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Jim Marrs Recycles Anti-Semitic Conspiracies to Make Ancient Alien Claims

8/11/2013

35 Comments

 
On July 10, Ancient Aliens pundit and prolific conspiracy author Jim Marrs appeared on William Henry’s Revelations radio show to discuss ancient aliens in advance of the Contact in the Desert symposium currently going on in Joshua Tree. Marrs was promoting his new book, whose name I refuse to publicize thanks to HarperCollins’ refusal to provide me a review copy. Marrs’s book detailed his belief that world governments are conspiring to cover up knowledge of ancient astronauts, and in so doing, Marrs recycled century-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, exchanging the Jews for aliens and in one case making the Jews into aliens trying to suck the gold and lifeblood from Christian America.

(Full disclosure: Last year Henry, who believes that telephone booths are esoteric symbols of the wormhole through which Jesus travels the universe, asked me on his radio show, and I recorded an episode that he decided not to use after discovering that I am in fact not a believer in ancient astronauts.)

Marrs said the evidence for ancient aliens is “compelling…almost overwhelming,” but says that he is most interested in what the aliens are doing today. Like other alternative writers, he is angry about “what we were taught in school” sometime in the last century and mistakes midcentury schoolbooks’ discussion of general processes of social development for modern academia’s absolute declaration that human societies move gradually and linearly from hunter gatherers to farmers to empires. Obviously, while social complexity has increased over time, it is not a linear process but one of stops and starts, development and collapse and reformation. This was understood by the late nineteenth century so it really shouldn’t surprise Marrs, who thinks there is a conspiracy to hide the fact that social complexity and political integration are non-linear. Apparently the Middle Ages have escaped him. Instead, he finds “compelling” evidence against his straw man in the form of Ezekiel’s vision and the Tower of Babel and crop circles. These prove the aliens jump-started civilizations and destroyed civilizations as they saw fit.

Marrs says that he is the first person to tie together ancient astronauts with the New World Order, apparently because he doesn’t know who David Icke is, despite using Icke’s ideas later in this very interview. Marrs and Henry agree that Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations show that the New World Order is trying to destroy individuality to make us better prey for the aliens and, as Henry says, may put at risk our eternal souls because the NSA spying is a digital Judgment Day presaging the New Heaven and the New Earth. Somehow Paula Deen is involved because Marrs says computers are scary and can’t be trusted (no, I have no idea how it ties to computers since Deen was not exposed by computer spying), and Henry tells us that the U.S. government (all others need not apply) plans to use “the cloud” to create immortality at the Judgment by “making a holographic copy” of our consciousness while our “flesh bags” are left to rot.

It gets worse from there.

Marrs then asserts that “we know” that “They” are behind 9/11 and the 2008 banking crisis, and he asserts that “They” are American politicians under the influence of the aliens. Yes, Marrs claims that 9/11 was an inside job. He also complains that “aspartame” and “fluoride” are tools used in alien-NWO conspiracies, and that non-human aliens masquerading as human politicians and elites, including Prince Philip of England (“one of the bloodlines trying to control everything”), are trying to kill us all to make room for more alien hybrids. He bases this on Philip’s long ago statement that he wished to be reincarnated as a virus to help stop overpopulation. This was in 1986, and repeated in 1988, and cannot seriously be taken as proof that the aliens “want us dead,” as Marrs asserts.

Marrs next claims that the Rothschild family of financiers are the masterminds behind the alien conspiracy—because, Jews!—and that the Rothschilds assert that they are descended from the “ancient Sumerian Anunnaki god Nimrod.” This manages to combine a number of deeply disturbing ideas. The first is Zecharia Sitchin’s claim that the Anunnaki were aliens. Next is David Icke’s claim that the Rothschilds are lizard people descended from Nimrod—a claim derived from twentieth century anti-Semitic literature. The last is the ancient anti-Catholic claim by Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons) that Catholicism is a Satanic cult of Babylonian Nimrod worship. Thus does Marrs marry anti-Catholicism with anti-Semitism in service of anti-government activism. Jews! (By the way: Nimrod is a Biblical figure and cannot be securely identified with any Mesopotamian king or god.)

