Lis­ten: One seg­ment

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.

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. (Record­ed on 10/31/99.)