​It’s no secret that I have devoted considerable space to discussing the close connection between the collection of topics loosely grouped as “fringe history” and the alt-right and other extreme right groups. These connections were comprehensively documented by the sociologist Michael Barkun in his book A Culture of Conspiracy (2006, rev. 2013), a volume that made the case that extreme rightists had purposely and purposefully infiltrated ufology and related fringe fields in order to use them as a recruiting tool for extremist ideology. These connections became only more obvious in wake of the rise of Donald Trump, with Trump supporters such as Alex Jones, Jason Reza Jorjani, David Wilcock and others spouting a range of ancient astronaut and anti-government conspiracy theories that circle around white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and extreme conservative politics. 

​Last week, in the run-up to the annual UFO festival in Roswell, New Mexico and World UFO Day, the Socorro County Chieftain ran an article describing the actual military project believed to be behind the legend of the Roswell UFO crash. On June 4, 1947, Project MOGUL launched a balloon carrying microphones designed to help triangulate the location of Soviet atomic bomb test explosions by monitoring sound waves carried in the zone between the troposphere and the stratosphere, about 50,000 feet up. It crashed, but the description of the balloon is interesting:

​Today is Independence Day, and what could be more American than to take a look at how a Frenchman convinced people across the United States that illegal aliens from outer space were threatening their supply of steak and cheese? Today, we’re going to take a look at how Jacques Vallée helped to invent the myth that flying saucers were mutilating cattle. It’s a sad, dumb story, and the short form is: He put it in a movie, so the public believed it because they saw it on screen.

​A report in the Times of London indicates that the British government spent fifty years from 1947 to 1997 trying to catch a UFO on the off chance that it could yield advanced weapons technology. The RAF feared, according to the report, that the Soviet Union or China had already captured a flying saucer ad were using to make super-fast jet planes. As we now know, the Soviets and Chinese thought the same about Westerners, and the most obvious conclusion is that world governments had entered into a mutual delusion based on paranoia and wishful thinking. It’s always important to remember that governments are composed of people, and large numbers of people have been willing to believe things that are untrue. It’s also worth noting that the files—like the Pentagon UFO program in America—don’t describe UFOs as alien spaceships but couch their language in terms of “novel” propulsion technologies, suggesting that there may be earthbound explanations that world governments considered.

​Reboots are the biggest trend in entertainment right now, with a mixed bag of results. In Search Of is a program conceived in sin, so to speak, tainted by the elements of its own DNA. Ages and ages ago, a German film adaptation of Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was nominated for an Oscar, and TV producer Alan Landsburg and Twilight Zone host Rod Serling recut it for American television in 1973 as In Search of Ancient Astronauts. The special attracted 28 million viewers on NBC and spawned 250,000 news sales of Chariots in the first 48 hours after broadcast, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. It was the most successful ancient astronaut TV broadcast ever. After a series of such specials promoting credulous views of UFOs and ancient astronauts, Landsburg decided to produce an ongoing syndicated series to be hosted by Serling as a spinoff from the specials. Serling died before the show went to air, and Leonard Nimoy stepped in as the host of In Search Of… which aired from 1977 to 1982. The new series spread beyond ancient astronauts to cover the full range of subjects generally classified as “mysterious,” from cryptozoology to UFOs, from Hitler to Nostradamus, and from poltergeists to Atlantis.

​From time to time, I am sorry that the story of the so-called “alien” metal under investigation by Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science ever fell into my lap. It’s my own fault, really. I first encountered Tom DeLonge nearly two decades ago, in my freshman year of college, when I spent long, lazy evenings hanging out with the school’s football team in their overheated dorm rooms watching MTV. (It was not my choice.) I couldn’t possibly have guessed that the goofball parodying boy bands in the video for “All the Small Things”—inexplicably a favorite of my friends, presumably because of its juvenile humor—would someday become the avatar of modern ufology. 

​As many regular readers know, I recently discovered that some of the evidence the Hal Puthoff of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science used to support the claim that metal with supposedly unearthly composition and properties from flying saucers is in their possession has been previously studied and determined to be earthly, most likely industrial waste. After hearing ufologist Richard Dolan speculate idly about the New York Times’ coverage of the such topics, I thought that the New York Times, which broke the original story credulously mentioning these metals, should know about this in the name of accuracy and integrity. Over the past two days, I have been in conversation with Ralph Blumenthal, who co-wrote the December 16, 2017 story revealing the existence of the Pentagon’s UFO program and the claim of Luis Elizondo, the program’s onetime head who joined Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, that billionaire aerospace contractor and ufology buff Robert Bigelow was examining unknown metals, described as being metal recovered from the ships of space aliens. It has been strange. 

​Last week Ancient Aliens talking head and ufologist Richard Dolan interviewed Peter Levenda, the writer on occult matters who is definitely not an occultist (despite participating in the occult scene for decades) and definitely not the author of the fake Necronomicon known as Simon (despite telling the U.S. Copyright Office otherwise). In the interview, Dolan and Levenda discussed Levenda’s work writing Tom Delonge’s ancient astronaut book for To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and Levenda’s views on the former rock musician’s efforts to disclose the truth about space aliens by profiting from it. 

​It’s a bit of a cliché that reviewers and audiences misunderstood Starship Troopers and didn’t realize that it was a satire of fascism. All the same, I’m not quite sure how to react to the news that not only does America have internment camps for children now but that Pres. Trump has also ordered the creation of a new “separate but equal” military service branch, Space Force, to fight battles in outer space. I’m torn between thinking our world has drifted into The Man in the High Castle and thinking we’re now in Starship Troopers. Either way, there will be Nazis on the moon. 

​Last week, the Society for Scientific Exploration held its thirty-seventh annual conference, this time in combination with the International Remote Viewing Association. The two organizations focus on fringe science claims about psychic powers, the mysteries of consciousness, alternative energy, alternative medicine, etc. You will of course recognize the SSE as the publisher of Edge Science, a magazine whose articles about ancient astronauts and related claims I have had occasion to criticize more than once. Well, at last week’s conference in Las Vegas, Dr. Hal Puthoff gave a lecture on his work for To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and the Pentagon’s UFO program. Like the secret showman that he has long been, he hinted at things he refused to say and used blanket claims about government classification to avoid dealing with provable details to support his implications and allegations. However, he accidentally led me to the solution to the mystery of To the Stars’ secret “alien” metal alloy that they have been promoting since last year.