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| Written by John Teehan |
I love me a good conspiracy theory. And there are so many to choose from!
UFOs, government-sponsored weather control, chemtrails, lizard people, mole people, Illuminati, Freemasons, Priory of Sion, government surveillance, New World Order, Area 51, Agenda 21, various “truther” conspiracies, false flags, ever-popular assassination theories, Vril Society, the light bulb conspiracy, Celestial Seasonings (yes, the herbal tea company!), Trilateral Commission, time travel, fluoride, Bilderberg Group, Opus Dei, Bohemian Grove, and the nefarious eight buns/ten hot dogs consumer manipulation conspiracy.
And that’s barely scratching the nutty surface. What’s particularly beautiful to a conspiracy theorist fan like me is that the Internet has gone a long way to boosting the signal for these theories’ adherents and promoters. The truth is getting out there–if you call that truth. Personally, I’m not a believer, but I’m a fan of believers–kind of like how some people collect serial killer trading cards. I have a strange fascination with the lengths some people go to make their mundane lives more interesting, or to explain a sometimes confusing world.
I could go on and on about why conspiracy theories happen and why they’re so popular–and getting more popular by the day, but this intermittent series on conspiracy theories is going to be broken up into thematic parts, and will particularly focus on those theories that have some nice, full, wacky YouTube videos to tell “the whole story” for your entertainment.
This entry, in honor of the current X-Files revival, will look at my personal favorite flavor of grand conspiracies. Buckle up and clench your butt. We’re looking for UFOs.
I admit I have favorites of favorites, and this one is my top favorites. The whole Ancient Astronaut (or as the History Channel says “Ancient Aliens”) has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance over the past several years. It’s not a new theory by any stretch. Among its claims is one that suggests many wonders of the ancient world were the done by, or with the help of, aliens, and continues to suggest that any number of historical, religious, and mythological figures had contact with, or were actually themselves, aliens.
Most of its popularity today can be credited to the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series consulted and hosted by former bodybuilding promoter, polyglot, and Internet meme sensation Giorgio Tsoukalos. He is the director of the Center of Ancient Astronaut Research which was founded by Erich von Daniken. While Tsoukalos is the current face of ancient alien goodness, von Daniken is likely the one most responsible for the ancient astronaut theories becoming so popular in today’s culture.
While the theories have been bandying about in one form or another since the early 1900s (and may have been a major influence on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft), it was von Daniken’s 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? (and its multiple sequels) that proved someone could become rich off this. Mind you, Daniken has a bit of colored history of fraud and playing fast and loose with other people’s works, but he was resilient enough to weather all of that over the following decades to become the internationally recognized godfather of the ancient astronaut theory.
I could spend ages discussing the bad archaeology, the bad anthropology, the bad history, the spurious connections and other flaws with the way the theories are presented in Chariots of the Gods? and other ancient astronaut books and videos, but I’d be here all day and if you want debunking, they’re only a 10-second Google search away. Still, it’s a fun theory partly because (if you don’t think about it too much), it’s a fun theory. It rewrites history and religion in major ways, and turns the world into a more interesting sort of place. Starship battles over ancient Indian cities? Rocket ships in ancient Mexico? UFOs hovering near both the birth and death of Christ? Egyptian pyramids and obelisks forming the foundation of a global energy network? Ooh, yeah. Pile that on to my plate. I know it’s all empty calories–it’s a guilty pleasure. Join in.
In 1970, a West German documentary film was films based on Chariots of the Gods? and later dubbed into English (narrated by Rod Serling) for American television. The film version was actually nominated in 1970 for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It lost out to Woodstock.
The Internet gods are good. And Holy YouTube doth giveth everforth. You can watch the original English version on YouTube, and then follow links to various follow-ups done more recently. But there is something special about seeing the original (so to speak). Revel in the very early 70s narrative voice, film editing, and, best of all, soundtrack. You can be forgiven if you can’t sit through the whole thing. Just click on a link to one of the follow-ups or to Ancient Alien episodes to get a more contemporary feel for this rather classic conspiracy theory.
Roswell, Roswell, ROSWELL!
Is there any conspiracy theory of any brand that has had more of an impact on popular culture than the Roswell Incident? It’s bigger than who shot JFK. It’s bigger than the 2000 election. It’s bigger than why Emma Thompson doesn’t return my phone calls.
Seriously, the Roswell Incident has inspired countless books, games, TV shows, movies, and fevered dreams of many a late night lonely radio talk show host.
In short, something (most likely a military surveillance balloon) crashed in the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. While there was some initial interest in the incident as a possible alien craft cover-up, the general public accepted the balloon story until the 1970s when UFOlogists began putting out a number of conspiracy cover-up theories. Since then it captured the American imagination to the point where no amount of denial could stand up to the tabloid fascination of an actual alien crash landing. It has since become a perfect storm for the whole conspiracy theory concept where now it has been suggested that the military encouraged UFO theorists to encourage cover-up conspiracies s in order to divert attention away from other military tests in the area. Some see this “admission” as a way to cover up the truth as in “yes, there really was a flying saucer crash because that’s just what the government doesn’t want us to think… I think.”
