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On the Rhetoric of Anti-Elitism in Fringe History and Right Wing Politics

7/31/2014

57 Comments

 
I’ve never heard of the Covert Chronicle. It’s apparently a video podcast that runs on its presenter’s YouTube channel. Yesterday the Covert Chronicle presented several minutes about the launch of Giorgio Tsoukalos’s In Search of Aliens, which the presenter framed as a battle between Tsoukalos and his “arch-nemesis,” me. The insults and slipshod logic descend into self-parody, so I will simply provide you with the video for your own amusement:
I would, however, like to talk a bit about a somewhat related topic, the rhetoric of fringe history and its similarity to the rhetoric of other anti-elitist and anti-government actors. We saw a little bit of that above where the presenter complained about “intricate” criticisms and contrasted it with heroic popularizers. I was watching the Colbert Report this week when Stephen Colbert played a clip from Sarah Palin’s new online television channel, and it sounded so very familiar.

At this point I’m going to stop to say that Republicans aren’t the only people to hold fringe or anti-intellectual beliefs, nor are they the only people to oppose science, history, or academia. Progressives, for example, tend to disproportionately support anti-vaccine claims and to revise historical narratives to emphasize issues of race, class, and gender. They are also more likely to believe in New Age claims and alternative medicine. However, for the purpose of this blog post, conservative rhetoric differs enough from liberal or progressive rhetoric that only one really compares to fringe history rhetoric.

Here is Sarah Palin describing her stand against the elite:
Are you tired of the media filters? Well, I am. I always have been, so we’re going to do something about it. I want to talk directly to you on our channel, on my terms, no need to please the powers that be. […] We’ll talk about the issues that the mainstream media won’t talk about, and we’ll look at the ideas that, mmm, I think Washington doesn’t want you to hear.
This is nearly point for point the same argument that fringe historians and ufologists make about their claims. We recently heard from MUFON’s executive director Jan C. Harzan make quite similar claims about the need to cut through media filters that supposedly suppress unwanted points of view:
Historically mainstream media has kept its distance from professional coverage of UFOs. And the little coverage it does receive is riddled with tired ‘little green men’ references and other old techniques. We’ll discuss the profound effect of the media and how the media can sway or control perception and our plans to effect change for realistic coverage in the future.
For Harzan, that change extended to launching a fabricated TV series, Hangar 1, to just lie to the audience about UFOs by using fake documents and tabloid stories. But for fringe history in general, it’s about creating a network of mutually-supporting alternative media sources that form a closed system—from Coast to Coast AM to New Page Books to, sadly, the H2 network. The similarities to the right-wing iron triangle of Fox News, talk radio, and Republican politicians are too great to be entirely coincidental. Both represent efforts to create a closed culture similar to but distinct from the mainstream. Indeed, if you believe Michael Barkun’s research in A Culture of Conspiracy (2006/2013), there is a great deal of overlap between right wing activism and conspiracy culture, so it is no surprise that the two would also have similar infrastructure, down to the elevation of personality as a substitute for substance.

But Palin’s last sentence—suggesting that there are things that the elites don’t “want you to hear” strikes uncomfortably close to the rhetorical strategies of fringe history. Giorgio Tsoukalos, in introducing In Search of Aliens just last week, put it this way: “What we’ve been taught by mainstream scholars is not the whole picture.” Similarly, Scott Wolter opens each episode of America Unearthed by saying “The history that we were all taught growing up is wrong. […] Sometimes history isn’t what we’ve been told.” In both cases, there is the assumption that there are things that an elite don’t want “you” or “us” (the non-elite) to know, and that the presenter has special access to this elite knowledge. Kal K. Korff gave voice to the claim in the title of his Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You to Know (1997) and Michael Benson in Inside Secret Societies: What They Don’t Want You to Know (2005). The most famous fringe history use of the idea in  book title is probably Forbidden Archaeology (1993) by the Hindu creationist Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, which posits a vast conspiracy of academic elites to suppress the true history of the earth.

In fact, much of conspiracy culture centers on the idea that a shadowy “they” (defined or undefined) are attempting to prevent the heroic seeker of truth from (a) learning that truth and (b) being a full and active participant in decision-making about the relevant issues. This is parallel to political populism (used by conservatives and liberals alike), which asks non-elite voters to overthrow Washington elites who are both out of touch and all powerful so that the non-elite outsiders may reclaim their rightful power.

