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Review of America Unearthed S02E02 "The New World Order"
When America Unearthed began last year, it promised to use science to investigate the mysteries of North American prehistory. Science went out the window long before the production had dowsers scouring for giants with magic sticks, but the show kept its focus on prehistory for its first season. For this season, however, we have apparently slipped the surly bonds of history to touch the face of Alex Jones, or at least Jesse Ventura, spiritual godfathers to the show's sudden turn toward contemporary conspiracies.
And there are just so many conspiracies! From Glenn Beck warning darkly of FEMA concentration camps for the coming Obama-run anti-conservative genocide to Jim Marrs proclaiming that Pres. Obama and the ancient aliens are conspiring with China to commit mass genocide to Alex Jones claiming that the United Nations is planning a global genocide to reduce the world population... there are just so many!
Hmm… Well, I guess, there's a theme, at least. Oh, and happily it's also the theme of our episode tonight: a conspiracy to commit global genocide. For all of you who hate when I mention politics, I am sorry that the show chose to explore a claim associated strongly with the right-wing paranoid fringe, but it shows that politics and history cannot be completely unlinked.
To Scott Wolter's credit, however, he seems barely interested in this week's topic. There are very few statements of "I believe" or "I'm convinced" as there are when he talks about Holy Bloodline conspiracies or the Knights Templar; instead, all of the weird stuff is attributed to "some people," tacit admission that this episode is the brainchild of producers trolling the internet for topics designed to provoke the interest and outrage of the perceived audience. Wolter himself is merely reading a script, one at times he seems barely able to convince himself is worth the effort. The show's halfhearted conclusion only confirms the episode is a waste of time designed to attract those already interested in imaginary conspiracies.
As Profs. Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj write in their new book The Outrage Industry (Oxford University Press, 2013) in terms of political media, but which equally well applies to pseudo-historical programming:
Controversial content like this has always existed in small pockets of the media landscape, but in the last twenty-five years this form of commentary has come into its own, as a new genre of political opinion media that we term outrage. The genre has several distinctive attributes but is most easily recognizable by the rhetoric that defines it, with its hallmark venom, vilification of opponents, and hyperbolic reinterpretations of current events.
You can add America Unearthed to the list of program that use hyperbolic reinterpretations and feigned outrage at unloved "elites" to forge an emotional bond with the audience that exists beyond facts and thus helps grow the show's audience share. The show's exploration of fringe political beliefs, such as New World Order genocide conspiracies, in addition to fringe historical beliefs is disappointing and portends an ever-closer alignment with the greater "alternative" movement, in all its many and mutually exclusive forms, united only in a deep-seated belief that "elites" are somehow hiding a "truth" which, if exposed, would somehow set us all free.
Here, I am afraid, fringe characters have an advantage over me. When one does not need any special training or education in a discipline to become a self-proclaimed expert in it, there is nothing to stop the fringe speculator from exploring with equal fervor prehistoric Phoenician voyages to New Hampshire, medieval royal genealogy, or contemporary political maneuvering beneath the Denver International Airport. I, on the other hand, do feel the need to have some kind of grounding in the subjects I discuss, and this means that while I am well-versed in ancient history, I am much less familiar with the fine details of contemporary conspiracy theories. They've never been of much interest to me, and I don't have the same depth of background knowledge on New World Order conspiracies that I do on ancient subjects.
America Unearthed S02E02 "The New World Order" opens with the Georgia Guidestones, which the show describes as "apocalyptic" despite the fact that they contain no reference to an apocalypse and no explicit statement about any type of doom. The show plays up the mystery angle and announces that the dramatized 1979 historical recreation we are about to see, imagined as occurring on grainy surveillance cameras that were not widely used in 1979, is fictional, apparently in tacit admission that last year they fabricated a few too many "video" scenes. The reconstruction is based on the testimony by Wyatt Martin and Joe H. Fendley, Sr., who both rode the Guidestones to modest fame and had a vested interest in creating a "mystery" that would turn them into a tourist attraction. Bad acting emphasizes "discretion" and "secrecy" as an unnamed man (who in real life, if he ever existed, went by the fake name R. C. Christian) makes arrangements to finance the construction of the stones.
