What, if anything, might these numbers mean for left politics in the United States? Does the movement loosely organized around 9 I 11 truth involve dynamic political struggle? Is the movement an essential site of resistance against the policies of the Bush administration, its illegal wars, and its attempt to increase executive power and stifle civil liberties? Insofar as information at odds with the oficial story of 9 In circulates primarily on the Internet, do we find in the truth movement an example of the power of alternative and participatory media over the corporatecontrolled mainstream media?
The conflict over 9 I 11 truth is a battle over facts, knowledge, who knew, who knows, and who has a right to know. Pervasive skepticism renders every fact, every claim, suspect. So does the push to uncover the truth of September 11 continue the democratic project of underminig the sovereign privilege of secrecy by making hidden knowledge public?
Most mainstream discussions of the 9 I 11 truth movement, even those challenging the adequacy of the administration's account of the events of September n, dismiss truth activists as a lunatic fringe, as paranoid conspiracy theorists with a fragile hold on reality. This gap between oficial and alternative accounts raises the question of the possibility of facts credible both to those convinced by the oficial aq:ount and to those who reject it. Could any information exist that would disprove the suspicions of the MIH O P or made-it-happen-on-purpose segment of the 9 l n truth movement (the other segment is LIH o P, let it happen on purpose) ? Conversely, could any facts be revealed that would firmly establish the Bush administration's complicity in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Diferently put, is the matter simply one of revelation and disco�cealment such that a smoking gun could emerge that all would agree is definitive proof of the truth of the event? Or is something else at stake, something that concerns the conditions of possibility for knowledge and credibility?
Confronting this dilemma is crucial for thinking through the role of media.old and new-as well as for grasping the setting of contemporary politics. If facts and information are introduced into a media environment wherein they are rejected or suspected in advance, that is to say, if facts are immediately presumed to be either lies in the service of ideology or the irrelevant factoids of the reality-based community, and if they circulate primarily as eyebal bait in communicative capitalism's endless circuits, then are they necessary for or relevant to left political projects? Vhat if the so-called facts circulate tribally, consolidating comunities of the lil<:erninded even as they fail to impress-or even register to-anyone else?
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