September 11 attacks On September 11, 2001, there were four coordinated attacks on the United States of America. These attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda. Members of this terrorist organization hijacked planes. Two of the planes were flown into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, though originally it was heading to Washington, D. C., presumably for the White House. ESL Lesson Plan Conspiracy Theories

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September 11 attacks The attacks killed almost 3,000 people and injured 6,000. After the September 11 attacks, the United States launched the War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan. The US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban, a fundamentalist political movement, was providing shelter to al-Qaeda. These are the official facts. What else do you know about the attacks?

A conspiracy? Yet not everyone thinks that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. There are other ideas about what happened. Have you heard of other theories about these events? After the event, people began to question the official version. Some people proposed conspiracy theories, which claim that other people were responsible for the attacks, and that many people knew about the attacks before they occurred. One prominent conspiracy theory is that the Two Towers collapsed because of a controlled demolition, and not because of structural failure due to fire and impact. Other people believe that the Pentagon was hit by a missile launched by the US government. What do you think happened on this day?

Conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory explains an event or situation as the result of a secret plan by powerful people or groups. In particular, a high-profile engineer and a physicist argued that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings could not have occurred without additional energy. According to them, the impact of the planes and the fires were not enough to make the building collapse. WTC 7, a building which collapsed during the attacks, is the focus of one conspiracy theory. People claim that this building collapsed because of a controlled demolition. This means that someone or some people made the building collapse. However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology confirmed that the building did not fall because of a controlled demolition.

Was there a conspiracy? Years have passed since the tragedy of 9/11, yet according to one source, almost 50% of Americans believe that there is a conspiracy surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Why do you think that so many people believe in a conspiracy theory? Do you think that powerful people in the US government were involved? Why would the US government cause so much damage to its own country? What would it gain from such an attack?

The Moon Landing Hoax In this century, third-party evidence such as high definition photos showing the lander modules, tracks left by the astronauts and American flags, have been released. Regardless of this evidence, many Americans and Russians believe that NASA faked the landing in order to win the Space Race. According to the official facts, there have been six manned landings on the moon, the first occurring in July 1969 and the last in December 1972. Conspiracists claim that NASA filmed the moon landing in a TV studio and that no human has ever set foot on the moon. Another conspiracy theory claims that the first moon landing was a hoax, as were the subsequent landings.

Who shot the president? There are many other famous conspiracy theories. On November 22, 1963 US President John F. Kennedy was shot twice while riding through downtown Dallas in his presidential convoy. A man named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime. There are many, many conspiracy theories about the death of JFK. Did the mafia kill him? Was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone? Did Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson organise Kennedy’s assassination? Is it possible that other people or organizations conspired to kill the president? How many people would be required to carry out such an event? How could you keep this a secret for so long?

‘People call some events a conspiracy theory. In fact, they are conspiracies - not theories - and they are real. There really are large groups of powerful people who conspire to maintain control and to cause harm to certain members of sections of society. ‘Trust no-one’ is an excellent mantra for our times.’ What do you think? ‘People who believe in conspiracy theories may be intelligent and educated, yet they are also irrational and gullible. If you believe in a conspiracy theory, you clearly don’t have all the evidence. Or perhaps you are just acting a little too human – after all, humans have small minds, and when a big thing happens, we are incapable of accepting it as factual.’

Do you believe? According to Jan-Willem van Prooijen, a professor at VU University Amsterdam, people who believe in conspiracy theories feel a lack of control over their lives. ‘If people feel as though they don’t have control over a situation, they will try to make sense of it by connecting the dots… that aren’t necessarily there in reality. If you give people a sense of control, then they are less inclined to believe in conspiracies by governments,’ he says. Do you think this is a reasonable explanation about why people believe in conspiracy theories?

Look at the evidence! The main issue with conspiracy theories is that they often contain logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is something that sounds logical, but isn’t. There are many types of logical fallacies. One fallacy is Double Think. This means that you hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. For example, conspiracy theorists say that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the US government. They claim that the attacks showed ‘military precision and perfect secrecy.’ For proof, these same people claim to have found YouTube interviews with government officials who admit to planning the attacks. But if the attacks showed military precision and perfect secrecy, then why can you find these videos on YouTube?

Another fallacy is the Unqualified Expert. Conspiracy theorists use experts to prove their ideas. However, an expert in one area may be unqualified in other areas. Unqualified experts are used heavily. Air pilots make claims about engineering, engineers make claims about town planning, town planners make claims about airplanes… Other fallacies One of the most common fallacies is the Bandwagon Effect. People believe something because other people believe it. Of course, this does not prove anything. 14% of Americans believe that sound travels faster than light. In a way, religion works like this too. We automatically believe in our parent’s religion. Why wouldn’t we?

Do you believe in UFOs? After a United States Air Force balloon crashed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, the world went a little conspiracy-mad. However, it is true that the US military lied about the balloon, which was used for nuclear test monitoring, though they reported it as a weather balloon. After almost 30 years, interest began to appear in the story, to a point where the majority of people by the 1990s believed that the US government was hiding evidence of an alien visit to Earth. Why do so many of the world’s UFO sightings happen in the United States? Why don’t UFOs visit Thailand, Yemen or Vanuatu?

Argument from Ignorance is a common fallacy. You believe something is true because you cannot say that it is not true. When someone says, ‘There is so much we don’t know about the universe,’ that is a true statement. But it doesn’t mean there are UFOs. We don’t know if there are UFOs. A universe full of the unknown doesn’t prove anything. Two fallacies Inductive Generality is an interesting fallacy. It’s when you provide a hugely complicated explanation for something that is actually quite simple. When you think that thousands of people in the government conspire to do something, and then keep all of their movements secret for decades, you are using inductive generality. If something can be explained in a simple way, that’s usually closest to the truth.

But there are conspiracies… Of course, governments do bad things. And of course, governments that have a secret intelligence service often do very bad things. ‘People who live in rich, safe countries often forget what their governments are doing overseas. In order to preserve their citizens’ well-being, governments undertake covert operations all around the world. It’s no wonder that so many people believe in conspiracy theories.’

Is the media to blame? The mean world syndrome is a phenomenon whereby constant publication of violence by the mass media makes people believe that they live in a world that is much more dangerous than it actually is. Do you think that the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ is responsible for conspiracy theories? With the rise of the Internet, how much can we trust the information that we read? To what extent is the media at fault?

What’s your opinion? Look at each of the statements and make a comment about it. Are you strongly for or strongly against the statement? Or somewhere in between? A government will murder its own citizens if this is in the interests of national security. People who watch police dramas are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists just can’t deal with the truth. They don’t accept evidence because they can’t accept that there are simple explanations for terrible events.