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Star Trek Into Darkness Is 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Propaganda
Paramount Pictures
What You Think It's About:
Star Trek Into Darkness is basically a remake of Wrath of Khan, except its subtitle sounds like the title of an Evanescence album and its grammar looks like it came from the MySpace page of a 13-year-old Evanescence fan. It's basically a nonsense action movie full of awesome space battles fought entirely by hot people.
What It's Really About:
Because Star Trek fans aren't known for their casual enthusiasm, it didn't take long for the Internet to point out that Into Darkness looks an awful lot like an allegory for the worldview of 9/11 "Truthers," who believe that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the American government to justify an invasion of the Middle East, and whose brains may be full of spider webs. That obviously makes Khan space Osama bin Laden -- literally the first thing we see him do is convince a desperate man to become a suicide bomber.
Paramount Pictures
Although we don't think anyone has ever masturbated to bin Laden.
Before we get into the details, keep this in mind: this movie -- which is about a space terrorist being used as an excuse to further a secret space military agenda (in space) -- was co-written by Roberto Orci, who's espoused Truther sentiments on Twitter, the official platform for legitimate political debate, as well as on Star Trek message boards, the second-most-official platform for legitimate political debate. How these conspiracy theory ramblings managed to manifest themselves as a Star Trek motion picture and not just a convoluted blog post, well ... that's the magic of Hollywood. Did we mention that in the credits, the film was dedicated to "Post-9/11 Veterans?" A nice sentiment, but a little out of left field, right?
Now look at the plot: after Khan attacks a meeting of Starfleet big shots in a conspicuously Pentagon-like location, he transports to the Klingon home world faster than anyone can say, "Hey, that guy looks way too white to be named Khan." Kirk is ordered by Admiral Guy Who Played RoboCop to pursue Khan with an armament of 72 experimental torpedoes, but Kirk eventually learns the truth: Admiral RoboCop had been forcing Khan to develop weapons to secretly give Starfleet a military overhaul and jumpstart a war with the Klingons, which he considered inevitable. That's basically the Truther narrative: that bin Laden was nothing but a patsy used by American warmongers to justify the Middle East invasion they wanted anyway.
Paramount Pictures
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