The opening credits roll and we are off to… A discussion of America's freedom and liberty, courtesy of Scott Wolter, who promises to "expose" the "true mission" of "one of America's secret societies," which seems to "go against" freedom. He does no such thing in the hour, failing to even establish the existence of this organization, the New World Order, which Wolter describes with short clips of Nazis. He flies to the Denver International Airport, but there isn't even a feint toward ancient history or archaeology.
Conspiracy theories about Denver International Airport, which is confusingly referred to both by its IATA code DEN and its acronym DIA, emerged shortly after construction began on the airport in the 1990s and really took off when construction finished in 1995, two years late and $3.1 billion over budget. Unable to accept incompetence as an answer, fringe thinkers speculated that the government diverted secret resources into the airport as part of a master plan. These were discussed on Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory, where the ex-governor claimed that the airport was a bunker designed to withstand the Maya Apocalypse of December 21, 2012.
Most of the conspiracy theories were distortions of truth. Fringe thinkers, for example, claim that the airport has fewer runways and less capacity than the older airport it replaced. This is only partly true. The older Stapleton International Airport had six runways, four of which crossed each other. As a result, no more than three could be used at once. By contrast, DIA has five runways that do not cross each other. DIA's runways are also longer, allowing the airport to accommodate modern jets, something the older airport could not do. As a result, DIA can accommodate more and larger jets.
But, really, that's not what everyone wants to hear about. Another part of the conspiracy asserts that the runways are shaped like a Nazi swastika. They are not in a geometrically exact or perfect swastika shape, but the fact that they are offset and perpendicular to each other might suggest one—a shape necessitated by the simple fact that otherwise the planes would be crossing one another's runways, the problem at Stapleton that DIA was supposed to fix. You can draw a swastika with the runways, but only by leaving out several paved areas, including the airport's longest runway.
Conspiracy theorists also home in on two sets of murals painted by Chicago artist Leo Tanguma, an ethnic Mayan. The first, called Children of the World Dream of Peace is a diptych depicting a fascist soldier stomping across a ruined landscape in one panel, and the soldier dead as hope blossoms anew in the next. Conspiracy theorists think the first panel represents the New World Order's plans for world conquest. The second mural is called In Peace and Harmony with Nature and shows in its first panel a post-apocalyptic world in which some animal species have gone extinct and can be seen only behind glass in a museum thanks to environmental devastation. The second panel depicts life blooming anew. Conspiracy theorists believed that this represented the preservation of key species during the 2012 Maya Apocalypse, allegedly known to the Mayan artist, until, of course, the apocalypse failed to happen.
The art isn't to my taste, but that doesn't make it evil.
On the floor is a depiction of a mining cart with the letters Au and Ag inscribed—the chemical symbols for gold and silver, key minerals mined historically in the Rocky Mountains. Conspiracy theorists read this as Australian Antigen (Au-Ag), a hepatitis antigen variant that they believe the New World Order will use to control the population. The more common modern abbreviation for the antigen is HBsAg, for Hepatitis B Antigen, and at any rate antigens are not diseases; Au-Ag is a protein found on the surface of the hepatitis B virus and is harmless on its own.
Others claim that Navajo geographic terms used in the airport are an extraterrestrial language.
