Blog #6

Chapter 11: Selling Conspiracy Theories to Skeptical Audiences, outlines three key components of arguments from conspiracy – Sowing Distrust, Challenging Plausibility, and Telling A Better Story. Through these lenses, the argument presented in Loose Change was effectively presented to the audience, as the film illustrated several inconsistencies with the widely accepted 9/11 explanation.

            Fundamentally, Loose Change altered the audience’s perception of what occurred during 9/11, by fostering “serious doubt.” 9/11 occurred during a “time of social strain,” as citizens were wary of their government and of the policies the Bush Administration were trying to pass at the time.  The conspiracy indicated in Loose Change was thus easier to believe, since trust in the government was continuously being challenged and diminished. Conspirators challenged the original explanation’s plausibility by making “implausible labels, such as “coincidence,” sound deceptive” (293). For instance, in Loose Change, conspirators described how much of a ‘coincidence’ it was for the plane that landed in the pentagon to crash in an area designed to withstand attack, and at the opposite side of where an influential politician was located.

Loose Change additionally, ‘Tells A Better Story by “creating a competing narrative that appears to be more plausible” than the original narrative reported by both the government and media (296). Throughout the film, conspirators “describe aspects of events, institutional actions, and explanations as mysterious, curious, strange, suspicious, weird, magic and unexplainable” (289). For instance, conspirators provided overwhelming amounts of evidence, (Skid Marks near the Pentagon, Plane Crash Scenarios into the Pentagon, Plane Crash Scenarios into the Twin Towers, Bombs Planted inside the Twin Towers, etc.), Loose Change managed to prove how the government withdrew information and disguised evidence to their favor. Overall, Loose Change was captivating, and unnervingly unsettling, as the  arguments they presented were sound and logical.