JASON COLAVITO
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Legends of the Pyramids
    • The Mound Builder Myth
    • Jason and the Argonauts
    • Cult of Alien Gods >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Foundations of Atlantis
    • Knowing Fear >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Hideous Bit of Morbidity >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Cthulhu in World Mythology >
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
      • Necronomicon Fragments
      • Oral Histories
    • Fiction >
      • Short Stories
      • Free Fiction
    • JasonColavito.com Books >
      • Faking History
      • Unearthing the Truth
      • Critical Companion to Ancient Aliens
      • Studies in Ancient Astronautics (Series) >
        • Theosophy on Ancient Astronauts
        • Pyramidiots!
        • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • Fiction Anthologies >
        • Unseen Horror >
          • Contents
          • Excerpt
        • Moon Men! >
          • Contents
      • The Orphic Argonautica >
        • Contents
        • Excerpt
      • The Faust Book >
        • Contents
        • Excerpt
      • Classic Reprints
      • eBook Minis
    • Free eBooks >
      • Origin of the Space Gods
      • Ancient Atom Bombs
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Ancient America
      • Horror & Science
  • Articles
    • Skeptical Xenoarchaeologist Newsletter >
      • Volumes 1-10 Archive >
        • Volume 1 Archive
        • Volume 2 Archive
        • Volume 3 Archive
        • Volume 4 Archive
        • Volume 5 Archive
        • Volume 6 Archive
        • Volume 7 Archive
        • Volume 8 Archive
        • Volume 9 Archive
        • Volume 10 Archive
      • Volumes 11-20 Archive >
        • Volume 11 Archive
        • Volume 12 Archive
        • Volume 13 Archive
        • Volume 14 Archive
        • Volume 15 Archive
        • Volume 16 Archive
        • Volume 17 Archive
        • Volume 18 Archive
        • Volume 19 Archive
        • Volume 20 Archive
      • Volumes 21-30 Archive >
        • Volume 21 Archive
        • Volume 22 Archive
    • Television Reviews >
      • Ancient Aliens Reviews
      • In Search of Aliens Reviews
      • America Unearthed
      • Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar
      • Search for the Lost Giants
      • Forbidden History Reviews
      • Expedition Unknown Reviews
      • Legends of the Lost
      • Unexplained + Unexplored
      • Rob Riggle: Global Investigator
    • Book Reviews
    • Galleries >
      • Bad Archaeology
      • Ancient Civilizations >
        • Ancient Egypt
        • Ancient Greece
        • Ancient Near East
        • Ancient Americas
      • Supernatural History
      • Book Image Galleries
    • Videos
    • 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 >
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • 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
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • 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
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • 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
        • 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
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • 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
        • 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
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
      • 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
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
  • About Jason
    • Biography
    • Jason in the Media
    • Contact Jason
    • About JasonColavito.com
    • Terms and Conditions
  • Search

On Offensiveness, Trigger Warnings, and H. P. Lovecraft

8/25/2015

32 Comments

 
It’s hard not to see a relationship between two articles that ran over the last week in the Atlantic. The first is extremely depressing and discusses the rise of “trigger warnings” and “microaggression alerts” on college campuses. On the surface this doesn’t seem like it would relate to subjects of interest to us, but bear with me.
In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt depict a world where colleges and universities encourage young minds to think in pathological ways based on emotion and police these emotional reactions with an iron fist. Although the authors use a frankly bizarre cognitive-behavioral psychology model to frame their investigation, the overall theme is quite clear: In an effort to prevent any type of harassment and to avoid federal investigations, colleges have gradually become police states, reinforcing an ideology that individuals’ emotions are so fragile that a single word could send them into a spiral of despair. Such a state emerged from the best of intentions, derived from the notion that students should be protected from overt harassment and that students who have experienced trauma may need to be informed when discussions of that trauma occur, lest it make them uncomfortable. Consequently, students are increasingly demanding “trigger warnings” be placed on course content, including classic literature, to warn others that such works contain racism, sexism, classism, or depictions of sexuality and violence that might cause a traumatic flashback.

