There are some things so difficult to countenance that it can seem simply easier to believe they didn’t happen: that one man could put a bullet through the president’s skull, that human beings could stand on the moon, that a seemingly average man might walk into a school and kill the children inside. And, throughout history, many people have chosen simply not to believe those unfathomable events, telling themselves stories that help make the world make sense, albeit more sinister.
So when the first plane and then another collided with the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan in September 2001, it opened a wound so unfathomable in its horror that it seemed necessary to tell a new kind of story – one that helped make sense of the tragedy, even as it distorted it. The conspiracy theories began almost as soon as the attacks had finished, and they have stayed with us to this day.