Obviously, the formulation isn’t unique to fringe history. The controversial convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau turned this into an art form with his Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About (2004) and its spinoffs. Dozens of other books from a rainbow of authors on subjects ranging from creationism to pharmaceuticals employ the “they don’t want you to know” gimmick. It’s a reliable way of suggesting to the audience that the author is on their side in fighting against perceived enemy elites.

What separates fringe history from more mainstream uses of the rhetorical strategy is the opprobrium heaped upon a specific set of elites: educated people. This evident in every fringe history book that bashes “mainstream scholars,” “academics,” or other possessors of scientific or historical knowledge. But it has for a long time also been part and parcel of American political discourse. Richard Hofstadter, for example, famously wrote about Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in 1963. Recently, though, this has spilled over from a rather apolitical distrust of elites of all stripes into a politically-oriented attempt to identify education, specifically scientific education, as a partisan trait. The National Review, for example, recently published a piece by Charles C. W. Cooke blasting what he called “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.”

Cooke complained that “nerds” are arrogant and rely too heavily on facts and evidence—a complaint fringe figures, as we have seen, have made about me—and he descends into the worst sort of grade school stereotyping of “smart” people (or rather, as he sees it, faux smart people) to express his outrage, claiming that this “nerd” group include “anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.” He calls the use of facts and evidence in argumentation an affectation of poseurs, and a “fad.”

Cooke makes a good point that progressives who claim to act in the name of science have many beliefs that are not scientific (though his list is not entirely correct), but he seems to think that collecting scientific evidence is the same as recommending a policy. Science as a discipline and the use of scientific evidence for argumentation are not the same. The change in the average global temperature trend, for example, is a scientific fact; evaluating whether that change is good or bad is a value judgment; and what (if anything) to do about it is a political question. Cooke, like his fringe history peers, does not want judgments to emerge from evidence but rather the other way around: ideology should govern the acceptable limits of inquiry. If fringe writers want to cite that ideology to “ancient texts,” Cooke prefers the slightly more updated Founding Fathers, whose timeless wisdom he would privilege over modernity. 

The bottom line? For Cooke “First and foremost, then, ‘nerd’ has become a political designation.” Therefore, for example, under Cooke’s definition Ben Stein is not a “nerd” despite his seeming adherence to every stereotype: he wears glasses, he talks of statistics and facts, he hosted one of the geekiest game shows of the 1990s--Win Ben Stein’s Money (and shame on History for ripping it off completely for the wretched Pawnography), and he’s a Yale-educated lawyer and economist. Oh, right: He’s also a right wing creationist. And there is the difference. Being a “nerd” is bad when you disagree with Cooke’s politics and social values. If you agree, you’re just folks. He is, of course, a hypocrite since he fails to see a problem with the pervasive posing and posturing of those who claim to govern in the Bible’s name, a mirror image of the “nerd” chic he despises in his opponents.

Yet Cooke’s rant against people who know things (or who trust those who do) is the same rage against the “academics” we find percolating just beneath the surface of so much of fringe history. Jason Martell, for example, said that Erich von Däniken deserved praise for “challenging academia.” Scott Wolter opened his book Akhenaten to the Founding Fathers (2013) by asking “So just what is going on with the academics anyway? […] The world is ready, eager for the truth.” All of this applies in spades to creationists, who are even more insistent on the impregnable isolation of the Ivory Tower and its nefariously liberal influence. No wonder the concepts fade into one another. Some creationists have adopted fringe history’s evidence as “proof” of pre-Flood Nephilim culture, and ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos once explained that “the divine is permeated throughout the entire universe.”

In every case, the irony is that no truth will do except for the ideological one already held by the speaker. Honesty exists only as a measurement of how much others agree with the speaker. Everything else is “bias,” “filter,” or “politics.”

57 Comments
Josef Karpinovic
7/31/2014 07:53:39 am

Obama of being a 'dictator', or 'acting like a king', as if they'd be able to publicly malign him if that were the case. Also, as usual, whole lotta projection goin' on with anyone who uses this kind of rhetoric. There's quite a bit regarding history, archeology, and other relevant disciplines that Giorgio and his ilk don't want you to know, since their livelyhood depends on a lack of common knowledge and understanding of the topics they discuss.

