Conspiracy theories have a certain attraction. They show the world under an original and peculiar perspective, as if everything you’ve been told is a lie: not only paranoid schizophrenics take stock in it, but the genre has a fervent group of fascinated writers willing to stipulate who really killed JFK, who really blew up the World Trade Center, etc., and such speculation, though usually irresponsible, is at least entertaining. Nevertheless, when legislators start getting behind it and putting their name on such theories, we have serious recourse to question their standing and legitimacy. Republican state legislator in New Hampshire Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) for instance has suggested that the Boston Marathon bombing was done by the federal government. We would expect better from a law maker.
She posted on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck’s Facebook page Friday that the search had panned out as Beck had suggested. She suggested that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not ultimately responsible.
“Just as you said would happen. Top Down, Bottom UP. The Boston Marathon was a Black Ops “terrorist” attack. One suspect killed, the other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak. Drones and now “terrorist” attacks by our own Government. Sad day, but a “wake up” to all of us. First there was a “suspect” then there wasn’t. Infowars broke the story and they knew they had been “found out”.
The Alex Jones video which seems to have impressed Tremblay comes from a man who has claimed that the federal government caused the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and that former Attorney General Janet Reno killed Branch Davidian compound members in Waco, Texas, in 1993; in other words, she is giving credence to irresponsible speculators on alternative views of history. This is a pattern. She also sent an email to the other 399 state House members of a doctored video in which President Barack Obama seems to say he was not born in the United States. In February, she told a legislative committee that Woodrow Wilson agreed with Adolf Hitler, though he died before Hitler rose to power.
“Even for the New Hampshire Republican Party, which has become synonymous with the tea party and radical extremism, Representative Tremblay’s claims are a new low,” said state Democratic Party spokesman Harrell Kirstein in a statement, as reported by the left-leaning Huffington Post. “She is an embarrassment to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, to her constituents, and to the entire state of New Hampshire.”
Nevertheless, Tremblay has persisted in her theory that the U.S. Government is behind the Boston Bombings, rhetorically asking, “Why are you leaving it to some dumb representative to ask questions, when the reporters should be doing their job? Are you that blind that you’re not willing to ask questions of your government?” Rhetorical denouncements of blind patriotism, herd-morality, etc. are standard tactics used by conspiracy theory activists – which seem to have impressed her – that they are really “truth seekers” looking to open the eyes of their fellow citizens. That irresponsible and extreme accusations should be regarded as the light of truth is not the position we expect from a legislator.