20 Years On, Raging Pandemic Gives 9/11 Conspiracists Second Wind

The general idea, including the oft-cited "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" argument, is to prove that some entity must have planted explosives in the towers, because they could not have collapsed so neatly from being hit by planes.

For Heather Bauer, 9/11 anniversaries are about something other than the fallen Twin Towers, smoking wreckage at the Pentagon, and a crashed airliner in a Pennsylvania field. Instead of the accepted version of events -- that Al-Qaeda conducted the attacks -- she believes the US government was primarily responsible. That is among falsehoods being promoted at various events to mark the 20th anniversary of September 11. "I question absolutely everything now, and I wonder how much or what we have been told of history is even really true," Bauer told AFP. That includes Covid-19, which she does not believe exists. Bauer, a Wisconsin homemaker, was 14 when the attacks left nearly 3,000 people dead.