Secret Nazis and the return of the
Ancient Aliens
Tonight, Syfy’s
otherwise delightful series Resident Alien is scheduled to
air an episode in which Harry (Alan Tudyk) attends a UFO conference and meets Ancient
Aliens star Giorgio Tsoukalos. The series
has made sometimes unpleasant use of ancient astronaut theory material in
framing the backstory for its lead character’s extraterrestrial history as an
alien visitor stranded on Earth. However, it is disappointing and somewhat
shameful that the show would openly embrace Ancient Aliens, a
series that the Southern
Poverty Law Center and
a number of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians have decried for
its use of racist tropes and Victorian-era arguments born of imperialist and
colonialist anti-indigenous narratives.
Nurtured by
neo-Nazi's like Ernst Zundel, Wilhelm Landig, and
Rudolf J. Mund, who argued that Nazis invented flying
saucers had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep under the South
Pole including the inventions of Erich von Däniken
whose origins we will explore, the American History Channel has a series titled
"Ancient Aliens" that claims to explore the controversial theory that
extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years from the age of the
dinosaurs to ancient Egypt and present what as we will see can best be
described as a sensationalized
bricolage.
Thus the series,
among others, veers into claims that Greek stories dating to 2000 B.C. tell of
the god Hephaestus refer to creating robots to build weapons and the bronze
giant Talos. In Egypt, the Pyramid Texts say that the god Osiris was dismembered,
reassembled, and brought back to life just like a machine. And from there jumps
to such questions as if sophisticated robots really did exist in the ancient
world–what function did they serve? Who built them? And what happened to them?
Like a ride on von Däniken's the chariot of the gods and the Ancient Alien,
theory see the clip from the upcoming episode of Resident Alien. In the
teaser trailer for Episode 9, Harry (Alan Tudyk)
faces alien expert and internet legend Giorgio Tsoukalos.
The latter carries most of the conversation, explaining how technologically
advanced aliens might have visited ancient cultures while an enthralled Harry
munches down on a delicious Edible Arrangement. At last, the good doctor speaks
up and tells Giorgio that he "should be on television." After all of
the tasty fruits are consumed, Harry exits stage right, leaving behind the
honeydew, which, in his opinion, tastes "like old women's perfume."
So, were prehistoric
humans visited by peoples from beyond the stars? To quote Palmer from John
Carpenter's The Thing,
"They're falling out of the skies like flies. The government knows all
about it ... They practically own South America. I mean, they taught the Incas
everything they knew."
"In my opinion,
it would be fairly boring and kind of an insult in the face of creation if
Earth [was] the only game in town," Tsoukalos remarked in 2019.
"So, the idea that perhaps other extra-terrestrial intelligence
civilizations exist throughout our galaxy, and perhaps even throughout the
universe, and that we are just one tiny cogwheel in this gigantic mechanism is
wonderful."
In the 1960s and 70s,
Erich von Daniken and Zecharia
Sitchin twist myths about Aryan visitors from a lost
civilization predating the last Ice Age. These visitors to Mesoamerica didn’t
come from Atlantis but the sky. Bestsellers like von Daniken’s
Chariots of the Gods (seven million sold and counting) popularized the idea
that Aryan-looking aliens brought science and technology to primitive peoples
worldwide. In recent years, Graham Hancock has repackaged Ancient Astronaut
Theory for a new generation in his bestselling Fingerprints of the Gods and
through steady work as a History Channel talking head.
While somewhat
different from its precursors, which we described,
today’s far-right is divided on Ancient Astronaut theory. On the one hand, it
denies agency to brown-skinned peoples and features Aryan-looking heroes, which
they consider good. Still, it also deprives ancient (human) Aryans of the accomplishments
credited to them so lavishly in Atlantis and other theories.