Reply
Josef Karpinovic
7/31/2014 07:56:20 am

My comment got chopped at the beginning somehow^, but, I said that these people 'remind me of' certain politicians, etc. You get the gist.

Reply
Walt
7/31/2014 08:13:38 am

If you swap out a couple words from the Sarah Palin quote, it could accurately describe your experience with that latest TV appearance that didn't happen. You were silenced by the powers that be. Change 3 phrases in that quote, and you could've written it. It's not a conspiracy, that's just how society works.

And how un-elitist of Palin to say she'll talk "on our channel, on my terms". Guess she didn't get her own memo.

As for that video, it seems to imply people (including you) either believe aliens and UFOs have visited us, or believe no life exists anywhere beyond our planet. The logic is a bit flawed.

Reply
spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 08:15:13 am

Before I get any further

Kal K. Korff gave voice to the claim in the title of his Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You to Know (1997)

Korff's book plays on the title ironically (somewhat), because the "they" in this case are ufologists. Korff was a UFO believer, who at some point decided that UFOs stopped visiting after the 1973 flap (which is about when old-school ETH ufology started giving way to the modern era of ancient aliens, abductions, crash conspiracies, and Keelian esotericism). His book debunked Roswell, and was particularly a response to Randle and Schmitt, who had recently put out several version of their Roswell narrative with titles reminiscent of that one. I don't think I read the whole book word-by-word, but IIRC it was one of the first major claims that a Mogul surveillance balloon train was behind it all.

Korff claimed to have worked for CIA earlier in his life, so that obviously didn't endear him much to the community.

Reply
Only Me
7/31/2014 08:48:35 am

Actually, he told Royce Myers III he:

"Is a Captain in the Special Secret Services and works in anti-terrorism as a SAPSTOE (Special Activities Planning Strategies Tactics Operations Execution)".

Check out this link if your interested: http://www.ufowatchdog.com/kal_korf.htm

Reply
spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 08:51:38 am

ARRGGHH I did it again.

I always confuse Kal Korff, yes a "character" to say the least who wrote an anti-UFO book on Roswell and claimed secret service with ....

Karl Pflock, less of a character, wrote an anti-UFO book on Roswell, and claimed secret service.

http://www.amazon.com/Roswell-Inconvenient-Facts-Will-Believe/dp/1573928941/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406836207&sr=1-1

Thanks for the correction. I've done that _numerous_ times.

spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 08:39:29 am

NRO is a magazine run with the ethos of internet trolling. It is the house publication of entitled rich blueblood frat boys. I mean, it's home to this guy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/03/inris-rich-lowry-palin-se_n_131735.html

The author of that piece went to Oxford, he's not "folks," m'kay? He's playing to an audience. An audience that apparently is losing its shit that NDG Tyson is on TV explaining science, so much that he needed to go on the cover. Do with that what you wish.

They're also still smarting over the whole Nate Silver bursting their bubble in 2012 thing. And this is again where there is a difference. Nate Silver said this year that the Democrats are electorally in trouble. What did they do? They denied it initially, and then started fundraising on it, and taking other steps to try and win.

What did the conservative con-artist media* do in 2012? They created their own poll "calibrations" to try and create a whiter, older, and more rural America they could pretend to live in, at least until the votes were counted. Even their supposed brain trust, the likes of Rove, fell for it.

And speaking of which, he's the guy who is widely believed to have given us the "reality-based community" line, about how all of their enemies carefully sift facts while they just act. I mean, what else needs to be said?

People on the fringe hate the mainstream. You can find that across the political spectrum. But something else is going on here, and its religious politics, blended with white identity. Both major parties have their corporate masters. But the base of one party is a mix of people in cities as well as yes, educated people who live in and around colleges, science and tech based industries, and other places where you will find geeks and nerds and other people who read more than one book (hence why North Carolina has been turned purple). And that same party generally does not allow people who publicly promote those beliefs, represent the party. The biggest exception I think of is Bill Maher, and he's taken a lot of flak (rightfully) from liberals for his support of antivax.

It's a serious issue, and a bad one for our country and for humanity given the power our country wields politically, economically, and culturally. But its not all that new, and it certainly isn't being led by the frat boy rag of NR.

