WHAT YOUR RIGHT-WING UNCLE BELIEVES ABOUT BIN LADEN'S BOOKSHELF, AND A MORE LIKELY THEORY

We should have known that Rush Limbaugh would say something like this about the newly revealed Osama bin Laden reading list:

RUSH: Well, look at this. So they declassified the documents found in bin Laden's compound when we went in there and killed him....

The National Intelligence Director has declassified some of these documents, and there are books by well known leftists, like Noam Chomsky. Bin Laden was reading books with titles like Wage Inequality in France. He was a leftist. Is it any shock that Osama Bin Laden was a leftist? In fact, as I understand this, there is even an outtake on video of bin Laden either giving or rehearsing a speech on class warfare and the despotism of big money. He goes on for about 40 seconds and starts stumbling and losing his place, and he gives up. But the guy was a redistributionist. He was a typical leftist.

This will probably become conventional wisdom on the right. Philip Bump of The Washington Post has a different assessment:

Bin Laden's library was the equivalent of an Internet conspiracy theorist's browser history. There was a print out of a weird article about a card game that was said to have predicted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He had an e-book about voter fraud conspiracies from BlackBoxVoting.org. He had books documenting the fringes of American politics. He had a 1928 book called "The Secret Teaching of All Ages" that details various aspects of forgotten religions and the occult; he had a book unveiling "The Secrets of the Federal Reserve."

Regarding that last one: Oliver Willis noted in 2010 that it was on Glenn Beck's bookshelf:

Beck promoted the work of an anti-Semitic 9-11 truther

...On the September 22 [2010] edition of his Fox News program, Beck attacked early 20th century diplomat Edward House for saying of the Federal Reserve, "I am suggesting that the Central Board be increased from four members to five and their terms lengthened from eight to ten years. This would give stability and would take away the power of a President to change the personnel of the board during a single term of office." While Beck spoke, on-screen text indicated that the House comment was "Quoted In 'Secrets of the Federal Reserve,'" which was authored by Eustace Mullins....

In their profile, the ADL said Mullins was "an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist for over half a century." They further wrote: "Throughout his life, Mullins produced numerous books, essays and articles and delivered scores of speeches and lectures with a common bigoted theme: that Jews are allegedly responsible for many of the problems and evils that have confronted the modern world." ...

Mullins is the author of "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation." ...

Mullins reportedly spoke at [a] 9-11 conspiracy conference, blamed [the] attacks on the Israeli Mossad....

Another book on the list is Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael Ruppert. Here's a description:

... its core premise is fairly straightforward: the amount of oil available for human consumption peaked in the mid-’60s and has been quickly declining ever since (a concept known as "peak oil"). In order to reach the world’s precious remaining reserves, the US government was willing to perpetrate unthinkable acts.

According to Ruppert, then-Vice President Dick Cheney ignored warnings that hijacked planes might be used for terrorism in the US’ northeast corridor in the months leading up to September 11th. In May of that year, Cheney sent fighter planes from military bases in the northeastern US to Alaska. Ruppert concluded that the move was a calculated effort to leave the northeastern US vulnerable. Then, "the US government had deliberately leaked the information to the al-Qaeda ‘hijackers’ so that the attacks could be carried out effectively," Ruppert wrote. The ultimate goal: to start a war and secure unfettered access to Middle East oil.

So bin Laden was reading conspiracy material about his own organization. He also read a 2005 L.A. Times opinion piece that suggested that Al Qaeda didn't really exist. You get the feeling that he really would have been eager to read Seymour Hersh's theories about his own assassination. I'd say it was an effort to assess Americans' beliefs about his group, but he also read general-interest craziness like Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier. Was he a conspiracy nut, or did he think most Americans are?