The relationship
between esotericism and far-right extremism can be investigated from both a
historical and a contemporary perspective. Thus for example is there a relationship between National Socialism and
currents such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy, but especially Ariosophy. Whereby both
esotericism and National Socialism are often misleadingly regarded as the
'other' of European or American culture: The links between them prove to be
culturally ordinary. The emergence of international far-right and neo-Nazi
networks in the post-war period shows that widespread perceptions of Nazi occultism were, often on the one hand, the
result of pop-cultural notions, and of far-right discourses on the other.
Today, their influence cannot mostly be noted in subcultural or socially
marginal contexts, but also in world politics.
Consider the case of
Patrick Chouinard, a prolific writer who operates the alt-history sites
RenegadeTribune.com and ancientaryans.com. (The latter site’s symbol, the Norse
rune, was also the logo of the Nazi Ahnenerbe.) Like
the Nazis, the sites are dedicated to recapturing a lost, pure Aryan
civilization — one respectful of but not dependent on alien life. In September,
Chouinard cast a critical eye on the upcoming tenth season of the History
Channel’s Ancient Aliens in an article titled “Are Ancient Aliens Theorists
Selling Our People Short?”
Chouinard believes
they are. He cites an old episode of the H2’s In Search of Aliens. The hosts,
Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress (see above),
explore the alleged mystery of some “elongated skulls” discovered in Peru.
Chouinard scoffs at the hosts’ conclusion that the skulls belonged to aliens.
Rather, he argued, reconstructions “show a very Nordic facial structure with
[a] huge cranium.” This could be proof, furthermore, of “a separate branch of
the White race the went along its own evolutionary path over 5,000 years ago.”
And who, you might
wonder, does Chouinard believe is behind the Ancient Alien Theory that is
“selling his people short”? “The Jews,” writes Chouinard, “are using … the
ancient alien camp to confound our race to the point that we deny our own accomplishments.
The White race did not need ancient aliens to build our ancient civilizations
or found other civilizations in the Earth's remote corners. Our race is capable
of so much more.” In 2018, it was dangerous in alt-ancient history circles to
completely discount Ancient Aliens. Chouinard knows this. Rather than risk
alienating his readers, he concedes, “It is possible that visitations from
extraterrestrials did happen in ancient times, [but] I will not conclude that
the majority of our accomplishments as a race can be attributed to
extraterrestrials.”
Massive and
hopelessly intricate cover-ups. Nefarious alien races with gnomish physical
features. Tales of secret Nazi super-technologies. It was always inevitable
that the UFO and far-right scenes would end up in bed together. UFO culture
cast a shadow over everything in the postwar years, and as noted above, the
far-right has never been a stranger to the supernatural. In Conspiracy, the
historian Michael Barkun locates the early 1990s as
the decade this convergence accelerated. Books like William Cooper’s Behold a
Pale Horse and journals published by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn described UFO conspiracies that fit snugly into the
New World Order conspiracy template, heavily influencing that decade’s militia
movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan of
Cooper’s radio show.)
But the seeds of this
union are much deeper in the postwar record. One of the most important early
UFO writers in the early 1950s, William Dudley Pelley,
as detailed here, was an American occultist and fascist; his most important
disciple, George Hunt Williamson, produced Byzantine UFO theories that
incorporated anti-Semitic themes. Williamson’s 1958 book, UFOs Confidential,
claimed every government on earth was under the control of a handful of (mostly
Jewish) “international bankers,” which, for some reason, the author believed
included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Lying naked on a
marble slab, with two men in white uniforms attending to him, they told Pelley
to neither be afraid nor try to see everything in the first "seven minutes."One of the white-clad individuals told Pelley
that everyone has lived hundreds of times before because earth is a classroom
where souls learn and move up the spiritual hierarchy. This hierarchy accounts
for human races, which are simply "great
classifications of humanity epitomizing gradations of spiritual development,
starting with the black man and proceeding upward in cycles to the white."
