Blog Archives

Scott Wolter Backs Out of "Forbidden Archaeology" Course, Blames Me for Existing

7/21/2016

Before we begin today, I’d like to point you to Laura Saetveit Miles’s excellent essay in Vox criticizing Stephen Greenblatt after he won $735,000 from Norway for his work in the humanities. Miles believes that Greenblatt intentionally misrepresented the Middle Ages in his 2011 book The Swerve in order to glorify the Renaissance. While I don’t agree with everything Miles says—one would be hard pressed to argue that the Middle Ages did not represent a decline of some kind from the Classical period—the piece is a fascinating discussion of how the way we discuss history is shaped by more than evidence.

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Evangelicals Hold Infomercial to Accuse Catholics and Nazis of Secretly Using Nephilim to Control the World

7/20/2016

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I think that Ancient Aliens has had a lot more influence in crazy culture than it might seem. Yesterday, con artist preacher Jim Bakker devoted yet another hour of his program to an infomercial for the evangelical answer to Ancient Aliens, and filmmaker Tony Alberino specifically identified his DVDs about ancient history as containing information that the History Channel won’t tell you, specifically that cyclopean architecture the world over is “pre-Flood construction” that was “built by a hybrid race.” He then went on to discuss Ancient Aliens specifically:

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Netflix's "Stranger Things" Is a Little Too Derivative

7/19/2016

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Back in the Bush Administration, top presidential advisor Karl Rove said “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” When he said this, he meant that American actions create the conditions he wanted to see in the world. But the lesson our political class took from this is that facts no longer matter. Last night Melania Trump’s speech quite obviously plagiarized several paragraphs of material from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech, but when called on it, the Trump campaign simply denied that plagiarism had occurred, arguing that the paragraphs of duplicated language were “common” sentiments that coincidentally came out identical. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort even claimed that taking notice of the plagiarism was an effort to silence critics of Hillary Clinton! Statistically, it’s almost unheard of for more than seven words in a row to repeat, let alone paragraphs, but the brazenness of the denial of reality was less shocking than the shrug with which media greeted it: Of course they lie about everything! That’s just what those silly politicians do.

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L. A. Marzulli Promotes "Watchers X" and the "European" DNA in Ancient America That "We Were Hoping For"

7/18/2016

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In his most recent YouTube broadcast, Nephilim theorist L. A. Marzulli took the opportunity to promote his new DVD, Watchers X, now selling for $19.95. He interviewed the DVD’s director, Richard Shaw, and the pair engaged in some rhetorical sleight of hand to make it seem like their DVD is a more dramatic revelation than it is.

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Reports: Sinclair-Jesus-Templar Conspiracy Theorist Unmasked as Pedophile; Plus: New Fringe Cruise Video

7/17/2016

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Some of you may have seen a bit of surprising and shocking news about one of the key players in the Sinclair family Knights Templar drama. Postings on a blog devoted to exposing sexual abuse earlier this week alleged that Niven Sinclair, a longtime talking head on Templar conspiracy programs (most recently Forbidden History) and one of the wealthy patrons of modern Templar conspiracy researchers, is a convicted child sexual predator. I confirmed the reports with the court records from the British court system, and it appears that the Templar conspiracy theorist is the same Niven Sinclair who has been convicted more than once on charges of sodomizing a significant number of boys aged 12 to 15 in the 1960s and 1970s. He spent time in prison after each conviction. The court records make for disturbing reading, including allegations that he ordered at least one boy to submit to him at gunpoint, and I learned that the Mirror picked up the story late last night.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S11E09 "The Hidden Empire"

7/15/2016

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As the Cold War wound down in the summer of 1989, Soviet social scientists looked with a combination of wonderment and bemusement on the nationalism percolating in China, where the gradual loosening of government control threatened at any time to spill over into revolution, as the protests at Tiananmen Square had proved. I tell you this because in July of that year, A. D. Dikaryov, writing in Narody Azii i Afriki (“Peoples of Asia and Africa”), recorded that the Chinese government and its scientists had tried to harness the power of nationalism to uncover a distinctively Chinese ancient astronaut theory. The American CIA found this sufficiently interesting to translate part of the article in their regular roundup of Soviet publications:

