With Objective Polling Data, Kevin Barrett Declares the Death of LIHOP

Mainstreaming MIHOP: New Polls Chart Progress of "Inside Job," Controlled Demolition Hypotheses

By Dr. Kevin Barrett, http://www.barrettforcongress.us

Since mid-2004, a series of scientific polls has shown high levels of support for the LIHOP (let it happen on purpose) interpretation of 9/11. According to this interpretation, top US officials knew the attacks were coming and intentionally allowed them to succeed.

But until fall 2008, no scientific poll in North America had found significant (double-digit) support for the hypothesis that most independent experts believe is best in accordance with the facts: That top US officials orchestrated 9/11, including the controlled demolition of three World Trade Center skyscrapers. This interpretation, known in the 9/11 truth community as MIHOP (made it happen on purpose) has now entered the mainstream, according to polls commissioned by the Barrett for Congress campaign.

In surveys of households with two or more registered voters, at least one of whom has voted in a recent election, the Barrett campaign found that 22% of voters in Wisconsin's conservative, rural Third District say that 9/11 might have been an inside job. And in a nationwide poll the Barrett campaign found that 33% in similar households either believe the World Trade Center was taken down in a controlled demolition, or that we need an investigation of possible controlled demolition.

What makes these numbers especially significant is that regular voters in multi-voter households are presumably on average older, wealthier, whiter, more settled, and more invested in the system than the general population. The fact that large numbers of such people either espouse or are willing to contemplate MIHOP suggests that the truth about 9/11 is slowly making its way into the US mainstream.

One seemingly disappointing result of the Wisconsin survey was that support for LIHOP was only 24%. Since earlier polls had shown higher levels of support for the proposition that top US officials intentionally allowed 9/11 to succeed, this result suggests that belief in LIHOP is growing very slowly, if at all. By contrast, the same polls suggest that support for MIHOP and controlled demolition is growing rapidly. What might account for this disparity?

Perhaps LIHOP is an inherently unstable position, due to both its theoretical improbability and its many tensions with the empirical facts. If this is the case, we can expect people to fall off the LIHOP bandwagon and either embrace the full MIHOP "inside job" position, or return to a guarded acceptance of the Official Conspiracy Theory (OCT).

LIHOP's theoretical improbability is obvious upon reflection. Is it really plausible that top US military and intelligence officials, especially those who avidly desired a trigger event to launch pre-planned wars, would, upon learning that by an amazing coincidence just such an event had been planned by their enemies, decide to simply look the other way? Had there been actual hijackings on 9/11, the hijackers could have dive-bombed nuclear power plants and rendered much of America's most populous and productive region, the eastern seaboard, permanently uninhabitable. Such a genuinely disabling attack, while it would serve the purpose of actual enemies, would hardly be considered an acceptable possibility by US strategists.

All military thinkers, whether they are radical Muslims who want to bring down the US empire, or neoconservative radicals who want to unleash the US empire, know that the only successful military operation is one that decreases the enemy's desire and/or ability to fight...or increases one's own fighting capacity. 9/11, as would have been obvious to its planners, radically increased the US capacity to fight, by rallying the American people to a "war on terror." No anti-imperialist Muslim would be stupid enough to do that. Nor would any US strategist be stupid enough to "look the other way" and allow a kamikaze attack from the air to go ahead, given the possibility that such an attack could be genuinely disabling if nuclear facilities were targeted.

LIHOP is not only theoretically untenable, but also at variance with numerous facts, the most important of which fall under two rubrics. First, there is no evidence whatsoever of involvement by extremist Muslims. Had Arab hijackers actually boarded the alleged attack planes, the evidence that they had done so (boarding passes, CATV videos, official passenger lists, testimony by airline employees) would have quickly been made public, alleged hijackers would not have turned up alive after 9/11, and Bin Laden and his associates would have quickly been indicted. Second, the controlled demolition of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7 could only have been accomplished and covered up by insiders.

Given these and other problems, why have so many people embraced LIHOP? Psychologically, it is far easier to blame 9/11 on an external enemy, abetted by inaction or incompetence by US officials, than to believe that top US officials actually orchestrated the demolition of the World Trade Center with more than two thousand people inside. Those who accept LIHOP, like those who hold the incompetence theory, can continue to hate and fear the alleged external enemy, rather than turning their anger squarely on their own treasonous leaders. They can accept the paranoid "there are people out there who want to kill us" meme and its attendant Islamophobia. In short, they can remain more or less within the belief system that 9/11 was designed to inculcate, which is now the majority belief system in Western society. It is much easier, psychologically, to remain within hailing distance of the dominant belief system of ones society, than to step completely outside of it -- especially if stepping out reveals that belief system, and those who inculcate and espouse it, as utterly and irredeemably evil.

In short, MIHOP is the "red pill" that moves people outside the matrix of the dominant us-versus-them belief system. MIHOP's penetration of the American mainstream is therefore an extremely important phenomenon.

What accounts for this mainstreaming of MIHOP? First, since 2006, a groundswell of expert opinion has grown up in support of the case for controlled demolition, and many of these experts have effectively presented the case in terms graspable by laypeople. Second, the 9/11 truth movement as a whole has strongly embraced MIHOP and made it the focus of most 9/11 activism. Third, the powerful emotional barriers that form the only meaningful impediment to universal acceptance of MIHOP have gradually receded as the shock of 9/11 dissipates over time.

The Barrett campaign's poll findings suggest that 9/11 truth activists should continue to focus on MIHOP and controlled demolition, which are becoming increasingly acceptable in mainstream America. The Barrett campaign strongly urges all people of good will to support the efforts of Richard Gage and the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://www.ae911truth.org) who are doing so much to shift the weight of public and expert opinion and expose the truth about 9/11. Conveying the Architects and Engineers' message to architects and engineers in your area is one of the most effective actions you can take to ensure that the full truth of 9/11 continues to emerge.