But this has morphed into a system of institutionalized paternalism, due in part to the U.S. Dept. of Education changing the definition of harassment in 2013 from “overt” offensiveness to merely “unwelcome” speech. As a result, students have learned that their emotions can be used as weapons to punish others and to avoid being challenged. Hence, the authors say, the rise of “microaggression” reporting, in which students rely on the power judicial procedures to police one another’s word choices, lest the connotation of a misplaced verb “trigger” trauma. In extreme cases, this has resulted in punitive speech codes, and because the sole criterion for offensiveness is how the alleged victim feels, there is no defense against an accusation, since emotion cannot be disputed. According to the authors, this Orwellian enforced emotional neutrality has infected my own alma mater, Ithaca College, where in March the student government voted to request that the college create an anonymous reporting system and keep detailed records about every student’s use of microaggressive sexist or racist speech, with punishments appropriate to the number of naughty words a student says.

When I was a student there many years ago, they already had a system like that in place, though it was not linked to individual students’ names. They called it “BIAS Alerts,” though I can’t remember what the acronym BIAS was supposed to stand for. They would post a weekly flyer everywhere on campus listing racist, sexist, or homophobic language or incidents observed and reported that week, and these alerts were the laughingstock of the school. Some of the less progressive students would fabricate “BIAS” incidents in order to generate a BIAS Alert and then laugh at it. I shudder to think what it must be like to attend a school where similar types of reporting aren’t just for “awareness” but serve as a totalitarian system of punishment.

OK, so what does this have to do with history? Quite a bit. First, the authors report that professors (or, let’s be honest, adjunct instructors and T.A.s) are increasingly trimming their courses to fit the new mold, to the point that it simply becomes easier to avoid challenging students in any way than to deal with the fallout if someone is “offended.” There are two immediate issues that arise from this: First, this makes it more difficult to teach any sort of material that might offend a student’s belief system, and second, it creates a situation where students expect that their emotional reactions—and thus their ideologies—should be elevated above facts, something they will carry with them into the future. Both of these problems directly impact questions of fringe science and history.

When I went off to college in 1999, as I wrote in my introduction to The Cult of Alien Gods a decade ago, I was deeply interested in fringe history and convinced that Graham Hancock was onto something with Fingerprints of the Gods. One of my professors, in a course on skepticism in journalism, challenged me to critically examine a piece of journalism, and I chose Fingerprints (since it was billed as the work of a journalist) and pulled the book apart claim by claim, which began to undermine my trust in Hancock’s judgment. This same professor also showed the class the NOVA episode tearing apart Erich von Däniken’s ancient astronaut theory.

We know from surveys that a large number of college students are open to ancient astronaut and lost civilization beliefs, not to mention creationism and Nephilim theories. Would a student entering school today still be challenged to examine the foundations of those beliefs? Or would those students declare the challenge offensive? How can one teach critical thinking in a world where the authorities themselves prefer motivated reasoning and emotional thinking? There have already been reports of creationist students using claims of offense to object to references to evolution.

I can’t help but see a reflection of this in the article that ran a few days ago to mark H. P. Lovecraft’s 125th birthday. In that article, Philip Eil writes about the difficulties that Lovecraft’s extreme racism have created for his fans, and he talks about the way the debate over Lovecraft’s racism, particularly in terms of the World Fantasy Award statuette, descended into questions of “political correctness,” which is not a world removed from trigger warnings and microaggression. Lovecraft’s legacy, Eli says, rests on a tension between the surface Gothic of his work and the underlying rage at the decline of WASP culture. “I haven’t made peace with this tension,” Eil writes, “and I’m not sure I ever will. But I have decided that perhaps he’s the literary icon our country deserves. The stories he conjured, in many ways, say as much about his bigotry as they do his genius.”

