The Blind Spot of 9/11 Denialism

Quarter of a century after hijacked jetliners struck the World Trade Center, basic geometry still proves surprisingly difficult for certain public figures. The latest demonstration comes courtesy of former British Conservative Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen, who recently discovered that opaque buildings tend to block the view of objects behind them.

Posting to X shortly after the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, Bridgen shared a short clip showing the World Trade Center with its North Tower already in flames. Moments later, an explosion erupts from the South Tower, yet no aircraft is visible in the frame. Armed with this snippet, the former lawmaker posed a rhetorical question about the whereabouts of the plane, implying that official accounts of United Airlines Flight 175 had been fabricated. His post promptly accumulated over a million views.

The mechanics behind this viral revelation are remarkably pedestrian. The footage in question was captured live on September 11, 2001, by NBC's Chopper 4. Positioned to the north of the Twin Towers, the helicopter was filming the south tower's northern face. Flight 175, a hijacked Boeing 767, struck the southern face of the building. The plane was not erased by a grand cover-up; it was simply obscured by several hundred feet of steel and concrete standing between the camera lens and the point of impact.

A rudimentary check of the complete NBC broadcast online reveals that even from that northern perspective, the aircraft appears as a small speck approaching the tower immediately prior to the blast. Ground-level footage from other vantage points—most notably captured by cameraman Evan Fairbanks at the base of the structure—clearly records the Boeing 767 slamming into the south facade, precisely as documented by the official US commission investigating the attacks.

Selective cropping and a fundamental misunderstanding of lines of sight remain remarkably effective tools for generating digital engagement. That a former parliamentarian can command a million-strong audience by repackaging basic spatial occlusion as high conspiracy says far more about the mechanics of modern social media than it does about the events of September 11.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com