Another at the time
famous figure was George Adamski. He first founded
an organization called the Royal Order of Tibet, to disseminate the messages of
the Theosophical Masters. In the 1940’s he wrote a
short story revolving around spiritual contacts with mysterious, highly evolved
beings. A decade later, the same claims would once again be presented, but this
time as biographical facts of Adamski’s own life. Other texts from the period
of this involvement with the Royal Order of Tibet were reworked and the
Oriental Mahatmas were replaced with aliens.
Pelley and
Williamson’s successors are not always or even often so blatantly anti-Semitic.
But the fingerprints of anti-Semites are visible in the works of influential
modern UFO writers like Jim Marrs and Jim Keith. These fingerprints appear in
what Barkun calls “refracted racism and
anti-Semitism,” in which old tropes are repackaged as an episode of the
X-Files. This repackaging often includes not very subtle distinctions between
“benevolent” aliens (tall, Aryan-looking) and “malevolent” aliens (short, grotesque,
often in league with “international bankers”).
More than anyone
else, the British conspiracist David Icke has popularized the Alien version of the New World Order conspiracy. The former
sportscaster’s elaborate theory is the Sgt. Peppers album-cover of the genre,
featuring the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the House of Windsor,
everyone is there. At the center of the theory is an alien race of lizard
people from the fifth-dimension. Though Icke has always denied trafficking in
anti-Semitism, he has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous
forgery and foundational text of modern anti-Semitism, choosing to call it “The
Illuminati Protocols.” This is Barkun’s “refraction,” in action, and Icke’s shadow is long
indeed, visible across the far-right media spectrum.
Another inevitable
development in postwar conspiracy subculture was the rise of a belief in secret
Nazi bases underneath Antarctica. The idea of a “hollow” or “inner” earth was a
key tenet of nineteenth-century occultism. It reemerged as a setting for
escaped Nazi scientists working in secret technology and weapons labs in the
postwar years.
The legend took root
during the mid-1970s, nurtured by the Canadian neo-Nazi
Ernst Zundel, Wilhelm Landig,
and Rudolf J. Mund, who argued that Nazis
invented flying saucers had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep
under the South Pole. The Third Reich was interested in a possible base at the
South Pole. A few high-level Nazis did escape to Argentina, whose national
territory includes Antarctica's slice extending to the South Pole. Zundel and
his successors have infused these facts with Victorian inner-earth legends and
then marinated them over multiple viewings of the 1968 B-flick, They Saved
Hitler’s Brain. Versions of the theory remain popular on neo-Nazi alt-history
sites, and in recent years British tabloids like the Mirror and Daily Star have
found click-bait gold in spreading them.
The story’s
persistence led Colin Summerhayes of Cambridge University’s Polar Research
Institute to look into the matter. In a 2006 edition of The Polar Record,
Summerhayes presented his heavily footnoted and researched conclusion that
secret Nazi bases do not exist and have never existed, on or below Antarctica.
As exhaustive as it was, it is unlikely Summerhayes’ study had much impact
among the theory’s adherents. It was, after all, competing with an
ever-expanding glut of “hidden history” books, podcasts, and websites. One of
many such titles to appear that year was SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazi's
Incredible Secret Technology, penned by Joseph P. Farrell, a
prolific alt-historian and regular on Red Ice Radio.
Akin also to books we
highlighted in an earlier section that
involves pseudoarchaeology, and pseudoscience,
left out from the History Channel series
is the actual history of the idea of Ancient Aliens theory. This whereby
science fiction fans will be aware of the work of the English author H.G.
Wells. And the fact that his most well-known story, War of the Worlds (1897),
is in part remembered for its 1938 radio adaptation directed by Orson Welles,
which caused widespread panic across the United States as listeners who tuned
in to only a portion of the show perceived as fact the fictional news broadcast
about a Martian invasion. The publication history of War of the Worlds is
typical of Victorian and Edwardian fiction: rather than being issued as a
single volume, it was published in a serialized form, in the War of the Worlds
in Pearson’s Magazine April-December 1897.
As soon as the
Worlds' initial publication of Wars ended in December 1897, the American
magazine New York Evening Journal began publishing an unauthorized version of
the story with the title changed to Fighters from Mars or the Worlds War.
