Blog Archives

Graham Phillips Recycles Another Old Claim, This Time about the Ark of the Covenant in England

11/10/2016

Ancient Origins is, by most measures, a pretty crappy website. No matter what browser I use, or what ad blocking software, it routinely causes my browsers to freeze up and crash. But that’s beside the point. The content is terrible, too, and not just because it promotes all manner of bad ideas. It’s also because they are deceptive in their content. Sometimes, they present as their own articles content that they have copied and pasted under Creative Commons license, acknowledging only in a footnote that the content wasn’t written for them. More frequently, they republish old content and pretend that it is new. That seems to be the case with a “new” article from fringe writer Graham Phillips, which was published yesterday on Ancient Origins but speaks of events from 2007 as though they are occurring now.

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Fringe History and Its Cultural Connection to the 2016 American Election

11/9/2016

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When Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States last night, politicians, pollsters, and pundits all wondered how they had been so terribly wrong about the intentions of the electorate. The explanations ranged from the technical—incorrect weighting of poll responses—to the systemic—blindness to small town and rural Americans. Watching the election coverage last night, one could see on the blanching faces of the pundits and analysts the exact moment they realized that Trump was on track to win. It was probably at 9:00 PM, when Minnesota and Wisconsin came in as too close to call when polls said they never should have been competitive.

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Review of "The Sagan Conspiracy" by Donald L. Zygutis (Part 2)

11/8/2016

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Yesterday I began reviewing Donald L. Zygutis’s new book The Sagan Conspiracy, which alleges that NASA and the Pentagon conspired to suppress what Zygutis believes to be Carl Sagan’s “model” for proving that ancient astronauts visited the Earth in historical times. For a variety of reasons that I laid out yesterday, I found the author’s evidence to be lacking and his conclusions to be faulty. Nevertheless, I am moving forward with the remainder of the book to evaluate the evidence that Sagan operated under suppression from the government and was preparing to defy their diktats when he died.

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Review of "The Sagan Conspiracy" by Donald L. Zygutis (Part 1)

11/7/2016

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Most readers know that New Page Books is a leading purveyor of fringe history. They publish ancient astronaut theorist Erich von Däniken and ex-Nazi leader Frank Joseph, as well as the late Ancient Aliens pundit Philip Coppens. Most of you also know that they no longer provide me with review copies of their books because they don’t like the fact that I have been critical of their books, both in terms of their authors’ generally terrible content as well as the publisher’s tendency toward production errors in their books. That is why I must give credit to Donald L. Zygutis, the author if The Sagan Conspiracy: NASA’s Untold Plot to Suppress the People’s Scientist’s Theory of Ancient Aliens from New Page Books. He generously provided me with a copy of the book at his own expense with the proviso that I hold nothing back in fairly and honestly evaluating the claims made in his book. I will also give New Page a compliment: Their cover design for the book is exceptionally attractive, even if the interior pages are missing some of the standard features you’d expect in professionally published works, and where widows and orphans (printers’ terms for single lines of a paragraph that spill onto a new page or single words that dangle at the end of a paragraph) are badly handled, resulting in uneven text blocks on pages.

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Brian Taylor Claims That an Ancient Conspiracy of Elites Is Suppressing the Truth about Astrology and Asteroids

11/6/2016

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Before we begin today, I’d like to draw your attention to Andy White’s blog where he describes a disturbing case where Ancient American magazine owner Wayne May has hired a treasure hunter and biblical archaeologist to excavate a Hopewell mound site in order to prove that it is the fictitious ancient Jewish citadel of Zarahemla from the Book of Mormon. The archaeologist, John Melancon, claims to be an expert on the lost treasure of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Regular readers will remember the Knights of the Golden Circle as the pro-slavery Confederate group that tried to establish a white supremacist slaveholding empire in Latin America, and the same organization that Scott Wolter, who has car-pooled to the Ancient Artifact Preservation Society meeting with May and ex-Nazi leader Frank Joseph in years past, investigated on America Unearthed. He nodded in agreement when his informant in the episode said that you “have to admire” the group.

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UFO Disclosure, Satanic Occultism, and the Consequences of Bad Ideas

11/5/2016

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On Thursday, I discussed a recent article by Robbie Graham which criticized musician and ufologist Tom DeLonge for teasing UFO disclosure while simultaneously launching a for-profit multimedia company to profit from what DeLonge promises will be years of teasing, through fiction, nonfiction, music, and collectible merchandise, on behalf of ten high ranking government and military officials who have revealed the alleged truth about UFOs to DeLonge. The newest major release from DeLonge’s project is a novel written with Shakespeare scholar A. J. Hartley. Graham’s article has set off an interesting conversation among ufologists and other fringe types, many of whom are debating the relative merits of DeLonge’s and Graham’s positions. This has produced an absurdity that both made me a little angry and also showed the small and increasingly homogenous world of the fringe.

