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This pro­gram con­tin­ues an exam­i­na­tion of the fascis­tic polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of the “ET” myth. Pre­vi­ous treat­ments of the sub­ject have doc­u­mented the phys­i­cal real­ity of so-called fly­ing saucers. They do not come from outer space. They are advanced aero­nau­ti­cal devices that were devel­oped on earth, by human beings. (Dat­ing to the clos­ing months of the Sec­ond World War, these air­craft were orig­i­nally devel­oped as anti-aircraft weapons by the Ger­mans. The stealth air­craft which came into pub­lic view in the late 1980s were part of the same line of aero­nau­ti­cal research and devel­op­ment.) Pre­vi­ous pro­grams on this sub­ject have high­lighted the delib­er­ate cre­ation of the myth of “extrater­res­trial” by fas­cist and national security-related ele­ments. This myth (believed by 42% of col­lege grad­u­ates accord­ing to 1997 poll), has been manip­u­lated in a racist, ariosophist manner.

This broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of Joe Fir­mage, a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur who has pub­li­cized his belief in extrater­res­tri­als as well as his con­vic­tion that they gave us our high tech­nol­ogy. (The prop­a­ga­tion of this same myth by fas­cist ele­ments con­nected to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy is doc­u­mented in FTR-68.) More dis­turb­ing is the fact that Fir­mage has assem­bled a group to “research” this alle­ga­tion, includ­ing per­son­nel from NASA. In Octo­ber of 1999, this group was sched­uled to have a sym­po­sium on the sub­ject. This sym­po­sium included Sil­i­con Val­ley elec­tron­ics exec­u­tives who shared Firmage’s views and who were part of his research group. The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner reported that these exec­u­tives were going to cap­i­tal­ize Firmage’s orga­ni­za­tion to the tune of $100 mil­lion! An inves­ti­ga­tor from NASA was reported to be very con­cerned about this group’s inclu­sion of per­son­nel from that agency. Specif­i­cally, he was wor­ried that those per­son­nel might dis­close secrets con­cern­ing propul­sion sys­tems dur­ing the course of their ruminations.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of Fir­mage & com­pany, the pro­gram high­lights the grow­ing belief in cre­ation­ism and Amer­i­cans’ dis­en­chant­ment with the notion that we evolved from “lower” ani­mals. (Accord­ing to one recent poll, 68% of Amer­i­cans favor the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism and 40% favor the exclu­sion of the evo­lu­tion of species from school cur­ric­ula!) With fascis­tic the­o­ries about humans hav­ing evolved from space aliens grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, the will­ful igno­rance of Amer­i­cans on the sub­ject of evo­lu­tion holds the poten­tial for dis­as­ter. (For more on these fascis­tic the­o­ries, see FTRs 167, 170.)

Next, the pro­gram reprises an ele­ment of the dis­cus­sion from FTR-66. Act­ing on behalf of an appar­ent neo-Nazi group, a colonel in the mil­i­tary pro­moted the notion that aliens vis­ited earth and were still here. Uti­liz­ing the iconog­ra­phy of Hitler’s SS, this group claims to be prepar­ing “a belief change in Amer­ica”. One won­ders if this belief change was along the lines advo­cated by the believ­ers in “The Nine,” dis­cussed in FTR-169. This Nazi UFO group warned researcher Jacques Vallee not to con­tact “the gov­ern­ment”. The racist and fascis­tic the­ory that the so-called “Aryans” evolved from space aliens and that the Ger­mans are, there­fore, supe­rior is a recur­rent theme of vol­umes pub­lished by neo-Nazi pub­lisher Ernst Zundel’s Samis­dat pub­lish­ing house. As dis­cussed in FTR-167, for­mer Naval Intel­li­gence Agent Bill Cooper has sounded related themes.

The broad­cast con­cludes with a review of a dis­turb­ing piece of infor­ma­tion first pre­sented in FTR-173. This con­cerns author Jim Marrs’ endorse­ment of the notion that we have been vis­ited by space aliens and that they gave the Ger­mans their “fly­ing saucer” tech­nol­ogy. Marrs has also engaged in Holo­caust revi­sion­ism. The author of the book Cross­fire and one of the influ­ences on Oliver Stone’s film JFK, Marrs claims that the 6 mil­lion fig­ure is greatly exag­ger­ated. (This is in keep­ing with con­tem­po­rary Holo­caust denial, which claims that only some thou­sands died and that there were no gas cham­bers in the con­cen­tra­tion camps.) Marrs’ endorse­ment of the unten­able “ET” myth and his Holo­caust revi­sion­ism is par­tic­u­larly dis­turb­ing, when one con­sid­ers that learn­ing the truth con­cern­ing the JFK assas­si­na­tion and other polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cies can leave a per­son in a state of intel­lec­tual rel­a­tivism. Hav­ing come to real­ize that Lee Har­vey Oswald did not kill Pres­i­dent Kennedy, a per­son may think “per­haps the Holo­caust didn’t hap­pen”. Because of this, Nazi ele­ments have focused on con­spir­acy research as a vehi­cle for gain­ing cred­i­bil­ity for their pro­pa­ganda. (For more on this sub­ject, see FTR-73.) (Recorded on 10/31/99.)