How important is 9/11?
Hey, all. So, I realise that this question would have been unbelievable just 10 years ago. Today, we are 25 years -- a generation -- away from September 11. A lot has happened in that time -- and not all of it is directly attributable to 9/11.
@evan The USA Department of Homeland Security creation is directly linked to the 9/11 attacks.
I know that the story of 9/11 is that it's when the world changed. I don't know if I still feel like that's true. It seems like there's a lot more continuity from 1996 to 2026 than we used to think there would be.
For me personally, it's a hinge in my life; almost by accident. I moved out of San Francisco that week, travelled for a couple of years, and moved to Montreal. There is a before and an after for me that was only partly due to the terrorist attacks.
Yeah. As you know that's almost exactly my experience with the month of September 2001. And here we are 25 years later and world events are aligning with (and to an extent caused) another personal hinge.
I think as we move through time away from 9/11, and the hyperbole of it dissipates, we actually can see the tragedy for what it was, separated from what we thought it meant to us. Thousands of people died in a terrible catastrophe. It's pretty horrible.
@evan
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@evan
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@evan Whoa I do not understand the lower votes in this poll. At. All.
@evan very important. A Danish tech news site just informed me that 9/11 was the birth bed of surveillance capitalism. In a way, that makes me feel like the terrorists have won...
"U.S. response to 9/11 led us on the trail of a new data-authoritarian regime" in Danish: https://radar.dk/holdning/kommentar-usas-reaktion-paa-911-ledte-os-paa-sporet-af-et-nyt-data-autoritaert-styre
@evan Historically and politically, very important. But in terms of commemoration at this point? Very unimportant, except to people with a close personal connection (like people who lose friends or family).
@evan in terms of historical events, very important. everything got a lot worse fast and never recovered, and a lot of people died in the pointless wars that followed. i don't think i've ever seen as an abrupt and stark change in the people around me and in the broader world as back then.
as an anniversary, it is very unimportant. the fash milked every last drop out of it, and the healthiest thing we could possibly do is not try to live in that moment forever.
@evan
I think knowing the history and what actually happened is important. Many of the draconian population controls spawned in once everyone was convinced to be terrified of anyone from the middle east, and by extension, anywhere but white-centered America.
@evan I think in terms of the victims and those they left behind, itβs been hugely important.
Though IMO, not enough focus has been placed on itβs cause, that being meddling in other countriesβ affairs, overthrowing govβts, assassinating heads of state, destabilizing economies, starting wars, perpetuating extractive capitalism, etc.
9/11 didnβt happen in a vacuum, and I feel like to this day, most of the response has been around airport security and immigration, as opposed to national soul-searching about how this nation treats others.
@evan not very. That day on 2001 was the day the US first started to get paranoid and their paranoia has now spread to all air travel protocols, which is kind of annoying, but I think it servers more as a marker of when people noticed something was happening rather than consequential to the thing itself
(I may be biased as my family was in a very remote area at the time and we only heard about it on a long-distance phone call a few days later, but then again the US is itself very far away)
@evan As a historical event extremely important. It defined a lot of things over the subsequent two decades.
@evan After the Cold War, many in the West thought that the end of history had finally arrived; that global affairs were on the right course at last; and that democracy, liberty and trade would gradually spread through the world, freeing men and women and decreasing poverty.
9/11 woke the US from that pleasant dream.
On the other hand, if it hadn't been 9/11, it would have been something else, maybe Pres. Putin. Somewhat important.
@evan
To me 9/11/1973 was more important than 2001.
@evan Important but that was the day we started to descend into stupidity and have not recovered since.
Somewhat unimportant.
Right after 9/11 happened people at work organized a memorial event. Again on the first anniversary. And again on the second (I worked in a different department after that).
I wouldn't have gone, but social pressure forced me to attend. I thought a 9/11 memorial was horribly hypocritical, there were never any memorials for all the people killed in other countries, some by the very country we were memorializing.
@evan more people have died from US attacks in Iran in 2026 than have died because of 9/11. 9/11 is just an excuse for the police state.