Wednesday Grab-Bag: Nazis, Lovecraft, UFOs, and More!

8/20/2014

I’m feeling a bit uninspired today, so I’ll share a grab-bag of small stories I haven’t figured out how to spin into something more substantive.

Micah Hanks Thinks I Am Too Snarky
Sunday on the Paracast “investigator” Micah Hanks took time out to criticize me by name for criticizing ufology the wrong way. In discussing the state of modern ufology, he explains that he’s happy to draw people to conferences and TV shows by featuring Erich von Däniken, but “I am adamantly opposed to calling him a ufologist. He is not ufologist. Giorgio Tsoukalos is not a ufologist.”

Hanks accuses me of conflating ancient astronauts with ufology, as though the two fields were inherently separate. He also finds my tone too snarky.

A good example—Jason Colavito, a skeptical blogger. He basically really spends most of his time dissecting the books that people who are fringe theorists like to talk about. Well, that’s fine and he offers some very intelligent commentary. He’s a bit negative at times, and frequently a little too snarky for my taste, but I still think he has every right to try to deconstruct the arguments of a lot of these researchers, and really, frankly, I don’t agree with a lot of it myself. But I realize there’s an entertaining component to that, and I find it entertaining just as well. It is absolutely not ufology, though.

Hanks believes that ufology should be defined entirely as the “attempted” scientific study of anomalous aerial phenomena. This leads to an interesting demarcation question: Why is it “scientific” to study Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting, but not one from, say, the Basel “UFO battle” of 1566? Neither can be verified with instruments, physical evidence, or photographs. What makes telling stories about one more scientific than the other? The date?

Going back to the 1950s, we can see in works like Flying Saucers Have Landed and Stranger than Science that ufologists have always tied UFOs to ancient historical “sightings.” But as I point out in my article on the “ultra-terrestrial hypothesis” in the journal Paranthropology, there are many threads that have been folded into modern ufology. One does not get to pick and choose whose approach to ufology is “official” ufology. You’re welcome to restrict your study to simply testing for lights in the modern sky, but I can’t control the fact that Ancient Aliens has explicitly tied ufology to ancient astronauts and to spiritual exultation. I equally can’t pretend that they didn’t do it to help you feel more scientific.

Oh, and since I have stated over and over again that I write about fringe history, not scientific ufology, what angle did Hanks expect me to take on the subject?

Red Ice, Black Hearts
Do you remember Red Ice Radio? The online radio program is a mainstay of the fringe circuit. It’s played host to such guests as Robert Bauval, Scott F. Wolter, Scotty Roberts, Richard J. Dewhurst, David Icke, Yuri Geller, Richard Dolan, and more. Well, on Monday Red Ice Radio played host to Dennis Wise, a British filmmaker who believes that Adolf Hitler was unfairly libeled by the Allies and that the Holocaust never happened. Wise denies that Hitler was a racist, for example. The host agrees that Hitler and the Nazis were “incredible” for Germany, and agrees that the Holocaust denial story told in Wise’s film Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told provides “another level of truth” that the mainstream media are hiding. The two men agree that the Jews “stabbed him (Hitler) in the back” after he made a deal with the Zionists to facilitate their rapid transfer to Palestine in order to remove what Wise calls Jewish-homosexual “decadence” from “German culture.” It will be interesting to see which fringe history figures continue to patronize Red Ice Radio after its host declared his support for Hitler and Nazism.

I am increasingly concerned, though, that so many fringe outlets are descending into Nazi apologetics. It’s everywhere!

Scott Wolter’s Night at the Theater
I previously wrote about a musical that debuted at the Minnesota Fringe Festival that tells the story of the Kensington Rune Stone in the form of an encounter between an investigator modeled on Scott F. Wolter and several ghosts. The playwright described the musical as a way to get back at academia. Well, Wolter attended the performance and shared his reaction on his blog, and he loved the musical, especially its flattering portrayal of the character modeled on him:

The play told the story of the human tragedy that results when, scholars in this case, are more concerned with being “right” than getting the “right answer.” The cast did a beautiful job of demonstrating how facts trump the beliefs of so many scholars who abused (and continue to abuse) their positions of perceived authority and credibility. In an age where science and technology rules, I’m often dumbfounded how so many intelligent people still don’t understand the basic principles of evidence and logic. It just goes to show how far we as humans have not progressed.

More Lovecraft Zaniness
Christopher Loring Knowles is continuing his campaign to troll Lovecraft scholars, and apparently me in particular, with more poorly reasoned claptrap about how no one would have read W. Scott-Elliot’s The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria in 1926 because the book was more than 20 years old, neglecting of course to note that while the two source books were decades old (1896 and 1904), the omnibus volume Lovecraft actually read had been published in 1925, and Lovecraft read it in early 1926, just before starting “The Call of Cthulhu.” Knowles, however, has struck upon a new issue: He wants to know how Lovecraft could afford to travel to visit friends when he was so poor that he was living off of canned food and crusts of bread. Lovecraft was poor, but not destitute, and he ate little and save his pennies to finance his trips. But they weren’t as expensive as Knowles assumes. The only real expense was train or bus tickets. He stayed at friends’ houses and apartments and, frankly, ate their food. (Back then, hosts were expected to provide for their guests without the expectation of payment… the horror!) He wore one suit of clothes and washed the collar of his shirt each night to avoid needing a second shirt. Shorter jaunts were made with friends who took him in their cars.

Skeptic’s Strange Videos
Have you seen the “witty and satirical” video the Skeptics Society released this week? Part of the “Skeptic Presents” series, the video features Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer conducting a fictional interview with “Pope Francis” in which he pushes the fake pope on issues such as female priests, homosexuality, and abortion. Only one issue in the video is actually related to skepticism—exorcism—and that is summarily dismissed with guffaw.

I found the video uncomfortable to watch and not really very funny. Shermer seemed to tie skepticism to a politically specific set of social views, but the question of whether to recognize gay marriage or support abortion or contraception isn’t one of skepticism or science but of politics. The video seemed like the kind of thing designed to provoke a supportive response from secular humanists, but I don’t see how it’s going to help promote the idea of critical thinking or reason-based analysis.

98 Comments

Scott Hamilton

8/20/2014 04:36:06 am

So Micah Hanks has never been to a MUFON meeting in, say, the last twenty years? Because conspiracy theories, time travel, ancient astronauts and the like have been heavily discussed at every one I've been to.

8/20/2014 07:00:20 am

Frankly, UFOlogists really need to clean their own house before acting outraged at anything their critics say. Forget the likes of von Daniken - how about hypnotists selling private medical records of "abductees" to tabloids and fringe writers?

