By Eric Vandenbroeck
and co-workers
Where The UFOs On Capitol Hill Came From
The US government
conducted a “multi-decade” program that collected and attempted to reverse
engineer crashed UFOs, former intelligence official David Grusch
told the
hearing.
David Grusch, who led the analysis of unexplained anomalous
phenomena (UAP) within a US Department of Defense agency until 2023, claimed he
had been denied access to secret government UFO programs and said he has faced
“very brutal” retaliation due to his allegations. He claimed he knew “people
who have been harmed or injured” during government efforts to conceal UFO
information.
The Pentagon has
denied Grusch’s claims of a cover-up. A defense
department spokesperson said investigators have not discovered “any verifiable
information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession
or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past
or exist currently.
Attitudes about UFOs
contain the seeds of conspiracist thinking, for public attitudes are clearly at
variance with the official position that there is no credible evidence that
UFOs exist. Indeed, in a 1996 Gallup survey, subjects were asked, "In your
opinion, does the U.S. government know more about UFOs than they are telling
us?" Seventy-one percent answered yes. Today these figures are even much
higher.
To be clear, I/we do
not deny unidentified objects might indeed be for pilots, and so such reports
should be investigated by national security, for they are. Yet,
National Security has never confirmed any of these objects were of
concern. Otherwise, it would have been dealt with this whereby the object
that has been the most touted for already twenty years in a row is seen
above and below) 'tic tac,' which didn't look very impressive. They easily
could be something like the Chinese launched UFOs that, in reality, were
Chinese 'spy balloons' with 'unexpected
maneuverability' that were
hard to shoot down and no doubt were a threat to national security as they
gathered secret data.
And while the spy
balloons and tic-tac are real, they do not have to be very unusual (or come
from outer space...) However, the tic-tac loomed large during today's Capito
Hill discussion. A lot of people believe it does. But about what people
'believe' we indeed have a 'real' long history for us to look back
at.
For example, unlike a
female pilot that saw tic-tac 20 years ago, the earlier American pilot was
firmly convinced he saw not just one but nine unusual objects flying in tandem.
This next was popularised (and from where it entered the human imagination)
by Ray Palmer's graphic magazine depiction:
And laughable today
this even led to things like a neo-völkisch group variously referred to as the Landig Circle (Landig Kreis), Vienna
Group (Wien Konzern), and Vienna Lodge (Wien
Lodge) produced (what basically was faked) evidence that flying
saucers were Nazi
secret weapons a theory that evidence by the following three current
books still finds many believers and promoters (with 'secret files
referring to what was produced by the Vienna circle whose members previously
belonged to the WWII SS) all of them published in 2021-22.
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
several 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-Nazis 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
referring 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 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 sees 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
people 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 from the sky.
Bestsellers like von Daniken’s Chariots of
the Gods (seven million sold and counting) popularized 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 people and features Aryan-looking heroes, which
they consider reasonable. 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 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 far-right discourses on
the other. Today, their influence cannot primarily be noted in subcultural or
socially marginal contexts but also 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. Instead, 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 that went along its 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 accomplishments. The
White race did not need ancient aliens to build our ancient civilizations or
find 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
influential 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 (predominantly 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 had lived hundreds of
times before because the earth is a classroom where souls learn and move up the
spiritual hierarchy. This hierarchy accounts for human races: "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 the Royal Order of Tibet to disseminate the messages of the Theosophical Masters. In the 1940s, he
wrote a short story about spiritual contact with mysterious, highly evolved
beings. A decade later, the same claims would again be presented, but this time
as biographical facts of Adamski’s life. Other texts from 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 X-Files episode. 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 features the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, and 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
fundamental 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. It was nurtured by the Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, Wilhelm Landig, and Rudolf
J. Mund, who argued that Nazis invented
flying saucers and 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 investigate 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 lived on or below Antarctica. As exhaustive as it was, it is
unlikely Summerhayes’ study impacted the theory’s adherents much. After all, it
competed with an ever-expanding glut of “hidden history” books, podcasts, and
websites. One such title 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 is 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 serialized in the War of the Worlds in Pearson’s Magazine
April-December 1897.
As soon as the world's 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 report, 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. A
lesser-known sci-fi author wrote it, 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 surface 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) united the planet’s population to launch a pre-emptive attack on
Mars. Leading the assault is the American inventor Thomas Edison, who studied
abandoned Martian equipment to develop the necessary tools (including ray
guns). During the attack on Mars, the expeditionary force encountered 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? What can this Land of Sand and a wonderful
fertilizing river 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 that aliens had visited
Earth in the ancient past; no more than Jules Verne thought that an obsessive
submarine captain cruised around the Seven Seas in an electrically powered
submarine. It would be nearly half a decade before anyone earnestly proposed
the Ancient Astronaut theory.
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 plagiarizing some of them word for word). He created a
hodgepodge of pseudoscientific ramblings centered mostly 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 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. 1954–1955, Wilkins published
three books: Flying Saucers on the Attack, Flying Saucers on the Moon, and
Flying Saucers Uncensored. Despite their sensational titles, these books were
intended to be taken as factual severe 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 significant meteorites, aerolites, comets
or planetoids upon ancient South American cities? 2
Wilkins’s theories were so outlandish
that the academic establishment did not take them seriously. 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 vast 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 who helped perpetuate the myth of alien
beings visiting the Earth in its ancient past – 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 worldwide. 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
misrepresenting data, a highly 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
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 and 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 entirely 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 that the stones were
quarried using very ‘Earthly’ bronze chisels. And finally, the idea that the
Egyptians built the Great Pyramid perfectly from the word go is a complete
fallacy. The earliest pyramidical structure is the 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 relatively 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 initially built using a
wrong angle, which had to be rectified half-way through construction, giving
the finished pyramid a decidedly lopsided appearance.
Däniken’s, despite their serious flaws, theories 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 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
of the History mentioned above Channel’s Ancient Aliens. This show 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 rose again to 35 percent; in 2018, it had
increased 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 general public's beliefs about the
effect of extraterrestrial contact have also been studied. A poll of United
States and Chinese university students in 2000 provides factor analysis of responses to questions
about, among other things, the participants' belief that extraterrestrial life
exists in the Universe, that such energy may be intelligent, and that humans
will eventually make contact with it. The study shows significant weighted
correlations between participants' beliefs that extraterrestrial contact may
conflict with or enrich their personal religious beliefs and how conservative
they are. The more conservative the respondents, the more harmful they
considered extraterrestrial contact. Other significant correlation patterns
indicate that students believed searching for extraterrestrial intelligence
might be futile or dangerous.
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 ideas
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 Wilkins mentioned above,
Peter Kolosimo (pseudonym of Pier
Domenico Colosimo), and von Däniken, they were built by ancient astronauts, aliens, and
White Gods in various guises. One can be forgiven for thinking that specific
white and mostly Western scholars and pseudo-scholars would instead 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 basilica construction 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. White people, on the whole, don’t need help
from alien beings to build stuff, according to Däniken’s flock.
Von Däniken has
made several claims over the years that are insensitive to Black
people, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, including his insistence
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 could
not develop 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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