.

BTW, I too have read Dem sites and, as some posters here point out, it's amazing what much garbage they are actually trying to sell there. For example, one poster recently proclaimed proudly that he or she just affixed a "BUSH KNEW" bumper sticker to their car. The other posters thought this was great. I was lurking and thought: You are a total idiot. And so are your friends here.

One more thought -- I appreciate that FR allowed this thread to stay up, because I think it at least gives a heads up as to what is to come: as soon as this guy's French best seller hits the USA's shores, he will be booked in some college campuses across the country. The left editors in France are leading the charge against this author. Yet, I wonder how loud our left leaders will be to denounce him...

[summer]

what much garbage = how much garbage....

[BeAllYouCanBe]

"The media, at long last, would have to
address these lunatic fringe leftists as the psychos"

As you point out crazies can only be from the right as portrayed by the media or Hollywood and a prime example is the new Tom Clancy picture "Sum of All Fears" where the Muslim bad guys were changed to Neo-Nazis. Certainly in any group there has to people who are radical and are not in the mainstream – but France is probably more intolerant of the right than any other country I know of.

As you suggested I went to DemUnderground and said this is cool! I thought I’d just sign up and "verbally-blast" a few liberals to get my adrenaline flowing.

>>> From DemUnerground "The purpose of this website is to provide a discussion forum for Democrats and other individuals from the political left. We are building an online movement to effect progressive change in our country. As a privately run website, we are not obligated to give equal time to all points of view." <<<


So conservatives are not allowed and not welcomed. So this is how they view the world as evil conservatives who deserve no voice and liberals cannot be crazies no matter how crazy they really are.

Michael Savage says that liberalism is a mental disease and he probably is correct.

[Clemenza]

I have proof that this man is advancing his theory on orders of right-wingers in American government to appear so loony that no one thinks this could actually be true, when in fact it was the Rothchild family that ordered the Mossad to fake 19 Arabs out of their ranks and send them into the planes which they parachuted out of in the last seconds because one of them was Elvis and another was Jim Morrison and we don't want them to die yet because their music is the only way we can speak to the aliens who control the Council for Foreign Relations which was set up to stop the Masons from ruling the world.

These guys would love to hear your proof. ;-)