But this is nothing compared to the one piece of "evidence" that sets Scott Wolter's hair on fire: A plaque commemorating a time capsule buried by the local Freemasons in 1994. The plaque contains the names of various government officials and the grand masters of Colorado's two grand lodges flanking a central Masonic logo and the March 19, 1994 dedication date. Beneath this, the plaque records three members of the "New World Airport Commission": Martin Marietta Aeronautics (now part of Lockheed Martin); Fentress Bradburn, Architects; and Zimmerman Metals. Contrary to conspiracy claims that this is an acknowledgement of the New World Order, DIA officials confirm that the organization was an informal group of local businesses (the New—as in second—World [as in world-class] Airport Commission) who promoted the airport as a new era of transport. Further, the underground tunnels were not a secret Illuminati-Freemason death camp but were baggage tunnels; they were eventually shut down for the most banal of reasons: they lost money due to crippling expenses. But as DIA officials told conspiracy theorist Greg Ericson in 2003, "these explanations rarely satisfy people who love to believe in conspiracy theories and who are convinced that Denver International Airport is at the center of something sinister. It is important to keep in mind that this airport was the largest, most scrutinized Public Works project in American history. There were cameras and reporters here documenting every single inch of dirt ever moved."
Wolter examines most of this material, and then he stops a passenger from a plane to ask her what she thinks of the murals described above. He tells her that he's "going to try to uncover the truth," and she stares at him. Who is this nut with a camera crew ranting about the "truth" in the airport?
A staged phone call pretends that Wolter is about to meet someone who know about the New World Order, which Wolter links to the Illuminati and to Hitler and George H. W. Bush through shared use of the phrase "new world order" ("new order of the ages," etc.). The fact that the airport gave Committee Films permission to shoot inside should suggest that there isn't much they're worried about him finding there.
Greg Ericson, a conspiracy theorist who the show allows to call himself a "factualist," as though this gives him credibility, describes how global economic collapse, mega-terrorist attacks, or some other crisis will lead the military to take over America in order to impose what Wolter describes as Nazi fascism. That's when Ericson suggests that the airport is a swastika, and Wolter says this is one of "many symbols" that are "hidden in plain sight." Ericson explains that the Freemasons, Illuminati, New World Order, etc. are all connected "at the highest levels" of Freemasonry. Ericson calls the New World Airport Commission a branch of the upcoming fascist state as well. Wolter calls it a "possibility" that elements of the U.S. government are planning a fascist revolution. Wolter misidentifies AUAG as "deadly," which it is not, although he says that that the inscription makes more sense as the symbols of gold and silver. He then prompts Ericson to declare AUAG part of a global genocide conspiracy. Ericson is angry that Americans don't care that fascists are planning to move the U.S. capital to Denver after a false flag terrorist attack on the White House, and he describes the alleged underground base beneath the airport—that would be the expensive baggage tunnels.
As we head into break number one, Wolter plans to discover whether the ground at Denver is capable of supporting an underground base, as though this would establish the "truth" of the fascist conspiracy claim. The existence of the underground baggage tunnels already establishes that underground structures are possible, so this exercise in rooting through rocks seems to be just for show.
But what on earth is the purpose of this episode? It seems designed to appeal to the same paranoid, anti-elitist, nativist audience that the show has so successfully courted with its mixture of America-focused Eurocentrism and religious revelation. But it's just disturbing to see another hour of prime time cable television devoted to political paranoia—and so sloppily done that even after fifteen minutes of TV air time, viewers unfamiliar with the conspiracy theories would have no idea what the hell Wolter and Ericson are talking about. The mural artist, for example, was not named in this segment, nor were his works shown in full. Surely Wolter could have worked the fact that the artist is Mayan into his "Mayans in Georgia" anti-government conspiracy, where he though the U.S. government was trying to hide the truth about Mayans.
Wolter and Ericson head out into a field so Ericson can relate secondhand conspiracy theories he heard from the ex-wife of some guy whom he does not know, does not name, and has never met—and who is also dead. Ericson suggests a murder conspiracy, and the show does not do even a cursory job of asking whether any element of this story is true. The man's name was Philip Schneider, and he died in 1996 (officially a suicide) after claiming that the government was hiding extraterrestrial craft from eleven different races of aliens (who use our "glandular secretions" as their food) in bunkers he helped design across the country in preparation for the New World Order's alien-directed global genocide. One alien, he said, works in the Pentagon and is named Val Valiant Thor, presumably as in the comic book heroes Prince Valiant and Thor. America Unearthed conveniently leaves out the alien connection and the fact that Schneider never produced a shred of evidence to support any of his outlandish alien or conspiracy claims. After his death, Schneider became a martyr celebrated by fringe thinkers of many stripes, most notably anti-government activists and ufologists.
