Read Democrat Jamaal Bowman’s 9/11 conspiracy theory poem

Representative Jamaal Bowman was found to have promoted conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in an old personal blog, which he has now said that he regrets.

Bowman has represented New York’s 16th District since 2021, winning office after campaigning as a progressive Democrat. Previously, Bowman worked as an educator, serving as the principal for Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a Bronx public middle school.

On Tuesday, the Daily Beast published a report about a blog Bowman maintained during his days in education, on which “he published poems and brief essays there on personal, political, and pedagogical concerns through 2014,” according to the outlet. While the blog’s contents were deleted in full sometime prior to February 2016, the outlet was able to find back-ups via a web archive, through which it turned up a May 2011 post titled “Recapitulate.”

The 137-line free verse poem starts as a recollection of world events before transitioning heavily into meditations on various 9/11 conspiracy theories, generally focused on claiming that they were not terrorist attacks but rather planned by some other entities to precipitate the U.S. “war on terror.”

Newsweek reached out to Bowman via email for comment on Tuesday.

Bowman himself disavowed the post when contacted by the Daily Beast, saying that he regrets it and highlighting his record as an elected official as proof that he does not currently hold conspiratorial views, though he did not touch on whether or not he believed them at the time the poem was written.

“Well over a decade ago, as I was debating diving into a doctoral degree, I explored a wide range of books, films, and articles across a wide swath of the political spectrum and processed my thoughts in a personal blog that few people ever read,” Bowman said.

Newsweek was able to find the May 2011 post on Bowman’s blog using a web archive service. Here is its text in full:

“If only I knew then what I know now…
Wow!
Things would be different

Actually, things are exactly as they should be

The world is in flux right now
An organic organism
Changing
Right before our eyes
And under our noses
As we exist within it

Consider the last 12 years

1999
Fear and panic
Perpetuated by a few

A mass computer crash
Would send us back
Into the stone age
Or something like it

Thankfully nothing of note occurred

2000
George W. Bush won the presidency
Or did he

First Al Gore won
Then a recount
In Florida
Where another Bush was Governor
After the recount
Dubya was president
Wow

2001
Planes used as missiles
Target: The Twin Towers

30 minutes later
Both buildings collapsed
Onto themselves

Later in the day
Building 7
Also Collaspsed
Hmm…

Multiple explosions
Heard before
And during the collapse
Hmm…

Allegedly
Two other planes
The Pentagon
Pennsylvania
Hijacked by terrorist
Minimal damage done
Minimal debris found
Hmm…

Watch Loose Change
And Zeitgeist
Then share your thoughts

We blamed Osama
Went to war in Iraq
Captured Saddam
Killed him

Bin Laden is Afghan

So we went to war there too

2011
Saddam
Bin Laden
Ghaddifi
An Al Qaeda leader
All dead

An Egyptian uprising
Removed a dictator
Preceded by a revolution
In Tunisia

What does it all mean?

Back to 2008…
Barack Hussein Obama
An African American
Elected president

The first

A Black family in the white house

How cool is that!

Back to 2011
Republicans sound crazy
Archaic
Unintellectual
Individualistic
Stopping human progression

The new America
And the real America
Has always displayed
Togetherness

Consider our new D.C memorial
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Non-President
Non-violent
Righteous
Preached brotherhood

Wow

Wall street is occupied
Against the 1%
That controls the 40%
Economic protest
Now worldwide
And televised

Shout out to John Perkins
William Cooper
Michael Moore
Peter Joseph
And Adam Curtis

Shout-out to WBAI

Moreover
We’re connected

Microsoft
Google
Apple
Facebook
Amazon

Run the world

Making things efficient
And free

Moving forward
Resources
More important
Than money

Watch Zeitgeist!

Education is changing
Principals have power
Teacher development is a priority
Everyone’s accountable

The last 12 years…
Eventful
Scary
Confusing
And exciting

A lot of s*** going on

A lot of opportunity

Regardless of what
Morality must triumph
Poverty must end
Then we’ll have our utopia”

Numerous points raised by Bowman in the poem have long since been debunked, including the claim that the collapse of Building 7 was a controlled demolition. As the Daily Beast noted, the National Institute of Standards and Technology proved that the smaller building collapsed after debris from the taller Twin Towers fell on it and started a fire inside. Bowman also incorrectly identified Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as an Afghan citizen when he was, in fact, born into a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia.