Only Controversial Topics!!!

This controversy touches on many things (including personal experience) considering the date.

First, on Coast to Coast last night they had a topic of revisionist history, cover-ups and facts that have literally been expunged from the media for various motives. I didn't hear the whole show, and what I'm about to talk about wasn't mentioned in the part I heard, but considering it was the pre-dawn hours of the 9/11 anniversary, this controversy immediately came to mind.

It became huge during the Presidential campaign when Donald Trump claimed that "thousands" of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. History bears out that Trump was indeed wrong in his exaggeration of the numbers as no such numbers could be corroborated, but his ascertain that these "celebrations" occurred was true and he was vindicated many times over in his recollection of the occurrences if not the extent.

The disturbing thing to me, since I remembered it too, was the fact that the media went on a total blitz to say this was a complete lie and it never occurred to any extent, in any way, shape of form, or by anyone whatsoever. This narrative went on for weeks while the controversy raged. The scary thing was most of the evidence of these events had somehow been intentionally expunged - no one could find the newspaper articles, newscasts or radio reports - a great deal of effort had apparently gone into covering this up.

However, hundreds of eye-witnesses began to step forward with their accounts: everyone from school teachers to police officers. Since then newscasts have been recovered and testimonies have surfaced. But what we still don't know is why so many deniers showed up in the media and why there was such a concerted effort to remove this item from history. It's also a bit strange that as soon as the facts were verified, the media never retracted the claim that anyone who said they remembered this was lying or was making up falsehoods motivated by "Islamophobia."

On a personal level, I worked in construction in 2001 (as a safety coordinator) and I not only remember newspaper articles about these "celebrations," as well as local TV newscasts, but I remember the construction workers who came from Patterson, Jersey City, and some other areas who recounted the celebrations that they witnessed firsthand BEFORE any reports ever came out about them publicly, and who had these accounts officially corroborated later by news outlets.

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defined the presidency of George W. Bush.

And the point of your post is?

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I remember watching it on my local TV channel. Hundreds of people celebrating in Muslim countries. Whether the clips are still there, I have no idea. But that I saw this on TV, I have no doubt.

Yes, it's true there were much larger celebrations in various countries that were both filmed and reported on. The contention arose at the end of 2015 when Trump mentioned the celebrations by Muslims specifically in America during his campaign.

Until then, I didn't even know it was or would be a controversy as I clearly remembered it as something that occurred after the 9/11 attacks. It was well reported and thought others remembered it as well - which they did.

The disturbing aspect was that the media (driven by a significant and apparently powerful part of the government & population) turned it into a controversy (see topic title) by making a concerted effort to expunge these facts from history.

And the question is why? Was it so hard to believe that since Islamic fundamentalists murdered 3000 people in the largest terrorist attack in modern history which was celebrated throughout the international Islamic world that there might be sympathizers in the U.S.?

My guess is that the concerted effort to expunge history was in part an aspect of the Clinton campaign to discredit Trump, but also because the facts contradicted the narrative about fundamentalist Islam being expounded by the Obama administration and the PC left. They are unable to accept the fact of "bad apples in every bunch" - so for them, when they say Islam is a religion of peace, it has to be an absolute and anything that contradicts that has to be expunged or declared as having "nothing to do with Islam."

This is how PC does business.

You're a tad confused: whether people were celebrating was not the issue. The issue is whether it was happening in America, in public, in sizable numbers. That's what made the claim significant. If he'd just said he heard a few guys on a roof had cheered, people wouldn't have been that surprised, or cared much.

It's pretty clear that Trump just half-remembered the same kind of footage you're describing, mixed it up with some rumors, and then blurted it out. And then never admitted he was wrong, of course.

Yes. If you read my earlier post I said upfront that Trump was wrong in his numbers - he exaggerated and, as you said, it's been surmised that he may have combined his memory of the actual reports with the many reports and videos from Palestine and elsewhere that showed Muslims celebrating in the streets.

And I agree he should retract erroneous statements - but we know from watching him that he retracts nothing, and rarely ever admits a mistake.

Now, due to the efforts of the PC camp to cover up history, it's now difficult to ascertain exactly what the reaction or the extent really was or if there was any outside of Patterson & Jersey City, NJ. There were reports that there were celebrations on the west coast as well and eyewitnesses reports that the same occurred in such places as Dearborn, MI. suggesting that the presence of terrorist sympathizers may be larger than anyone realizes.

Keep in mind, this isn't a controversy of my making - this was just a tiny factual of history largely dismissed by the masses as having little importance compared to the 9/11 attack itself. It was the PC camp in an effort to contain their apologist narrative that made it a controversy by trying to erase it from history. That's the scary part - that we have aspects of our government, society and culture that will erase history in order to pigeonhole it into their narrative.

I wouldn't have minded it if people corrected Trump on his numbers or his accuracy, but they went the extreme in the opposite direction of saying the entire thing was a lie and anyone who claimed to "remember" it was an "Islamophobe." And there is a lot of evidence that someone went to some good effort to erase newspaper articles, newscasts and reports on the issue from the Internet before Trump ever mentioned it.

What, specifically, was done to make it difficult to ascertain this? Questioning Trump's specific account doesn't stop anyone from substantiating other reports.

