by Dominic Connolly, Telegraph
A quarter-century on, the world’s deadliest terror attack is absent from classrooms and consciousness, leaving conspiracies to fill the void
It was the most shocking, dramatic event of the century, even though that century was only 18 months old. It was something that those who saw it – let alone those who were affected by it – knew they would never be able to forget.
Immediately apparent, even as the dreadful airborne fireballs engulfed the World Trade Center, was that we were witnessing an event of global significance, whose ramifications would echo through the decades to come – a dark mirror to the joyful fall of the Berlin Wall, reflecting the return of totalitarian ideology and conflict that the West might have dreamed it had put behind it with the fall of the USSR.
It seems scarcely possible, then, that just a quarter of a century later, those apparently indelible memoriesare already fading. Yet today, half the world’s population is under 30, not even born before that tragic September day, or too young to remember it. Their lives have been shaped by its legacy, yet many are barely aware of the context and the details of the plot.
While dramatic footage of the collapse of the Twin Towers may still resonate on short-form social media platforms like TikTok, the truth behind who brought them down has been lost to conspiracy or the passage of time. A mere 25 years after the day that shocked the world, when it stood in solidarity with America, a new generation is growing up who have forgotten – or never learnt – the lessons of 9/11.
Read also: The dark truth about 9/11 conspiracy theories by Fraser Myers, spiked