Lovecraft’s foaming rage at immigrants presages by nearly a century the rise of Donald Trump, and the underlying motives are not all that different. A particular type of race, class, and gender-based privilege is in steep decline, and those who once exercised it direct their anxiety outward toward those they feel are stealing that privilege. It perhaps says something about our culture that where twenty or thirty years ago critics focused on Lovecraft’s cosmic themes, but today it is his view on race, class, and gender that dominate. I would say that this marks his final ascendance into the academic canon, but I fear his stories would require a trigger warning before that could happen.

32 Comments
Scarecrow
8/25/2015 03:52:19 am

The UK TV News is excessively paternalistic giving us all flash photography warnings and "Some viewers may find the following images disturbing" of ALREADY CENSORED FOOTAGE where folks need to access Youtube to get the full coverage. Impacts of plane crashes - where the impacts cannot even be seen because it happened behind trees - is also censored. Gee, This sort of nurse-maiding did not exist 30 years ago.

Reply
Mark L
8/25/2015 08:01:57 pm

30 years ago, UK TV was censoring the voices of legitimately elected Irish politicians, so I'm not sure where you get the idea from that this sort of nurse-maiding didn't exist back then.

Reply
Scarecrow
8/25/2015 09:59:18 pm

The original voices of Sinn Fein and the IRA were censored (Airey Neave was a close personal friend of Thatcher) but there was dubbing.


Scarecrow
8/26/2015 03:09:53 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions

Subtitling was initially used, but one of the main ways the new law was circumvented was by substituting the voices of actors for those who could not speak directly.[17] The BBC and its commercial counterparts compiled a list of actors who could be called upon to record voiceovers for news items and documentaries about the Troubles, often at short notice. The actors frequently spoke the words in real time along with the person whose voice was being dubbed. One such interview with Gerry Adams once appeared on the US CNN network without anyone realising they were hearing an actor speak.

Scarecrow
8/26/2015 03:18:18 am

I remember the BBC passing a directive never to mention Peter Mandelson's homosexuality (following the disclosure by Diane Abbott who said it was open knowledge in the House of Commons). That only publicised the information even more.

Mark L
8/26/2015 09:20:31 pm

So, censoring their voices then, just like I said.

Scarecrow
8/27/2015 08:08:32 am

The BBC showed crashings 30 years ago, and did not nursemaid us all with flash photography warnings. The BBC even showed predatory animals catching their prey and gobbling them up, as well as killer whales catching baby pup seals and swallowing them.

Weatherwax
8/27/2015 08:47:46 am

Some 20 years ago a female slalom skier was killed at a competition when she tripped and went head first into a post. The news stations here happily showed the accident followed by her lying motionless in the snow.

The following story involved animals in an accident, I don't remember what. Horses falling in a race or something. The same anchors made it very clear with several warnings that the footage was disturbing, but none of the animals were injured.

Reply
titus pullo
8/25/2015 04:11:22 am

I had to laugh when I read this one. I just dropped my son off at Ithaca College this past Sunday and in his dorm room was literature about fighting "bias"..I read the pamphlet and laughed. It really read like a Monty Python skit of 1984. Of course kids will manipulate any PC system, they are kids and driven like all of us by self interest. I had a Jewish roommate from a very wealthy family as an undergrad 30 years ago and everytime things didn't go his way it was "anti semitism" and he was on his way to what at that time was the "diversity" office.

My son saw me reading it and said, "don't worry Dad, I'm not political in any way."

Reply
Mark L
8/25/2015 08:00:54 pm

It started from good intentions, which is what makes it worse. I'm as PC and liberal as they come, but I think "trigger warnings" are a ludicrous system for universities and schools. The real world has no trigger warnings.

