The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [75]
There was a skittish, late-thirtyish woman sitting next to me with a long dark ponytail, I’ll call her Mary, who had kept trying to bring the JFK assassination into the discussion. Mary had also said that the military was controlling the media, that “all this Brad and Jennifer stuff” was part of a plan to hide the truth. She interjected now.
“I think what he’s asking, Les,” she said, “is what the actual evidence is linking the government to the attack. What you’re talking about is circumstantial evidence.”
“And not good circumstantial evidence,” I said.
“Yes it is,” she said. “It’s good circumstantial evidence. I would say it’s very strong.”
Les frowned. “Well,” he said, “if you’re asking for concrete…”
Just then a lean, bearded figure, dressed in an army jacket, stormed through the front door of the diner and made a beeline straight for my side of the table. It was as if he’d studied my probable seating position beforehand; his entrance was executed with military precision. He pulled up a chair, spun it around to sit with the chair back facing forward, plopped down, and started barking at me in the frenzied, heavily accented English of a German film student sent to the emergency room for a meth overdose.
“Who zent you!” he screamed. “You left-gatekeeping scum! Who paid you off! Who made you do zis? You are vorking for zomebody! You…”
He kept screaming. I looked around the table in shock. The others looked down at their food.
“Hah! Who vas it! Answer me! Answer me now!”
“Jesus,” I said. “Calm the fuck down!”
“I am not CALMING DOWN!” he screamed. “You vill give me ANSWERS!”
I reared back in my chair. I didn’t know it yet, but this was my introduction to Nico Haupt, the so-called mad genius of the 9/11 Truth Movement, a feverish blogger who is credited with inventing the famed movement acronyms LIHOP (let it happen on purpose) and MIHOP (made it happen on purpose) and seems to be a ubiquitous presence at any 9/11 Truth function on the East Coast. Haupt is the movement mascot, the future propaganda minister of the Truth Republic. I would later look up his blog entries and find them to be masterpieces of conspiratorial paranoia and unintentional comedy. Among other things, they contain the usual salutations to the surveillance teams who of course are watching him at all times:
Secretly on the payroll of some other weired intelligence? Not true, because I’m also constantly hungry. I still regret any kind of recruitments:) A personal note to the NSA, who’s a regular log-in guest on my sites: I guess, you have to take the less comfortable way again and sniff my e-mails. You’re still bastards for me, who betrayed this nation and the constitution. Shame on you and go to hell!
I also enjoyed his theories that someone “got to” Ed Asner, often listed as a 9/11 Truth supporter:
I always was and always will be a big fan of Ed Asner’s movies and TV series, especially “rich man, poor man”. Last week, I was a bit disappointed that Asner “caved in” and basically made a u-turn, by writing that 9/11 was based on negligence. I heard a different view a long while ago, even personally from him on the phone. Someone else might speculate, why this has happened now. Maybe someone threatened Asner with some infos of his past?
Haupt’s blogs are a great running account of the life of a would-be revolutionary in the Internet age—sort of like a MySpace version of Che’s Congo diary. His writings are full of little offhand personal tidbits left behind for his future biographers. “Or what about a romantic reason?” he writes one day in 2004, apropos of nothing. “My girlfriend denied to marry me…Maybe it’s frustration, depression or that i’m constantly broke.” Later on, he confesses to bravery in the face of impending capture: “Maybe i’m scared that the Homeland Security will arrest me as a ‘terrorist’? Not at all.”
In any case, Haupt had better hope he’s a speed addict, because if he isn’t, there are very few reasonable excuses for his Raskolnikovian appearance. He spits