*Limbaugh is a jerk, but he's not a con-artist. But Beck, Jones, and their imitators railing on every day about the end of Christian America, the end of the Dollar, Immigrants, and how you need survival seeds and guns and gold? On the Venn Diagram of alternative history, you'll find a near perfect overlap.

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EP
7/31/2014 09:19:59 am

Bill Maher serves as a warning that libertarianism is the gateway lunacy :)

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spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 10:38:03 am

Concur. Though he's really hard to call a libertarian. Maybe 30 years ago in a "let me have my sex and drugs and rock and roll" sort of way. But something tells me he doesn't pray have a prayer rug set up in front of a portrait of Ayn Rand, and I haven't seen him shilling gold recently.

EP
7/31/2014 11:05:41 am

That's exactly why I carefully avoided calling him a libertarian :)

(He used to distinguish himself from libertarians, but he meant extreme 100% libertarians. Like, the used to be okay with government health inspections, that sort of thing...)

Jason Cousins
7/31/2014 08:49:07 am

Equating Sarah Palin's reaction to a well documented media bias against conservatives to the reaction of a bunch of Looney Toons maligning the establishment for ignoring their fanciful conjecture is intellectually dishonest at best. Jason, I really enjoy your scholarship and your blogs. I also disagree with you politically on a host of issues. I am okay with that, but I do think you went a little bit too far on this one. It is not befitting your intellect. Have a great day and I look forward to reading your work in the future.

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EP
7/31/2014 09:07:37 am

(1) Analogies are not "equating".

(2) Could you name any peer-reviewed studies supporting the existence of a "well documented media bias against conservatives"?

(3) Surely lots of intelligent people thing Sarah Palin is herself a loony (I'm one of them). Even if you disagree, and even if you're right, that's not a sign of intellectual dishonesty "at best".

(4) You know what IS dishonest? Sarah Palin contrasting herself with "the powers that be". I bet if Al Gore did that you'd not let it slide...

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Walt
7/31/2014 09:30:46 am

Wall Street produces some products based on "financial engineering". I think what Jason was really getting at is the use of the same well-researched phrases by multiple public figures indicates a bit of "emotional engineering" going on. It's almost a science at this point. Democrats, Republicans, ufologists, and fringe speakers are all just using the same well-tested buzzwords to manipulate their intended audiences into attaining some ultimate goal.

I've always felt Jason himself is being manipulated by the powers that be into responding to some of the stupidest stuff on tabloid TV shows. It's all just a game, and I continue to be shocked that Jason wastes his time playing it. He can't win the game, he can only succeed in changing the stimulus to which he's responding.

As for Sarah Palin specifically, she could've just said she's starting her own channel so she's now the "power that be" since it's on her terms, but that doesn't produce the same emotional response.

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EP
7/31/2014 09:55:05 am

"It's almost a science at this point."

A fringe science :)

"Jason himself is being manipulated by the powers that be into responding to some of the stupidest stuff on tabloid TV shows"

What does that make us, then? :)

Jason Colavito link
7/31/2014 10:00:45 am

Yes, I was trying to discuss the *rhetoric*, not the underlying politics. It doesn't matter who is saying the words, only that they are using similar rhetorical posturing to achieve similar ends.

Walt
7/31/2014 10:16:08 am

And that the rhetoric changes over time. Right now, Democrats are not using anti-elite rhetoric. If they see polling and focus group data that indicates it would help them, and if Republicans, ufologists, and other fringe authors see data that it's hurting them, the usage will flip-flop.

spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 10:47:46 am

Walt, I'm not sure I'd agree that this particular rhetoric flips that easily. This particular brand of know-nothing rhetoric has a long history of being associated with a populist, anti-city, anti-immigration, anti-government vein of America, one largely though not exclusively held by white protestants in the South and more broadly in "the heartland". It fought against big corporations a century ago yes. But it has been the driving force against science education (see W. J. Bryan), it has typically been easy to speak to through a certain kind of revival-style religious rhetoric (see all the comparisons between Father Coughlin and Glenn Beck a few years ago). This is what Hofstadter was talking about, and reading him talking about the Goldwater people fifty years ago, you could swap in Beck, Palin, etc. and it could be written today, and it is largely about the same political movement. That population once voted Democrat, until the civil rights movement and then Nixon's Southern Strategy. But it wasn't "liberal" or "progressive" in any sense.