Only Me

8/20/2014 05:02:07 am

Reality tells the story of the human tragedy that results when, fringe historians in this case, are more concerned with being “right” than getting the “right answer.” Scholars and skeptics (i.e. Jason Colavito) do a beautiful job of demonstrating how facts trump the beliefs of so many fringe historians who abused (and continue to abuse) their positions of imagined authority and credibility. In an age where science and technology rules, I’m often dumbfounded how so many intelligent people still don’t understand the basic principles of evidence and logic. It just goes to show how far we, as humans, have not progressed.

There, that's fixed.

BillUSA

8/20/2014 12:05:54 pm

Only Me -

Beat me to the punch on that one. If SW is good for anything, I'll soon have another opportunity.

8/20/2014 05:31:33 am

"I am increasingly concerned, though, that so many fringe outlets are descending into Nazi apologetics. It’s everywhere!"

Check out rense.com

But first make sure all your internet blocks and filters are up to date :)

spookyparadigm

8/20/2014 06:39:51 am

Given the concern over increased militarization of police, more open use of racial language in politics, political polarization, and continued economic weakness especially for the lower end of the economic scale, I'm sure the hard turn towards radical reactionary schemes in fringe culture, including towards fascism, is entirely harmless and not at all a canary in the coalmine.

Hm.

8/20/2014 06:48:25 am

Do check out rense.com if you haven't. It's quite a sight...

8/20/2014 07:38:16 am

Oh, I'm familiar with rense

8/20/2014 08:08:06 am

I do think that your assessment may be too pessimistic. I'm inclined to think that the combined intellectual and political anti-establishment hysteria bubble is going to burst eventually, since the big players have to keep upping the stakes to compete with each other. And, all jokes aside, there is a ceiling to how far they can go, since they aren't really capable of creating anything fundamentally new. I think Hitler obsession is (among other thing) a sign that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.

. link

8/20/2014 12:18:50 pm

unfortunately... i did. more than a decade ago.
the news articles that were about Nazis became
ten times the number they were when i first
went there. he is infamous for net-feuding with
Jack Shulman of American Computer Company
and his now long gone Roswell Incident site.

http://www.phils.com.au/transistor.htm

8/20/2014 09:16:45 am

BTW, I've listened to Red Ice a couple of times, and while I didn't like it, I wouldn't have expected this.

8/20/2014 09:25:55 am

Keeping up with the Joneses, man, I'm telling you. (Joneses, heh...)

The Other J.

9/7/2014 06:11:48 pm

When Red Ice began, it was more or less just a slickly-produced interview session on esoteric subjects -- a kind of modern, podcast version of In Search Of. It took a few years for it to really start to gravitate to fringe-ology as a mask for hate politics, and I'm not exactly sure which was the cart and which was the horse, the show or the guests. They were openly trying to get guests who claimed to be researching fringe subjects of any sort, and I'm not sure there were any white race-baiters in the early days. (But the vast majority were white -- only one black guest in the first three years, and I'm not sure after that.) They had Jim Marrs on once, but most of the guests discussed things like how money was magic or synchromysticism.

But since the kinds of ideas Jason has found on the show don't have much of a place in regular political discourse, they're going to take root in the fringes, and that's who started to pop up on the show. Red Ice of course booked them, so I guess that makes them the horse, but back then (maybe six or seven years ago), they were having guests on more than once -- Michael Tsarion was on almost monthly. So it could be they needed to broaden their content, and just stumbled into the creepier sociological end, then got caught up in it. In any case, they've become a media outlet for atavistic racist ideas based on pseudoscience and magical mumbo jumbo posing as philosophy and theology.

I first came across it when I was looking for material for a conspiracy theory unit for a class. Red Ice was a real find for that, and also a real test of patience. Very few of the guests could be taken seriously, as most of their arguments consisted of connect-the-dots assertions rather than evidence. The first time I saw a guest that was clearly on a rage ride and not trying to hide it in code words was a Canadian anti-feminist, anti-Zionist, anti-homosexual, anti-Freemason writer named -- actually not sure if I want to name him. Doing that tends to bring the google alert troops. He was on a few years after they got started, talking about masculinity under siege in America. He has a PhD in English from the U. of Toronto (which kind of saddens me), and he wouldn't stop talking about his credentials, although I don't know if he ever held any university appointments. But it seems he was on the path of a typical scholar -- he even invented the board game Scruples -- and at some point went waaaay off the rails. (That should give the curious more than enough info to find out who he is.)

His constant appeal to authority ("Look at my PhD") was the first thing that set off my spidey sense. Then the way he used his evidence was all kinds of wrong -- misused, misquoted, data that didn't check out, leaps from supposed evidence to conclusions that weren't warranted. Every couple of minutes I was putting on the brakes because what he said just seemed too extreme and pseudo-scholastic, but he kept smoke-screening the host by throwing down his credentials. Many of his statements were just howlers that demanded follow-up questions, but those questions never came. Before this guy, most of the Red Ice guests just made wild, unprovable claims about UFO's, ancient humans or neanderthals, architecture, crop circles, assassinations or mythology -- often bonkers, but harmless enough because they were so removed from anything actual or actionable. This guy was the first guest who seemed to be activating an agenda against specific people today. The whole thing felt disgusting and propagandistic.

From what I can tell, that was the turning point. They had that guest on again, and started having on more guests with similar positions or presentations. Some of their past, more benign guests also grew beyond just being eccentric and becoming more strident, often in their views about culture. (Jim Marrs discourse became more and more coded anti-Semitism during this same period.) At least for me, that was the point when Red Ice ceased to be a kind of modern podcast version of In Search Of and became something closer to the esoteric version of Alex Jones.

8/20/2014 05:46:31 am

I really do wonder whether Knowles really *is* trolling. Or, somewhat more to the point, merely whoring for (at least negative) publicity.

"the Mafia used the pulp mills to smuggle Canadian liquor over the border and the newsstands themselves were notorious money laundering operations... Does that anything to do with Lovecraft per se? No, it just shows that he was swimming in some pretty murky waters his entire career. And you should always remember that nothing is ever as it seems."

8/20/2014 06:36:46 am

If you replace "trolling" with LARPing, with a side of freaking the mundanes, I'd probably agree.

Granted, I think the same about a lot of folks in occulture, especially those not heavily focused on political conspiracy theory, so I may be biased. But it's a mix of trolling, and of playing.

We discussed this before, but I think this kind of makes the point. If you're going to spend your time sorting through this material, why would one want to get boring answers? Why would you want the answer to be that Lovecraft was poor but thrifty, and that his one activity he spent money on was the one reflected in many of his works, an antiquarian traveling to places and investigating their history? His longest work was an architectural and historical travelogue, not a horror story.

