Heather Lynn Is Upset with Me

​Not many of you read my recent piece analyzing H Files creator Heather Lynn’s conspiracy theory about Zecharia Sitchin, Jeffrey Epstein, and an alleged Israeli effort to use the ancient astronaut theory for propaganda purposes. But Lynn did, and last night she appeared in a 5-hour X Spaces conversation in which she complained not about my criticisms of her poor scholarship but rather about how offended she felt that I mentioned the undertones of antisemitism in her conspiracy theory. The irony was rich because Lynn—who uses a pseudonym—did this in the X Space of a social media personality who goes by the name Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park) and who (ironically, given his handle) focuses on promoting conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in media and politics.

​I can do no better than to simply quote Lynn verbatim (starting at 2:49:39), when she begins by making statements about Sitchin’s Judaism before attempting to link me to Israel:

It's not just a passing interest. It's not just the fact he was Jewish. He was in the IDS. You know, he was born in Azerbaijan, but then he went to live as a young kid and was raised in British Mandate Palestine. So he was a colonizer in Palestine and worked for Zionism. His whole thing was trying to push Zionism. As a side gig, and in a lot of the different press all over the world that discusses him, he's also in, like, Encyclopedia Judaica, he's in the archives, he's considered a Zionist figure, but they reference his work as, you know, like, popular author or, you know, author of, you know, things about human origins.
 
They never say Anunnaki, ancient alien theory, etc., whatever, because they're... So, it's just important to know. And then the question is, well, how could that have peppered his worldview, perhaps? You know, and that one's come under a lot of scrutiny, as you can imagine. That one got me some hate. I got the attention of good old Jason Colavito, or whatever, the guy who has the blog where all he does is just, you know, try to take down people and debunk, which is fine. He did a whole case-by-case look at this. And what's funny is he actually, like, helped my case because he found more documents that supported it, said that he didn't realize it, but basically had to reframe my thing. If you look, he put it up on X. He added me.
 
I don't think I responded because it was just kind of like a waste of time. But he said, he claimed that I was saying that there was an Aryan Jesus. And it's, again, he's... He's doing what a lot of people do, whether he's doing it in good faith or he's just manipulative, not understanding what a historiography is, which is very important to understand. It is the history of the history of. So I'm laying out the discussion of this is what happened, this is how people perceived that, this is the arguments that came about, these are basically the academic beefs that went on. So just because I'm presenting all of those different viewpoints doesn't mean I'm adhering to any of them.
 
But... He would rather go on there and say that I was trying to push an Aryan Jesus narrative, that I'm anti-Semitic, that I'm blaming the Jews. And what's the funniest is he's so anti-ancient alien in any way. He's anti-Sitchin. But it's so funny how people's push to support Israel will get them to support and advocate the things they've always been against.

​It’s rather surprising how little Lynn understands. The least important point: I didn’t “add her” on Substack out of deep interest in her work. I had to subscribe to her free tier in order to read her otherwise paywalled article. A shocking mystery, I know, but one she might have realized by … reading her own Substack blog’s membership terms.
 
It’s also clear that she, like most of my critics, has not engaged with my work beyond searching for their own name and whatever topic is of interest to them. To say I do nothing but “take down people and debunk” is ludicrous. It is certainly what I was once known for, but it was never all I do. None of my books, for instance, is a “debunking,” and my work on the medieval Arabic-language pyramid myth may well be my most lasting contribution to scholarship. I proved Alfonso the Great had a real Arabic source for the ancient Egyptian history he attributes to Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah—something not even the experts who study him for a living had been able to do. But I will concede that most people don’t read my scholarship; they just want the drama. In short: I wrote a major feature in Archaeology magazine this month, and Lynn is on X ranting about Jewish influence.
 
Lynn’s comment that it was “funny” that I helped her case by uncovering “documents” before claiming that I don’t understand historiography is doubly rich. As you might recognize: Scholarship involves a fair appraisal of evidence, not merely one-sided propaganda. I presented what I found because it is the truth, not merely the story I hoped to tell. Lynn conveniently overlooks that I was able to find this information in an afternoon, while she—who claims to be a historian (though, as I understand it, her PhD is not in history)—failed to do even basic historical research into her subject. Yes, I was surprised by what I found, particularly Sitchin’s personal wealth and his corporate history. That is how research works. You learn things you didn’t know. Sitchin has never been a particular fascination of mine, so there was much for me to learn. Again: That’s what research is supposed to be for.
 
That also means having reading comprehension. I did not accuse Lynn of supporting Aryan Jesus. She specifically cited Friedrich Delitzsch, and—in examining the “history of history,” so to speak—I explained that his Babel-and-Bible ideas ended with his student Paul Haupt used them to develop the Aryan Jesus hypothesis. (She also brings it up at 2:43:46, where she both doesn’t realize the idea is Haupt’s, not Delitzsch’s, and seems to misunderstand “Aryan” as a reference to Nazism.) I never attributed this idea to her but instead discussed it in countering her notion that Assyriology was a “Protestant project” intended to disinherit Jews from Chrisitan religious history. As I mentioned, Panbabylonism was only one of many competing ideas floating around Assyriology discourse in the 1900s.
 
That probably reflects the reason she said she did not respond to me. It’s not so much that it is a “waste of time” as she claims but rather because she knows that my research and analytical skills easily outpace hers and one cannot win an argument when one is not in command of the facts. This is a “researcher,” after all, who sought to create a conspiracy theory around Jeffrey Epstein without thinking to consult the Epstein files.
 
Lynn’s final bit about how my supposed love for Israel induced me to make common cause with the dread enemy Zecharia Sitchin both answers her objection to claims of antisemitism with an own-goal and shows how deeply she misunderstands the idea of historical research. First, I can’t recall ever having taken any public position on the state of Israel. Beyond that, there is no contradiction between saying that Sitchin lived a rich, varied, and interesting life and saying that his ancient astronaut research is false and dangerous. To oppose the ancient astronaut idea on evidentiary grounds is not synonymous with automatically demonizing the people who support it. (Some deserve that treatment, to be sure, but thy earn that opprobrium through their odious behavior.) Seconds earlier, Lynn said “just because I'm presenting all of those different viewpoints doesn't mean I’m adhering to any of them” but can’t imagine that anyone else might be able to find someone’s life story interesting without endorsing their conclusions, or their political activities for that matter.
 
I think we can all understand this. I have written about H. P. Lovecraft, a compelling writer and fascinating figure, who was nevertheless a loathsome racist and archconservative, and I have written about Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, who was a humane and liberal leader and a brilliant skeptic of the paranormal, but also an adulterer, borderline pedophile, and murderer.
 
And for the record, I did not accuse Lynn of being antisemitic. I said she “buts up against antisemitic stereotypes” in her piece and pointed to places where she alluded to anti-Jewish tropes alongside places where her feelings about Israel are quite clear. It is, of course, difficult to draw clear lines between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and political opposition to either the state of Israel or the current Netanyahu government. They are not the same, as Lynn halfheartedly notes here (around 2:33:28), and I cannot begin to know what is in Lynn’s heart. But she chose to address this by going to the forum of a man who started this very X Space event by talking about “the Jewish question, or Jewish supremacy” and opining that America will be “enslaved” by Jews. And she chose to discuss in response to Malcolm’s claims about Jewish “overrepresentation” her conclusion that modern Israel is the product of an evil occult death-worshiping society of archaeologist and Assyriologists, “peppered with Zionism,” whose six-pointed star originated in Sumerian paganism.
 
You know, totally normal stuff people talk about when someone mentions Jews.