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Approaching the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I’ve been asked to participate in a panel on the early days of the 9/11 truth movement. It’s part of the Turning the Tide conference in New York City that begins this Thursday, September 10. Hope to see you there! Meanwhile, here is my account of how David Ray Griffin played a major role in my transformation from employable academician to truth jihadi. You can watch the whole memorial at the Claremont United Church of Christ YouTube channel.
Transcript
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. I’m Kevin Barrett and I have an article published out on the internet called “How David Ray Griffin Changed My Life.” There’s the long version and the printed version (in American Free Press). Now I’ll give you a brief spoken version.
When I was in graduate school in the late 1980s and 1990s, I discovered that amongst the vast wasteland of structuralism and post-structuralism and this, that, and the other, all reactions to the scientism that was dominating the academy, there were basically three schools of thought that I could find that actually had anything worthwhile to say. The first was Bakhtinian dialogism. The second was the traditionalism of René Girard, and I followed those people into Islam.
And then finally, of course, there was the process thought of John Cobb and David Ray Griffin. And of all of these stunning discoveries, perhaps the most stunning and craziest of all was that the best single guide to empirical reality across a wide range of disciplines was this theologian, a Christian theologian, David Ray Griffin. I was shocked andsurprised to find that! And so I read a bunch of David’s work and cited him in my dissertation on Sufism in Morocco.
And then, after 9/11 happened, I was the only Muslim in Madison, Wisconsin, who didn’t immediately just know that 9/11 was some sort of inside job. I said, “let’s wait and see the evidence, guys.” And everybody else said, “come on!” So I was suspicious from the get-go, but I figured that, well, it’s probably one of these things that we’ll never really know. And I was finishing my dissertation, very busy, trying to learn Arabic, get my Arabic up to speed. And it wasn’t until late 2003 when I heard that David was working on The New Pearl Harbor and that he was going to be asserting that the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives—it didn’t just fall down from plane crashes and fires—and that whatever happened to the Pentagon, it certainly wasn’t hit by an airliner piloted by a guy who was incapable of flying a Cessna training aircraft, doing an amazing corkscrew dive and pulling multiple Gs and leveling out at the lawn, not putting a scratch on the lawn, but flying straight into the accounting office, which had just lost $2.3 trillion the night before, according to Donald Rumsfeld.
So the absurdity of this official story…what was stunning to me when I looked into it, thanks to hearing about what David was looking into, was not so much that they, meaning our wonderful national security state and its partners, would do this, but rather how absurdly, shamefully obvious it was. Did these people have no shame? Couldn’t they have at least created some slightly more plausible cover story? Are our intelligence agencies that incompetent? It made me angry in a lot of ways.
So when the book came out, I wasn’t surprised that it was as good as it was, knowing David’s work. And I started talking about it and doing teach-ins at the University of Wisconsin.
At some point, I think I handed the book to a friend of mine who was the local Imam at one of the three mosques in Madison. He was doing some interfaith work, and he had met a guy named Jim Goulding, who, as it turns out, got his PhD in Christian history from Claremont, and was teaching at Edgewood College of Madison, a Catholic school. And my friend, Salih, the Imam, said to Jim Goulding, “you should read this book. It shows that 9/11 was an inside job. They blew up the Towers. And whatever happened at the Pentagon, it wasn’t a hijacked plane.”
And Jim Goulding thought, “wow, this must be some kind of crazy Muslim belief.” He couldn’t believe it. He said, “okay, I’ll look at the book.”
And Salih handed him the book, and he said, “David Ray Griffin?! I studied with him. He was the smartest guy in my class, the smartest guy in my university. He wrote this?” And so Jim was totally flabbergasted. And then the next thing you know, Jim and I were talking about bringing David to Madison to give a speech at the University of Wisconsin. And this would have been in late 2004. So we organized that event (which happened April 18 2005).
Jim passed away a couple of years ago. So I guess he, from the other world, won’t mind me saying that I did most of the work. But he provided moral support, and we got David to Madison. A couple of days before the event, C-SPAN, just out of the blue, called my house, and my son did some kind of prank answer, and so they had to call back a couple of times to finally tell me that they were coming to Madison to film this. And that suddenly put it on the radar screen.
It was the first time ever that the 9/11 Truth Movement had gotten any major media publicity. So David showed up in Madison. Jim and I had dinner with him. He gave an incredible talk. And I got to have breakfast with him the next morning. Fantastic conversation. I’m still in awe of his intellect.
And the success of that event made it inevitable that I would end up walking this bizarre path that I’ve had to walk ever since then. I ended up getting chosen as the whipping boy of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth. I was the guy that the state legislature in Madison attacked. They said I had to be fired from the university because I was corrupting the youth of Athens or something like that. So, next thing you know, I’m on Fox News fighting with Hannity. And the administration is begging me to “please go hide in a cabin somewhere, don’t talk to the media.” And I’m saying, “I’m trying to get thismessage out, and I’m sorry, I have to talk to the media somewhat.” And they said, “just please don’t go on Fox any more.” And I said, “okay, not until the semester’s over.” And this whole experience (including the internet paper trail) made me unemployable in the American and indeed the entire Western Academy.
And since my wife and family were not that interested in going to someplace like Iran or Malaysia or some free country where you’re allowed to talk about the most important political things in the world, unlike in this godforsaken police state that we live in, I ended up having to become a crowdfunded troublemaker, which is what I’ve been doing ever since. And I’ve been blessed to be working with the real thinkers, the people of real intellect and heart. The true truth seekers of our time are mostly on the other side of that divide (academic or foundation-funded vs. independent) and I’ve been forced into that world, and I thank God that I have, because I’ve gotten to work with people like David, and John Cobb, who I regard as obviously one of the most important thinkers of this age, maybe any age, and some other really amazing people, including Sheikh Imran Hosein, who is one of the very few Muslim thinkers out there with something powerful to say about today’s world.
It’s been a great path and I thank God and David Ray Griffin for putting me on it.