So why don’t the Anunnaki just kill us all and end the farce? Why because other races of aliens are holding them in check! It’s a “Cold War” he says, unintentionally revealing the outdated paradigm he is projecting into the sky. Marrs argues that George Orwell, a known socialist (and therefore evil), explained the aliens’ master plan in 1984, to divide the world into three political blocks for perpetual war and control. Socialism, as you know, is a Jewish...no, alien...conspiracy. Henry chimes in to add that the “otherworldly entities” are obsessed with gold and money. The Bible, he says, “is about profits […] Why does it boil down to money?” Because you’re using anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about gold-hungry Jews, that’s why. 

I can’t believe this ranting old fool and hippy-dippy New Ager are blissfully repeating anti-Semitic conspiracies with aliens substituted for Jews without apparently understanding any of what they are doing.

Marrs’s ideas are a bizarre mixture of right-wing anti-government paranoia and left-wing anti-corporate and environmental panic, all tied together with an alien-conspiracy ideology that papers over the political contradictions in his ideology. Marrs thinks that Obama is restricting gun ownership in order to leave America defenseless in the face of “15,000 Russian troops” he’s hired to impose martial law. How does that even make sense? How would 15,000 Russians impose anything on America’s nearly 1.5 million active duty military personnel? Marrs wants us to “fight back” against the government and its alien overlords by refusing to comply with Obama’s laws.

Henry hates “Islamo-Fascism” and Marrs thinks “They” (the aliens) have a hidden agenda that involves arming Muslims to promote apocalyptic war. He darkly hints that in “a year or so” the world will have ground to its end, the aliens having destroyed our civilization, stripped us of our rights, and left us in the hands of the NSA, Obama, and the alien-hybrid Rothschild Jews. He also thinks an asteroid or a flood will destroy the coasts, forcing us to huddle under Obama’s protection in the American interior, just as the Chinese have built countless “new” cities in the interior to house their displaced population when the aliens strike. (Remember: The Chinese are communists, which are like socialists, and therefore are part of the alien-Jewish conspiracy.) He worries about George Zimmerman race riots, nuclear bombs, and, of course, Obama declaring an imaginary “three day bank holiday” to destroy the financial system and send control of our world to the aliens/Jews.

Marrs said he was excited to meet up with Michael Tellinger at Contact in the Desert to discuss the claim that Tellinger had actually found the physical laboratory of Enki, the Sitchin-influenced alien “god.” He said he was hopeful this would prove that human DNA was manipulated by aliens, which is why, he said, scientists can’t find—and I quote—“the Missing Link between Neanderthal and Cro Magnon. That’s because there isn’t one.” He’s wrong twice, first in that the “missing link” refers to the  connection between modern Homo sapiens and earlier ape-like species—of which many such human ancestors are now known; and second: Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens apparently interbred (according to actual DNA studies), as he ought to know since his fellow conspiracy theorist Michael Bradley has written extensively about how modern Jews (as opposed to the true Jews chosen by Yahweh) are actually sexually deviant Neanderthal hybrids. Man, these guys love to recycle anti-Semitic conspiracies.

He finishes up by saying that the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery) was illegitimately passed without representation from the southern states, and therefore Lincoln is wrongly hailed as an emancipator and hero when in fact “his plan for the black race” was to “ship them all to South America.” Marrs says that he suspects Lincoln is getting “all this publicity” because “he violated the Constitution” and “They” (Obama, the Rothschilds, and the aliens) plan to use that as justification for Obama’s extra-constitutional actions.

So, let me get this straight: Jim Marrs is saying that he is pro-slavery, anti-Jew, anti-Obama, anti-Muslim, and prepared to “fight back” to preserve the rights of old white Christian men? He makes Glenn Beck look like a moderate for supposing that Anglo-Saxons are a Lost Tribe of Israel.

MAKE IT STOP. If you are listening, HarperCollins (owned by Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch) and Prometheus Entertainment (producers of Ancient Aliens): STOP THIS MAN. STOP PAYING HIM. STOP PUBLISHING HIM AND LETTING HIM ON TV. This is racist, anti-Semitic, paranoid nonsense and needs to stop masquerading as historical analysis.

On a happier note, an episode of Funny or Die’s Yo, Is This Racist? asked if “the Ancient Aliens bullshit” is racist. Nick Thorburn and Andrew Ti say that they’ve never seen Ancient Aliens but note that multiple people have asked the two if the show is racist because it attributes the wonders of the ancient world, primarily found in areas occupied by Native American, African, or Asian peoples, to extraterrestrials. The two note that a “pervasive subtext” suggests racism, but that Ancient Aliens isn’t racist in origin because it deals with time rather than geography. Nevertheless, its current form is functionally racist because it focuses heavily on the accomplishments of non-white peoples and compares their historic achievements unfavorably to their current cultures, which were destroyed by contact with Western people and technology.