If you're going to play around in history, from the perspective it is all play, why not come up with an exciting answer? Would you rather find evidence of the poor dead-end Lovecraft, or the secret agent with access to the numinous gnostic truths Lovecraft? Which one allows you to LARP as a dedicated investigator of hidden truths? Which one is more fun to talk about? Never mind that yes, it's also more likely to get eyes, and you don't have to go through all the struggle of all those skeptic-pleasing citations and such.

8/20/2014 06:45:51 am

These are all rhetorical questions, I assume... :)

The same problem I pointed out before: He doesn't dispense with some, however lame and perfunctory, "struggle of all those skeptic-pleasing citations". And he gets "legitimate" academics to write blurbs for his works.

I do agree (and, for what it's worth, have said things to similar effect myself) that what you're saying describes his intended audience.

8/20/2014 07:47:48 am

As he does intend to get paid for his writing, I guess he has to have some basic standards.

I went over to the post, and he's got another one up announcing the project this is all part of, a "find the secret conspiracy behind entertainment" project. Given how common "Illuminati" beliefs have been the last few years, maybe he's somewhere between my Foucault's Pendulum bored tricksters and your salesmen.

8/20/2014 08:03:25 am

Given the extent to which he has immersed himself into various occult and pseudoscientific ideas, and given that he seems sufficiently egomaniacal to take his own imagination as a guide to reality, perhaps the distinction you make begins to break down.

And intent to get paid still doesn't do it for me. He could do something a la David Markson or David Shields (and do it well as far as this stuff goes, for all we know), but he doesn't.

8/20/2014 08:19:52 am

"and given that he seems sufficiently egomaniacal to take his own imagination as a guide to reality, perhaps the distinction you make begins to break down."

I think that's why I find it interesting. I haven't had friends who are con-artists. But I had a former friend who does act like that, sees patterns in everything, and simultaneously tells everyone how superior his understanding is to theirs, yet demands an audience (yet only produces disjointed material for his own benefit, with glimmers of insight because at one time he was quite bright).

Jason Colavito link

8/20/2014 08:22:22 am

Did you like the part where in the comments on his blog post, Knowles accuses me of having "just discovered" Desmond Leslie, as though his existence disproves all of my work? The best part is that after attacking me for not doing research to "engage" with the facts, Knowles fails to note that I wrote about Leslie in my "Cult of Aliens Gods"--in 2005.

8/20/2014 08:27:49 am

Jason, I hope Knowles isn't causing you anything other than amusement. Though perhaps I say that because he's not misrepresenting my work.

You really owe it to yourself to read more of his stuff, if you haven't already. It would make for interesting reading and you're bound to come out on top (especially if Knowles stops by again).

8/20/2014 08:31:27 am

(I meant any destructive critique you write would make for interesting reading)

8/20/2014 10:09:47 am

"sees patterns in everything"
"demands an audience"
"only produces disjointed material for his own benefit, with glimmers of insight"

Wow. That sounds amazingly like one of the board's most prolific posters.

8/20/2014 10:31:03 am

@ Only Me

Hey, I resent that! :)

8/20/2014 12:12:29 pm

spookyparadigm -

That they go for the exciting tales of mundane reality can be similarly applied to my own theory about the tales and practices of our ancestors. I am no scholar on the subject of ancient writings, but I have always wondered if ancient ideas of entertainment and science fiction aren't being mistakenly taken as proof of contact with ancient aliens.

8/20/2014 12:21:39 pm

That's a really hard question to address, especially because 19th and early 20th century scholars had such an interest in mythology for their own reasons (some of which are relevant to AA, western occultism, etc.), they've muddied the waters.

It isn't my strong suit, but I suspect that the answer is all of the above. Some people took myths literally. In some contexts, everyone may have taken them quite seriously, in others perhaps not so much. You see this in religions today, with literalist practices in Christianity vs. those who approach scripture as metaphor and morality. 1001 Nights is a classic piece of ancient fiction, but it played with ideas (jinn, for example) that people did believe in and believe in today.

Looping to a persistent topic here, the divide between entertainment media and belief is a lot more permeable than most people believe. There is an ideal of it coming from a century ago, of a literate populace that could differentiate between for-the-sake-of-art-and-entertainment literature and things one is supposed to believe, or that wanted to. I don't think this was ever the case, and it certainly isn't a human universal to even think this way, nor is it a human universal to completely blend the two at all times.

8/20/2014 06:26:33 pm

spookyparadigm -

That's the thing. As your response states, it's impossible to nail down with any certainty the "where-when-how" a society dealt with the application of religion, superstition and art. I suggest there were individuals from say the Stone, Bronze or Iron Age who were ahead of their time but never published (to use the term gratuitously) or recognized for their understanding and differentiation of the three in any pre-historic method of record keeping that could have passed down the credit.

I postulate (admittedly on no evidence at all) that some carving, cave drawing, or geoglyph on the Nazca plain - which fringe theorists believe to be a depiction of aliens - might have sprung from the imagination of one such individual. The design may have been created sans the influence of lore or religion but I'm not trying to suggest that it was a widespread practice either. Perhaps the work of someone with a very creative imagination.

The roots of science fiction are planted somewhere in our deep history and its presence may be seen in an example here or there. However, I do find it an interesting possibility and would love to know if the idea has ever crossed the minds of mainstream scholars.

Ronald W. Satz link

8/20/2014 05:54:48 am

I went to a MUFON conference one time here in Bucks County, PA (just for fun). I estimate that 80% of the attendees were kooks, and 20% were serious. I asked a question if the physician's files of Betty and Barney Hill were ever to be released; the answer was "No." I think Dr. Bruce Maccabee is a serious UFOlogist, but the vast majority of those claiming to be such are not. It's clearly degenerated into a pseudoscience like the Ancient Astronaut theory.

8/20/2014 05:56:20 am

"It's clearly degenerated into a pseudoscience like the Reciprocal theory"

Fixed.

Steve_in_SoDak

8/20/2014 06:03:33 am

LMFAO :p

8/20/2014 06:23:42 am

To be honest, I think I was being too harsh... on UFOlogy! :D

8/20/2014 12:57:35 pm

You again? The Reciprocal System is the true theory of the universe, you retarded little humanities major. I have, on the market The Reciprocal System: Microcosmos Database, which applies the Reciprocal System to hundreds of thousands of situations. Obviously, it's way beyond your pathetic IQ level to grasp.

8/20/2014 01:17:32 pm

I just linked RWS's last post on RationalWiki.

Dave Lewis

8/20/2014 04:25:10 pm

8/20/2014 04:42:46 pm

Hey, Dave, are you that comics guy? Or is it just a really common name?

8/21/2014 11:07:10 am

@EP

No that's another Dave Lewis I guess!