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In New Interview, Giorgio Tsoukalos Claims Ancient Astronaut Theory Can Bring the World Together

11/4/2016

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It looks like our old friend Giorgio Tsoukalos has gone on tour again, racking up cash payments to spout predigested catchphrases from Ancient Aliens and perhaps also deliver his standard PowerPoint presentation. Tsoukalos is set to appear tonight at the Hamburg Music Festival in Buffalo, New York, where audiences will pay $35 apiece to listen to him discuss ambiguous evidence for space aliens in what is billed as “a mind-bending, brain busting evening of deep space mystery and Ancient Astronaut exploration.” I’m sure that the promotional team didn’t mean the accidental honesty of admitting that listening to Tsoukalos will cause one’s brain to break down, but we’ll spot them the gaffe.

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Author Suggests Musician and Ufologist Tom DeLonge Is an Unwitting Government Disinformation Agent

11/3/2016

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You will recall that on Sunday J. Hutton Pulitzer announced what he claimed to be the discovery of “Roman” human and cultural remains in “near conjunction” to Oak Island, Nova Scotia. This morning I received a statement from the Special Places division of Nova Scotia Communities, Culture and Heritage, the provincial department in charge of archaeology for the area surrounding Oak Island. Special Places confirms that there was no report made to them of a discovery of “Roman” human remains or “Roman” cultural artifacts anywhere in Nova Scotia, and Special Places has issued no permit for the excavation of human remains to J. Hutton Pulitzer, Xplrr Media, or any entity associated with them. While Pulitzer has not specified the location of his alleged discovery beyond being in “near conjunction” with Oak Island, Nova Scotia’s Special Places has jurisdiction over the entire province encompassing Oak Island. Any such discovery, therefore, has been unreported, misreported, or was made on the mainland, such as in New Brunswick or the U.S. state of Maine, points which are at least a hundred miles or more from Oak Island.

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Protestant Nephilim Hunters Reveal Their Anti-Catholic Agenda in "Sky Watch TV" Broadcast

11/2/2016

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I am constantly amazed by the fringe obsession with the Catholic Church and its supposed power to suppress history worldwide. The same Church that was not able to stop Islam from conquering half its territory, or the Eastern Orthodox Church from entering into schism, or Martin Luther from launching the Protestant Reformation, or Darwin from publishing The Origin of Species, or even the Kingdom of Italy from annexing the Papal States, somehow exercises such universal power that every person on Earth, save for a few brave fringe historians, bows before it.

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J. Hutton Pulitzer Claims That a "Roman" Soldier Is Buried in "Near Conjunction" to Oak Island

11/1/2016

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The Farce of Hoax Island is my parody title for my ongoing coverage of the hype and publicity surrounding the History Channel series The Curse of Oak Island, returning for its fourth season this month.

In conjunction with the new season, Xplrr Media announced plans to offer a weekly Facebook video discussion of each episode. In a Facebook broadcast Sunday night leading up to the Xplrr Media Curse of Oak Island coverage, J. Hutton Pulitzer announced what he claims to be the discovery of a Roman soldier’s grave near Oak Island in Canada. He offered no proof and no details to support his analysis or his claims. Pulitzer claims that he will provide full details in an upcoming broadcast in an unspecified format, but he did not provide information about the broadcast except to say that he and Xplrr Media business partner Scott Wolter were preparing a two-hour documentary about Oak Island, stones, and other typical fringe history topics. He added that he and Wolter will be meeting in Minnesota this month, though he did not indicate whether this would be at the same time that Wolter will be meeting with Graham Hancock to discuss the role of Atlantis in Pleistocene history.

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Forward>>

Graham Phillips Recycles Another Old Claim, This Time about the Ark of the Covenant in England

Fringe History and Its Cultural Connection to the 2016 American Election

Review of "The Sagan Conspiracy" by Donald L. Zygutis (Part 2)

Review of "The Sagan Conspiracy" by Donald L. Zygutis (Part 1)

Brian Taylor Claims That an Ancient Conspiracy of Elites Is Suppressing the Truth about Astrology and Asteroids

UFO Disclosure, Satanic Occultism, and the Consequences of Bad Ideas

In New Interview, Giorgio Tsoukalos Claims Ancient Astronaut Theory Can Bring the World Together

Author Suggests Musician and Ufologist Tom DeLonge Is an Unwitting Government Disinformation Agent

Protestant Nephilim Hunters Reveal Their Anti-Catholic Agenda in "Sky Watch TV" Broadcast

J. Hutton Pulitzer Claims That a "Roman" Soldier Is Buried in "Near Conjunction" to Oak Island

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