It gets very confusing.
Combine this with the flying saucer remains and alien bodies being taken to the mysterious Area 51 and the flood of denials and confirmations and confirmation of denials and, of course, denials of confirmations… well, if the military was trying to distract people from actual mundane military tests… they’re probably succeeding because, despite how much we actually know about Area 51, we’re much more interested in the fantasy version.
For your viewing pleasure, a BBC documentary on the Roswell UFO Crash. Why this one? Because everything sounds more reasonable with a British accent.
UFOs and Nazis
Nazis suck.
Of all of history’s bad guys, however, the Nazis seem to be the ones who had battalions of super scientists and bizarre weaponry on hand–or so movies would have us believe–yet never trotted them out. In the end, neither panzers nor genocide enabled them to keep the ground under their feet. Good thing, too.
So why are they, outside of the US, the ones known for hobnobbing with alien forces?
It seems that some ten whole years before the Roswell Incident, the Nazi’s had their very own incident in the shape of a classic disc-shaped flying saucer crashing into the German countryside. This, supposedly, led to the interest of Nazi leaders and scientists in the study of wingless aircraft, antigravity mechanics, radio controlled aircraft, and honest to goodness flying saucer design. It’s also supposed to have inspired Himmler’s fascination with occult artifacts and practices for use in war. Go figure.
While the Nazis did come up with the V-2 rocket, there is a lot of mystery behind any other successes they may have had in exotic aviation. It’s a bit of a trial to separate fact with fiction because, to a conspiracy theorist, any absence of evidence is only proof of a cover-up. Therefore, it’s a no-win sort of situation for anyone looking for the actual truth. Who’s covering it up? Name them. The US military, the Russian military, the UN, even the aliens themselves. There were plenty of rumors in the 90s of declassified material suggesting grey aliens were in cahoots with the Nazis for reasons only the grey aliens could fathom.
One interesting aspect of the whole Nazi-alien connection, though, is what happened after the war.
Operation Paperclip is pretty much an open secret these days–it being a program in which German scientists (not all of them actual Nazis) came to the US after the war ended to work on our own rocket and aviation programs. What a combo… the folks who made the V-2 rocket with the folks who made the atomic bomb. Put those together and you have a total Reese’s peanut butter cup of doom. Conspiracy theorists oft-times pounce on Operation Paperclip as further proof of direct alien influence in world governments, and thus anointing the victorious United States (ignoring all of the other countries involved in WWII) as the superpower on Earth most deserving of world-busting technology.
Wacky aliens.
But those are more recent theories. For a more comprehensive telling of the original German saucer cash and its influence on Nazi technology, including the infamous “bell” saucer, check out this video:
Alien Abductions
These stories were once all the rage.
Ever since Barney and Betty Hill reported their strange experience on September 19, 1961 in rural New Hampshire, abduction has been a classic alien encounter story. Of course, abduction by strange beings is an old story, starting further back than even the tale of Rip Van Winkle. Somewhere along the line, the faeries of the old stories became replaced by aliens in the new stories, and many of the details of the classic abduction story have remained the same such as strange lights, lost time, and odd pregnancies. As stories of faerie encounters wound down, so did abduction stories… until Betty and Barney Hill. Now abduction stories are common enough now to be considered a tired tope. A vast majority of so-called abductions are reported in the United States, which stands to reason if you believe in a post-WWII alliance between the US government and grey aliens.
The Hill abduction happened in the early 1960s. The made-for-TV movie (starring James Earl Jones) came out in the mid-1970s. By the 1980s, authors such as William Birnes and Whitley Strieber brought the phenomenon even more to the forefront, and then you have The X-Files which featured heavily on alien abduction themes.
The whole abduction thing is fraught with a multitude of problems involving everything from mental instability of the alleged abductee to false memories implanted by so-called regression hypnotherapy.
Certain physical attributes to abductee stories, such as strange rashes or unexplained illnesses, are often very easily explained by environmental causes. Still, the abduction story seems to have legs and will continue to be popular for a long time.
And why not?
As a story, being an abductee reinforces someone’s specialness to… someone, I guess… even if it’s just a slime-sucking alien. It’s attention after the fact. And it’s a great story to keep telling every Thanksgiving. We should all be so lucky as to be abductees.
For a take on the Betty and Barney Hill story, check out this YouTube video:
There are thousands of UFO-related videos on YouTube. A wealth of wacky knowledge you can arm yourself with should you ever be confronted with Greys or Greens or Rigellians or Snarks. And it looks like there is some big money in UFO fandom given the number of books and magazines there are on the subject, the conventions, the TV shows and movies, and plethora of alien-related toys. But remember to ask yourself… qui bono? Are aliens real? Are they simply just a creation of government propaganda? Am I really a skeptic? Or am I just pretending to be one in order to throw you off the path to true truthdom? Would you believe me if I said one way or the other?
I thought not.
Or so I’d have you believe. In any case, the truth is out there–if only you have the patience to sort through a hundred thousand hours of video.
And always remember…
Keep watching the skies!
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