Reply
Kal
8/25/2015 04:22:52 am

The hyper conservatives of Fox news, not really news IMO, seem to dislike all the politically correct stuff and coddling of their generation, but when it comes to younger generations, college voters, they're treated like they are all dumb stoners who will turn liberal if not coddled into following some yes man politico. After all, a mediocre leader is better than an evil one, and a rich fantasy leader, even better. Then they cry foul when the citizen journalists show all of the footage of both sides and make either pundit look like Yosemite Sam or Wylie Coyote.. (Cartoon characters from the 60s). They complain about being too PC about calling out terrorist groups or making thinly veiled racist comments about immigration, over there at Faux News, and others, and wonder why they never get them to vote. As for a similar deal in colleges, it seems to tout the liberal sentiment in some of the louder colleges, and makes people seem like they can't make up their minds. Real harassment on campus is a thing, as is date rape, but if there are too many faculty people crying wolf about these things, when a real thing happens they might ignore it. Then someone's going to get sued. It seems they cannot make a distinction between perceived actions and actual actions. I would not take a funny look or even a curse word as an assault. That is just someone being a jerk. An assault is something where there is actual contact. So there is this odd double standard from all sides. Do people start monitoring our thoughts like in 1984 to keep us all nice, or do people actually try and think before they say or do things? Education trumps ignorance. Trump himself is another story. Lovecraft would have loved that guy. What a joke. It depends on who is the one doing the harassment. If it's some rich student or someone in charge of something, or heaven forbid a teacher, they can get better lawyers. If it's just some drunken student's word against another, not so much. Should we tell things like they are or not? Should we be afraid to tell the bullies where to go? It seems like they're making this over complicated. Find the bullies and punish them. Don't punish the victims.

Reply
Only Me
8/25/2015 04:51:21 am

"I must respectfully disagree, good sir/madam. You have your opinions, I have mine."

TRANSLATION:

"Fuck your feelings!"

I suppose it's too late for colleges to return to being institutions for *higher learning*, instead of hugboxes for those who are in for a rude awakening once they enter the real world.

Reply
Adorable
8/25/2015 06:37:17 am

Political correctness is the norm in much of the real world. Businesses are quite used to being politically correct for business reasons. This is nothing new even if acceptability is always changing. This should not be surprising because most businesses generally try to avoid offending people unless they believe it will get them more money. AFLAC firing Gilbert Gottfried was a business decision. Companies are severing ties to Trump for good reasons. It should not be seen as unique to liberals as conservative political correctness is a thing and it can hardly be denied that conservatives have tried getting professors punished for saying things that were politically incorrect to conservatives. Conservatives calls for civility are often just calls for conservative political correctness.

The person who gets mad at being told not to use the n-word because it used to be OK before the PC police came along is the one that doesn't live in the real world these days. The frat boys saying "No means yes!" are the ones that will have difficulty with the real world. Living in the real world means not being "authentic" and altering your behavior on the thoughts and feelings of others to a decent extent.

Speech codes are nothing new on campuses. They have been around since forever in American colleges. Such restrictions have been relaxed over the years, if anything.

The whole thing continues to come off as conservatives being mad because they feel they are losing as standards of acceptability shift so the institutionalized politeness that isn't anything new is being seen as working against them now instead of for them.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
8/25/2015 06:52:49 am

What's different, though, is that today we are looking for administrative or even judicial solutions to what was once a social problem. If someone was offensive or prone to saying and doing offensive things, the solution was to shun the person, which society once did. But with weaker social institutions, we now want social behavior regulated by the state, and that's bad news for everyone. The standards for when the state should get involved have gradually pushed down from imminent danger or chronic harassment to simple, one-time offensiveness, a term that is slippery enough to be used to cover anything someone disagrees with.

David Bradbury
8/25/2015 11:12:24 am

"If someone was offensive or prone to saying and doing offensive things, the solution was to shun the person"

Or give the person a cable TV show.

Dave
8/26/2015 02:45:20 am

"If someone was offensive or prone to saying and doing offensive things, the solution was to shun the person"

Or that person runs for president of the United States and certain people applaud his honesty and candor.