Wolter, who could have learned the geology of the airport site from a decent U.S. Geological Survey map, examines the soil several miles from the airport and declares the ground fit for secret fascist bases. Ericson says that airport officials refused to answer his questions, but I've linked above to his actual questions and the answers he received so you can see that the airport did everything it could to patiently explain the truth to him, over his own foaming rage that his fantasy wasn't true. As we head into the second break, absolutely nothing has happened in this episode except that Wolter has now left a voicemail (recreated for the camera) for airport officials demanding "answers."
I'd rather hear him try to explain the eleven different races of "secretion"-eating aliens that undergird Ericson's conspiracy claims.
By the way, this exercise in paranoia is brought to you by Xarelto, an anticoagulant to reduce stroke risk. I may have a stroke by the end of this episode, which is also sponsored by ChristianMingle.com, a site that once employed Jason Martell, the ancient astronaut theorist.
And we're back, in Georgia this time to look at the Georgia Guidestones. Apparently, if you are a conspirator you are driven by an unstoppable force to proclaim your conspiracy in public.
The Georgia Guidestones of Elberton, Georgia I find terribly boring since they are only thirteen months older than I am (they were erected in March 1980), but Brad Meltzer liked them enough to devote an episode of Decoded to them, which contains much of the same information repeated here. I can't believe I will ever say this again, but compared to America Unearthed, Decoded was a rigorous and analytical exploration of the stones. Brad Meltzer at least understands the basics of nonfiction TV, which involves presenting information clearly and in sufficient detail for viewers to have some sort of understanding of what they are seeing.
The stones are not old, and their superficial resemblance to Stonehenge and their astronomical alignments are entirely purposeful. Four vertical slabs surround a central pillar, and each contains an identical message written in one of eight world languages. The "message" asks humankind to maintain a population of only 500 million, unite in a single language, and engage in eugenics to improve the fitness of the species. According to a stone placed near the monument, "a small group of Americans who seek the age of reason" put up the stones, but conspiracy theorists refuse to see the smallish monument as the work of Malthusian cranks but instead as the announcement of the New World Order's plans for genocide in the name of environmentalism. They make much of the fact that the man who carved and set up the stones on behalf of the unnamed sponsor, Joe H. Fendley, Sr., was a 32 degree Freemason, a fact Wolter overlooks, apparently through poor research.
No, I take that back: He purposely avoids discussing Freemasons this week because he can't. Although I believe Fendley is now dead, to accuse other living people of plotting genocide is libel, so he mutes his usual love of Freemasonry and instead places emphasis on the non-existent New World Order, which, being fictional, cannot be libeled and can't sue for cash money.
According to that Fendley and Wyatt, the sponsor of the stones was a man who went by the pseudonym R. C. Christian and identified himself as a concerned Christian. The stones seem to show influence from fringe works like Hal Lindsey's Late, Great Planet Earth (1970), which had been made into an Orson Welles-narrated documentary in 1979, one of that year's top-grossing films, and Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb (1968) and its successors, which predicted mass deaths due to overpopulation and recommended government sterilization and population control efforts. The astronomical alignments recall Gerald Hawkins's Stonehenge Decoded (1965), which attempted to trace alignments at the British site, and the "ancient wisdom" school of fringe thinking surrounding Alexander Thom. Overall, the monument appears to be a product of 1960s and 1970s fringe ideas, and nothing in the monument is out of place for a 1980 construction emulating fringe history claims about ancient monuments. It is therefore humorous that this outgrowth of 1970s fringe ideas is now taken as proof that those ideas were right all along!
