Former Ancient Aliens pundit and Gaia TV host David Wilcock issued a public apology to Gaia TV for the alleged resignation letter that circulated under his name last July. In the letter, Wilcock expressed dismay over his financial situation and domestic violence he said he had experienced, and he accused Gaia TV of unethical behavior, including poor treatment of employees and deceptive editing of programs to make it appear that Wilcock endorsed “Luciferian” beliefs, potentially exposing him, he said, to violence from conservative Christian fans. In his apology, he took back the claims.
20 Comments
The Australian government is under increasing pressure to ban conspiracy theorist David Icke from the country following complaints from Jewish groups and the opposition Labor Party about Icke’s anti-Semitic views. The Anti-Defamation Council raised the alarm last week, but the issue rose to national prominence after the Labor Party sent a letter to the immigration minister, David Coleman, decrying Icke’s “extreme antisemitic views, including campaigning for Holocaust denial to be taught in schools” and asking for Icke’s visa to be revoked ahead of his planned five-city Everything You Need to Know tour next month.
A member of the alt-right Proud Boys who also professes a belief in the pro-Trump Q-Anon conspiracy murdered his brother with a sword, prosecutors say, because he had become convinced that his brother was a Reptilian lizard person. Buckey Wolfe, 26, exhibited signs of mental illness, according to prosecutors, and had filled his Facebook page with images of conservative politicians and pundits as well as Pepe the Frog. Reptilian lizard people are best known from their appearance in the borderline anti-Semitic works of British writer David Icke, who is popular with far-right audiences because of his conspiracy theories about quasi-Jewish international banking elites. Wolfe made social media postings referencing elements of Q-Anon that endorse Icke’s Reptilians claim—ideas also repeated in media like Ancient Aliens and other “fringe” programs, which helped spread them beyond the fringe of the fringe—and he was reported a fan of Alex Jones, the InfoWars conspiracy theorist who has promoted ancient astronaut and Nephilim conspiracy theories on his far-right talk show.
I had to laugh when I read Inverse magazine’s admission that in a 21-minute interview with Ancient Aliens star David Childress, Childress spoke for 21 straight minutes, barely letting the interviewer get a word in edgewise and making it impossible, as Inverse writer Jake Kleinman said, to create a “coherent” story from his verbal ramblings. Clearly, ancient mysteries are the type of pet topic that allows Childress to monologue in unbroken streams, regardless of whether his listeners are interested, and one might speculate as to the reasons for that, but I would never offer an armchair diagnosis. Instead, I think it serves as a fair warning to future interviewers to be less open-ended in questioning him. In the interview, Childress made a number of statements that lacked the usual qualifiers that the producers of Ancient Aliens routinely force their talking heads to include to provide legal and ethical fig leaves.
With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, my plan is to take off Thursday and Friday for the holiday. I will return this weekend with a new blog post. Depending on how fast I read, it may be my review of the new Curse of Oak Island tie-in book by Randall Sullivan, but to be entirely honest, I twice fell asleep reading it, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through. The only thing duller than watching old men dig pointless holes is reading about old men digging pointless holes!
This week, U.S. President Donald J. Trump said that he would not be “surprised” if billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, were paying hundreds of Hondurans to trek across Mexico to reach the United States. A week earlier, Soros had been the target of an attempted mail bomb assassination, and the man who committed the largest violent attack on Jews in the United States a few days later cited anti-Soros conspiracy theories among the reasons he believed that Jews needed to die. Writing these words is horrifying, and I struggle to understand exactly how our country has reached this point. It is almost like something out of the Twilight Zone, except that the Twilight Zone was created by a Jew, Rod Serling, who always made sure that in his stories the Nazis didn’t win.
You’ve probably noticed that over the last few weeks my blog posts have been a bit shorter and less detailed than usual. That’s because I’m busy trying to finish my book on the myth of the Mound Builders. Over the past four or five weeks, I’ve added about 40,000 words to the book, and I have about a chapter and a quarter left to write. I always come to a point near the end of a book where my energy and enthusiasm start to wane, and it becomes a little difficult to make the final push to complete it. Part of the reason for that is that the sense of adventure has vanished this late in a book. Early on, I am still discovering new things and unexpected connections, but by the last few chapters, the narrative has boxed me in and becomes mostly busywork pulling together the threads I’ve spun throughout.
Today, I have three quick stories to share. Regular readers will remember that actress Megan Fox is an Ancient Aliens super-fan and had expressed interest in either joining that show or hosting her own version of it. Well, the brain trust at the Travel Channel, recently added to the Discovery Networks’ roster of channels, have awarded Fox her own mystery-mongering show. According to a press release, the network has greenlit a new four-episode series called Mysteries and Myths with Megan Fox, in which Fox will travel the world in an attempt to rewrite history.
It’s been a bit of a slow week, and I must confess that I have rather little to talk about today. One thing that is worth mentioning, though, is an article in the forthcoming issue of Newsweek in which the magazine analyzes the potential risk that fringe history and conspiracy theory videos pose to YouTube. The Alphabet company site is overflowing with conspiracy videos, and Newsweek attributes this less to public belief in conspiracies than to the economic incentives YouTube created to produce conspiracy videos in a desperate bid to garner eyeballs and thus ad dollars with the most extreme content, using the example of a video by Shane Dawson suggesting that space aliens were responsible for the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner a few years ago:
|
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
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
May 2024
|