Platy
8/26/2015 03:12:37 pm

""I must respectfully disagree, good sir/madam. You have your opinions, I have mine."

TRANSLATION:

"Fuck your feelings!"
Maybe it's just me, but in a lot of these situations, it seems to actually be the latter statement. That or it starts off as the former statement and goes to the latter.

Reply
V
8/25/2015 06:06:08 am

Speaking as someone attending college right now--a non-traditional student seeking a new degree--I think that, frankly, this is alarmist bullshit. Even within the US Department of Education's legal definitions, there is recognition of the difference between "classroom material" and "offensive speech." My more recent degree, in education, discussed all KINDS of "offensive" subjects--including child rape, abuse, treatment of individuals with disabilities, racism, sexism, religious belief systems, homelessness, mental illness, and abject poverty.

Please educate yourselves about procedure. There is more to it than a student declaring that something is "offensive." Even with the definition being "unwelcome speech," the STUDENT is still the one with burden of proof placed upon them. There are still things they have to do well beyond whinging to a counselor. There are forms they have to fill out and proof they have to obtain. There is a mediation process, and the professor is quite properly given benefit of the doubt in the face of this type of accusation. It takes WEEKS or even MONTHS before actual action is taken with regards to a report of "offensive speech" from an instructor.

Professors are not trimming material out of fear of "offensive speech" complaints. Professors are trimming material because of a fundamental shift in societal beliefs of what is acceptable and unacceptable. But they're not removing "Romeo and Juliet" from the syllabus because someone might object to the themes of child marriage (Juliet is 14), gang warfare, or suicide. They're just shifting the focus of discussion to "this needs to be evaluated within context." And isn't that a VITAL part of critical thinking, sir? Critical thinking that I'm afraid I find sorely lacking in this particular blog post.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
8/25/2015 06:29:16 am

I imagine that there is a great deal of variation from school to school, and there is certainly a bit of alarmism in the authors' article. (It would seemingly be impossible to police speech as closely as they imply.) That said, the speech codes do exist and can be documented, so they aren't entirely the product of journalists' imagination. It's also a fact that students are more demanding today about asserting their right not to be offended.

Reply
Adorable
8/25/2015 07:55:16 am

Hoolaboos about political correctness at universities are older than I am. Email and other modern technology makes it vastly easier to make it look like it is more common than ever even if it isn't.

If anything, actual assertions appear more minor than in mid to late 20th century. Jokes about Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything or fears of student destruction of college property reflected real beliefs, Assertions no longer involve much more than a complaint that probably goes nowhere. Even then, the professors always seem to have almost no examples for themselves with being more than a minor annoyance always looking more like something that could hypothetically happen.

X
8/25/2015 07:57:08 am

I was an instructor accused of something like "offensive speech" because the student wanted a worked solution for homework posted - to which I disagreed, suggesting it would be better if the student attempted the problem before asking for the solution. Which the student deemed my position to be offensive and led to an immediate investigation and eventual dismissal. Students have all the power. SO much for academic freedom.

Reply
Crash55
8/25/2015 10:42:30 am

Political correctness and hypersensitivity have gone too far. i work for the government and it has gotten to the point where we can't do an over the hill birthday party for a 50 year old not because he would be offended but because someone else who is older may be offended. You have to be careful when you go after someone on technical terms even because they may take it the wrong way.

Reply
Kal
8/25/2015 11:38:04 am

"It seems like they're making this over complicated. Find the bullies and punish them. Don't punish the victims."

No means no, especially after a few drinks.

"It seems to always be about the other guys over there that behave badly, but we never do."

Sure, you never do. Even so, trying to keep your nose clean and not get into trouble by making offenses is a good thing. Making this political is foolish. It is not. It is common sense. Be good to others and don't encourage angry or vicious behavior.

