Charles Veitch has such lovely teeth

When I first went to university in the early 1980s I got to know one group of students, all ex private schoolboys from well to do backgrounds, who were members of the Socialist Workers Party. You could tell they were working class at heart, if not in background, by the donkey jackets and Doc Martens they wore

The 1984 Miners’ Strike was in full, bad-tempered, swing at the time. My SWP acquaintances would regularly zip up to potential confrontational hot spots with a view to getting stuck into police lines, in solidarity with their striking ‘comrades’

These passionate revolutionaries subsequently got their degrees and went off to work in accountancy, banking and legal firms; with a view to partnership and rearing the next generation of middle-class dickhead student activist

The miners, of course, all ended up on their arse and I doubt if many of them went on to become partners in City law firms

My mistrust of activists from privileged backgrounds consequently goes back almost 30 years

An ex-girlfriend of mine had an expression for rich kids who get down with the common people for a time, often fuck things up, and then return to pursuing their own genuine class interest. She’d spot one a mile off and mutter ‘down at heel, a mouthful of dental steel’

They do have such lovely, well-maintained teeth

Which brings me back onto the subject of Charles ‘Charlie’ Veitch

Veitch's latest outrageously satirical Youtube video. I got as far as 3:22. If he stops being a cock anywhere before the end of the clip could someone let me know

For the reasons outlined above, I freely admit that I was prejudiced against Veitch from the moment I first became aware of his existence

On the other hand, he did start off his Internet career by promoting the kind of subversive, non violent approach to activism that I personally warm to

So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt

...right up until he took a great big dump on the 9/11 Truth Movement, and the conspiratorial view of the world in general, a few days back

People have commented here and elsewhere that it does not matter that a solitary 9/11 Truther has publicly recanted his conspiratorial views

On one level that’s true. Veitch is not a 9/11 researcher and after listening to his reasons for accepting the Official 9/11 Narrative it is clear that he is either not very informed about 9/11 or pretending to be not very informed about 9/11. He is simply recycling pre-existing arguments in support of the Official Narrative and offering no good reasons for an informed 9/11 sceptic to adjust their opinion

However, the Veitch recantation may be useful to promoters of Official Narratives in other ways

I have seen no evidence which conclusively proves that Veitch is a conscious cognitive infiltrator. However, Veitch himself freely admits that he changed his views on 9/11 as a result of being part of a BBC production on the subject of 9/11 conspiracy theorists

So, at the very least, Veitch himself has been the successful subject of a deliberate act of cognitive infiltration

Which makes him a very special little muffin indeed

I cannot think of another case of a high profile ‘conspiracy theorist’ successfully being converted back to a non-conspiratorial world view

Praises be! The pickle has been turned back into a cucumber. The cult fanatic has been successfully deprogrammed back to being a ‘normal’ person

The BBC is going to make a meal out of this conversion in its 9/11 Conspiracy Road (to Damascus) Trip, big time

There are parallels with the BBC’s earlier 7/7 Conspiracy Files production, which also featured a leading (sic.) conspiracy theorist who hadn't been on the scene for very long before the programme was made and who was more than happy to be presented as a delusional idiot on national television

At a time when the resources available for investigative journalism are so meagre most productions have to be put together in a matter of weeks, the BBC still manages to devote months, sometimes years to the preparation of hit pieces targeted at conspiracy theorists

And the cherry on the cake for any self-respecting BBC hit piece worth the resources lavished upon it is the inclusion of at least one fool, whose ego is greater than his intellect, willing to offer himself up for ritual sacrifice

When all is said and done, no-one has ever became a Truther or stopped being a Truther as a result of watching the BBC. The service provided by the BBC is to provide viewers with narratives that at least appear to explain what’s going on in the world. It doesn't really matter if those narratives stack up or not, as the target audience won’t be subjecting those narratives to critical scrutiny

Contrary to the standard BBC psychobabble, there is nothing comforting about a conspiratorial world view. The average television viewer probably understands that, albeit subconsciously, and their psychological defence mechanisms cut in. The BBC exists to nurture and feed those defence mechanisms

Personally, I’m going to continue to keep an eye on Veitch’s antics because there’s more to come, that’s for sure. I’m going to do so, partly for pure entertainment value but mostly because I’m fascinated by the pathology of the cognitive disruption game

Thus far, my gut feel is that the sophistication of the mass of on-line loons is currently developing faster than the tactics and stunts being rolled out to deal with them - the controlled demolition of Charles Veitch included

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