Conspiracy theorists also point to the inclusion of Hebrew as one of the eight world languages on the stone as evidence of a Zionist-Freemason conspiracy, shading at times into anti-Semitism. Wolter never mentions this, and with good reason. It's not only false, but also libelous.
Wolter seems content to suggest a link between the Guidestones to the Denver Airport and the New World Order, all without offering even a hint of an evidence to support this—mostly because he plans to conclude later on that there isn't one, despite all the time wasted pretending that there might be.
Wolter discusses the granite stones with Gary Jones of the Elberton Star, and he discusses the granite without any real reason to talk about its grain and lack of polish. Any crank with cash can raise a hunk of granite—how many granite Ten Commandments monuments litter parks and courthouses across our country? Wolter scoffs at the monument's demand for a World Court and a restricted population. "If that doesn't sound like a New World Order mandate, what does?" He asks whether a nuclear war or a genocide would be responsible, but Jones tries to explain to Wolter that 1980 was deep in the Cold War and reflected its era; Wolter twists this into suggesting that the New World Order planned for a catastrophe.
The site's astronomical alignments are explored, but they are not "archaeoastronomy," which Wolter continues to mistakenly believe means "ancient peoples' astronomy" instead of the application of archaeology to study ancient people's astronomical knowledge.
At this point I realize that this show is so slow that, except for two or three background paragraphs I prepared ahead of time, I am typing this review in real time and haven't struggled at all to keep up. They are really stretching things out this year, and there is notably less information per hour than last year.
Scott Wolter tries to get Wyatt Martin of Greensboro, Georgia, the onetime banker to R. C. Christian, to tell him about the real R. C. Christian. Martin has never spoken of the real man (if there ever was one), largely because to do so would be to dispel the Guidestones' tourist draw. Martin recites the same story he's been telling consistently since 1980, and he doesn't reveal Christian's identity. Instead, he tells Wolter that Christian created a fake mystery to make the Guidestones into a tourist attraction. Wolter ignores this and seizes on Martin's half-remembered idea that Christian may have mentioned the New World Order to press him again for Christian's real identity, which leads us into our next commercial.
After the break, Wolter suggests that because the translations for the monument were produced at the United Nations, the UN could be involved in the conspiracy. Martin tells Wolter that there were plans for "moon stones" to be added to the monument to track the moon, just as Gerald Hawkins had suggested that Stonehenge had been designed to do. Martin claims that the monument was designed to "restart" science and the calendar after an unspecified apocalypse. In its historical Cold War/nuclear-winter context, this is entirely to be expected and has no direct relationship to a conspiracy, least of all through what Wolter continues to mislabel "archaeoastronomy."
At the three-quarter mark, all we've gotten is mood music, hot air, and suggestions that lead to nothing. Worse than even Ancient Aliens, this episode simply looks at stuff and wonders at it really hard. Apparently season one of America Unearthed was a close-ended Holy Bloodline miniseries, and the producers didn't plan ahead for an encore.
Wolter pretends to talk to the Denver Airport by phone from the Georgia Guidestones, although this is obviously not how it happened given the internal evidence of the program itself, and gets clearance to see the underground baggage tunnels.
Stacey Stegman, an airport official, meets with Wolter, who is dressed in his clothes from the beginning of the episode even though the show pretends that he has flown to Georgia and back in between the opening segment and meeting Stegman. Please. Viewers ought to be smart enough to understand that segments are edited together without this cutesy fakery that just serves to make the producers look even more dishonest than their half-hearted, time-wasting show usually makes them seem. This isn't Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and the routine fakery of reality TV only serves to call into doubt any claim to "truth."
This leads to another commercial, and three-quarters of the way through the show, not a scintilla of evidence for the existence of the New World Order has been presented, yet the New World Order has somehow gone from a hypothetical to be proved to a reality that must be combatted. The two physical subjects of the hour, the airport and the Georgia stones, lacked anything like a coherent presentation (writing my paragraphs about them above filled in for me a lot of details the show simply failed to even pretend to present), and I can't imagine what people who didn't know anything about either site before coming to this hour made of this slipshod set of suggestions.
