Conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism are more widely accepted than they were 25 years ago.
Conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism are more widely accepted than they were 25 years ago.
S everal of the in-the-moment, in-the-city responses to 9/11 from National Review editors stand out for their (to borrow the title of journalist Charles Mackay’s 1841 book) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds approach to the event. On a day on which Americans appeared more lockstep than any other, prominent National Review writers challenged rather than acquiesced to various empty yet accepted assertions.
Richard Brookhiser seemed to suggest that in a beauty pageant against the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers — structures of “slowly endearing ugliness” — neither won, nor placed, nor even showed. William F. Buckley Jr. memorably objected to the rote description of the terrorists as cowardly. “The men who guided the airplanes into their final destination were deranged, and the consequences of what they did were horrible,” he wrote. “But those who are willing to give their lives to their cause aren’t cowards, and the cause that moves them is proportionately grave.”
Elsewhere, pundits declared it the end of the American Century. Twenty-five years later, 9/11 looks more like the start of something. The day brought about a new federal department, burdensome experiences at airports, a heightened U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and a more active surveillance state. But an overlooked part of that “something” that started to accelerate as a result of 9/11 runs against the grain of conventional wisdom.
Two phenomena, occasionally interwound so tightly as to pass as one, slowly moved from fringe to forefront in the wake of the monstrous tragedy: conspiracy theories, and reflexive anti-Americanism. The day that supposedly brought us together actually propelled a method of looking at events that actually shut off conversations and eventually made contempt for country fashionable.
Here and there, small signs emerged to suggest a United States not as united as advertised. Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation, wrote about chastising her daughter for hanging the stars and stripes in the wake of the attack on their city: “The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.” A Lehigh University vice provost banned the American flag’s display by school employees in a not-all-that-uncommon occurrence on campus. American University professor Peter Kuznick ominously told his class that “this is very convenient, the Pentagon needs an enemy, and now they have one — very convenient that such opportunistic things happen.”
Aside from a certain corner of the newsstand (yes, newsstands still existed in 2001) and on campus, protests especially showcased such unusual beliefs. The interviews of demonstrators I conducted for articles, several of which ran at NRO, in the years that followed 9/11 suggested a heightened anti-Americanism and an impulse to indulge in conspiracy theories that eschewed evidence in favor of what flattered ideologically.
“Another thing about 9/11 — the United States is like a stuck-up little b****,” a New Jersey woman told me at a January 2003 antiwar rally. “They just do and take all of what they please. I mean, 9/11 was terrible, but it was the first terrorist attack on this country. It’s like, ‘Oh, no! Somebody broke the United States’s nail, now the whole earth is going to blow up.’”
Others depicted the Bush administration as the true 9/11 perpetrators or at least passive spectators of an attack that they secretly welcomed. “I saw 9/11 as the Reichstag,” a young, bearded, seemingly intelligent Vermont activist explained to me on the National Mall. “I’ll compare it to what Cassius did to Spartacus back in Rome. I’ll compare it to the Lusitania, to the Maine. I’ll do it, every single time.”
Neither House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt nor Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle nor any other Democrat in a position of prominence or responsibility indulged in conspiracy theories or rooted against their country. But what survived on the fringe in the early 2000s thrives in forefront of the Democratic Party in 2026. Melat Kiros, who likely enters Congress from a deep-blue Colorado district in January, blamed the victim in calling 9/11 an “inevitable” consequence of U.S. policy. The Democratic Socialists of America, a nonentity in Democratic politics in 2001 yet tellingly ubiquitous in 2026, used the 20th anniversary of 9/11 to highlight another 9/11 — the day socialist strongman Salvador Allende killed himself in Chile. Representative Ilhan Omar described 9/11 in 2019 with the words “some people did something.” A moral inversion that depicts terrorists as victims and their victims as terrorists appears not as universal as belief in abortion within the party but more common than not among younger Democrats on the coasts or in college towns.
Conspiracy theories and knee-jerk anti-Americanism seem among very few areas where Democrats and Republicans, at least growing elements within both parties, find common ground a quarter century after the event that launched more conspiracy theories than any event in American history save for the JFK assassination. As the headline of a Vivek Ramaswamy New York Times op-ed noted nine months ago, “Groyperism Isn’t Conservatism. It’s Anti-Americanism.” Former Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn said last month that “9/11 was very clearly an inside job.” From Russia electing an American president to the French first lady hiding male genitalia under her feminine garb to the Israeli scheme to assassinate Charlie Kirk, ideas too preposterous to entertain 25 years ago no longer occupy tinfoil-hat territory, or, perhaps more accurately, tinfoil-hat territory has greatly expanded its boundaries since 9/11.
The appeal to these two scourges against rational thought does not seem complicated. A rote anti-Americanism strangely awards one a gold star in ethics and an enlightened rather than a benighted status in a great number of political subcultures in the West alienated from the West. Conspiracy theories relieve the lazy of the burden of supporting one’s prejudices with proof, flatter by assigning credit and blame to the right heroes and villains according to the holder’s worldview, and provide an anointed status to those who embrace a “truth” that escaped everyone else’s notice. That many intelligent people fall for conspiracy theories probably stems from their logic-puzzle structure and suggests that something other than smarts — prudence? judgment? wisdom? — lacks in their enthusiasts.
“Men,” Charles Mackay wrote 185 years ago, “it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, indeed.