For me Chomsky's analysis - for example in Manufacturing Consent - is far more interesting than the minutiae of one specific event, because it looks at the big picture. Why are Western governments complacent about terrorism? Why is it useful for them to have an "enemy"? Why do they like to have wars - on "drugs", on "terrorism", on the "Axis of Evil"?
Because when occasional terrorist acts occur, it allows them to further their broader political objectives of tighter social control, greater police powers, wars on other sovereign nations justified in terms of "protecting freedoms" and "spreading democracy". It also means they can "protect us" and focus our attention on "the enemies" out there. And often this is not even a particularly conscious process on the part of governments and elites - they ain't that clever actually. It's just sh!t that happens, that is part of a "dominant discourse", the wheels of bureaucracy are slow but they grind exceedingly fine.
The Truther movement as I see it is an attempt to make sense out this spectacular, random, violent event and to come to terms with why our (in this case the US) government failed to protect us. Of course, most people can't see the big picture and focus on the details, the anomalies, the grainy footage, because they are trying to create a sense of meaning, of understanding. If we think it is impossible for these technological illiterates to capture our technology and hit us incredibly hard right in the heart of America, it must have been a setup right? Those Arabs just aren't smart enough to pull that sh!t off right? So it was a set-up. It was the government. It was the Jews in the form of Larry Silverstein. Those Jews are clever bastards right enough. Or it was "the Vulcans". Or both.
So in this quest for meaning, we have to determine the detail. We poke and we prod. We examine grainy video footage of "squibs" and "pools of molten metal" and sheared off girders. We invent holograms, remote controlled planes, "controlled demolitions", NORAD was stood down, Bush had GTA missiles poking out his arse, "free-falling buildings", thermite straps, even nano-thermite WTF that is. These ideas grow from seeds - for example the thermite theory came from the discredited Jones who when pressed admitted that there were only "trace elements of thermite". Yet now the thermite demolition theory is widely accepted by Truthers, most of whom don't even understand that thermite is not an explosive but a way to cut holes in metal, that has never been used in any demolition or on anything even approaching the required scale in the world ever.
Where evidence doesn't exist, that's because it was stolen. When counter evidence exists, it was planted. And then we have to understand the motive - it was for insurance, it was to hide stolen gold and bonds, it was to hide evidence of CIA/US wrongdoings over the past 60 years. Disco's latest article that tries to pull together every theft, every embezzlement, every dirty trick ever played by the CIA and allies and store all that evidence conveniently in one little office on the 63rd floor of WTC1 (or whichever it was) is simply this kind of analysis hypertrophied. It's only an extreme manifestation of other, much simpler theories.
Now all this isn't to say that many Truthers aren't well-meaning - they just don't understand what the hell they are doing. The other extreme is the Loose Change "we are only in it for the money" or the crappy 9/11 website creator who just wants the ad click revenue. There's a sucker born every minute they say.