And to be honest, the mountain men, ice truckers, swamp loggers, duck dynasts, and the rest that go along with the package of History and H2's programming, it isn't an accident they are bundled.

Can you find conspiracy theory on the fringe of any movement? Yes. Can it enter into the heart of any movement? Not always, but there are a lot of examples.

But this particular kind of anti-"elite" (never meaning those with money, so much as those in cities and with educations. Which has traditionally brought a lot of bad associations with it, see Jason's recent post on Jim Marrs) rhetoric? It has a distinct history in America, and it isn't generic.

Walt
7/31/2014 11:12:27 am

I agree that the intended audience of Republicans and fringe authors seems to be the same right now. If that never changes and if those people continue to feel the same way, then you're right, nothing will ever change.

But, everything changes over time. Democrats may want the Heartland someday, or Republicans may want the Northeast and West Coast, or the Northeast may become anti-elite, or the Heartland and South may contain the most educated people in our country.
Any of those things could cause a flip-flop for members of either party.

tubby
7/31/2014 12:56:46 pm

@spooky
Weirdly (or not) a few days ago I heard a report on the radio about certain cities that were put on some kind of snobbiness scale by a realtors association, and one of the cities near me was rated high on the snob scale due to the number of college graduates and art galleries. I can kind of see lots of art galleries maybe, but hearing that being educated made you a snob kind of made me sad for the world.

spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 01:09:57 pm

And Tubby, the funny thing is, the people Jason writes about here, including our unfriendly neighborhood vlogger, are arrogant as hell. When he says "science can't explain" the origins of humans or ancient societies, something tells me he hasn't read much actual work by people who really do research.

And something tells me that if he was somehow sat down and read it, it wouldn't make much difference. The number one thing that "alternative" theorists and their enthusiasts know isn't any particular fact or belief (with the exception of the religiously motivated), so much as that mainstream and professional scholars, experts, and other "elites" are wrong.

My favorite examination of this was a psychological study written up recently that found that asked, amongst other questions, whether they thought Osama bin Laden was still alive, whether he had been killed years ago in Tora Bora and the government had hidden the fact, or whether he was killed by the SEAL team as per the historical record.

They found that those who believed most he was alive were most likely to secondarily believe he had been dead since 2002, and vice versa. The whole point was to call the mainstream/government liars. It's nice to have a controlled experiment showing this, but anyone who follows occulture communities long realizes that this is about performing a stance or an identity.

Gregor
7/31/2014 01:32:15 pm

I think what I enjoy most about this "rhetoric debate" is that no one seems to note that the United States has an incredibly shoddy educational system ("for the masses") that enforces only a minimum standard. Not only that, it has so many loopholes, exceptions and exemptions to said standard that it's about as good at enforcing broad education as wire mesh is at holding water.

Rambling about polling results and political posturing is a dog chasing it's own tail. Populists of all sorts - from Tsoukalos to Palin to whomever else - bank on this widespread ignorance and use it to peddle their wares to those who know no better while encouraging them to hate and deride what they do not understand. They perform the ultimate disservice by convincing people that not only should they be happy, they're better off (!) for having such a dim and narrow view of things. Why pain yourself with thinking? We'll shovel as much garbage as you can possibly swallow!

Also, for whatever it's worth, I'd gladly be counted amongst the wicked & debased "Elite" if it meant I could live in a town with an abundance of art galleries, museums and college graduates.

EP
7/31/2014 09:17:47 am

LOL at the Covert Chronicle guy implying that "the scientific community" is behind the Tsoukalos macro meme.

Also, observe the disgust with which he utters the word "book".

Wow, what a tool.

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Gregor
7/31/2014 12:52:25 pm

This whole goddamn video made me cringe.

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Zach
7/31/2014 06:24:31 pm

I didn't even notice the way he said the word "book" since everything he said was completely phoned in. Seriously, even a blind person see how he kept looking off camera to the cue cards to remember what to say. I honestly got bored than mad, since the guy showed no emotion or interest at all in his voice.

Also, while I know that Giorgio hates Jason and why Jason doesn't exactly think highly of Giorgio, it really did make me laugh when he called Jason Giorgio's "arch nemesis." Apparently we are living in a subpar superhero comic if thats the case.