“Probably the idea just started out as some kooky, weirdo, ‘this is our weird idea about technology’ ignorance,” says Ti. However, the reverse is actually true. The idea started out with the explicitly racist imperial and colonial ideologies of the nineteenth century and has actually become less racist over time as the ancient alien idea has expanded from explaining only conquered non-white people to encompass all peoples, even white ones. Today, ancient alien speculators happily assert that the Greeks (though not usually the Romans), the Vikings, the Germans, and the Celts were all overrun with aliens.

But as we see with Jim Marrs, it may not be entirely racist but it is apparently still anti-Semitic.

“Fuck people who think the ancient world couldn’t do shit,” says Ti.

35 Comments
spookyparadigm
8/11/2013 08:19:03 am

1. Everyone needs to read Michael Barkun's book A Culture of Conspiracy, which is specifically about how fantastic fiction allows one to completely erase the lines between conspiracy theory and radical/racist politics. Both the left/right lines (he focuses on Icke, but as the above is similar to Icke it applies), but more importantly, how UFOs, Reptilians, etc., act as a gateway drug in a sense. They're all labeled "forbidden knowledge," so once you are down in the sewer, it is all too easy to keep going. He and others have noted some specific attempts by neofascists to use UFOs and other esoteric topics to recruit people, but it also just more generally happens. It's a great book, and of interest to anyone who reads this blog (I have no tie to Dr. Barkun, btw, other than liking the book). In a sense, it is sort of a sequel to Jason's Lovecraft/Theosophy/AncientAliens book, in that it focuses more on how these ideas developed once they were established.

2. I know that the UFO can be used as a signifier of the esoteric by any number of groups and ideologies. And that there are leftish groups, sort of, in small numbers, that use it. But I'm willing to admit at this point that

- ufology as it once was conceived, died around 1973. A science or discovery-based ufology came to a halt in the late 1960s. It got so close to just recognizing that this topic is best studied via sociology and psychology, through the writings of people like Vallee, Keel, and others who identified the mind as the core component of the "mystery." And then it all collapsed, with supposed mainstream ufology embracing conspiracy theory, and other more esoteric branches heading in other ways, including Ancient Aliens

- That year of 1973, while possibly coincidental, is also the best marked date for the start of radical fundamentalist political Christianity in the US (AKA, the Religious Right), complete with a quite esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices including not just rapture theology but demonology, conspiracy theories of all sorts, the Satanic Panic, and so on.

I think that at this point, the most dynamic and influential aspects of "ufology" are almost impossible to remove from being just one branch of folk theology in this larger movement. So it should be no surprise to see the same old populist ideas one could find in past decades of the antecedents of the Religious Right, popping up in the new version.

I'm sticking with that, unless someone else comes up with a better explanation for the ufological obsessions growing since the 1980s with demonic aliens, soul removal/manipulation, Ancient Aliens with a particular emphasis on the Middle East, and numerous ties to more explicit political and religious conspiracy theory as shown above.

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The Other J.
8/11/2013 02:06:16 pm

Agreed on Barkun's book. I've used that book in a course on argument and conspiracy theories.

Another good place to look -- if you have access -- is a specific issue of the scholastic journal "Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology," issue 4.2 (2007). It's entitled "Conspiracy Theories Theorized," and if you don't mind wading through academese, it's a collection of essays by philosophers, psychologists and sociologists trying to break down just how conspiracy theories operate. The issue was organized and compiled by David Coady from the U. of Tasmania Dept. of Philosophy, and he expanded that into a larger book called "Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate."

Dr. Jovan Byford is a senior lecturer in the Dept. of Psychology at the Open University in Britain, and he's also taught and written quite a bit about the thinking behind conspiratorial thinking; I'm not as familiar with his work, but it seems to start with the Bosnian-Serbian ethnic tensions. You can hear a BBC Thinking Allowed interview with him, Univ. of London sociologist Kate Nash, and David Aaronovitch ("Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History")-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b1g96.