Humanist

8/20/2014 03:56:56 pm

Sometimes Rational Wiki is an Oxymoron akin to
Justifiable War, Military Intelligence or Jumbo Shrimp.

8/20/2014 04:21:37 pm

Wait, what? Are you saying that 'wiki' generally means 'irrational'? I see the joke you were going for there, but it only works if you don't misapply the term 'oxymoron'. (And "justifiable war" isn't even in the ballpark either.)

8/20/2014 04:32:42 pm

Oh! You mean, like, Reciprocal Theory?

See, a theory is a hypothesis that has been confirmed by observation, experiment, etc. Ronald's baby has failed that definition, which is why he is the lone voice for it. Thirty plus years invested and nothing to show for it. Sad.

8/20/2014 04:48:07 pm

Really sad part: It's not even his baby. It's basically regurgitating another guy's work and making it somehow even more ridiculous. RWS's "baby" is a "Russian mummy" (Unexplained Files reference).

8/20/2014 04:56:50 pm

Saw that episode. You know things are spiraling out of control when an episode of Unexplained Files contains more facts and realism than the mockumentaries that have become a part of Shark Week.

8/20/2014 05:00:44 pm

Sorry, you lost me.

8/20/2014 05:12:21 pm

Following the "Mermaids: The Body Found" fiasco, Shark Week either that same year or the following year included a mockumentary called "Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives", done in the same style as Mermaids.

And just like the prior Mermaids series, the Megalodon mockumentary for this year's Shark Week was an Extended Cut. A second offering was "Shark of Darkness: The Wrath of Submarine", about a 35+ feet long Great White that haunts the west coast of Africa.

Watching a television event that used to be groundbreaking become a parody of itself is disheartening.

8/20/2014 05:18:38 pm

No, I mean the part comparing it to Unexplained Files. Were you being sarcastic, or what?

8/20/2014 06:49:10 pm

Not really.

At least Unexplained Files has real people offering their opinions, whether there is any truth to the stories or not. At least we can do Internet searches for the subjects of said stories to learn more for ourselves.

By comparison, mockumentaries using doctored photos, SyFy-level CGI, staged scenes and actors without an opening disclaimer about it's entertainment purposes serve only to highlight how low once credible channels will stoop for ratings. Especially troubling, are the folks who fall for such offerings...and actually believe what they've seen.

I know the same could be said about shows like Unexplained Files, but really, what's worse? The fringe show that can be researched and critiqued, or the completely fictional mockumentary that's revealed to be fictional at the end credits? Sometimes, I don't know.

8/20/2014 06:53:58 pm

It's always better to have the option of critiquing something. Check out my post on Fenton on "Artificial Mounds" for an example of why :)

8/21/2014 08:44:27 am

I am puzzled. Jumbo shrimp are real. They tend to be rather big
shrimp. Military Intelligence tries for accuracy in order to create
what the British would call "day reports" but we sometimes see
substandard work or jingoistic speculations in lieu of solid facts.
A sincere Pacifist thinks that the reasons for going to war often
is not there at all, and very lacking, and even if you must fight, its
easier to defend a defensive action over something that takes
a proactive offensive strategy to its outcome. Rational Wiki does
assume educated members of our power elite can be rational,
its 'label' gives one the impression that the Enlightenment is in
its revolutionary Apex, not that Romanticism subsumed many
of the Great Wits in due time, it more properly is the Skeptic's
Wiki, even at the risk of much Cultish & Irrational & Compulsive
behavior that has its own "True Believer" pitfalls as defined by
Eric Hoffer's magnificent tome. Human beings tend to be very
irrational, illogical, internally conflicted on several levels of being
as by Sigmund Freud's Ego, Id + Super-Ego defining of things,
logic & rationality are lofty ideals almost completely out of reach of mere mortals, nearly all human minds are given to ancestral
instinctual responses coming up from the deepest levels of the
Id to the Ego & Super-Ego, if not the rather voluminous interface
the Id has between the lobes of the brain. Emotions tend to have
a resonance even when dealing with an abstract concept, we do
tag things with sense memory associations, David Hume did
have the correct linkage idea about our cognitive abilities and our senses. An unrealized goal and ideal thusly is being confused with an accomplished goal or destination. Objectivism as Ayn
Rand defines it tends to not confuse the ideals and goals we
have with our minor defeats and failures on a day to day basis.
Rational Thought was thoroughly defined 250 to 500 years ago,
building on Plato's archetypes. Steven Pinker's book debunking
many of the Enlightenment assumptions perhaps indicates that Rationalism is in decline, even as counter-intuitively Science is
advancing and accumulating more knowledge, Again, definitions
are needed. Words tend to obey the rules of Plato's archetypes,
each human brain's complex network of synaptic connections and neurons is not identical to or a carbon copy of any other
human brain, and each individual seldom has chromosomes
or genes exactly like the next individual. (see identical twins)
Our DNA from the species genome is our 'foundation' that lets
us expand our brains between conception and early adulthood.
At best RationalWiki is semi-educated or educated guesses...it
in places is only just slightly better than Diderot's Encyclopedia!!!

terry the censor

8/21/2014 06:53:24 am

> if the physician's files of Betty and Barney Hill were ever to be released; the answer was "No."

That's Marden's MO. She also won't release (even for sale) the unedited hypnosis tapes, yet asserts skeptics are wrong and she is right because they haven't listened to the complete tapes!

Marden thinks withholding one's data is okay for "scientific" ufology. But in real science, that would get your papers retracted.

8/20/2014 08:49:22 am

spookyparadigm said: "I had a former friend who does act like that, sees patterns in everything, and simultaneously tells everyone how superior his understanding is to theirs, yet demands an audience (yet only produces disjointed material for his own benefit, with glimmers of insight because at one time he was quite bright)."

Knowles could well have some kind of gradually progressing mental illness. If we are to believe his blog, he is actually suffering from some atypical neurological condition, which could, for all we know, be impacting his cognitive functioning (or, if psychosomatic, be an effect, not a cause). And behavioral and thought patterns he exhibits (in his engagement with Jason, for instance) are consistent with (even if not symptomatic of) some mild schizoid disorder. Inexplicable jumps in reasoning, disordered speech, failure to notice obvious self-contradition, paranoia...

Or he could just be an obnoxious, out-of-control egomaniac...

8/20/2014 09:14:54 am

I've never liked doing that. One of my first rules for myself when getting really interested in occulture was not to chalk it up to mental illness. I do believe that's a major part of it, but in cases like Shaver where Palmer took Shaver's delusions and turned them into mythology. I eventually have loosened on that, but still, I can't get behind pathologizing people unless I'm actually trained, and even then ...

