Showing posts with label John Montone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Montone. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2020

A Successful Conference: "From 9/11 to COVID 19"

 


What a week on this end! In fact, with all the excitement, I didn't get the chance to update this blog about our "From 9/11 to COVID-19" conference. Very successful, especially with the kind of engagement the event had with its audience.

The presentation by Noah Rauch from the 9/11 Memorial Museum was an elegant outline of why the real cause of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers - the crashing of two highjacked airliners into the buildings by Al Qaeda terrorists and the structural damage done to the buildings - just as concluded by National Institute of Standards and Technology and the 9/11 Commission, is the one and only real conclusion any rational individual can reach. Simply, as Rauch presented, no conspiracies, no controlled demolition, no mini nuclear bombs, no space-based death rays built from alien technology the Illuminati is hiding at Area 51. Period.

John Montone from 1010 WINS news radio also offered very moving recollections of being on the scene 2001, covering the attacks and their aftermath. As he also put it so perfectly about our absurd new world of 9/11 "Truthers," Flat Earth, and QAnon conspiracists, you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

"Facts," are what you can examine, test, and replicate under the strict scrutiny of the scientific method. "Facts" are not the suppositions and guesswork conspiracy theorists trade in. Facts are not your personal preferences and wishes you just choose to believe in because they make you feel good or support your preconceived biases.

But we were especially heartened by the feedback from our students and the listeners to the program. The support was fantastic and it's good to see that so many young people are willing and able to live in a world of rationality and reject the paranoid, divisive fantasies of the conspiracy culture.

Check out this link to an article about the event in the Hudson County View.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

From 9/11 to Covid 19: Conspiracy Theories, Fake News, and the Assault on Truth

Two decades of a conspiracy culture spiraling out of control.

On October 13, my school, Saint Peter's University, will be hosting the virtual conference "FROM 9/11 TO COVID 19: CONSPIRACY THEORIES, FAKE NEWS, AND THE ASSAULT ON TRUTH." I will present on a panel that also includes Noah Rauch, Senior Vice President for Education and Public Programs at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and John Montone, reporter for New York's 1010 WINS news radio.

Among the topics we will discuss will be an effort to chart how conspiratorial thinking has mutated from people seeking to reexamine the details of major events to a world where our culture is ready to reject all consensus reality.

As I have written before, these are urgent questions to address because the modern conspiracism is becoming a threat to Americans' health and safety. Conspiracism is a movement we have seen ignoring science in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a movement that has become the haven for the dangerous and unstable fabrications of the QAnon movement, and the bullies and thugs of the crisis-actor movement that harasses the survivors of mass shootings. The anti-vaccination movement has deceived people into endangering the lives of their families and communities through the use of the rhetoric of the conspiracy theory. 

Simply, if there is no consensus reality, then only chaos, anarchy, and a corrosive moral relativism will reign.

With this conference, we are hoping to set an example, to encourage education to be a bulwark against the chaos and anarchy threatening to engulf this culture every day.