Hate speech is not free speech. Hate speech has to have actual malice intent. Free speech is opinion. They are quite different. You can say anything you like, so much as it doesn't defame others, and that goes for the professors, students, etc.

I am not a professor. I wouldn't know how that world operates.

You can easily be called a flaming liberal for disagreeing with a foolish conservative.

I can say that in my opinion Donald Trump would not be a good president. It is not hate speech. Opinion a blog is inferred.

The fine line must be drawn between PC and too much, that's all.

Reply
Bob Jase
8/26/2015 05:10:38 am

HPL's extreme racism doesn't present any difficulty for me, he was a product of his time and if you read other genres of fiction (or non-fiction for that matter) then you'll see that he wasn't extreme among his contemporaries. In fact, his views were pretty mainstream.

Unlike most folks back then, I can tell the difference between Italians and Deep Ones.

Reply
Jim
8/28/2015 09:04:22 am

I'm Italian and I can't always tell the difference...

Reply
Dr. Halsey
8/26/2015 11:28:11 am

As a current university student, I don't think I can quite agree with Jason on this one. One of my current courses involves war and literature and the professor put a paragraph in the syllabus about the content of the materials we would be engaged with. Now obviously most people know what to expect with depictions of war. But the warning does its job.

I think that is all that is really needed. Stickers don't need to be plastered over every book cover. I mean, take a book like Lolita for example. I read it and though I've never been a victim of sexual assault or molestation I felt disgusted by the end of the book. Now image a student who has been a victim, maybe at around Dolores' age or older, and reads the book and just watches as Humbert Humbert imply how much of a deviant Dolores is. What if one examines the critical evaluations of the book as well, particularly the ones that do insist that it is Dolores who lured Humbert Humbert into his pedophilia acts.

I do not insist that Lolita be banned, but I don't think a warning about its content would be politically correct either. Most people will get through it without any issues and setting some time to make sure the few who may have some issues can feel comfortable isn't a huge loss. I'm Christian so I try to live by the Golden Rule of "Treat others the way you'd want to be treated." I guess I could shake my fists in the air at the PC police or SJWs or whatever nebulous boogeyman is popular today, but it isn't productive. I'd rather empathize and figure out a solution that works for everyone.

Reply
Platy
8/26/2015 03:31:51 pm

You know, I wouldn't say I'm big on what some people would call "political correctness run amok", but at the same time. I have to agree with V's statement that it is "alarmist bullshit". As annoying as it can be I wouldn't exactly say it is as prevalent as its made out to be.
P.S.: I do have a bit of an issue with the backlash against "trigger warnings" especially in regards to those who suffer from PTSD. As I said, I can see these people's points, but they really don't need to be a dick about it (the "fuck your feelings" response).

Reply
C Smith
9/3/2015 10:49:46 pm

Thanks for the thoughtful and well written article. We're all known as much for our faults as our genius; Lovecraft was a bit racist, but so what? He was a human. If readers want to reject "Rats in the Walls" because the protagonist has a pet cat named Nigger then it's their loss. It's one of his best crafted stories.

Reply
Dave
9/4/2015 07:34:44 am

I think it was in the movie "Battle for Britain" where one of the pilots had a pet dog named "nigger" as well. The clip from the movie was actually used on the Pink Floyd "The Wall" album.

Reply
Graham
9/19/2015 12:36:33 am

Actually it's "The Dam Busters", that single single fact is why every attempt to remake the film has been unable to get off the ground.

Americanegro
8/23/2016 03:59:47 pm

One of Agatha Christie's novels was titled "Ten Little Niggers".

Graham
9/19/2015 12:35:27 am

It seems that President Obama agrees, that this movement is counter productive:

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Blog
    Picture

    Author

    I 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.

