What UFOs and Joe McCarthy Have to Do With the Assault on the Capitol
Quote:In the 1980s and 1990s, right-wing extremists made a concerted effort to use interest in UFOs to lure disaffected white men into what Barkun called “a culture of conspiracy.” Come for the aliens, be a man, and stay for the racism, homophobia, and misogyny.
What came next was no surprise.
On any given night, viewers of the highest-rated show in the history of cable news, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, might find themselves treated to its namesake host discussing flying saucers and space aliens alongside election conspiracies and GOP talking points. Praise for former President Donald Trump, excuses for those involved in the Capitol assault, and criticism of racial and sexual minorities can sit seamlessly beside occasional interviews featuring UFO “experts” pleading conspiracy.
Most outside the right-wing bubble treat his UFO segments as a joke. They’re not.
Flying saucers are part of his midlife rebel act. He argued in November that UFO conspiracy theories and his political analysis are inseparable. “We literally do UFO segments,” he said on-air, “not because we’re crazy or had even been interested in the subject but because there is evidence that UFOs are real and everyone lies about it.” That “everyone,” of course, is the Deep State, the federal bureaucracy, and Democrats—enemies of conservatives for other reasons, too.
Carlson appeared in 2019 on the History Channel series Ancient Aliens to say he was “starting to believe” that the U.S. government harbors UFO wreckage.
Why is this dangerous? In September, a judge found that no reasonable viewer would mistake Carlson’s program for factual. But that is a generous assumption. A 2018 Pew Research Center report found that news consumers cannot reliably distinguish between fact and opinion. And just as Barkun warned more than a decade ago, UFO conspiracy theories serve as a vector of radicalization.
Viewers become curious, start searching online, and discover a constellation of right-wing extremism. Whether it’s YouTube’s algorithms directing conspiracy fans to ever-more-extreme content, UFO researchers embracing QAnon-style conspiracies online, or Ancient Aliens star Erich von Däniken putting racist and transphobic coments in his books, the jocular cable UFO conversation is the smiling face of a nasty underbelly. Former Ancient Aliens star David Wilcock started an online spiritual movement combining QAnon, UFOs, and Donald Trump for his more than 450,000 YouTube subscribers.
In short, most people don’t treat the paranormal fringe seriously, so poisonous attitudes can seep in where mainstream journalists and scholars aren’t looking until they erupt onto the national stage. And erupt they did on Jan. 6. Many in the mob that breached the Capitol wore shirts promoting QAnon conspiracies. One of the most visible insurrectionists, Jacob Anthony Chansley, who goes by the name Jake Angeli, mounted the Senate dais shirtless in a horned headdress. He posted a video to YouTube before the company shut down his channel in which he relayed his “secret” history of the world, complete with space aliens and Egyptian pyramids, even citing History Channel regulars like author Graham Hancock by name.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/ufo...eories.amp
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
