Conspiracism Is A Circular Firing Squad

Over at Screw Loose Change, the premier blog for debunking 9/11 Truther Woo, they've lately had something of a coup. The organiser of a forthcoming "9/11 Accountability Conference", featuring all the leading names of the 'Truth Movement', just so happens to be a Holocaust denier.

Not, mind you, that Eric D Williams is much of a name in denial circles. Indeed, his contribution is so inept that it would embarrass even Hannover for its clumsiness. His website features a PDFed 'book' detailing Williams' visit to Auschwitz which relies almost purely on argument to incredulity and long-debunked denier canards. Needless to say, Williams denies being a denier, but then they all do that, don't they?

The brouhaha in 9/11 Truther circles is worth following over at SLC, especially since CNN ran a story exposing the antisemitism of many in the 'Movement', which has lead one gaggle of Woos to suggest forming a Jewish 9/11 Truth group to act as a decoy in order to distract attention from the fact that many among the movement's researchers and sources - Eric Hufschmid, Christopher Bollyn, the American Free Press - are proven conspiracist antisemites.

Predictably, Truther footsoldiers have been flooding the SLC blog's comments threads with complaints that pointing to Eric Williams' Holocaust denial is a "smear". But as the story spreads, more and more Truthers seem to be dropping out of the conference or trying to put clear blue water between themselves and Williams, which strongly suggests that even conspiraloonies know that some of their kind peddle ideas that are too toxic for the wider world to swallow. Then again, other conspiraloonies have evidently been moved to read Williams' screed or come out of the closet as "Holocaust sceptics" themselves (all the while denying that they are antisemites, just "anti-Zionists") - scroll down to the comments of this post to see a classic example in the shape of 'Swing Dangler'.

But what is the overlap between the two forms of denial? There are few if any Holocaust 'revisionists' known to us at RODOH or elsewhere who vocally advocate the MIHOP lunacies of 9/11 denial; conversely, the majority of 9/11 Woos are desperate to distance themselves from Holocaust deniers, even as they rely on the AFP coterie for a significant proportion of their sources. You can even find complaints that "Holocaust deniers push hoaxes that sabotage 9/11 Truth Movement" on Truther-leaning sites.

It's fair to say that the leaders of both fringes - Dylan Avery on the one hand, Bradley Smith on the other - would probably be highly embarrassed by the antics of the segment of their audiences that overlaps. Well, tough cookies, deniers. If your audience are all morons, then expect them to do moronic things. If you peddle conspiracy theories to the gullible, then don't complain when they integrate yet another theory into their lunatic worldviews.

All of which goes to show that conspiracism, whether it espouses MIHOP views on 9/11, or claims without any proof or basis in fact that the Holocaust was a 'Hoax', eventually forms a circular firing squad.

Bwahaha.