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EP
8/1/2014 02:24:08 am

Ever wonder why you never see Jason and Giorgio together? Now you know :)

Shane Sullivan
7/31/2014 09:24:22 am

Wow. "Nerds" used to be considered the very image of the typical conservative. 'Oh, look,' people used to say, 'a white guy wearing thick glasses and a suit; he must have disposable income and be afraid of black people and social change.'

Now it's “anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics”? That's quite a departure from the villain in every exploitation film ever.

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spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 10:53:25 am

The business wing of the American right used to be well represented in American colleges, the Creationists and theocrats not as much.

Then the 1960s and Vietnam and desegregation happened, and we entered the modern era of American politics. And they largely weren't represented, not just due to pressures within the community, but because the business wing of the American right allied with the know-nothings, and they started shifting culturally.

One way to try and stem the loss was to create all those thinktanks that are paid to give the proper free-market answers. But even that wasn't sufficiently in lock step (see the fate of David Frum).

So now, the fratboys that are all that's left of the idea men are crapping on education as a tool of secularism. Because that's so horrible. Good luck with that boys.

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Titus pullo
8/1/2014 01:23:21 pm

Education today is a joke. The so called experts have taken the try and true methods of education into fuzzy math and whole language. Look at the modern religion of keyniasian economics, it's a joke yet the experts continue to teach this failed theory. When my kids teacher told me she like fuzzy math with its cut and paste approach because she didn't like math...that said it all.

Only Me
7/31/2014 10:20:47 am

From the Covert Chronicle guy himself:

[Meet Giorgio A. Tsoukalos' arch nemesis Jason Colavito.
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/my-alien-afternoon-with-giorgio-tsoukalos

I support some of the skepticism expressed by Jason Colavito. However I think he's going overboard with much of his critism, intricately analyzing everything many of these Ufologists have to say. The truth is, neither science nor ufology can officially explain all of the origins of man. There have been jumps in the species that aren't easy explainable, as well as the ancient culture. Ufologists such as Tsoukalos try to provide answers for ancient culture and man, yet Colavito shoots down everything he has to say because Tsoukalos doesn't provide enough evidence.

I always wonder what the beliefs are of some of these skeptics. And also wonder how they treat their mothers, who chances are raised them to believe in some form of God or religion. Most people are raised to believe in a Religion. I myself lean towards atheism, but you don't see me bashing others for their beliefs in God and religion. I can sit here on Covert Chronicle constantly debunking religion and God because there's not enough proof. But I choose not to, why because I acknowledge the fact that I still don't know for sure what's out there, there's still a possibility of some form of God or intelligent energy that creates life.

It just kills me that people like Michael Shermer and Colavito try to make a living off debunking everyone's theories, yet they never provide their own. And in one article Colavito criticizes Ufologists for trying to make money of the subject of UFOs. All I can say is, isn't he doing the same thing with his debunking books. This notion of trying to ruines one's reputation because they make money of their interests is rediculous. Because that's what most people do in a profession! And I love all his anti-semetic and racist rants towards Jim Marrs and Nick Pope. Colavito tries to ignore the fact that certain races in our culture have more pull than others, yet you see who's fucking bombing the fuck out of Gaza right now. History has shown that certain races, have formed conspiracy to control business and the public (The Mob/Italians.) Yet Colavito has nothing but bad things to say about Jim Mars' theories.

I can't stress enough how easy it is to sit back and analyze everyone else's beliefs, while not sharing your own so people can't critize you. I almost look at these "constant skeptics" as bottom dwellers, because they feed off of everyone elese's theories. They act like everyone else's theory is crap, yet their magazine or blog wouldn't be around if it wasn't for these theories.

All I know is, with Colavito constantly bashing Ufologists on his blog, this guy better be an Atheist or he has a lot of explaining to do. Much of religion can easily be explained a way because it doesn't provide enough proof.

I lost a lot of respect for Colavito when he remarked in one article that Rendlesham Forest can easily be explained away. The skeptics are always looking proof and hardcore testimony from people with a qualifying background, yet two people trained in Aeronautics witness ET like craft, that's still not good enough for them. To this day, both of them have health problems from the radiation and the government still won't release their health records to the VA. Yet Colavito and his chronies say there's no proof. Oh yeah, he claims Roswell is a total fraud too. I guess Major Jesse Marcel was full of shit along with others who have testified on the crash.