I don't really have a problem with some kind of conspiracy theory sea change occurring around 1973, but I'm not so sure it was all that unique. Concepts like satanic panic and possession scares were present in the early colonial period (Salem witch trials), and before the late 19th/early 20th century, you can find much of conspiratorial thinking that's applied to Jews/aliens today applied to other outsiders -- Catholics, Freemasons, Irish, etc. But that's mainly political paranoia in the U.S., where Jacobins/Freemasons were pretty much "the communist under the bed" sort of boogy-man. (There wasn't a one-to-one mapping of Antisemitism to those other conspiratorial fears; Jews had a much different history in Europe than in the U.S., and when those Jacobin/Freemason fears were occurring, there wasn't a critical mass of Jews in the country to scapegoat. Of course much of that has changed by today.)

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spookyparadigm
8/11/2013 03:41:26 pm

Such panics are not unique, of course. But this has gone on for 40 years now, because it isn't just a panic. It's a series of panics, revolving around a broader conspiratorial worldview. That's also not new.

What's new, or at least different from a lot of the other times in American history, is how it has been embraced by the political establishment, and we've seen in the last few years how it is coming close to completely taking over one of the two major parties in the US.

The Other J.
8/11/2013 03:57:11 pm

"What's new, or at least different from a lot of the other times in American history, is how it has been embraced by the political establishment, and we've seen in the last few years how it is coming close to completely taking over one of the two major parties in the US."

There you go -- that is new, and think about what else has come along in that same time span -- a revolution in communications technology. You had Father Coughlin's radio show; Joseph McCarthy televising his hearings; The Manchurian Candidate fictionalizing how widespread conspiratorial paranoia could be perpetuated through mass media and particularly television; actual conspiracies with the Gulf of Tonkin, Watergate, and who knows with the various assassinations in the 1960's. But nothing has done more for the spread of conspiratorial worldviews than the internet. Just look at how fast the "Newtown massacre was a governmental hit job" conspiracy was spread via twitter and youtube. A couple of days ago Jason was writing about Glenn Beck, and most of his existence is on the web now. At the same time, we're using that same medium to counter flawed conspiratorial thinking.

It's a Pandora's box I have no real answers for.

spookyparadigm
8/12/2013 11:46:56 am

The Other J, I don't know if the internet is the issue. I would argue that it is responsible for a great deal of the cross-pollination you see coming up from the grassroots (the Christian-UFO fusion I mention above).

But the issue of powerful institutions tacitly accepting this worldview, I don't think we can blame the internet for that. Beck may be mostly online in some respects, but he largely is still a 'radio' guy, and he would not be much of an issue without the far larger subculture of right-wing talk radio.

The creation of an alternative right-wing media has been going on since the late 1970s, and while some of it has to do with emerging technologies, I think most of it is cultural, and can be tied back to the populist schism I've already mentioned. The sense of resentment at "elite" culture (a completely misguided idea, that somehow a professor is an alien elite, but the billionaire Koch Brothers or media schemer Donald Trump are just good ol boys) is extraordinary, and can absolutely be tied back to the period in question above when American society was substantially remade in the 1950s and 1960s, on many fronts but the most obvious being racial equality in law.

The problem isn't that some people on the internet believe crazy things. Its that right-wing politicians decided in the late 1970s to embrace these crazy people as a wing of their movement (the New Left had its share, smaller but existing, of conspiracy theory, but you will be hard pressed to find much traction from the Democratic mainstream). And one of the reasons I think they did so was to take advantage of the new media that the religious right was creating. Remember, the televangelists, the Falwells and Robertsons and Roberts and others, they came before Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck. In the 1980s and even the early 1990s, television was the Big 3 (whose politics were centered primarily around selling refrigerators and pancake batter), a smattering of fairly innocuous cable channels none of which had any significant political orientation unless you consider MTV liberal (a case could be made, a weak case, but a case), PBS (again, not remotely liberal politically, but culturally associated with the interests of the educated middle class, and therefore branded "elite" or "liberal") ... and the televangelists, including Pat Robertson's own cable network. Likewise, I don't think it is any accident that cultural right wing politics have done so well on talk radio even though each election makes clear this group is only one part of a roughly split electorate. The radio talkers largely followed in the footsteps of radio preachers (see Coughlin) in style, just as "shock jocks" followed in a longer tradition of music DJs.

I think medium affects message in various ways. But the rise of populist conspiracy theory has been decades in the making, and predates the internet, especially the social media internet. You can't blame it on twitter (I think other things, including a truly toxic online culture, can be blamed on twitter, but not this).