Although the Martian invasion setting had been changed from Surrey to New York,
the story was broadly similar. A second unauthorized publication of the story,
Fighters from Mars, or the War of the Worlds in and near Boston, was published
by the Boston Post starting in January 1898.
Once the Fighters'
run from Mars had been finished in both magazines, a sequel to Wells’ story
appeared. It was written by a lesser-known sci-fi author, Garret P. Serviss (1851–1929), entitled Edison’s Conquest of Mars
(1898). It may seem somewhat incongruous to cast Thomas Edison as the
protagonist in a space opera. Still, Serviss was
writing within an established literary genre known as ‘edinsonades.’
These had been born out of a fascination with science and engineering, which is
also visible in many works by the French author Jules Verne. In the same way
that not all ‘robinsonades’ focus on Robinson
Crusoe's character, not all ‘edinsonades’ focus
on the character of Thomas Edison. However, a shared element of all the stories
explores new technologies. The protagonist is usually a brilliant inventor
(sometimes Thomas Edison himself) who uses his inventions to overcome various
perils and explore unknown lands and worlds.
Edison’s Conquest of
Mars is a direct sequel to War of the Worlds and concerns the human response to
the aborted Martian invasion of earth. Humanity’s leaders (represented by the
President of the United States, Queen Victoria, the Emperor of Japan, and
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) unite the planet’s population to launch a
pre-emptive attack on Mars. Leading the assault is the American inventor Thomas
Edison, who studies abandoned Martian equipment to develop the necessary tools
(including ray guns). During the attack on Mars, the expeditionary force
encounter a population of human slaves taken thousands of years in the past by
another Martian raid. The slaves tell their human saviors that during this
ancient invasion of Earth, the Martians constructed mountains of stone-blocks
and a large statue carved in their leader's shape. At this stage, one of the
earth scientists realizes which structures this ancient legend alludes to:
‘Gentlemen,
gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘is it that you do not understand? This Land of Sand and
a wonderful fertilizing river – what can it be? Gentlemen, it is Egypt! These
mountains of rock that the Martians have erected, what are they? Gentlemen,
they are the great mystery of the land of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic
statue of their leader that they at the foot of their artificial mountains have
set up – gentlemen, what is that? It is the Sphinx!’1
In these sentences,
we witness the birth of what became an addition to the field of Pyramidology:
the Ancient Astronaut theory, which holds that ancient civilizations were
visited by advanced aliens who in various ways helped to develop their
societies. In Egypt’s case, this theory's proponents generally hypothesize that
the Egyptians did not build the pyramids and other monuments. Still, they were
constructed – as Serviss suggested – by an alien
race.
However, Serviss’s story was fiction. There is no evidence he
seriously believed the notion that aliens had visited earth in the ancient
past, no more than Jules Verne believed that an obsessive submarine captain
cruised around the Seven Seas in an electrically powered submarine. It would be
nearly half-a-decade before anyone proposed the Ancient Astronaut theory in
earnest.
The man credited with
bringing Serviss’ fictional creation into the realm
of factual publication was the British journalist Harold T. Wilkins
(1891–1960). Wilkins published a broad catalog of books on pseudoscience,
borrowing liberally from previous authors (and in fact plagiarizing some of
them word for word). He created a hodgepodge of pseudoscientific ramblings
centered for the most part around the notion of White Gods in the context of
ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica. Wilkins claimed that the Mayans, Incas,
and Aztecs' great monuments had been built by a now-vanished white race who had
been worshiped as gods (and who were also associated with Atlantis). The
Italian writer Peter Kolosimo would later adjust this
idea of the White Gods in his book Not of This World (1969), suggesting that
they were not human but alien in origin. In rapid succession from 1954–1955,
Wilkins published three books: Flying Saucers on the Attack, Flying Saucers on
the Moon, and Flying Saucers Uncensored. Despite their rather sensational
titles, these books were intended to be taken as serious factual contributions.
