Sept. 11, 2021 (Nouvelle Solidarité) – On September 9, the largest public all news French radio channel, France Info, posted a 2 minute video clip on its website on the attacks against the twin towers in 2001. Instead of investigating the crime itself, the “peach” of the item is “September 11, 2001 attacks: a turning point in the history of conspiracy theories.”
Below the published videoclip, the transcript:
“Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, New York City was hit by the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil. More than3000 people lost their lives. Twenty years later, this event still feeds conspiracy theories.
“On September 11, 2001, two planes hijacked by Al Qaeda hit the Twin Towers in New York. And already, an American holds a conspiracy speech on the radio. (Picture of Lyn with audio of his voice): `I know it, this attack aims to create a provocation inside the United States, that’s the only reason’,declared, live, Lyndon LaRouche, a man convinced that the Queen of England is on top of the world drug traffic. He is one of the first to claim that the attack was ordered from within, by the American government itself, to justify the wars waged by the United States in the Middle East.
“This theory, which has been denied many times, will reach an unprecedented scale in history, because this attack coincides with the advent of the Internet in the early 2000s. In 2005, the YouTube platform was born, on which the documentary ‘Loose Change’ was broadcast, viewed hundreds of millions of times. This series will expand the audience of false theories around the attacks. (Narrator of Loose Change:‘On the morning of September 11, the United States runs simulations in which hijacked planes disappear from radar,’ the documentary explains.) These conspiracy theories will allow some people to gain popularity, like Alex Jones, an animator. Twenty years later, he is now one of the most powerful disinformers of the country. He was even Donald Trump’s personal adviser. Conspiracy theories are as old as mankind, but 9/11 was the first to spread so widely.”
The clip is part of the new season of “Complorama,” a series of audio podcasts which opens on a founding episode of the modern conspiracy: the 9/11 attacks. “Twenty years ago this year, these attacks hit the United States and fed crazy theories, sometimes elaborated in France… Even today, some people do not believe that 9/11 was a series of attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda. What is the place of 9/11 in the current conspiracy ecosystem? How was the conspiracy narrative created around these attacks, in the United States and in France? Can this 20th anniversary revive certain theories? From Lyndon Larouche to Thierry Meyssan, via the film ‘Loose change’, Rudy Reichstadt and Tristan Mendès France explain why September 11, 2001 changed the face of conspiracy theory.”
“September 11, the tipping point of conspiracy is the 12th episode of Complorama, with Rudy Reichstadt, director of Conspiracy Watch and Tristan Mendès France, lecturer and member of the conspiracy observatory, specialist in digital cultures.”
Already three years earlier, on September 10, 2019, another public radio station, France Culture, broadcasted a documentary produced by Roman Bornstein which included LaRouche’s friend and co-thinker Jacques Cheminade:
“While the World Trade Center towers in New York are still burning and the investigation has not even begun, one man is already on the radio giving his conspiracy version of the events in progress: Lyndon LaRouche. For him, the American government is at work. A former presidential candidate, Lyndon LaRouche has been developing a paranoid vision of the world for decades. Many times denied by the facts and convicted of fraud, he nevertheless enjoys the almost sectarian adoration of the militants of the political organization he presides over. With international connections, he is a voice that counts. In France, another former presidential candidate has been following in the footsteps of the man he considers his mentor for years: Jacques Cheminade. It is through him that Lyndon LaRouche’s conspiracy theories have arrived in France. These ideas began to circulate. The Internet was in its infancy, but the forums of the time were already talkative. People were adding their views to Jacques Cheminade’s theories, and new ones were being developed. A small team of virtual investigators was set up. They include Pierre Henri Brunel, a former soldier convicted of treason, Stéphane Jah, an ex-paratrooper who runs an amateur website about the DGSE, Hubert Marty-Vrayance, a senior civil servant, and Emmanuel Ratier, a polemicist close to the Front National. Confidential, these ideas born on the extreme right will reach notoriety through the voice of a man who was until then classified on the left: Thierry Meyssan.”
Both Reichtadt and Bornstein are “experts” of the “Fondation Jean Jaurès,” a French think tank associated with the most Blairite faction of the French Socialist Party.
