It is often pointed out that antisemitism (or anti-Semitism), meaning "anti-Jewish," is a misnomer since the word Semitic, strictly speaking, refers to a number of peoples, including Jews and Arabs, and a number languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. In the case of 9/11 conspiracy theories, however, the term is properly inclusive, since both Arabs, or Muslims, and "Zionists," or Jews, have been fingered as the culprits. The US government conspiracy theory, of course, is that 19 Arabs did it, and anyone who has looked into the subject will know that speculation about "Zionist" authorship of the attacks (and much else) is rampant.

More than enough has been published on the first conspiracy theory (by David Ray Griffin and others) to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that it is not only wrong but an outright lie. The second one has to be handled differently because, in my opinion, it is the manifestation of a mental illness that is historically conspicuous and still socially widespread. I am not being facetious, any more than I am when I describe racism and nationalism in the same way, and it is no surprise that these three illnesses, or syndromes of the same illness, are almost invariably found together. (Anticommunism used to be part of the same complex, but it has receded in recent years.)

One does not have to be a psychiatrist to analyze this disease, or its root cause, which is denial. In order to deny an uncomfortable truth, a scapegoat is found to carry the burden of guilt, a role which Jews have been forced to play often enough. In the case of 9/11, the uncomfortable truth to be avoided at all costs is that our own government (the American, US, government) is responsible, and if the 19 Arabs (or Saddam Hussein) won’t do as scapegoats, Jews (or "Zionists") are convenient alternatives for many.

One example will suffice to support this point. On his radio show on Sept. 1, 2009, Kevin Barrett asked Christopher Bollyn the following question (my transcript):

"Well, your investigation has taken you on a path that’s a little bit off the beaten one of the mainstream of the 9/11 truth movement, which has pointed towards evidence implicating high-level American figures, including, well, I guess Dick Cheney is everybody’s favorite suspect, but along with Cheney I suppose Bush, other members of the Administration, and presumably the CIA , but you’re arguing that actually there’s primarily a kind of a foreign apparatus behind this attack, presumably the Mossad and perhaps an associated prime network out of Israel, and the reason that a lot of 9/11 truth leaders like DRG don’t talk about this or emphasize this, I think the first reason is that they don’t think the evidence is as strong. You know we have evidence that the US govt covered up the demolition of the Towers, we have evidence that the US military stood down or disabled its air defenses and we have evidence that Bush, in Florida, his Secret Service people at least, knew he was not a target that day, so there’s the US Secret Service implicated, and we have all sorts of evidence against Cheney, so that seems like pretty strong evidence, and the question is, is there equally strong evidence, or stronger evidence, implicating Israel, the Mossad, and/or Zionists?"

Bollyn replied:

"Ok, very good question. Kevin, it’s actually, the evidence to support my thesis is actually many times stronger than any evidence showing that this is any sort of homemade American plot. First of all, you know, as an American, I find it absolutely beyond belief, I cannot believe, that any group of Americans would do something like this to their own people, to their own country, and for what reason, to make some stupid, disastrous war in the Middle East? It makes no sense. The argument cui bono, or, you know, for what reason — it strongly points to Israel."

We can skip the rest of this "argument" because whatever "evidence" Bollyn may have concerning Israeli foreknowledge (there does appear to be some, just as there is evidence of foreknowledge of Americans, Pakistanis, Germans, French, etc.), or even possible complicity, it is vitiated by his a priori exclusion of "Americans" as the perpetrators. This, as he says astonishingly clearly here (I would have expected him to be more clever), he simply "cannot believe." There you have it. This is the end of the story as far as this "truth-seeker" is concerned, just as it is, one must add, for many other Americans who "cannot believe" that their own government would do such a terrible thing to them.

I am not going to bother reviewing the many examples disproving this naive point of non-view (google "false-flag terrorism"). The point is that Bollyn, one of the most best-known and "respected" (that is, among his ilk) "anti-Zionists," reveals very clearly here that the basis for it is denial — the "inability," which is to say the refusal, to believe that his own government is responsible for 9/11, despite the mountain of evidence that has accrued to justify this conclusion. No, Bollyn says, I "cannot believe" that. It is easier for him to believe that "Shimon Peres and his gang of nuclear criminals are the real architects behind the false-flag terror of 9-11," as he writes in his comment on the interview.

"Barrett asked me," he continues, "how such a small group can dominate and control such a large nation as the United States. ’They run the whole show,’ is how I would answer this question in one sentence. They control the media that informs Americans, the law enforcement agencies, the courts, the money, and the political process. This control is maintained by their exclusive secret society, B’nai B’rith and their allegiance to their collective."

At this point, the degree of irrationality is such that virtually anything and anybody can be identified as the "small group" in charge, and indeed, many candidates have been proposed (e.g., Illuminati, Bilderbergers, Bohemian Grovers, Skull and Bonesers, P2, the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, Freemasons, Martians, reptiles, etc.). Anything goes because the most logical conclusion, on the basis of the evidence, has been eliminated from the beginning.

Here too is the perfect illustration of how "anti-Zionism" (not to say anti-Semitism) fits hand in glove with nationalism. It is a a short step, in fact no step at all, from "I cannot believe Americans could do it" to "America First." (Go to William Fox’s amfirstbooks.com and you will soon discover how racism fits into the same mentality.)

Finally, but not least importantly, all of this plays so blatantly into the hands of the primary suspect, the US government, that complicity, either alternatively or in addition to mental illness, must be suspected. If Americans are indeed the perps, what better agents for their defense could there possibly be than people who "cannot believe" that Americans could be guilty? With enemies like Bollyn, the CIA needs no friends.

The anti-Zionists are only one faction of the "evil elements did it" crowd. There is a broad spectrum of people who, less candidly perhaps than Bollyn, admit the complicity of Americans but in the end still find the "small group" of controllers if not outside the US government, somewhere secretly ensconced within it, infesting it like a virus, or as Peter Dale Scott (see The Road to 9/11) probably most convincingly puts it, parallel to it. I have referred to this as "Deep State Doublethink" because it is illogical, and Orwellian, to assume the co-existence of a Deep (bad) State and a Public (good) State vying with each other for power, as Scott suggests. Both of these contradictory ideas cannot be true. If there is a Deep State, it is the state, and there is no Public State; you can’t have both.

With due respect for Scott’s scholarship, which cannot fail to impres, it is unnecessary (albeit an intriguing academic exercise) to speculate about precisely who the bad guys are. We have a (nominal) public state, and we know who is supposed to be in charge. We know equally well, having been forced to this conclusion by the great preponderance of evidence (much of which Scott himself meticulously presents), that this is not the real chain of command, since commanders-in-chief do not order their own assassination (or their personal jets to buzz NYC as a "publicity stunt"), and it is hard to imagine GWB talking the Air Force into standing down for the attacks on 9/11. The evidence is clear; it is the conclusion that is lame. This too is denial.

I don’t know how to fix the situation, but I don’t think denial helps, whether in the most obnoxious form of scapegoating Jews or in the least noxious form of maintaining the fiction of a functioning democracy. Our society is moribund. It is on a fast track to an overt police state, most likely preceded by more 9/11’s, more wars, more financial crises, more disease epidemics, and more holocausts of other kinds, unless we can wake up and stop the slide.