It’s always nice to know that I’ve made a difference in the world. I got confirmation yesterday from an author that New Page Books / Career Press will not send me review copies of any release—even at the author’s request—because they don’t like my reviews. Since their books tend to get few or no reviews, one might think that they would take the view that any publicity is good publicity, especially if they could then use my criticism to market their volumes as the books that “skeptics” don’t want you to read. But instead, they have taken the line that I am an enemy, which probably speaks more about their mentality—and their understanding of how crappy the books they publish must be—than it does me. But so long as they continue to publish new books by former Nazi party leader Frank Joseph (as they will do again next week—with the endorsement of Brad Steiger!), it is impossible for them to argue the moral high ground.
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A while back I discussed the “Ancient School” project that ancient astronaut theorist Jason Martell launched and promoted on Ancient Aliens. He had hoped it would become a non-accredited lecture series that would see users paying Martell $17 per month for access to speeches from ancient astronaut theorists in a “live” online classroom setting. It appears that the plan was a failure, and “Ancient School” has been reduced to a self-published DVD series, which from the highly limited information that Martell makes available seems appears to feature primarily Martell himself.
Note: This post has been updated to include the solution to the alien coin mystery.
Regular readers will remember that last year the History Channel (or as it now bills itself “HISTORY™ network”) put out a children’s book to teach tweens about the ancient astronaut theory. This year, they’ve set their sights slightly higher. In partnership with HarperCollins, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., History is launching a companion book to the TV series Ancient Aliens, along with an adult coloring book of the same. The two volumes are scheduled for publication next month, in time for the lucrative holiday buying season. Over on Ancient Origins, we find that David Naef, who wrote an earlier article about the “mysteries” of Mount Shasta, has a new article in which he relates a 1916 account of giants. The story comes from Lucy Thompson, a Native American who in 1916 published a book called To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman. Naef selectively quotes part of Thompson’s account, eliding uncomfortable details that point toward a polemical purpose behind her story.
It’s a bit long, but it’s worth looking at Thompson’s account in full: Chapman University Survey Finds Astonishing Levels of Belief in Ancient Astronauts and Atlantis10/17/2016 Last October I wrote about a depressing survey from Chapman University which found that 1 in 5 Americans—20.3%--professed to believe in ancient astronauts. A couple of regular readers let me know that this year Chapman University repeated the survey, and the results were even worse. According to the annual survey’s new results, fully 1 in 4 Americans, an astonishing 27%, believe that aliens visited the Earth in the past. Even more disturbing, 39.6%--more than one in three—believe that Atlantis or another advanced prehistoric lost civilization once existed. (The survey did not ask about Atlantis last year.) Similarly, 42.6% of respondents believe that the U.S. government is covering up knowledge of alien encounters, and a full third think that elites are plotting a single world government.
A Prehistoric Global "Tamana" Culture? Plus: The "Glamour" Writer Who Hates Horror Movies10/16/2016 PZ Myers is (humorously) “blaming” me for introducing him via Twitter this past week to the angry pseudohistory of the white supremacists who believe that a lost white race of Solutreans were destroyed by Native Americans in a “white genocide” in North America at the end of the last Ice Age. It doesn’t get much more disgusting than that, but I’ve learned that there is always a claim that is worse.
Greek Sculptors in Ancient China? Plus: A Very Early Claim for a Pole Shift Destroying Atlantis10/15/2016 This week the BBC announced that it would screen a new documentary next week that will allege that the famous terra cotta warriors found in the tomb of China’s first emperor were the work of ancient Greek artisans who traveled to China in the wake of Alexander’s conquests. Alexander’s armies reached as far as India before his death in 323 BCE, and a Hellenistic Greek-Indian kingdom existed in what is now Afghanistan down to perhaps as late as the first century CE. The terra cotta warriors were sculpted in the years leading up to Qin Shi Huang’s death in 206 BCE.
Yesterday Donald Trump delivered a fiery speech in which he blamed his current scandals on a “dark conspiracy” fomented by “international banks” working in conjunction with “elites” in order to undermine the will of the American people. Given that Trump is tied to New World Order conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon, his campaign CEO, and Info Wars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, it seems quite probably that these “international banks” are a reference to the international bankers routinely blamed for attempting to create a one-world genocidal government in conspiracy literature. These bankers are typically described as identical with or stooges for space aliens, Reptilians, Freemasons, and above all, Jews. Indeed, among the so-called “alt-right,” white nationalists seized on this phrase and began posting online conspiracy theories about how the Jews are behind Trump’s scandals.
Today I have two topics to discuss: John Podesta’s Nibiru email and Syfy’s new horror series Channel Zero.
Yesterday I discussed the connection between Nephilim theories and the Trump campaign, so today, in the interest of balance, I’d like to share one of the further revelations from the Wikileaks publication of Clinton advisor John Podesta’s emails, which U.S. officials concluded had been hacked on orders from the Russian government. Fringe websites have gone into a tizzy after discovering that one of the emails Podesta received discussed Zecharia Sitchin, Nibiru, and ancient astronauts. This was not, however, an email sent by high ranking U.S. officials but instead was an email from a member of the public sent to several different officials, no different than the tens of thousands of crank letters that fill government archives. Whenever I mention politics in one of my blog posts, I receive angry messages from people complaining that it is inappropriate to do so. However, it has been clear for, frankly, centuries that fringe history and conspiracy theories have a political dimension. Over the last few days it’s become obvious that this year is no different, and in many ways more extreme than we have seen in decades, and not just because the former Curse of Oak Island guest who current runs Xplrr Media spent most of the past weekend trying to goad Republican politicians into retweeting a badly designed anti-Hillary Clinton meme.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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