After the break, Stegman tells Wolter that there is nothing to his conspiracy claims. Wolter wants to know about the Freemasons, and Stegman explains that it's the New "World Airport" Commission, not the "New World" Airport Commission. We go down under the airport, wasting a very long time, and Stegman shows off the failed baggage system. Wolter replies with recitations of internet theories that even he doesn't pretend to believe and asks how we can know they aren't true. Wolter shows off the "swastika" runways, and Stegman notes that all the planned runways aren't yet built, and that when they are the imaginary pattern will vanish. She also informs him that the "Au Ag" symbol is nothing more than gold and silver—which Wolter himself recognized back at the beginning the show but conveniently chose to forget until the end of the show. Stegman explains Leo Tanguma's two-part mural about violence and peace, and Wolter is happy to accept all of these answers, which he could have done 45 minutes ago and instead spent time productively by confronting Greg Ericson about how he can believe ridiculous things. Instead, the conspiracy and debunking segments are separated by 45 minutes, letting the original claims sink in unopposed, making the later debunking ineffective and ensuring that viewers tuning out before the end got the wrong impression.
It seems painfully clear that Wolter could not really care less about this conspiracy and is simply putting on a show for the camera at the behest of the producers. He declares that there is no New World Order influence at the Denver Airport, but he stops short of declaring the conspiracy fake. Instead, he says that the New World Order "could" exist, and he declares that the Georgia Guidestones are proof of actual New World Order "connections." Wolter declares that even though nothing in the airport supports the claims made in the first half of his show, nevertheless we are supposed to take away the lesson that the symbols—which by his own admission don't have anything to do with the New World Order—somehow have meanings we don't "expect," even though all of the airport's symbols mean exactly what at face value they seem to mean. Perfect.
This episode really seems like it is on the wrong show. Is just believing every bit of nonsense you hear until proof otherwise is shived in your face just one of Wolter's character traits?
spookyparadigm
So, as something of a rebuttal of a comment I made a few days ago, History Channel obviously DOES know its audience.
This isn't really surprising, I suppose (just think of the demographics History Channel has always had, they're very reminiscent of Fox News). But you must feel a bit vindicated.
Jason Colavito link
At least after this episode people can't complain that I'm imagining a connection between fringe history and contemporary political fears.
Great blog, Jason!
I heard hints of "nordic/aryan" identity politics during the first season. Now it's open and blatant.
I'm guessing they had to tell the "factualist", to take off his pistol to be on TV.
This show stinks! It has since day 1. Snooze feat at best
Titus pullo
America unearthed is an entertainment show and poor entertainment last night. Wolter phoned it in. The producers didn't even do the new world order cult very well. No mention of the Fabian society, council of foreign relations, the creature from Jekyll island....they I'd a poor job but the show does that. They just dont even do a good job t plot, pacing, script...the show is boring.
The one thing I would comment on is this almost familiar refrain of blasting conservatives and libertarians on this blog. Being against keynsian astrology and for sound money, free markets, limited govt, and peace doesn't mean you believe in lgm. And I resonate
Ly find fox business to be the most thoughtful and fact based station put there....and if we are going to get into social science I would remind all tat Fredrick Hayek warned of pretense f knowledge...we should remember that.
The Other J.
Yep. If they didn't already have a good handle on their audience, they wouldn't be able to just signify Denver Airport, the Guidestones and the NWO -- they'd have to get into some deeper explanation. The fact that they can spend so much time hinting at deeper issues without really explaining them shows they know their audience will get what they're on about.
It also suggests that perhaps their audience share has topped out, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get away with the choir-preaching. Someone would have stepped in and required a little more unpacking for the viewer who wasn't already in the know.
