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Comment by aww_dang | Hacker News Reader

I agree the parallels are clear. Both narratives rely on fear and mass hysteria. Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less inflammatory way.

The mainstream presses never had a reckoning for their role in issuing false rationales for the war in Iraq. Those who believed the propaganda shouted down dissent as "conspiracy nuttery" and anti-Americanism. After the fact, many of those I know simply switched their positions. They denied they ever unfairly dismissed concerns or experts (Hans Blix) which ran counter to prevailing propaganda.

Which brings us back to the present rationales for expanded state power, where dissent is dismissed as conspiracy nuttery and anti-science. Once again, the incentives are ignored.

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One of the more interesting parallels I see is how injecting morality into the matter poisoned everything and ensured terrible policy decisions. How many people and politicians got effectively bullied into going along with the idiotic Iraq war because people on the right accused them of not caring about 9/11 victims?

9/11 victims, granny-killer, same side of a different coin.

Hysteria, paranoia, morality, a plan to keep people "safe" - beware of this dangerous pattern.

Absolutely.

Above all if everyone is acting in good faith, there should be no taboos about inquiring about ulterior motives. Instead of ridiculing or censoring dissent, coherent and consistent explanations should be provided. If the rationales for hysteria and emergency measures cannot withstand an open debate, that should be illustrative.

Part of the problem in the current situation is that there is a ton of anti-science conspiracy nuttery. If you are going to dissent, you need to do so in a way that doesn't get pattern-matched with people who are clearly being irrational.

Was it irrational to call critics of the post 9/11 world anti-American?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_truth_movement

>Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less inflammatory way.

https://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_QFYn_G1lc

Wikipedia lends itself to exactly the kind of cringe worthy coverage I described above. Starting with the reliable source policy which has only become more partisan in recent years. All of those reliable sources were involved in uncritically promoting WMD propaganda.

Yes, there are nutters with nutty concerns. There are also nutters who wear shoes, but we don't conclude that we must go barefoot. The generalization is misleading at best and disinfo at worst.

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