    Become a Patron!
    Tweets by JasonColavito
    Picture

    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.

    powered by TinyLetter

    Blog Roll

    Ancient Aliens Debunked
    Picture
    A Hot Cup of Joe
    ArchyFantasies
    Bad UFOs
    Mammoth Tales
    Matthew R. X. Dentith
    PaleoBabble
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Alternative Archaeology
    Alternative Archaeology
    Alternative History
    Alternative History
    America Unearthed
    Ancient Aliens
    Ancient Astronauts
    Ancient History
    Ancient Texts
    Ancient Texts
    Archaeology
    Atlantis
    Conspiracies
    Giants
    Habsburgs
    Horror
    King Arthur
    Knights Templar
    Lovecraft
    Mythology
    Occult
    Popular Culture
    Popular Culture
    Projects
    Pyramids
    Racism
    Science
    Skepticism
    Ufos
    Weird Old Art
    Weird Things
    White Nationalism

    Terms & Conditions

    Please 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

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010

    RSS Feed

Picture
Home  |  Blog  |  Books  | Contact  |  About Jason | Terms & Conditions
© 2010-2023 Jason Colavito. All rights reserved.

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Legends of the Pyramids
    • The Mound Builder Myth
    • Jason and the Argonauts
    • Cult of Alien Gods >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Foundations of Atlantis
    • Knowing Fear >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Hideous Bit of Morbidity >
      • Contents
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
    • Cthulhu in World Mythology >
      • Excerpt
      • Image Gallery
      • Necronomicon Fragments
      • Oral Histories
    • Fiction >
      • Short Stories
      • Free Fiction
    • JasonColavito.com Books >
      • Faking History
      • Unearthing the Truth
      • Critical Companion to Ancient Aliens
      • Studies in Ancient Astronautics (Series) >
        • Theosophy on Ancient Astronauts
        • Pyramidiots!
        • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • Fiction Anthologies >
        • Unseen Horror >
          • Contents
          • Excerpt
        • Moon Men! >
          • Contents
      • The Orphic Argonautica >
        • Contents
        • Excerpt
      • The Faust Book >
        • Contents
        • Excerpt
      • Classic Reprints
      • eBook Minis
    • Free eBooks >
      • Origin of the Space Gods
      • Ancient Atom Bombs
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Ancient America
      • Horror & Science
  • Articles
    • Skeptical Xenoarchaeologist Newsletter >
      • Volumes 1-10 Archive >
        • Volume 1 Archive
        • Volume 2 Archive
        • Volume 3 Archive
        • Volume 4 Archive
        • Volume 5 Archive
        • Volume 6 Archive
        • Volume 7 Archive
        • Volume 8 Archive
        • Volume 9 Archive
        • Volume 10 Archive
      • Volumes 11-20 Archive >
        • Volume 11 Archive
        • Volume 12 Archive
        • Volume 13 Archive
        • Volume 14 Archive
        • Volume 15 Archive
        • Volume 16 Archive
        • Volume 17 Archive
        • Volume 18 Archive
        • Volume 19 Archive
        • Volume 20 Archive
      • Volumes 21-30 Archive >
        • Volume 21 Archive
        • Volume 22 Archive
    • Television Reviews >
      • Ancient Aliens Reviews
      • In Search of Aliens Reviews
      • America Unearthed
      • Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar
      • Search for the Lost Giants
      • Forbidden History Reviews
      • Expedition Unknown Reviews
      • Legends of the Lost
      • Unexplained + Unexplored
      • Rob Riggle: Global Investigator
    • Book Reviews
    • Galleries >
      • Bad Archaeology
      • Ancient Civilizations >
        • Ancient Egypt
        • Ancient Greece
        • Ancient Near East
        • Ancient Americas
      • Supernatural History
      • Book Image Galleries
    • Videos
    • 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 >
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • 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
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • 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
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • 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
        • 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
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • 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
        • 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
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • 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
        • 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
        • 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
      • 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
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
  • About Jason
    • Biography
    • Jason in the Media
    • Contact Jason
    • About JasonColavito.com
    • Terms and Conditions
  • Search