Jonathan Kay on the sad descent into 9/11 conspiracism of former Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis

Screen capture from TVO broadcast

I should have seen the warning signs.

A few years back, during the taping of a foreign-affairs panel at the TVO studios in Toronto, I found myself seated next to Eric Margolis, who was then still working as a columnist at the Toronto Sun. The subject before the panel was (what else?) the Middle East — though I forget the precise news item we were discussing. What I do remember was that when I piped up to make some remark or other that Margolis deemed to be excessively Zionist, he affected an air of great exasperation and declared, for the benefit of viewers: “Thank you for the editorial comment from the Jerusalem Post.” (National Post. Jerusalem Post. Get it?) He then physically turned his body away from me to signal his disgust, such that he was literally sideways in his studio chair. Apparently, he regarded my attitude toward Israel as some kind of disease, and this was his way of making sure he didn’t catch it.

I’ll give Margolis credit for one thing: He’s seen the world — reporting from all over the Middle East and Central Asia, including some dangerous parts of the Hindu Kush where I wouldn’t dare set foot. But somewhere along the way, a few screws popped loose, and he started buying into the anti-American and anti-Israeli agitprop that circulates freely in the Muslim world. More and more, his writing became oriented toward foreign readers and eccentric American isolationists.

On Iraq, Margolis accused America of “neo-fascism.” When Israel invaded Gaza in late 2008 to stop rocket fire against Israeli towns, Margolis accused Israel of perpetrating a “final solution” — i.e. a Holocaust. When Yasser Arafat died, he wrote a glowing ode to him in the Sun, and gave credence to the conspiracy theory that he had been killed by “an untraceable toxin” dispensed by Israel. Along the same lines, he declared that “Israeli scientists are attempting to engineer deadly micro-organisms that only attack DNA within the cells of victims with distinctive Arab genes.”

And now, finally, just a few weeks after finally flaming out of the Sun job he held for 27 years, Margolis has came out to his friends, family members and followers as nothing less than a full-blown 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Now that he no longer has Sun editors setting boundaries, I suppose he’s free to let his mind roam where it will.

In his latest blog entry, Margolis reports (uncritically) a Pakistani spook’s theory that 9/11 was “staged by Israel’s Mossad and a cabal of right-wing US Air Force generals.” He also cycles through the various talking points that appear on those “9/11 Truth” websites you occasionally stumble upon: What happened to all the wreckage at the Pentagon? How come the Air Force didn’t shoot down the planes? The Osama bin Laden tapes were fakes. The 9/11 commission was a whitewash. And, of course, let’s not forget the Israelis “dancing with joy” on that tragic day. Naturally, Margolis also compares the Bush administration to the Nazis (“Dr. Goebbels would have been proud”).

At the end of the column, Margolis claims “we still do not know the real story about 9/11,” and admits that he has no “hard evidence” that 9/11 was plotted by Americans and Israelis. But in the same breath, he declares “What, in the end, can we conclude? … The attacks plunged America into wars against the Muslim world and enriched the US arms industry[,] boosted pro-Israel neo-conservatives [and] destroyed one of Israel’s two main enemies.”

I believe Margolis will now drift off into obscurity: His invitations to appear on CNN likely will disappear now that he’s come out with this claptrap. His most likely career option is to get a gig at the Canadian Charger, a web-only publication that has built its entire editorial policy around 9/11 conspiracy theories (though it lately has been branching out with equally dubious stories about how wi-fi will fry your brain). Margolis, I’m willing to bet, will fit right in.

National Post

jkay@nationalpost.com