While Wilkins did not overmuch discuss ancient Egypt, he was among the first to
seriously propose that aliens had visited ancient races and influenced human
history:
Maybe, there is life
on some other planet; for, how otherwise, shall we explain, what may not
necessarily be total legend and myth in the strange stories, of ancient South
American prehistory, about fire falling from the sky, seemingly by design and
not an accident, and not as the incalculable explosions of great meteorites,
aerolites, comets or planetoids upon ancient South American cities? 2
Wilkins’s theories
were so outlandish that they were not taken seriously by the academic
establishment. However, they did find a willing audience among the general
public in the UFO-obsessed aftermath of the famous Roswell Crash in 1947.
However, true widespread acceptance of the Ancient Astronaut theory as fact
among huge swathes of the Western world population did not begin until more
than a decade after Wilkins published his book. More than anyone else, the man
helped perpetuate the myth of alien beings visiting the Earth in its ancient
past – a man who makes most archaeologists and Egyptologists sigh and roll
their eyes – is the Swiss author Erich von Däniken. Däniken, a
convicted thief and fraudster, began his crusade to spread his theories
about ancient aliens in the late 1960s. In 1968, he published the hugely
influential Chariots of the Gods, a book that continues to sell throughout the
world. Where his inspiration Wilkins only hinted at ancient encounters with
extra-terrestrial beings, Däniken made these
encounters a cornerstone of his life’s work. The pyramids in Egypt, the Easter
Island statues, the Nazca Lines; there is almost no end to the (non-Western)3
monuments which, according to Däniken, could not
possibly have been constructed by humans without the aid of alien visitors.
Däniken’s theories are based on a mixture of willful
misrepresentation of data, an extremely biased selection of evidence, and a
downright refusal to engage with anything that challenges his basic narrative.
His theories about the Great Pyramid of Giza provide an excellent case study.
In essence, Däniken claims that the Egyptians could
not possibly have built this structure because:
There is no evidence
of the workers who worked on it.
1. The Egyptians did
not have the tools required to construct the pyramid.
2. The Egyptians
built the Great Pyramid perfectly in their first attempt.
All three
conditionals are, to Däniken, evidence that the
Egyptians had outside helped to build the Great Pyramid, that they followed the
instructions of a technologically advanced alien race.
So far, so good. The
issue with these three tenets of Däniken’s theory is
that they are completely incorrect. Over twenty years, Excavations conducted on
the plateau near the Giza pyramids at Heit el-Ghurab have revealed a vast town built to house the
workers who constructed the Great Pyramid. Discoveries at Wadi el-Jarf of an account of the transport of stone blocks for
the building site, written by Merer, one of the officials involved in constructing
the Great Pyramid, provide further evidence for the pyramid workers and their
organization. Chisel-marks found on the blocks used to build the pyramid and
the vast scars in the nearby limestone quarry at Tura show beyond a doubt that
the stones were quarried using very ‘Earthly’ bronze chisels. And finally, the
idea that the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid perfect from the word go is a
complete fallacy. The earliest pyramidical structure is the so-called Step
Pyramid of Djoser, built a century before the Great Pyramid at Giza. After constructing
the Step Pyramid, the Egyptians built no less than three pyramids for his
successor, Sneferu: the Meidum
Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid. These structures show clearly
how the idea of pyramid construction evolved from a fairly simple idea of
putting gradually smaller mastabas (flat rectangles of mudbrick) on top of one
another to achieve a stepped effect, and even show the trial and error process
experienced by their designers: the Bent Pyramid was originally built using a
wrong angle, which had to be rectified half-way through construction, giving
the finished pyramid a decidedly lopsided appearance.
Däniken’s theories, despite their serious flaws, however,
continued to go from strength to strength. As is known, Von Däniken
later became a co-founder of the Archaeology, Astronautics, and SETI Research
Association (AAS RA). He designed Mystery Park (now known as Jungfrau Park), a
theme park located in Interlaken, Switzerland, that opened in May 2003.
