Russian Scholarly Journal Uses Ancient Alien Claims in Push for Crackdown on Sex

​As we move toward Christmas, it’s been a relatively slow week for news from the fringe. However, I do want to briefly mention that Tucker Carlson announced on Blaze TV that he is now “open” to the flat earth theory and said that after the “deception” that he encountered from stories such as the UFO conspiracies he previously said had “bothered” him, he can no longer be sure that scientists aren’t conspiring to hide the true shape of the earth. While his comments were somewhat tongue-in-cheek, his implication that elites are deceiving us on even the most basic facts about the world continued his flirtation with science denial. 

​More disturbing, if that is possible, is a scientific paper published in a Russian academic journal by a member of the Duma and an FSB general alleging that Westerners and Asians are sub-humans from the serpent seed of the devil, that non-humans are planning a genocide of Russians, that feminists are evil witches who worship the goddess Lillith, and that Reptilians have infiltrated the global elite. According to the paper published in the St. Petersburg-based journal Legal Science: History and Modernity, the mark of an inhuman is a love of democracy and a belief in liberal social policies.
 
According to an English-language summary of the paper historian @ChrisO_wiki posted to X, which I am drawing from in writing about this article, the paper was the work of Mikhail Salnikov, the head of research as the Law Institute in St. Petersburg, State Duma deputy Igor Ananskikh, and several other authors, including the head of a mental hospital.

1/ A Russian State Duma deputy, an FSB general and others have co-written a 'scientific paper' about the genocide of Russians by "beast people", feminists who worship the demoness Lilith, a lack of men due to a US plot, reptilian infiltrators, and oral sex. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/wW9Zx5YnZi

— ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) December 18, 2023

​The authors adopt the ancient astronaut theory to argue for two separate creations, one being a divine creation of white Russians by the true god and a second instance in which Reptilians from another planet used genetic engineering to create “beast men” who have the form of humans but lack true consciousness, a “biological artificial intelligence.” The Reptilians also control world governments in secret, in a manner similar to conspiracy theories about Jews. Modifying a nineteenth-century idea about the origins of white people later adopted by the Nazis, the authors claim white Russians are the true indigenous people of earth, created “in the country of Hyperborea, and the Prophet Muhammad was also Russian.”
 
The article placed the blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russian civil society on women, whom they accused of betraying the submissive example of Jesus’ mother in favor of the hedonistic, assertiveness of Adam’s first wife, the demon Lilith. The author adopted a conspiracy theory originally presented as fiction in a novel by Anatoly Ivanov in order to claim the United States was behind the social change as part of a nefarious plot to corrupt women’s morals and prevent them from giving birth to boys, thus depriving Russia of soldiers.
 
The authors conclude that the only way to combat the space alien / feminist agenda of genocide is to ban homosexuality, oral sex, and anal sex in order to prevent sperm from becoming embedded in the brain and spinal cord. (No, I do not understand how the authors imagine sex working either.)
 
After the paper received media coverage, the journal yanked it from its website.
 
This is far from the first time that elements of the Russian government have used conspiracy theories and ancient astronaut ideas (indeed, Russian scientists warned about the popularity of Reptilian conspiracies in Russia back in 2016), but it is a relatively rare instance where they have appeared with the imprimatur of academic legitimacy. It’s also an important reminder of the danger that ancient alien conspiracy theories and fringe pseudohistory pose when combined with reactionary politics.