Gregory Towarnicki
I knew right away what I was in for when I saw the words "Conspiracy Theorists" at the beginning of the show's description on FIOS. I thought this show was supposed to be about history not conspiracy theory nonsense. I found it amusing that Wolter tells Ericson that "We need facts!" at the beginning of the show and then doesn't go on to find any. This show is getting worse by the episode.
RLewis
SW and the producers have obviously phoned-in these first two episodes. C'mon Scott - I'm sure there's a bunch more crazy shit you actually believe in that would make for more entertaining - if much less factual (if possible) TV fare.
Oh well, maybe next week we'll have more fun with wall-building bible giants.
Just want to stress that the extreme right-wingers may be paranoid about conspiracies, but eugenics, Nazi socialism, and the New World Order are all ideas that originated on the extreme left. If a few kooks want to live their lives wholly invested in guarding against the advancement of such things, then more power to them.
America Unearthed still stinks, though.
The Nazis are usually described as a rightist group, but yes, you are correct that eugenics and international governance originated as leftist ideas. That's probably why they feature so prominently in rightist nightmares, much the way military dictatorship and theocracy feature in paranoid leftist nightmares.
You are right, Jason. Nazis ARE usually described as a rightist group....when described by leftists. However, the German Nazi party was a socialist party, and as such has its origins in far left ideology.
While from a "logical" perspective that maybe the case, the reality was that the communists and the fascists were bitter enemies.
Good luck trying to explain to all the communists, socialists, and hard leftists from other countries in the 1930s that volunteered to fight the fascists in Spain and then worked with national governments to fight the Nazis that the Nazis were super leftists.
The primary difference and the source of animosity between Communism and National Socialism is that the Communists were all about the "International" and the destruction of the Geo-political state while the National Socialists were all about socialism WITHIN the Geo-political state. The Italian fascists where both nationalists and Communists and the German fascists (Nazis( were both nationalists and Communists. The Communists called the National Socialists "right wing" or "far right" because they were to the right of the Communists but they were/are both FAR LEFT.
But, as we have learned, say something often and loud enough and enough people will come to agree with it to make it, de facto, common knowledge.
Apologies, National Socialists weren't pure Communists. They didn't dirve for direct control of the means of production but they did tightly control it through regulation and what we now call private-public partnership.
For those who don't know, National Socialism was devised and promoted by Mussolini who was a long time Communist before the break due to the dispute over International vs. National Communism/Socialism.
The war between the two was a war within the Left and it dragged the world into it.
The Nazis were a right-wing group, and to say otherwise is just attempting to rewrite history to paint every group you don't like as socialists. The easy way to prove this, as has been mentioned, is the fact that the socialists all over the world fought them (much harder than the centrist national governments of the pre-WW2 era did, bear in mind). Oh, and communists were sent to the concentration camps too.
They may have used "socialist" in their name, but that's not the most important thing about them - that they killed and imprisoned leftists is. A whole lot of people on the political right in the USA love to call Obama a socialist - that warmongering, civil-rights-removing, friend of big business, ignorer of the working class, sort of socialism, apparently.
Ultimately, I don't get why people on the right are so desperate to portray the Nazis as a left-wing group. No-one's saying the Republican Party is the same as them, and no-one's using "well, the Nazis were right wing" in any sensible argument about politics in 2013. Truth is important, though, and the truth is that fascism and Nazism are right-wing ideologies.
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Calling eugenics a product of the far left isn't quite accurate. Not only because trying to place current labels on the political past can only be done with an eye towards political propaganda, but because eugenics seems to be an expression of a larger "bipartisan" fixation on race and nation from the period. Henry Ford is a good case of this. All but pro-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic, and strongly anti-Union. Yet at the same time was a reformer in working conditions and wages, pushing the American economy to pay workers enough to buy the products they made ... so long as he and other business elites kept that power rather than unions. He was a pacifist, but believed that peace would be achieved by economic consumption and the elimination of want. Is he a 'conservative?' A 'liberal?' Trying to peg another period's politics with modern labels is a debate game and not much else.