Various authors
echoed his theories and have inspired movies and TV shows, including the
hilariously kitschy Canadian sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 and its successors. Däniken’s books still sell like hotcakes, and since 2009 he
has served as one of the producers on the above-mentioned History Channel’s
Ancient Aliens, a show which now seeks to spread the pseudoscientific and pseudoarchaeological theories of Däniken
and his disciples as far and wide as possible. And to the horror of many
archaeologists, it appears to be working. Chapman University conducts an annual
survey of supernatural beliefs and conspiracy theories prevalent among the
American public. Among these, they measure how many percent of the population
believe that aliens visited the Earth during our ancient past and influenced
human history. In 2015, that number was 20.3 percent; in 2016, it had grown to
27 percent; in 2017, it grew again to 35 percent; then in 2018, it had grown to
a whopping 41 percent. Another benchmark – belief in the existence of
technologically advanced ancient societies such as Atlantis – grew from 39.6
percent in 2016 to a majority of 57 percent in 2018, and so on.
The beliefs of the
general public about the effect of extraterrestrial contact have also been
studied. A poll of the United States and Chinese university students in 2000 provides
factor analysis of responses to questions about, inter alia, the
participants' belief that extraterrestrial life exists in the Universe, that
such life may be intelligent, and that humans will eventually make contact with
it. The study shows significant weighted correlations between participants'
belief that extraterrestrial contact may either conflict with or enrich their
personal religious beliefs and how conservative such religious beliefs are. The
more conservative the respondents, the more harmful they considered
extraterrestrial contact to be. Other significant correlation patterns indicate
that students believed that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence might
be futile or even harmful.
On top of this, the
inherent racism and colonialism in most current pseudoarchaeological
theories cannot and should also not be denied. One of the central themes of
many of the theories dreamt up concerning the origins of the Giza Pyramids was
that the Egyptians themselves could not have possibly built them. To John
Taylor (The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built and Who Built it?) Joseph Seis (Great Pyramid of Egypt, Miracle
in Stone: Secrets and Advanced Knowledge) and Charles Taze
Russell (God's Stone Witness and Prophet), their architect, could be found
among the Biblical patriarchs. To Ignatius L. Donnelly, Newton Hall, and Edgar Cayce, the pyramids' origin
could be found in Atlantis's study. To later writers like the above-mentioned
Wilkins, Peter Kolosimo (pseudonym of Pier Domenico Colosimo), and von Däniken, they
were built by ancient astronauts, aliens, and White Gods in various guises. In
fact, one can be forgiven for thinking that certain white and mostly Western
scholars and pseudo-scholars would rather tie themselves into fantastical and
illogical knots than admit that non-European people were perfectly capable of
undertaking grand construction projects long before the advent of what we refer to as Western Civilization.
Interestingly, Däniken and his acolytes have never suggested that aliens
descended to help the Greeks build the Pantheon or the Romans build the
Colosseum. Nor did little green men help the various Italian architects build
St Peter’s Cathedral. And they arguably could have used the help – the
construction of the basilica took 120 years (from 1506–1626). Stonehenge
appears to be the only monument in Western Europe to have received widespread
attention from the ‘Ancient Astronaut’ contingent of the pseudoscientific
community. Evidently, white people, on the whole, don’t need help from alien
beings to build stuff, according to Däniken’s flock.
In fact, von Däniken has made several claims over the years that are insensitive to Black
people, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, including his claims that
the “Black race” is a “failure” and his attacks on a supposed “feminist world
dictate” for androgyny.
By giving Ancient
Aliens’ biggest star, a platform to enhance the show’s pop culture status as
“fun” and silly, Resident Alien is only helping to normalize racist claims that
indigenous people were not capable of developing their own cultures without
outside intervention.
1. G.P. Serviss, 1947 (book edition), Edison’s Conquest of Mars, Carcosa House.
2.H.T. Wilkins, 1954,
Flying Saucers on the Attack, London, 159.
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