The Other J.
8/12/2013 08:26:55 pm

*slow clap*

That was a great overview of late-20th century political paranoia. It's funny how that anti-elite culture emerged in the political right, because they William F. Buckley for so long trying to purge at least the party of delusional thinking -- he did a lot to keep the Birchers at bay. I don't know if this is the main culprit, but I think Kevin Phillips would argue the Republican Southern strategy of the 1970's -- that he helped orchestrate -- opened the doors to a particular kind of Christian right paranoia that was in part shaped by Jim Crow and resistance to the civil rights movement. So maybe that's the 70's hinge you're thinking of.

Along with the radio and the rise of the televangelists was direct mail, which the right used as an organizing tool much more effectively than the left. That persists today (it's part of what keeps Newt Gingrich afloat), but has exploded with the internet -- email lists, newsletters, etc.

I'm not saying the internet is the reason for conspiratorial thinking today, just a better megaphone. Two decades ago, it would have taken at least a few days to a week for the paranoiacs to spread the word that the government was behind Newtown; it took seconds, and reached far more people than direct mail or AM radio could. But you're right -- the kind of thinking that generated such a claim was already present long before packet switching had been perfected.

spookyparadigm
8/13/2013 02:32:22 pm

Other J writes

"I don't know if this is the main culprit, but I think Kevin Phillips would argue the Republican Southern strategy of the 1970's -- that he helped orchestrate -- opened the doors to a particular kind of Christian right paranoia that was in part shaped by Jim Crow and resistance to the civil rights movement. So maybe that's the 70's hinge you're thinking of. "

Absolutely. I peg it to 1973 because

- Roe v. Wade is arguably the biggest single event that allows religion to produce political foot soldiers

- Watergate blows up that year. While this confirmed some of the CT thinking on the left, it largely had the opposite effect in the bigger scheme of things, cementing the "liberal media" meme that has persisted ever since and been a nice talking point for populist resentment of "liberal elites" (and an easier one to use on a national stage than the leftover resentment of outsider agitators helping end segregation)

- American troops start leaving Vietnam. The loss of the Vietnam war has been driving much of the conservative hatred of the "liberal elite" in the Baby Boom generation and older Americans, ever since. The war itself was routinely explained by a conspiracy theory, the classic Stabbed in the Back ("the liberal elites and media hamstrung American efforts in Vietnam").

- 1973 is to some degree the beginning of the end of America's unprecedented post-WWII prosperity. While larger forces were at work to already soften the economy, the oil embargo around the Yom Kippur war was, literally, a foreign plot (albeit an open political one), and served as a convenient and memorable opening to the economically stagnant 1970s.

So, the year saw numerous explicit assaults and insults (some real, such as changing economics damaging the working and middle classes, others perceived such as Watergate) "traditional" working class values, following on a decade of setbacks and rebukes for the evangelical white south, that was in the process of being exploited by the Southern Strategy.

Out of this emerged the modern conservative movement and the Reagan Revolution.

Passing Through
6/9/2015 07:34:13 am

Found this site by accident. Your blog entry makes you come off like an angry hasbarat. But is there any other kind?

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spookyparadigm
8/11/2013 08:21:43 am

PS: I also should add, that the death of ufology around 1973 is more or less one half conspiracy theory, one half abduction. That's where much of this soul stuff and other horror stories come from.

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Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 09:54:41 am

There is also a paranoid & pathological mindset which consists of interpreting everything from an antisemitic perspective.I am sorry to say but the universe is not orbiting around the Jewish question.This morbid fixation exists both inside antisemitic circles and the Jewish community.Pathological antisemites are obsessed with Jews,& Jews are more than often obsessed with their own "Jewish identity" & the idea of being the target of permanent or imminent persecution.These 2 communities need each other in order to exist.Antisemites see the world as dominated & controlled by Jews,Jews believe that the very fabric of the universe is antisemitic. The concept of "Jewish Semitism" is ludicrous as the doctrine of Aryanism.More than 80% of Jews are not even Semites.I think it is about time we start to see people as individuals,not as members of particular ethno-religious communities.

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Scott Hamilton
8/11/2013 10:11:25 am

There's something kind of fascinating about someone generalizing about "the Jews" and uncritically repeating anti-Jewish propaganda, then claiming they want us to "see people as individuals."

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Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 10:37:10 am

I was expecting this type of accusation,& to be honest,it doesn't make me sweat.I couldn't care of less.The antisemitic accusation is a canard but you are welcome to stick to it,especially since I am Jew by "birth & blood".According to the Halakha, Jewishness is passed through the mother.Although I have always rejected the religion & the idea of my own "Jewish identity",both my grand mother & mother are Scandinavian secular Jews.We could continue this conversation in Hebrew if you wish so?.

Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 10:54:48 am

"There's something kind of fascinating about someone" throwing baseless accusations from the safety of his computer.Unfortunatly you picked a fight with the wrong person.What do you know about Jewishness,Judaism & Jewish history?.Do you speak Hebrew,have you ever visited Eretz?.If not,I would respectfully suggest you to keep your childish retorts to yourself.The last thing you want,is to be humiliated on a public forum.

Uncle Ron
8/11/2013 12:31:59 pm

Scott, That was just Tara's way of bringing the conversation around to her favorite topic: Tara. U.R.

Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 01:15:41 pm

Uncle Ron.
What I found fascinating is American obsession (& despicable hypocrisy) with antisemitism & philosemitism, especially in light of the history of Jewish persecutions in Europe.Americans never left a finger to solve the Jewish question,On the contrary,during the first wave of Jewish persecutions,when Germany introduced the Nuremberg Laws,US Congress prevented large-scale Jewish immigration to the US.Then there was the SS St.Louis "incident".Now we know, that the Roosevelt administration knew exactly what was going in the concentration camps but did nothing to stop it.They have their priorities...Americans are the last persons on this planet to even pretend to lecture anyone about this issue.Charity begins at home.

Varika
8/11/2013 02:22:37 pm

So, Tara, are you advocating that the US should have mounted a large-scale invasion of another country because it was doing something they didn't like? You know, JUST LIKE was done in Afghanistan and Iraq that I have seen you bitch about before? Oh, but it's DIFFERENT when it's YOUR ancestors, right?

Seriously. It's not like the Holocaust wasn't one of the worst tragedies in human history, but it's still complete hipocrisy to complain that a nation does something, and then turn around and complain that they DIDN'T in the past. Or do you just hate the US in general and pick anything you can find to piss on us about?

The Other J.
8/11/2013 03:45:11 pm

I don't want to step in the middle of a budding fight, but there was the 1939 Slattery Report about developing Alaska through European Jewish immigration there. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes came up with the plan in the weeks after Kristallnacht, and suggested the U.S. accept European Jewish refugees and re-settle them in Alaska -- which could have meant Alaska becoming a Jewish homeland. So it was possible, and suggested, but the proposal was nixed.

To be fair, part of the argument against the plan was that the U.S. was still climbing out of the Depression and didn't have the necessary resources to support a refugee population. Also, even though many church groups supported the idea, only one major Jewish group did, and apparently most American Jewish groups were against the it. The head of the American Jewish Congress argued that the plan made "a wrong and hurtful impression ... that Jews are taking over some part of the country for settlement," and didn't support it.

Michael Chabon's book "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" is based on an alternative history where the proposal was accepted and Alaska did become that home for Jewish refugees.

Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 07:15:11 pm

Varika,
Absolutely not.It is impossible to change the course of history,& try to tell today what people should have done in 1930`s.What I despise is the moral hypocrisy & the intellectual terrorism surrounding this issue.As soon as someone tries to be critical of Jewish identity politics, he is systematically labeled as "antisemitic",If that person happens to be Jew,he is classified as a "self hating Jew".

"Oh, but it's DIFFERENT when it's YOUR ancestors, right?".
I was raised by my grand parents who were "secular Jews" but viciously opposed to the creation of the Jewish State.One of the reasons I became so hostile to Jewish identity, is because I never understood how only 3 years after the liberation of Auschwitz,the people who were outrageously victimized by the Nazis,could act like Nazis. What the Israelis did to the Palestinians in 1948 (the massacres,the deportations,the ethnic cleansing & the land-property theft) is an absolute disgrace & a stench on Jewish identity, & I refuse to be a part of it.Am I critical enough with my "own people"?.

Reply
Graham
8/12/2013 05:49:46 am

Tara,

You may call yourself Anti-Zionist, Anti-Israeli or Anti-Illumiati, but those you support do not bother with such hairsplitting, there is only the Jew, an animal fit only for Beating, Degradation and Slaughter.

Or, to put it another way, remember the Mumbai terrorist attacks, how the attackers just killed Americans, even if they voted for Obama...