Tried to look up any of his research on Richard Doty, one of the airforce agents who has finally confessed about disinforming the public about ETs and UFOs. But I couldn't find anything about that on his blog!

I'm not going to deny, they guy is definitely a good writer, but that doesn't make him an expert on the topic. I'm still waiting to find some of his own theories on his blog.]

What interesting fanfiction you have there, fella.

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EP
7/31/2014 10:44:12 am

Jason, you have "cronies"?! How come no one tells me anything?! :)

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Jason Colavito link
7/31/2014 11:08:42 am

We meet in our underground lizard person lair. Clearly you didn't get the decoder ring for your invitation. It was written in Naacal.

EP
7/31/2014 11:25:30 am

You should show the Esoteric Black Dragon Society more respect. Surely with a name like that it must count at least a few powerful servants of Nyarlathotep among its initiates!

Zach
7/31/2014 06:53:55 pm

@ Jason

I think I might have gotten the decoder ring. Unfortunately when I used it to translate the message in Naacal back into English, I saw that it told me to drink more Ovaltine. I had to go to the lair of the lizard people and tell them to drink their own damn Ovaltine.

spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 10:58:06 am

Jason, if you wanted to criticize this guy, all you needed to do was post the above. I mean, really.

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EP
7/31/2014 11:03:23 am

He seems to be obsessed with Lyme disease. (Is that a thing for the conspiracy nuts these days?)

Jason Colavito link
7/31/2014 11:07:56 am

I'm more amused by it than critical. I mean, how exactly would one criticize self-satirizing material? It's nice to know that my work is apparently substantive enough that fringe types feel the need to respond.

EP
7/31/2014 11:12:47 am

"how exactly would one criticize self-satirizing material?"

As someone who's recently been literally spending most of his time reading crazy people, I keep asking myself that... It's gets frustrating after a while...

EP
7/31/2014 11:15:17 am

Btw, cudos for mentioning Richard Hofstadter's book. That guy deserves some love.

spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 11:18:20 am

EP, Lyme disease has been blamed on a government conspiracy for years, specifically the idea that it escaped or was released from a bioweapons lab on Plum Island, in the region between Connecticut and Long Island.

The funny thing is, research into a Lyme disease vaccine got quashed by a mix of free-market insurance companies and the antivaxxers these chuckleheads run with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination

EP
7/31/2014 11:33:46 am

Sigh... You might as well argue that the US government invented tapeworms...

Gregor
7/31/2014 01:04:15 pm

@Jason

I'm not sure I'd even call this a "response". He's so "covert underground" that he's still in his mother's basement, bringing us the truth with trial-ware Photoshop and his grandpa's camcorder. They say one can judge a man by his enemies... but if an unthinking lout with a bag of Straw Man arguments and the oratorical skill of a 5 year old reading aloud for the first time is what the Fringe thinks you're worth... I dunno, I'd be more insulted than anything else.

@EP

Not only that, they're trying to pollute our Vital Fluids!

Jerome Viveiros link
8/3/2014 01:18:38 am

"It just kills me that people like Michael Shermer and Colavito try to make a living off debunking everyone's theories, yet they never provide their own."

Wow, that's a major misunderstanding of both the lunatic fringe and the skeptics... Does it count as theories when they don't really have their own theories at all? Jason keeps pointing out how they just rehash old long-ago-debunked "theories" for fun and profit, and we've seen that they create a mutually supporting network of theories, which they then push as evidence of itself in an endless loop of circular logic.

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terry the censor
8/12/2014 08:21:30 pm

> I support some of the skepticism expressed by Jason Colavito.
> It just kills me that people like Michael Shermer and Colavito try to make a living off debunking everyone's theories, yet they never provide their own.

I guess this guy never heard of Socrates!

(This lame argument is the last refuge of the know-nothing moron. I've had the same complaint directed at me after dismantling a claim. The claimant abandoned his "facts" -- they always do after a fatal factcheck -- and demanded I produce my own theory to be scrutinsed!)

