A “debunking” of the movie Zeitgeist
May 6, 2008H/T to Dandelion Salad for the link to a supposed debunking of the entire movie Zeitgeist. Initially, I was going to post the following as a comment on that blog post, but it started to get a bit lengthy and I figured it would be both more appropriate and easier to format as a blog post, so here it is:
Thanks for the links. I’ll have to check out the debunks even though I doubt I’ll agree with a lot of it. Always good to see others’ perspectives, though. Peter Joseph (Zeitgeist’s creator) himself has written “It is my hope that people will not take what is said
in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.”
Do I think everything in the movie is 100% accurate? No. Do I think that it is worth watching and researching? Absolutely. Do I think attempting a good faith debunk and/or critique is a worthwhile effort? Yes, while emphasizing “good faith”. Most debunks which I see seem to have an agenda which seems to translate roughly as follows- “it’s all BS, and you should take my word for it because I’ve obviously put a lot of effort into this website and nobody really follows all the endnotes on these things anyway- just link to this page in forums like a good sheep and repeat after me- “it’s all been debunked”".
(note to new readers of this blog- I’ve read and researched (both online and offline) on many of the topics covered by the movie since well before the movie was released and provide some links for some further recommended reading on some of the topics covered both below and in my most popular blog post- Peter Joseph’s movie Zeitgeist)
Having looked a little bit at the “debunk” I’ll provide a few links of interest for Parts 2 and 3. I’m not about to attempt a full on debunk, analysis or critique of the “debunk”. It’s just not worth the effort. If Dick Cheney had written it, I might think otherwise.
Since part 1 of the movie has a complete interactive transcript with sources and additional reading on the zeitgeistmovie.com site and Peter Joseph has addressed debunk attempts of it in his FAQs, I figure it stands or falls on its own merits or lack thereof at this point.
For exploring Part 2 of the “debunk” an indispensible reference will be The 9/11 Complete 9/11 Timeline- mainstream media sources used and linked to as sources. Example: point one- Mahmood Ahmed
The author of the debunk uses sentences such as
I can find no sources of such an event — that is sources that do not occur on conspiracy web sites themselves.
This seems disingenuous. How hard did the author actually look for those original sources? Also, many of the original source articles on 9/11 are no longer easily findable online except on “conspiracy theory sites”. Does this mean that the original source article never existed? No. One just has to dig around in the internet archives or at the public library to find those sources; but if one dismisses a resource such as the Complete Timeline as “conspiracy theory” one will indeed have a hard time finding those articles.
Shafig bin Laden was meeting with George H W Bush, and the Carlyle Group the morning of 9/11
The author uses Popular Mechanics as a reference source. Part II notes #33 and #34, for example. Readers can easily find online debunks of that article. He said, she said… so who does one believe?
in addition to the timeline, readers may be interested in learning about the all the architects, engineers, pilots, government officials, etc. who have been willing to publicly question the 9/11 report and other official explanations for the events of 9/11 and publish- to give an example- a peer reviewed article in a Civil Engineering journal (in the 2008 section-
Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction Authors: Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley )
On to part III-
“The real truth of the matter is that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
- Franklin D Roosevelt, US President 1933
I found source of the quote. It is apparently a letter sent from Roosevelt to Colonel Edward M House, and apparently can be received from Sterling Library at Yale University or from Radio Liberty. After hours of searching, I could not find a single location on the Internet that references this letter that is not a conspiracy site or is from a post on a forum written by someone who is promoting a conspiracy theory. More so, searching Yale’s library database yielded nothing. I found plenty of letters, but not this one.
I found the quote elsewhere than on a “conspiracy theory site”- Webskeptic lists the quote as underdetermined. Webskeptic may or may not be more well researched or accurate than the “debunk” this post deals with, but at least it appears to be a bit more balanced in terms of a critique.
Looking a bit more for the source of the quote I found the following here:
LETTER TO COL. EDWARD MANDELL HOUSE from Franklin D. Roosevelt Nov. 21,
1933 - F.D.R.: His Personal Letters - Duell, Sloan and Pearce 1950, as cited in THE
SHADOWS OF POWER Id
whether one agrees with the POV of angelfire or Perloff, one could probably verify or refute the accuracy of the quote given that information, I think. See, the interesting thing about all of this is that not all books are currently searchable online. So if Peter Joseph has read The Shadows of Power (what do you know, he claims to have done! or at least cites it as a source) then he may well indeed be able to source all these underdetermined quotes which appear in the movie… whether debunkers will buy those sources or not is another question, of course.
Ah yes, good old books. What a concept! Further book reading (online) for part III of Zeitgeist is available with Jim Marr’s book Rule by Secrecy.
And I’ve spent enough energy writing this post for one night, I think. Where DO these “debunkers” find the time? Maybe some of them “secretly” get paid to do this type of stuff? Who knows, eh?