Tara Jordan
8/12/2013 04:15:25 pm

Graham.
I never mentioned "Zionism" in the first place & as far as I remember I never pretended to be pro-Palestinian.
I don't know why you brought the "Illuminati" into this conversation.The Illuminati conspiracy is absolute bullshit.The group existed in late 1770`s, but pretending that they are active today is as ludicrous as claiming that there are ancient Aliens ruins on the Dark Side of the Moon.

Tara Jordan
8/11/2013 07:33:07 pm

The OtherJ.
The truth is,the Jewish lobby himself was against the idea of large-scale Jewish immigration to the US.It thought it would be prejudicial to American Jews by increasing antisemitism.As you rightfully stated,"the U.S. was still climbing out of the Depression, & we have to remember that for the public opinion,"Jewish bankers" were responsible for the Great Depression.

It was not my initial intention on blaming Americans for what happened between 1933 & 1945,but as you probably noticed,I became systematically attacked by a semi ignoramus who accused me of "repeating anti-Jewish propaganda". What does this imbecile know about Jewishness?. I strongly suggest him to read Jewish scholars such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz,Nahum Goldmann,Israel Shahak,Bernard Lazare,Abraham Leon,Leon Bloy,Simone Weil,Avraham Steinberg,Ben Hecht,Izzy Cohen,Illan Pape,Shlomo Sand.They all denounce the same pathologies affecting Jewish identity politics.Afterwards, the moron is more than welcome to stick with the accusation of "repeating anti-Jewish propaganda", but I consider I am in good company with these individuals.

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Bill
8/12/2013 05:01:48 am

Tara,

If you have Jewish ancestors does that mean that you are also one of the Lizard People?

Anthony
5/21/2015 02:34:57 am

What's absurd about your comment is that interest in an ethnic or cultural identity is not the rational or moral equivalent of bigotry- nor is it "pathological." Additionally, the Jews have, in fact, been persecuted by both of their daughter religions since the ascension of those religions to power. Periods where Jews have been (or were) allowed full social and civil rights represent a tiny fraction of the time where Islamic and Christian rulers held power over Jewish populations; with almost the entirety of that period being in the last 100 years. Accordingly, a failure to incorporate that persecution into Jewish ethno-cultural identity would be a denial of reality. Quite frankly, had Jews been offered actual social "salvation" by conversion the religion would likely cease to have existed hundreds of years ago. However, ghettos, anti Jewish pogroms and the cunning switch of seeing Jews as members of a religion or a race (whichever was convenient to justify oppression) forged the Jews into an ethnicity as well as a belief system.

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Graham
8/11/2013 10:48:53 am

That mindset is taking the next step by claiming that the phrase 'conspiracy theory' did not exist before the 1960s, in the same way that Mike Barra (A guy claiming to have proof AncientAliens left evidence of their visitations on the Moon.) states that Pareidolia did not exist until the 1990 when 'skeptics' cooked up the term.

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spookyparadigm
8/11/2013 03:48:50 pm

Bob Blaskiewiscz just covered this question.

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/nope_it_was_always_already_wrong

That said, I do think there is evidence that the term (especially conspiracy theorist) got picked up a lot more in the 1960s. For starters, check out the ngram from google books

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy+theorist%2C+conspiracy+theory&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

as a tool for those in the establishment to throw at populist conspiracy theorists of the John Birch/Goldwater/McCarthy type that emerged in the 1950s. But I'd argue this wasn't so much a plot by the CIA, as a mix of an intellectual and media trend, and the actual growth of conspiracy theories in American politics at that time. Though I wouldn't be surprised if it also had something to do with the schism and subsequent upheaval in the American political party system in the 1960s, when the Southern Democrats migrated en masse to the GOP over segregation and civil rights, and Goldwater's populism paved the way for the reorganization after Nixon, whereas before this wave that creates modern American conservatism, the Republican Party was a lot more like your classic business elites ala George H. W. Bush. In a sense, you see the last gaps of this struggle happening today, every time a Tea Party candidate removes a well-known GOP incumbent in a primary.

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Only Me
8/11/2013 01:32:20 pm

There's an old saying that fits Jim Marrs to a tee:
"Crazy as a rat in a plugged up shithouse."

I honestly don't know how you slog through stuff like this, Jason. You da man!

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The Other J.
8/11/2013 02:21:14 pm

Marrs is really troublesome because his grandfatherly Miner 49'r appearance and folksy ways seems to take the edge off what he's actually saying.