That said, the former friend talks about being manic, and it may well be tied to that. He also smokes a lot of pot. And he's always had a huge ego. I gave up trying to figure it out some time ago (though I leaned to something like a narcissistic egomaniac with the added element that his career imploded before it began, while his wife's career in the same field took off), and just decided to cut off contact.

8/20/2014 09:22:46 am

I'm certainly not chalking it up to mental illness. (I've been saying all along that I have no strong views about the ratio of insanity, stupidity, and dishonesty in Knowles's case.) I'm merely observing certain parallels.

Besides, there is a slippery slope here. Are you averse to pathologizing the abductee phenomenon? Hallucinogen-fueled time travel? The John Ford affair? I'm sure you aren't.

You shouldn't *antecedently* chalk it up to mental illness, of course. But, like, what would it take to make it a live hypothesis? Knowles talking about how a court-appointed psychiatrist is trying to poison him with electropollution?

(Again, not saying Knowles is crazy. Just that he's not exactly helping people rule it out.)

8/20/2014 09:47:14 am

Alien abduction is a perfect example. Yes, for many people it can be related to hypnopompic/gogic hallucination and sleep paralysis, tied to space age cultural imagery. For other people, it can be mostly blamed on hypnotic "regression"/confabulation by problematic "researchers." For others, it does start to look like more engrossing hallucinations. For others ... and so on.

I think that yes, if someone leaves lots of evidence for behavior or perceptions commonly seen in cases of mental illness (say you start hearing voices coming out of your arc welding equipment, and they clue you into vast supernatural powers arrayed against you), ok. But someone could tell the same sorts of stories for other reasons, if that evidence isn't there.

I'm personally far more comfortable looking at these on a cultural level. I don't mean necessarily big culture, or in broad strokes. I mean looking at how they interact between people, how they impact/are impacted by institutions and historical forces, how they change through time, etc.. This is partly due to my training and outlook. It's also partly due to how trying to narrow these phenomena down to individuals is a path to frustration.

I don't really care too much why Whitley Strieber has published and said what he said and wrote. I'm intrigued by possibilities. But for me, how that impacted others, and the larger cultural patterns he drew on in that time and place, are more important.

And lastly, I guess that "he's crazy" is the easy way out. After all these years, I also wonder sometimes if it may be the smart way as well. But I guess I bristle at it as a non-starter :)

8/20/2014 09:54:05 am

I don't think you and I disagree about "possibilities". I just don't wish to exclude some of them because we may be uncomfortable or ill-equipped for examining it. But even on the level of society or culture, questions about individuals can be significant. I can't rule out that it says a lot about society whether it's more inclined to accept "alternative" narratives from the mentally ill or from scam artists. And if so, then we need to understand whether and how the narratives produced by one type differ from those produced by the other.

8/20/2014 09:36:48 am

Re: Micah Hanks

1.) I haven't finished listening to the episode yet, but I'm finding it kind of a snoozer. I've listened to a lot of their episodes, this isn't a favorite.

2.) I do like how they're complaining about being lumped in with various undesirables, on the same show where guests talk about stories of living dinosaurs in the American southwest, where one of the co-hosts has gone looking for the ancient city in the Southwest that the Smithsonian covered up, etc.. They've done some good episodes, the MJ-12 autopsy is required listening. But some guests are awful, especially if they have the ear of one of the co-hosts (and I mean specifically one of them), something that has been commented on in their forums.

3.) That said, I do think Hanks is somewhat correct with dividing ufology from Ancient Aliens etc.. Ufology is going to end up, IMO, being a popular brand of western occultism and spirituality that lasted about a half-century (other than for a small die-hard group of people). It sprang out of the ruins of the theosophical underground and out of the more fertile roots of the burgeoning science fiction community (something Mr. Knowles and Mr. Colavito both agree upon, the difference being on whether they interpret this as machinations of hidden forces, or recycling of cultural material). It seized upon the militarization of society but especially of science in the wake of WWII, providing a whole new audience for older ideas. This new Big Science dressing proved immensely popular. But as Big Science became less popular, that dressing began to have negative impact, especially among the anti-establishment audience naturally drawn to "fringe" topics.

Ufology isn't dying so much as it is going back to what it had been before. Sure, ufology has left its mark in some imagery. But the "study of strange things seen in the sky" has been on the way out for a long time. By Hanks' strict definition (which he doesn't really hold to during the conversation anyway), most of "ufology" moved on to other topics (abduction, conspiracy) by 1980 or so. These topics aren't unrelated, but methodologically they have nothing to do with identifying things in the sky, which is what he talks about by citing the various physics-oriented UAP papers.

There is nothing wrong with that. Cultural phenomena change, and they come to an end (largely: in our information age, it is a lot easier to preserve information about and recombine old practices, though generally only as niche hobbies or fads). We even recognize this in occulture. People still have a fixation on spirits. Mediums still do their thing. But outside of Lily Dale, we don't talk much about Spiritualism, we talk about where that cultural stream has since gone.

Just ask the sea serpents.

8/20/2014 09:46:55 am

It's no coincidence that rise and decline of strong relativism and constructivism in mainstream academia coincide with the rise and decline of mind-over-matter, New Age spirituality in mainstream culture.

8/20/2014 09:50:47 am

If anything, occulture demonstrates that academia is not the source, nor even the first adopter, for a lot of cultural trends and economic forces.

It's sort of like the difference between quality films and B-movies. Quality films are great to appreciate and analyze the craft of the creators and performers. They may provide soil for fertile and powerful ideas and discussions.

But if you want to actually know what's going on in the culture, B-movies always win. They're unglossed.

I'm an archaeologist. I love amazing pieces of iconographic sculpture. But there is a reason we use broken potsherds to analyze ancient cities.

8/20/2014 09:58:23 am

This is somewhat off-topic, but have you read this:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27650026

"Flying Saucers as Folklore" (1950)

8/20/2014 11:07:42 am

I can't remember if I've read it. I do remember running across it a few years ago and being surprised by its existence, especially since no one touches that topic again until the late 1960s (Festinger et al really is something else, and I don't even want to get into Jung).

8/20/2014 11:19:04 am

Hey, what's wrong with Jung? Once you get used to his framework and understand his roots, he's really nowhere near as flaky as he seems at first.

8/20/2014 11:30:28 am

My problems with Jung are shallow and ignorant, but I really don't have time to change them

1.) My strong dislike for Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces soured me on Jungian ideas

2.) I didn't like Jung's UFO book. I'm just really not that interested in symbology.

3.) That approach of primal memory etc., and the historical connections, bring him way too close to European fascism for my comfort. Funny in a thread on Lovecraft.

8/20/2014 11:40:21 am

I'd don't know how intense your dislike for Campbell is, but I bet I share it! Not sure what you mean about Jung being brought "way too close to fascism", however...

