A recent article by Bret Stephens (European Wall Street Journal, September 29) contains some frightening information about the state of public opinion in the Middle East and elsewhere.
We all witnessed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s UN speech, in which he aired three “theories” about the 9/11 attacks, essentially arguing that they were an inside job mounted by the US government.
Oh well, he is just a nutcase, you say, along with a few other extremists. Most of the world doesn’t listen to such idiocy.
Unfortunately, conspiracy lunacy has become a very widespread disease. According to the University of Maryland’s World Public opinion surveys, only 2% of Pakistan’s 200 million people believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by al Qaeda, while 27% believe that it was the US government (most said they don’t know).
Among Egyptians, 43% say that Israel was responsible, while 12% blame the US, and only 16% think that al Qaeda did it. In Turkey, 39% blame al Qaeda and 39% blame Israel and the US.
Even in Europe, 15% of Italians and 23% of Germans finger the US for the attack.
I just returned from Berlin, where I met a very nice and intelligent French lady. She tried to convince me that the 9/11 attack was a CIA operation.
Earlier, Ahmadinejad had already frequently advocated another “theory” - the denial of the Holocaust. More recently, other interesting theories have surfaced:
- The recent floods in Pakistan were caused by a secret US military project called HAARP, based in Alaska, which controls the weather through electromagnetic waves. HAARP is also responsible for recent tsunamis and earthquakes.
- The US invaded Iraq not only for its oil, but to harvest the organs of dead Iraqis.
- Faisal Shazad was not the perpetrator of the May 1 Times Square bombing. It was orchestrated by an American think tank.
We also have our share of conspiracy buffs, stateside: The birthers, for one, who continue to believe that President Obama is not US-born, that he is a Muslim, and/or that he is a plant to make America non-American (Socialist, Muslim, full of illegal immigrants, take your pick). What is worrisome here, again, is not the existence of such beliefs, but their astonishing popularity: Between one fourth and one third of all Republicans subscribe to them.
I do not believe that the two sides are mirror images of each other. I am sure that the irrationality of the other guys greatly exceeds that of such misguided Americans as the “birthers.”
But irrationality it is! And the scary part is that it cannot be blamed on lack of education. In the Middle East and elsewhere, these theories are spread primarily by the media and by religious and educational elites.
In recent years, the world’s economic problems have occupied center stage. No doubt, economic conditions influence people’s ideas. It was largely because the German economy went down the toilet during the 1920s and 1930s, that the German people went berserk - half of them becoming Nazis and the other half Communists. Whatever its cause may be, the current global retreat from reason is frightening. leave comment here
