As the spotlights dimmed and the auditorium screen flickered to life, a movie trailer featuring the strangely waxy face of AI-generated Larry Silverstein, billionaire and owner of the New York City World Trade Center, began rolling. Lounging in the deep velveteen seats, audience members — mostly elderly and unaccompanied — were enraptured as the video panned to the AI Silverstein’s conversation with an AI-generated woman in an empty corporate office. She explained the 9/11 Truth Movement’s upcoming 25-year anniversary event; he seemed surprised and skeptical; the trailer concluded with sparse applause that trickled out as the next film rolled.
Outside the auditorium, the Grand Lake Theater was dim and mostly empty. Lit by twinkling artificial candles on crystal chandeliers, the frescoed columns and stained glass were awash with gauzy red. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and two posters on the theater windows were the only advertisements for the Annual 9/11 Truth Film Festival.
The seven-hour event, complete with film screenings and speeches, was hosted by the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, a grassroots organization created in December 2002. The core of its argument is that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were part of a “false-flag operation” created by the United States and Israel to justify American involvement in global war. This claim has been disputed by many sources, including the official 9/11 Commission Report.
One elderly gentleman intercepted us before we could explore the event tables. “Israel had the motive, the expertise and the access to the buildings,” he explained passionately. Supposedly, Israeli agents were involved in some sort of plan that allowed them to get past the towers’ 24/7 security. “(Larry) Silverstein, he was in close contact with Netanyahu — every week, they were talking on the phone!”
The “permanent war economy” came up over and over again. “We go in and we kill people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Nicaragua, wherever, and we take whatever they’ve got — the oil,” one man said, hoarse words tumbling over one another.
There was a palpable air of paranoia. Nobody wanted their words attributed to them, but not from a lack of belief or shame. “If you start talking about this (at UC Berkeley), they might come down on you,” a participant warned. “If you say that the government lied, you’re a target. If you say Israel was involved, stand back!”
The event was organized by Carol Brouillet, Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance co-founder and former Green Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Brouillet has spent her life resisting government authority; in 2012, she was arrested for civil disobedience outside Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale during her congressional campaign.
But the real highlight of Brouillet’s career in activism has been her longstanding involvement with 9/11 Truth. In a Substack post, Brouillet explains that “(she made) friends online, in person, with kindred spirits… It was a slow, organic process of simply meeting people and talking with them.” She then describes how 9/11 Truth later inspired her run for Congress: “Neither the Republicans nor Democrats would touch 9/11, so when the Green Party asked me to run, I did. My campaign slogan was ‘Impeach the Terrorists!’”
We were unable to reach Brouillet during the event; she was surrounded by too many kindred spirits, flitting from one responsibility to the next. Some of these attendees included an eclectic group of men in their late 70s who were locked in conversation, sporting baggy neon t-shirts, tightly collared shirts and heads of long white Gandalf-esque hair. They teasingly informed us that they could do a better job than the films at filling us in on the conspiracy. Many had been involved with the 9/11 Truth Movement since its inception and had been politically involved in anti-war activism for even longer. For them, the 9/11 Alliance was a way to make a real impact on the world. “My whole life, I opposed things, but I didn’t do anything about it. This is the first and only time I’ve done it, really,” one attendee told us.
Every member is essentially an unpaid volunteer. “Nobody is making a penny… I’m literally in debt to my housemate. She hasn’t thrown me out yet. But she’s not happy,” the same attendee said. He has been able to make some money as a technical director, as well as by selling his 9/11 exposé videos: “Not enough to live off of, but enough to keep me off the streets, so to speak.”
Throughout the event, we were repeatedly offered baked goods alongside “Deception Dollars” — dollar bill-shaped informational slips featuring an unknown figure hiding behind a Barack Obama mask. Two nice employees gave us water and popcorn while we listened to everyone else speak about how the free-fall of 7 World Trade Center indicated a purposeful explosion. In the corner, the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo table was sharing Palestinian desserts. While the volunteer we spoke with felt little fidelity to the conspiracy, both organizations seemed to have enough common interests to garner a significant amount of interaction at the table, as well as a significant amount of signatures on their petition.
Later, an anonymous attendee shared her experience joining the 9/11 Truth Movement. She believed that 9/11 was an inside job long before she officially joined the movement, but only discovered 9/11 Truth after getting involved in anti-vaccine circles. Another member that requested anonymity approached and volunteered her story. “I lost all my friends,” she said, explaining why she sought out a local 9/11 Truth community. “My only living relative is my sister. She’s one of the first people who got me into this.”
Both women’s isolation led them to meet Brouillet (an anti-vaxxer herself) during the COVID-19 pandemic. When asked about the overlap between anti-vaccination and 9/11 trutherism, they told us that, while many members believe in both, there are still a few exceptions. Some 9/11 truthers are also getting into “geoengineering,” the idea that the government manufactures changes in the weather. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has denied this, stating that it “does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities.”
There was rarely any mention of life outside of members’ commitment to 9/11 trutherism and related theories. Perhaps in the world of conspiracies, belief inherently necessitates obsession. How could anyone casually believe that the government planned a terrorist attack with a foreign power, that vaccines are deadly and that weather events are engineered? If anything, the 100-something-person film festival was an underreaction.
These people — many of whom were elderly, lonely and isolated — had come together through their commitment to seek and spread the “truth.” The cause gives them purpose and direction, one that isn’t entirely unique to their community. The motivation behind their argument, once you get past the “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams” of it all, was surprisingly understandable. Even among our generation, institutional distrust builds with every new whistleblower, every leaked study, every time the federal government sues a major publication over an exposé. At some point for these theorists, that snowball tipped over the cliff; the question became “what isn’t the federal government lying about?”
Since the early 2000s, conspiracy itself has become much more palatable. Terms such as “deep state” and “psyop” have become commonplace enough to warrant their own animated Netflix shows; posts from QAnon, the infamous 4chan conspiracy, that feature an AI-generated Donald Trump averaged 17,000 likes on X. Such 4chan posts were a major component in the 2021 capitol storming, plainly illustrating their violent intent. Perhaps these intense conspiracy organizations have inured us to less violent groups like 9/11 Truth, which feels almost innocently charming compared to QAnon in its approach to perceived government and societal problems.
It all felt like a strange family reunion — we were constantly approached with kindness and warmth from people old enough to be our parents, uncles and grandparents. At the same time, we were being fed wild stories that felt adjacent to the depths of a fringe 4chan thread. By the end of the event, we found ourselves chatting idly with some young conspiracy theory enjoyers who came for a laugh. Slowly, event participants trickled into our conversation. They were interested in our attendance and asked us how to get young people involved in the movement, what we studied and what else we were doing that day. Eventually, we weren’t even talking about 9/11. We were just talking.