The ‘11 September’ narrative. The ritual of a West that knows nothing else to say but ‘it’s our fault’

There is one image from 11 September that has never left my memory – and it is not that of the second plane, of the skyscraper crumbling live on air, or of the people falling in hypnotic pirouettes, later immortalised by Don DeLillo in "Falling Man". Instead, it is that of Palestinians dancing in the streets, handing out sweets, firing shots into the air, and blaring their car horns as if after a World Cup final. Images that are perhaps nothing out of the ordinary, mind you, but which would have prevented me from ever feeling great empathy and passion for their cause. Twenty-five years on, that image is not a mere detail but a manual of instructions. Because 11 September handed us the protocol for our reactions – that fixed ritual with which the West processes every clash of civilisations (spoiler: it’s always our fault).

Looking back today, 11 September mirrors 7 October. How could we forget, after all, the scenes of jubilation here too – the toasts, the ill-concealed satisfaction at the collapse of the Towers of our anti-capitalist friend (we all have at least one). Here is the long-simmering revenge, even as a wild and unconfessable dream. There was then, and there has been since 7 October, the celebration of a well-deserved punishment – today occurring in perfect synchrony with the marches in Western cities, social centres and collectives, passing off a pogrom that would have made the Nazis green with envy as a popular uprising. Then there is the empathy and understanding expressed in the editorials. That ‘yes, but’ – yes, but the context; yes, but the occupation; yes, but all that anger had to explode somehow. In 2001, America paid for its imperial hubris; today, Israel pays the price for existing as a ‘colonial state’. The same syllogism – there’s no point even discussing it. Then, once the shock had passed, the bar was raised: it didn’t happen, or it didn’t happen like that – as with the rapes of 7 October, with Francesca Albanese taking the place of Giulietto Chiesa’s documentary.

When the facts are too shocking, they must be swept under the carpet. Then comes the inevitable conclusion: they did it to themselves. The inside job, the controlled demolition, the Mossad, the false flag operation, “did you notice there were no Jews in the Towers? They’d all been warned.” Twenty-two years on, a week before 7 October, I was already hearing the first “it’s obvious, come on… they did it to themselves”. We’ve seen it all before, documented with 11 September. Even set out in a handbook. Here is a French school textbook published in 2019 by the publisher Ellipses, a history textbook designed to prepare students for entry to Sciences Po. “This global event,” it reads, “probably orchestrated by the CIA (secret service) to assert its influence in the Middle East? – strikes at the symbols of American power on its own soil.” With a question mark, to encourage “critical thinking”. One wonders how they will portray 7 October. Among the most troubling tropes, however, is artistic catharsis. Western intellectuals have long shown a soft spot for the aestheticisation of massacre. Stockhausen described 11 September as the greatest work of art imaginable in the entire cosmos, ein kosmisches Kunstwerk. Just as some today see in the hang-gliders descending on the Nova Festival the ‘poetry of resistance’ – a people rebelling by going out to massacre young people dancing in the desert. A happening – ‘Long live Hamas’ shouted beneath Parliament, just as happened here the day before yesterday. My students had not even been born in 2001. For them, the Towers are a historical artefact, somewhere between the Sumerians and the Berlin Wall. But they handle the protocol perfectly, every time they open a social media app, without knowing where it comes from. It is the only thing about 11 September that no longer needs memory to survive. Its true legacy.