Jung is responsible for inspiring a *lot* of post-War craziness (like, A LOT of it!), but I think it's mostly the fault of the people who were inspired by him. It's also pretty clear that his project is a failure as far as serious scholarship is concerned. He is an enormously important figure historically, but *only* historically at this point. However, he is probably as close as one can come to taking the fringe seriously while remaining intellectually responsible, and I find something admirable, almost tragic about it...

Shane Sullivan

8/20/2014 07:11:30 pm

"1.) My strong dislike for Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces soured me on Jungian ideas"

Sorry to butt in, but thank you for saying this. I particularly take issue with Campbell because cast such a wide net as to make Monomyth virtually unfalsifiable--especially since he didn't expect every element to be present in all viable stories. In my mind, he's slightly guiltier of this than Jung.

8/20/2014 07:18:31 pm

@ Shane

Fact: Most of positive references to Campbell are by people who hardly read anything other than Campbell.

Fact #2: Most of appeals to falsifiability creiteria leave it unclear whether the scope of the criteria's applicability (to say nothing of the fact that they are pretty much discarded by contemporary philosophy of science) is understood.

Sorry man, it's a pet peeve of mine, and I'm pissed about Fenton... :)

8/21/2014 08:05:23 am

Next time I'll use a less Popperian word, like ... "undisprovable". The double-negative seems a bit clunky, though.

=P

8/21/2014 09:17:31 am

Shane, my complaint obviously wasn't terminological, but I want neither to split hairs nor to pick fights - unless you're an alien hybrid, a pseudophysicist, a symbologist, or an exorcist :)

Byron DeLear

8/21/2014 09:36:35 am

@Spookyparadigm you mentioned strong dislike for Campbell's monomyth idea, or was it just the way he packaged it in 1949 for Hero Thousand Faces?

8/21/2014 10:54:02 am

Byron,

I was first introduced to his concept by Moyers' PBS doc/interview with Campbell The Power of Myth. We were shown it in 12th grade AP English class. I loved the idea back then, and I still like the basic concept. I discuss the Popol Vuh with my students in some of my classes, and we watched the animated version of the first part of the book. I asked them what they thought of the Hero Twins being orphaned by evil ugly sorcerers (the Lords of Xibalba), and being sent to live with less-than-perfect in-laws (their grandmother), their past as chosen ones completely hidden from them (they are forced to farm even though they have magic, which they use to punish their taunting older brothers), until funny little creatures (rat) brought them to physical evidence of their destiny as future powerful warriors (the ballgame regalia of their fathers). Then I asked them about Harry Potter (Voldemort, the Dunsleys, the owl and the letter) and Luke Skywalker (Vader, Owen and Beru, the droids, his father's lightsaber). Minds blown.

As far as that went, great. But back in second or third year grad school, I read for fun Hero of 1000 Faces, and I barely finished it. He drew links from all over the place, out of cultural context, to make his case, to the point of being maddening.

There are clearly some basic narrative structures that lend themselves well to certain kinds of stories, such as culture heroes. But I know that despite hating his book.

Byron DeLear link

8/21/2014 01:15:53 pm

Great story about your students! The Popul Vuh / Harry Potter comparison is great. Thanks for sharing, and I get your issue with Campbell's Thousand Faces. Perhaps his fascination with discovery and syncretical analysis got the better of him at times. In a bit of research into Campbell detractors, I discovered a well-written missive titled, "Why I Don't Like Joseph Campbell" which inspired me to push back in a lengthy comment --- interesting author to be sure, you can check it out here, my comment is way at the bottom if interested. I did purchase Drew Jacob's E-book even though my comment title read (in answer to his blog title): "Why I Don’t Like Player Haters (or neophytes that pull down scholars for fun and lulz)" Good times!

http://roguepriest.net/2011/07/04/why-i-dont-like-joseph-campbell/#comment-19409

8/20/2014 10:32:26 am

I know I can't shut up about Knowles, but my God, he's such a trainwreck:

"If you were in a major metropolitan area during the Hellenistic or Roman era, you could attend any number festivals in which the stories of Isis and Osiris, Demeter and Persephone, Adonis and Aphrodite, Cybele and Attis or several lesser-known stories would be used in what basically boiled down to recruitment drives."

There was also a little thing classicists like to call "Classical Greek tragedy". You know, the theater from which most of the Roman and Hellenistic "shows" were derived. Or perhaps Knowles simply doesn't know what "Hellenistic" means in this context...

"With the rise of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry during the Enlightenment you had novels such as Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis... meant to make the complicated theories of [these] fraternities accessible to the unitiated."

Um... where to begin?... Is Knowles trying to run some kind of Da Vinci Code-themed ARG? Because I really can't rule that out at this point, what with him self-describing as a Symbologist and all... Could sppokyparadigm be right?! :)

"occultist (and Theosophist)"

Because this totally isn't misleading *or* redundant.

"Travolta would use his post-Pulp Fiction clout to stage a big budget adaption of the novel, which would go down in Hollywood's ledger book as one of the worst movies ever made."

Knowles apparently doesn't know about Saturday Night Fever. Or what ledger books are.

"Although the parallels are invisible to outsiders, many Mormons believe that Glen A. Larson generously leavened the 70s version Battlestar Galactica... with LDS doctrine."

I don't think Knowles understands that knowledge of basic *exoteric* tenets of a major religion and ability to notice basic patterns do not an "insider" make.

"the Dominionist cult of Christianity"

Not sure if he means that Christianity is a Dominionist cult, or that Dominionism is a Christian cult. The difference is in how spectacularly wrong he actually is.

8/20/2014 11:37:36 am

It would be interesting to compare this with the social media disaster (and I suspect sales disaster) that was Bob Curran's attempt at a Lovecraft book, a topic he didn't have that much interest in IIRC, but was presumably planned when Cthulhu became the geek go-to flavor about five years ago or so. See the reviews

http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Mind-Inside-Twisted-Lovecraft/dp/1601632193

I did not write nor comment on any of those reviews. I believe I did comment on it here, though.

Curran took to his blog and attacked his critics, got nastier, and then rage quit, deleting several of the posts if I recall correctly.

I would put him on the complete other side of the motivational spectrum EP and I have been discussing, if that doesn't come across in the reviews.

8/20/2014 11:43:31 am

"Other side of the spectrum"? Haven't we been discussing both sides of it? :)

8/20/2014 11:43:52 am

Correction, I commented on Curran's book at Dan Harms' blog, where he found it so bad he started fact-checking that all of the book's sources existed

http://danharms.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/bob-currans-a-haunted-mind-a-request-for-help/

8/20/2014 11:50:53 am

And here, where the vitriol is discussed by others. I knew I had said mean things about Nick Redfern somewhere!