You should start sourcing these claims.

Regardless, though, "reports" absent any corroborating evidence are merely rumors.

Er, no. It was a controversy because a very public figure made a blatantly false (and highly dramatic) claim with no evidence. It wasn't a controversy of your making, or of theirs, but of his.

In hindsight I cede this point - Trump's claim of numbers kicked off the controversy, but instead of simply correcting him, the "left" (or whoever) went the opposite extreme to try to say it was a complete lie, never occurred and anyone who remembers it is an Islamophobe... in much the same way the same people are now saying that anyone who wants to preserve historic statues (or who so much as voted for Trump to keep Hillary out of the Whitehouse) are Nazi Klansmen.

The point of this is how the PC camp operates - they erase history then assign a deplorable label to anyone and everyone who does not bow to their will or blindly swallow their revisionist history as a way to manipulate and intimidate.

Okay then.

Can you list some examples of this? I think I asked the same thing about Charlottesville.

I ask because it seems to me a lot of these arguments are based on hazy impressions of what a non-specific group seems to be implying, or what you think they think, whether it's actually been said or not.

No, I'm too lazy to try to research all this stuff to provide links and stats for every single statement that's common knowledge amongst those who regularly check out cable news. I listen to radio and watch TV and that was one of the narratives from the left regarding anyone who claimed to remember the celebrations or the many reports of them at the time.

And yeah, same thing about Charlottesville - after this amount of time I don't think anyone with even a minimal knowledge of "news" can claim to not to at least heard from various radical leftist groups that they believe anyone supporting the statues or who voted for Trump are now lumped in with Ult-right / Nazis / KKK.

I think we had someone on this very site say that anyone who voted for Trump is a Nazi (if memory serves) so there's an "example" right there, and you don't need to look any further than the now defunct terror thread to see that the reaction to people who so much as criticized Islam or who report new terror attacks was, by some, to quickly label them with the PC-contrived label of "Islamophobes." So use this site as a microcosm - and realize that the same things occurred in the major media on a much larger scale.

Your memory seems a bit whiffy. You claimed several times Yoda and I said that.

After all the sarcastic jumping up and down recently that Yeah, buddhists must be the ones terrorising people I'm not surprised there has been no mention of Myanmar.

I'm debating Yoda currently, thank you - I think he probably remembers the post I'm talking about (if it's still there or was removed) - I think it was on one of the Trump threads.

Trying to silence people yet again? No surprises, yet again.

So how about Myanmar, hey.

Well. I've grown quite used to that. Yeah, Islam certainly gets a free pass for everything and if you dare to criticize them, you are called a racist and an Islamophobe. So do people who criticize the Pope and the Catholic Church get called Catholicphobes? I don't think so....The amazing part is that the PC press (in Europe and my country included) make Trump out to be worse than the Korean Fat Boy Maniac. The media's hatred of Trump is such they will twist and misrepresent everything he says. I don't think he is the best President ever but he certainly doesn't deserve to be compared to Hitler or a mass murderer. OTOH, Obama got a free pass - I always did wonder why the heck He received a Nobel Peace Prize for?

Personally, I think being willing to substantiate a political argument should be a prerequisite for deliberately trying to start a conversation about it on a public forum.

And it's a mite disingenuous to frame this as asking for sources on "every single statement." It'd be more accurate to say I've asked for a source for a single statement.

That's kinda my point. How much "common knowledge" is based on half-remembered statements, or just feeling? My suspicion is that, in most of these cases, virtually nobody literally said the thing in question, but maybe you just felt sort of questioned or attacked by the tone of the coverage, and a few months later that gets remembered as the "common knowledge" that they said it.

Also, if it's common knowledge, it's presumably because there are lots of examples, which means it should be easy to substantiate, right?

Sure, but in that thread you said it was the media who did this, not "radical leftist groups." And yes, I know this setups a really easy joke.

Well, radical leftist groups and the media are synonyms these days!

I'm not intentionally trying to be disingenuous, I just honestly don't feel like researching right now - it's not nearly as much fun as debating!

Besides, if I corroborate everything, then the topics won't be nearly as "controversial" and the controversy instead will turn to the source of the reference material (as is usually the case in online debates... "Oh, is FOX News the best you've got? Typical right wing propagandist fill-in-the-blank-phobic ..." etc.)

Just for future reference: who's up for abortion?

So dont quote fox gutter news if the usual response gets your undies in a twist. Pretty simple.

Aaaaand there's the alley-oop.

Seems like it's a bad idea to form a strong opinion about something--let alone strong enough to want to debate it--unless you'd researched it a little.

Again, not "everything." In this case, it's your core claim, and you wrote like a dozen paragraphs based on it. Kinda feel like anyone who's going out of their way to start a debate and writing a whole bunch based on it, should be willing to demonstrate that their contention is true, and obviously has enough energy to do so.

We're all limited by time constraints (I'm making myself late by typing this). I don't mean to give the impression that I'm done debating, just that I don't have the time right now. And I did research it "a little." I researched it enough to find info that many remembered which proved all those who called radio shows to say that anyone who remembered these events were just "lying Islamophobes like Trump" were wrong.

Until I can continue, you can watch this: