United States.
the filmmaker Spike Lee, The QAnon movement, social media or gatherings of friends and family keep them alive: conspiracy theories about the 11-S they have never gone away, they have only evolved and on the twentieth anniversary of the attacks they are mixed with pandemic conspiracies.
The magnitude and complexity of some attacks that killed 3,000 people and resulted in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fueled a number of fanciful hypotheses, but almost all converged on the idea that the true perpetrator of the attacks was not the terrorist group Al Qaeda, but the United States Government.
Also read: Today marks 20 years since the tragic collapse of the Twin Towers
A controlled demolition
Thus the theory of “controlled demolition” became popular. It rejects that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the impact of the two commercial planes that the terrorists crashed into the buildings and the fire caused by the collision.
Twenty years later, film director Spike Lee has given prominence to this conspiracy in the documentary series he has made for the HBO channel about the attacks, “NYC Epicenters 9 / 11-2021½”.
Read to include opinions of the group Architects and Engineers for the Truth of 9/11 in an early version of the assembly, which has decided to change after the criticism received.
This and other conspiracy theories are kept alive on social media due to the action of new disinformation actors, such as the QAnon movement.
In Spain and Latin America, this misleading content is reproduced on websites specializing in publishing falsehoods, which are very active during the pandemic.
Recently, for example, several Internet sites have published that the relatives of the survivors “intend to present evidence before a Grand Jury that explosives were used to destroy the World Trade Center,” in an article that supports this unfounded belief.
The official investigation contradicts such speculations, as evidenced, among other documents, by the report of the bipartisan commission set up by Congress to analyze the facts.
On the other hand, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) determined in 2005 that the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers caused structural damage to the supporting columns of the buildings and went unload about 30,000 gallons of fuel on skyscrapers.
The consequences were the burning of the towers, with temperatures of 1,000 degrees, and their subsequent fall.
Investigators found no explosive charges or other evidence of a controlled demolition.
Building 7 of the World Trade Center
Another theory that persists strongly and is linked to the premeditated demolition hypothesis is that it underlines the fall of Building 7 of the World Trade Center (WTC 7), a 47-story skyscraper in which no aircraft was impacted. , as evidence that the collapse responded to a plan by the US Administration.
A different NIST report, in this case dated 2008, attributes the collapse of WTC 7 to the fires that were declared after the fall of the North Tower the flames burned for seven hours.
In this case, too, no evidence of intentional collapse was found.
As part of these speculations, conspirators have pointed out that among the remains of the July building was found termite, a type of pyrotechnic material that is also used for welding, but studies by the United States Geological Survey and of laboratory RJ Lee ruled out this possibility.
From the Antraz to the pandemic
Over the years, a story that links the attacks with anthrax – badly called “anthrax” in Spanish due to an error in the translation of the English word “anthrax” – with 9/11 has also gained relevance.
Just a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon began sending letters with charcoal spores to the media and politicians that caused five deaths.
Although these are unrelated facts, proponents of the existence of an internal conspiracy have insisted on connecting these events.
Some proponents of this idea have subsequently become prominent faces of pandemic denialist organizations, such as the German Heiko Shöning, one of the proponents of Doctors for the Truth.
In addition, among the events promoted these days to analyze and discuss these hypotheses on the twentieth anniversary of the attacks is a conference organized by the Committee of Lawyers for the Investigation of 9/11 entitled, precisely, “Of the coal from 9/11-Anthrax to the Pandemic. “
These lines of argument based on conjecture have gained more presence and displaced others who focused attention in the early years after the attacks.
Some of them claimed that the Pentagon had been attacked by a missile or that United Airlines 93 – which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers tried to take control of the aircraft. was shot down by U.S. Air Force fighters.