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/topic/23454-dont-buy-this-booka-haunted-mind-inside-the-dark-twisted-world-of-hp-lovecraft/

8/20/2014 12:42:16 pm

OMG, those "sources" are the fakest! :)

Tap Canfield

8/20/2014 11:07:23 am

I'm very confident that Mr Knowles isn't trying to troll anyone. His Lovecraft posts were really intended for like-minded friends and acquaintances who share his interest in mysticism and the occult and regular readers of his blog.

He certainly hasn't gone out of the way to draw attention to his Lovecraft posts. He's posted them, I think, only on his personal facebook page and private facebook group. Of course, this being the internet, anyone can read his blog and share the individual posts, and this is how it's come to the attention of people here.

It's unfortunate that the posts seem to have caused some small discord, but that was through no intention of Chris Knowles. This blog's readers were certainly not the intended audience. The original essay which kick-started all this wasn't written with the desire to troll anybody.

8/20/2014 11:16:03 am

Mr. Canfield (may I call you Tap?),

Your concern for Knowles's well-being suggests that you're either (a) Knowles himself, (b) someone who loves him, or (c) someone who is professionally obligated to make sure Knowles doesn't do too much damage to himself through being an object of deserved mockery.

You seem to have poor grasp of how internet works, especially whey you are a relatively prominent author (even if within a narrow field).

And guess what? One doesn't get to pick one's audience when making public statements. More to the point, one doesn't get to make ridiculous (and frankly insulting) statements in a public forum and then cry about how an unintended audience (including those at whom insluting statements are directed) is actually evaluating and responding to them.

8/20/2014 11:42:44 am

You may call me Tap. (Also, I'm female. But I don't mind being mistaken for a male. I'm not a very feminine person at all.) Tap Canfield was the prominent character in a short story I wrote a few years ago. I've always wanted to do more with him. I guess the best way to describe him would be that he's like a twelve-year-old Seymour Glass (my favourite of J. D. Salinger's characters.)

Neither A, B, or C apply to me. I'm a member of Christopher Knowles' private facebook group and I've enjoyed some of the posts on his blog. We've conversed a little, I wouldn't say I know him very well, but I find him to be bright, interesting and fun.

I do understand how the internet works. I tried to convey that before but obviously didn't do a good job. I *do* get that when someone posts something on their public blog that there is the potential for the blog post to go viral and spread to a wider audience than its target.

Of course, there's always that chance. But just because there's the chance that someone who may get offended by it *might* see it, that doesn't mean that the post was written with the express intent of angering anyone. It was stated that Chris was trolling Lovecraft fans, but that's not the case, because the author's purpose in writing it was to get some discussion going with readers and members of the facebook group. Anything else is just "collateral damage" as it were.

8/20/2014 11:49:55 am

@ Tap

No one's claiming anything about intent. If there was no intent, that's almost worse, since it just shows Knowles is rude and inconsiderate, or doesn't know how to express himself (though his entire corpus shows the latter as well).

And let me explain the trolling comment. It is, in fact, a *charitable* supposition about what Knowles is doing. He is either "trolling" (in the broad sense of the term), or mentally unbalanced, or phenomenally ignorant and dense. These aren't just insults, these are the options we are left with after careful consideration of his texts, both on HPL and other topics. Jason was in fact, being polite in his assessment of Knowles, something Knowles should try one of these days.

8/20/2014 12:03:12 pm

@ Tap

Apologies about gender confusion. If you don't mind, a word of friendly advice: you may wish to avoid using an alias that can connect you to Astral Projection forums when posting on a "skeptical" blog. I won't make fun of you, because you're nice and well-intentioned, but others may be less kind. (At some other blog, of course! Everyone here is pretty chill. I'm, like, the least chill "skeptical" poster here...)

8/20/2014 11:25:55 am

That's fair (and I'm presuming you are one of those folks), and it is good of you to say as much. I have criticized him, at times in less than pleasant ways, in comments here, but as someone who was playing (but honestly) and not trolling or being a charlatan.

I'll own up: I saw the original post because I've got a google alert for "Lovecraft" (and a couple of related terms). I sent it to Jason because I thought there were some interesting things to discuss, some of which I was skeptical of, some of which I wanted to know more about it. And I know Jason has worked the theosophy/Lovecraft angle and would be interested.

I'm not going to lie, I find the idea of Lovecraft as a secret student of the occult ridiculous. The man gushed about anything any new stream of knowledge he had recently learned, and he is on record asking other authors for help on occultism because it wasn't his strong suit growing up as an autodidact (presuming one doesn't consider Classical literature and myth to be occult).

At the same time, I've always had the nagging suspicion about the traditional short-hand narrative that Lovecraft got all his theosophy first from Price, so late in his career. I suspect that's accurate, if we mean first-hand theosophy. But as has become the argument point, he was clearly getting stuff second-handish, at a minimum.

My one piece of advice to Mr. Knowles would be to drop the "fanboy" attack thing. He can do what he wants, but assuming that folks discussing the material are fanboys waiting for the next Cthulhu+bacon+boardgame kickstarter to drop is foolish. I can't speak for anyone else here, but I've personally come to have a fairly strong dislike for HPL if for no other reason (and there are of course others) because of waste. Wasted potential (because he was talented), spent on pointless hatreds, pointless attempts at showing erudition, etc.. And I'm probably a little annoyed at all the people today who invest so much into him as a genius or as a comic book figure of arcane lore (when he was pulling "scary occult" passages and historical lore out of the Encyclopedia Britannica and Victorian books decades out of date), when in reality he wasn't. Joshi does lots of good work of course, but I don't get his attempts to look at Lovecraft's atheist philosophy, other than as someone injecting the idea into the early roots of science fiction.

8/20/2014 12:27:37 pm

"Joshi does lots of good work of course, but I don't get his attempts to look at Lovecraft's atheist philosophy, other than as someone injecting the idea into the early roots of science fiction."

It reminds me of the desperation of some feminist and minority scholars to declare every marginalized person to ever pick up a pen a brilliant thinker. Lovecraft is less of a philosopher than Black Elk (and about as original).

It's a bit weird that there is no need to fish desperately for intellectual models if one is an atheist. Joshi's advocacy of Lovecraft (and, to a lesser extent, of Mencken) is misplaced if his desire is to promote the secular worldview - unless he is aiming at people who don't respond to anything that's not a comic book-ready character. (And I don't know if the "souls" of such people are really worth fighting for...)

Clint Knapp

8/21/2014 03:04:52 am

Couldn't agree more on the points you make in that last paragraph, Spooky.

I'd even go it a step further to toss all the "Extended Mythos" onto the pyre. Lovecraft may have encouraged it, but that doesn't mean one needs to take the bait. If anything, one should strive to not be Lovecraft and create one's own worlds instead of feeding off of his.