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David Icke Makes Angry Appearance on Australia's "Today" Show, Doesn't Take Well to Being Challenged

7/15/2016

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Yesterday morning Australian time, conspiracy theorist David Icke appeared on the Nine Network’s Today show to discuss his upcoming tour of Australia, and things did not go according to plan. Icke seemed agitated and combative, and his nearly obsessive insistence on repeating a few fixed talking points without seeming to be able to go off script eventually left the normally genial presenters, Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson, dumbfounded and exasperated. In other words, it was a great seven minutes of television.

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Now Available Online: Al-Suyuti's "Treatise on the Pyramids," Another Collection of Pyramid Lore

7/14/2016

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I received an odd email last night from the publicist for Permuted Press, a small horror publisher you might remember from May when I discovered they had branched out into crackpot fringe history. Well, the publicist wanted to know if I’d be up for interviewing Patrick Duffy—yes, the former star of Dallas and Step by Step—about his new book on the lost continent of Atlantis. Years before I was born, Duffy was the star of the 1977-1978 NBC TV series The Man from Atlantis. His new book is a novel in which he says that he explores the hidden backstory of the TV series’ main character, Mark Harris, and draws on fringe history speculation about Atlantis to develop his novel’s backstory. “And we set the stage of the mythology of planet Earth, basically, of which Mark Harris is a small, but integral part of a much larger picture,” Duffy says. I can’t fathom what I’d ask him since I’ve never seen the series.

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Paleobotanist and Folklorist Claim that Ancient Plant Fossils Inspired Dragon Lore

7/13/2016

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A posting on Facebook yesterday gave a little bit of an inside look into the wild and profitable world of Nephilim hunting. Mirrell Blum claims after the death of her grandfather, she learned that he had had an encounter with a Bigfoot, which she sees as a Biblical Nephilim giant and blogs about on her “Giant in My Backyard” blog. Blum alleges that she possesses a letter describing her grandfather’s encounter with the beast and records of where the monster was buried. I’m inclined to think it’s a fake, but that’s beside the point.

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"Ancient Aliens" Gets Stoner Spin-Off Series; Plus: Chinese Artifacts in Regency Ireland

7/12/2016

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I can’t take it anymore. You might remember back on April 20 when A+E Networks tried to improve the ratings for their disappointing Viceland TV channel by having Action Bronson smoke weed while discussing an episode of Ancient Aliens from sister network History projected behind him. Well, Viceland liked what they saw and commissioned a full series of Bronson’s marijuana-laced reflections on his favorite episodes of Ancient Aliens. The show is “pretty much the best thing that was ever created by man,” Bronson said, forgetting that Ancient Aliens clearly explains that only aliens create things. The remixed version of Ancient Aliens begins airing on Viceland next week. The network made a deal with Nielsen to prevent the company from reporting the channel’s ratings, which media accounts say are among the worst in cable television

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Scott Wolter Backs Out of "Forbidden Archaeology" Course, Blames Me for Existing

Evangelicals Hold Infomercial to Accuse Catholics and Nazis of Secretly Using Nephilim to Control the World

Netflix's "Stranger Things" Is a Little Too Derivative

L. A. Marzulli Promotes "Watchers X" and the "European" DNA in Ancient America That "We Were Hoping For"

Reports: Sinclair-Jesus-Templar Conspiracy Theorist Unmasked as Pedophile; Plus: New Fringe Cruise Video

Review of Ancient Aliens S11E09 "The Hidden Empire"

David Icke Makes Angry Appearance on Australia's "Today" Show, Doesn't Take Well to Being Challenged

Now Available Online: Al-Suyuti's "Treatise on the Pyramids," Another Collection of Pyramid Lore

Paleobotanist and Folklorist Claim that Ancient Plant Fossils Inspired Dragon Lore

"Ancient Aliens" Gets Stoner Spin-Off Series; Plus: Chinese Artifacts in Regency Ireland

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