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EP
7/31/2014 10:52:33 am

This is basically an excuse to share my reading, but it's worth noting that once upon a time the fringe was quite comfortable being elitist and even exclusionary. Just look at Blavatsky go:

"Times have changed, are changing. Proof of the old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; and Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; and the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; and the South Indian invaders of Ceylon “heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees” the ollas of the Buddhists and set them ablaze to light their victory,—so to the knowledge of all, obliterating early Buddhistic annals and treatises of great importance; though this hateful and senseless Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations—still, despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what science has often called “most curious coincidences.” Europe has no very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past of record themselves, the European critics, historians and archæologists have not scrupled to deny one to others—whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige."

Beats the hell out of the H2 crowd, no?

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spookyparadigm
7/31/2014 10:54:41 am

I thought something similar when reading about the Naacal guy in Jason's twitter feed earlier today. He may believe in Lemuria, but least he's read a number of books and isn't limited to making poorly spoken youtube videos.

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.
7/31/2014 12:22:22 pm

Jason did a seminal namedrop. not all Populists
are negative, some are attuned to the public mood.
people who whip up a mob to a froth are endemically
part of the landscape, usually there are wiser voices
who are listened to. both the left and right can create
camps if allowed to, but this is resisted by the middle.

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Geoff link
7/31/2014 02:29:32 pm

Best comment ever:
"... not believing in alien life because of a lack of proof is downright ridiculous..."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
sorry.. I was having a miserable day, but now everything is soo much better.

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Socially Liberal Fundamentalist link
8/1/2014 05:04:24 am

I am against the conservative elites, as well as the Liberal elite. Hence the unique name for my Blog. I hope you check it out.

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Titus pullo
8/1/2014 01:19:06 pm

I think the same can be said of the left. I won't go into the hoary details of eugenics, the global warming fad of the 30s. Sure the physical world is absolute in terms of the scientific method. Physics and chemistry represent a body of beliefs which are the mist testable without human bias. Once you get into the softer sciences and the so called social sciences you often see religious or political ideology backed by cherry picking facts. Economics...macro us a joke. Education, trial and error had worked better than the experts. I literally had to teach my kids math as the public school force fed fuzzy math. Goethe had a great quote on the need to repeat the truth time and again.

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EP
8/1/2014 01:31:48 pm

Yep, your post is strong evidence for the failure of the public school system :)

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titus pullo link
8/1/2014 01:38:18 pm

Gregor
8/1/2014 06:53:35 pm

Just repeating this - Titus appears to have put his response in as a website address instead of in the textbox (just below it):

Titus pullo: "Your right..I need to blame the University of Rochester (Chemistry and Physics) and Georgia Tech for my poor logic and reason"

Titus pullo
8/2/2014 03:23:58 am

Thank you Greg

I was using an iPad mini and with the keyboard size I need on the screen due to my failing eye site, blame that on all the sf books I read as a kid in low lighting, I started typing and realized wrong place when I submitted. Nothing goes in the ether does it? Well I guess I just proved my point on the poor state of education. Cheers

EP
8/1/2014 07:31:38 pm

@ titus pullo:

I don't know who you need to blame (possibly yourself). Also, I wasn't really thinking of your "logic and reason"... more like your erudition and your style...

Also, isn't Rochester a private school anyway? :)

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Titus pullo link
8/2/2014 03:32:07 am

No slight taken. I'm using an iPad mini and typing on it is a hassle. I usually just type normally, leaning to type back in 1978 as sophomore was one of the best skills I learned. But this pecking style on a small screen results in changing words and phrases to simplify my posts. I could use my work PC but the iPad is just quicker to use. My advise is to get a full size iPad.

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EP
8/2/2014 07:00:50 pm

That doesn't exaplain your bizarre comparison of eugenics and global warming, or your sweeping claims about scientific method, but at least now we know that your kids are sure to get sound tech advice...

Kal
8/2/2014 02:37:36 pm

This confirms is, Sarah Palin is a pod person. JK. Or am I? Or is she a lizard? Oh, I've said too much. They're here to probe my erk, don'tya know. Oh,...a little more to the left...erk...oph gooly gosh, that...feels weird...take me to your leader...(insert sarcastic remark). And why does the fringe care so much about this blog? Could bde the sasaquatch aliens.

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        • 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 >
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        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
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        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
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        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
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      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
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        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
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        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
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      • Orville Wright on UFOs
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      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
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      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
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      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
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      • 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
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      • 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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