I think he's gotten increasingly paranoid, weird and racist over the years, especially since 9/11. He was easier to take in doses when he was focused on JFK. But since then... he really makes me wonder how much good old southern racism he's consciously re-packaging in alien skin, and how much is received knowledge he's mindlessly parroting without realizing how racist it is. But there has to be non-bigoted people out there who sincerely buy into some this stuff and over time start to see it in other groups of Others around them turning alien conspiracies back around into regular old racism.

Conspiracy theories don't worry me; conspiracy theorists do.

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spookyparadigm
8/11/2013 03:52:07 pm

Back when I followed CTs as a topic more closely in the early 2000s, there were CT sites that after awhile I just couldn't visit because the racist and other appalling material there started to get to you. The crap Marrs is spewing up above would have fit in very nicely.

Varika
8/11/2013 02:24:42 pm

"plans to use “the cloud” to create immortality at the Judgment by “making a holographic copy” of our consciousness while our “flesh bags” are left to rot."

....well, SOMEBODY was watching Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole. That, after all, was the entire premise of one show, and used those exact terms. It's another show of "bad science," tbh, and more insidious for the fact that it takes real science and makes a bad patchwork of things that don't relate in the way the show claims it does. Like conflating robotics with evolution!

Reply
Mark L link
8/12/2013 11:07:13 pm

Jason, I think you're a great writer and enjoy reading your blog, but I think you need to lay off the "I'm not mentioning this book because they wouldn't send me a review copy" stuff.

It makes you sound a little bit petty - they're not obliged to send a copy to every blogger who asks; and given they'll be fairly sure what your review of it will be like, it's sort of understandable they don't want to throw a perfectly good book down the drain.

If you want to stick the boot in to Marrs, just torrent a copy, pretend you bought it and review it that way.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
8/12/2013 11:45:00 pm

No one is obliged to send me a copy of anything, and they are within their rights to refuse to send me a copy. But so far they are the only publisher to whom I have made a formal written request on letterhead (as per their rules) who refused to even acknowledge the request, even if they chose not to send one. I have piles of books that publishers have sent me, including major publishers and publishers of alternative books. So for a while I'm not going to do Harpers' publicity work for them. Why should I help them make money off that particular title when Marrs gives his ideas away for free? When the book has failed (it's sales apparently weren't very good), I'll go back to using its title.

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Francois Tremblay link
9/5/2013 11:55:32 pm

"Obviously, while social complexity has increased over time,"

Probably just a nitpick there, but I've read a few anthropology books and I don't think that's actually true. Don't confuse complexity with amplitude. The Western world has traditionally concentrated power to a greater extent than most societies in history, but the amplitude of power does not make it more complex.

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Jason Colavito link
9/5/2013 11:59:07 pm

It's an interesting question, but in terms of what I was referring to, modern society is clearly more complex than Paleolithic hunter-gatherer tribes, and relative to the individual, the modern world of 7 billion people is perforce more complex than a life where you might interact with fewer than 100 people your whole life. Now whether society is today more complex than it was 50 or 150 years ago is a different question and much less clear.

Reply
Tomaidh
5/23/2016 09:05:51 pm

An anti-Semite used to be someone who hates the Jews.
Now it's someone the Jews hate.

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Cory Barnes
6/9/2016 03:49:31 pm

Well, I doubt there was much appetite for Alaska amongst Jewish populations. The process of buying land to settle back in Palestine was already underway and had began in WW1. The promise had already been made by Britain and the US to aid the Jews in establishing a Jewish homeland that included Jerusalem back then.
The American industrialists were cashing in big on the German war machine and there was a great deal of reluctance to pass up those profits to pursue a morally righteous agenda. The Japanese ended up being the unwitting heroes in that scenario.
Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador to Britain, was working hard to ensure the Americans did not enter the war against Hitler. His buddies were making the big bucks off of the situation.

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    • Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean >
      • Jimmy Excerpt
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    • Legends of the Pyramids
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    • Television Reviews >
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    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Eridu Genesis
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Resurrection of Marduk
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Zoroastrian Fatal Winter
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Fragments of Artapanus
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Fragments of Bruttius
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Byzantine World Chronicle
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Chronicle to 724
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Pseudo-Diocles Fragmentum
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • Popol Vuh
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Atlantis as Biblical History
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Atlantis and Nimrod
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and Hanno's Periplus
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
          • Amazing New Light (Hoax)
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • History of Paleontology
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • Arabic Names of Egyptian Kings
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • America Known to the Ancients
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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