At the end of the day, he wrote more than enough about his own influences and prejudices to form a pretty lucid picture of the type of person he was. Why would anyone want to emulate a severely-bigoted xenophobe with delusions of Anglo-superiority?

Don't get me wrong, he was also an intensely creative person who helped define an entire genre despite never gaining much more in life than the recognition of his peers, and his prejudices and predilections served him well as source material, but all this cult-following stuff people invest so much time and effort into is just ridiculous.

When I can walk into the bookstore (and not just the New Age one, the big chains!) downtown and buy a beanie-baby Cthulhu, a stack of Call of Cthulhu-inspired D&D books that have more text in them than the entire collected fiction of the man himself (discounting letters), and a CD from a band that to this day continues to inspire mis-lead posters to this site asking if Lovecraft ever used Theban in his "book covers" (I'm looking at you, Cradle of Filth fans), we have a problem.

Unfortunately, it's not really one that's limited to Lovecraft. It's just the self-cannibalizing nature of pop culture society. At the most, I'll give a look at an adaptation professing to use him as a direct source, but I'll always be just fine letting the man's own works speak for themselves and leave it at that.

8/21/2014 04:18:02 am

I don't want to crap on the Cthulhu tschoschke business too badly, but I also don't care to participate in it anymore. Getting older, having better things to do, and yes, getting to "know" HPL through his letters etc. all eventually burnt off the "fan" angle.

I can be amused by short efforts that play with Lovecraft's works. Dropping it into other works is fine in my opinion, be it as a throwaway or a mashup (as long as that isn't all you do). My favorite Mignola comic is "The Doom that Came to Gotham" though there are some bits I don't like (I can't really like his Hellboy stuff because he has this uncanny valley with his sources and inspirations of not following them exactly but then not escaping them either. Also, I don't really care for punch-em-ups like he does).

Likewise, if you haven't read Charles Stross' "A Colder War" which is free online, go do it now. Easily the creepiest Lovecraftian story I've ever read. But again, it is a knowing mashup that is also doing something new, and also takes Lovecraft's deeper points and brings them home nicely, rather than just being some surface invocations of tentacles and such.

That said, I don't like reading the "extended" material either, and even though I have a number of books of the stuff, I'm not really sure why I do as they aren't going to get read.

8/20/2014 11:10:56 am

Anyone try to watch the Hitler documentary Red Ice was promoting? As far as I can tell it's made up of large, uncredited chunks from other documentaries and some movie about the life Adolf Hitler. Pretty ballsy, and really puts a different spin on the "banned from YouTube" angle.

8/20/2014 11:17:53 am

Is it really SIX HOURS LONG?!?! :O

8/20/2014 11:34:05 am

Apparently. I watched the first couple parts, spot checked a few in the middle, then watched the last two. Yep, it's flat out Nazi apologia, but with a slightly odd Christian fundamentalist slant.

Kaoteek

8/20/2014 12:16:32 pm

Re: the Pope Francis vid, I got it earlier through the misterdeity channel, and yeah, I'm not particularly fond of that one. I guess it ties in with the fact that the Mister Deity videos are usually good fun, but they can be very hit or miss when guests are involved, especially at the writing stage. And apparently, four people wrote that one, so...

Re: the Hitler documentary guy, I'm kind of amazed by the fact that the full length documentary is on youtube, along with pages of hate-speech filled comments that don't seem to bother anyone. *sigh*

8/20/2014 12:31:44 pm

"I'm kind of amazed by the fact that the full length documentary is on youtube, along with pages of hate-speech filled comments that don't seem to bother anyone."

Welcome to YouTube. Also, it is a lot worse when it comes to videos and comments in languages other than English.

8/20/2014 01:06:22 pm

Oh, but i'm not particularly surprised by the comments, I've made my peace a long time ago with the low IQ of the average youtube commenter.

What amazes me is that, in the eight months the video has been on youtube. noone has flagged the documentary or any of the obviously antisemitic comments...

Fr. Jack Ashcraft link

8/20/2014 03:22:11 pm

I was quite surprised at the Red Ice hosts very clear agreement with Wise, even down to Holocaust denial and themselves attacking "international Jewry". However, as Jason has noted, racism and neo-nazi type ideologies are very much a part of the fringe history and Ancient Alien subcultures. This may be taken as a somewhat snarky comment on my part, but it doesn't surprise me knowing what we now know about Red Ice radio that they would have such people as Scotty Roberts, Scott Wolter, David Icke, etc., on the program. There is a common thread of racially connected theories and ideas that perhaps resonate with the host.

8/20/2014 08:17:59 pm

"Fr. Ashcraft offers a Religious Demonology Certification Course for those who live in the Greater Cincinnati, Southern Indiana, and Northern Kentucky areas. This course is equivalent to an academic level course requiring dedication and study to successfully complete. It covers everything from the online course with much more in depth material on the process of exorcism, the investigative process, how to detect a valid case from the invalid, and much more, as well as case studies of actual exorcisms, etc."

I usually don't say that, but I'd rather deal with AA theorists...

8/21/2014 11:15:33 am

Maybe we could get Fr. Jack to exorcise "666" from this blog.

I hope that comment didn't offend anyone except "666."

8/21/2014 11:17:47 am

Too bad exorcism is even more ridiculous than AA. At least they don't usually presume to base psychiatric help on their theories...

8/21/2014 11:36:45 am

I'm thinking half of the people on the extreme fringe actually
believe what is being said. More of them are like Herman
Goering, when in power they function like psychotic con artists
and murder the people they formerly wanted to thieve from.
Goering is infamous for his looted art collection. We must ask
who benefits if they ever come to power. Discussing the merits
of an idea is one thing, sometimes the unspoken intent does
factor in. In today's political system, one can find moral people.

A.D.

8/21/2014 02:49:46 am

Watched a few red ice shows and knew right away it was a conspiracy theory show.Couldn't deal with the blatant racist undertones

Harris

8/22/2014 05:23:51 am

Have my short review of the runestone play on my blog here; http://mspadventuretime.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/minnesota-fringe-festival-2014/

I honestly am at bit baffled by Wolter's reaction to his portrayal- the tacked on love story between him and a ghost suicide was downright creepy- also a bit problematic to blame her death explicitly on runestone critics (as a "sacrifice" for her father's shame)

A Critic

8/24/2014 09:38:10 am

Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" has all the main characters
being ghosts, its set in a New England cemetery. The lives
of the deceased town folk are looked at with compassion.
Even the TV program "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" has scenes
that bring to mind how Shakespeare has Hamlet talk to his father. The Sea Captain's nephew is still amoungst the living.