Mostly the 'moments of clarity' seem to come gradually. Personally, I was friends with many 9/11 truthers, shared some of their beliefs (namely, that certain government officials had foreknowledge of it) and attended a handful of events back around '03. At the time, I thought that we, the lunatic fringe, might be able to put aside differences in our beliefs (hah!) and convince others that the people in power were basically murderous thugs. Many of the truthers' assertions seemed pretty far-fetched at the time (thermite, building 7, etc.) but rather than dispute the groups' accepted facts I tried to convince them to focus more on a narrative with wider appeal - of course, this narrative was my personal belief in the Bush administration's foreknowledge of 9/11. I had not seen or heard anything to validate this theory; there was only my strong hatred of Bush & co. My involvement with the truthers was short-lived: there seemed to be no room for self-criticism or consideration of opposing points of view. When I stopped attending the events, I hadn't yet read through all the thorough debunking of the movement, but its goals weren't lining up with mine. In the minds of the leaders, there seemed to be no possibility that our rhetoric was hurting the anti-Bush movement, something which was clear to me. Only years later did I read and digest the true science behind why it was all so wrong. I still have a couple friends who were highly active truthers back then. One of whom I've recently talked to about the movement ignoring reality in favor of its biased view. He, too, has moved away from seeing conspiracies in everything. But first we had to admit that our world views could be wrong. And that can take time.