Eugenics was definitely a "progress"-informed and science-aligned ideology. But it was how those from that part of the political spectrum expressed a larger racism, classism, etc.. Less "progressive" contemporaries would have been behind racial discrimination laws such as Jim Crow, etc. In the case of the Nazis, eugenics was adopted to fit already existing mystical ideas of race and nation as well as a pan-European centuries-deep anti-Semitism.
Trying to argue that the modern left is somehow responsible for or susceptible to eugenics is like trying to argue that the modern right is responsible for or susceptible to slavery because the Bible was used to justify it. Both can be "made logical" but fall apart in any fair examination of historical context.
Can't argue at all, spookyparadigm. Thank you. These issues are much more complex than, and applying quick labels based on current political talking points does not do such subjects justice. I just had a feeling some readers of this blog would try to justify their own current political leanings, and I wanted to set some ground rules. I'm all for leaving the nonsense to America Unearthed.
Varika
Responsible for, no, but potentially susceptible to eugenics I would argue. Though my argument is that people, not just those from the left, either, really seem to like the "designer baby" idea, and frankly that's pretty much the same thing as eugenics. The modern incarnation of eugenics, really. It still has the same fatal flaw: stigmatizing certain traits as "undesirable," thus stigmatizing those who carry such traits.
It just goes to show, when there's a new twist on an old idea, even a bad idea, people can and will take it up anew as long as they don't make the connection. If someone came up with a way to justify slavery that didn't include the words "slavery" or "servitude," or a new way to justify denying humanity to a group, it would probably be taken up again, too, at least in the form of rhetoric if not actuality. And really, that circularity is what makes the modern "left" vs. "right" spectrum incredibly stupid as a description: it just doesn't even come close to describing reality.
Sacqueboutier
I don't the political spectrum as a straight line from left to right. I see it as a circle. Both left and right have useful ideas to offer, but in the extreme, they meet at the bottom of the circle.....oppression, control, and loss of freedom.
However you see Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, they all achieve the same loss of liberty.
It was also Whigs and those that became Republicans that made up the majority of Abolitionists and were opposed to slavery. They were also those that supported expansoin of rights for the freed slaves and for the franchise for blacks.
The majority of those that opposed the abolition of slavery were Democrats at the time.
So, it's not really fair to say conservatives or those that believed in the Bible were pro-slavery. In fact, it was many a "bible-thumper" that opposed slavery. Where from do you think the abolitionist movement emerged and who were the the supporters? Many Christian folks....eventually more than those Christian folks that supported the "peculiar institution."
The issue is far more complicated.
Nazism was a right-wing movement designed to compete with Socialism and Communism among the working classes, and so it coopted the term "socialist" and developed a few worker friendly policies. However, the raison d'etre of Nazism was always to promote the racial superiority of ethnic Germans, or "Aryans." Even the benefits of its pro-worker policies were limited to ethnic Germans. By contrast, the raison d'etre of left-wing parties was the promotion of the perceived interests of the working class without regard to ethnic origin and the leveling of society in general (whether they achieved their goal is beside the point). The raison d'etre of the Fascists, another right-wing party that aimed at competing for the allegiance of the working classes, was nationalism. Therefore, I do not see how it is fair to call either Nazism or Fascism left-wing.
You are correct, but of course that will not stop the fox-bots that vector this misinformation, endlessly, online.
But, it is fair to label racism as right-wing ideology? Hmmm.
BL, when racist ideology protect or foster privileged status for historically privileged ethnic groups, then it fits within the broader (and not necessarily racist) strain of right-wing thought that favors the maintenance of stratified societies with traditional elites (the first right-wingers were monarchist and pro-aristocracy). If it will make you feel better, though, you can put Nazism into its own category; just don't call it left-wing, because nothing about the essence of Nazism fits that category (which is why the first thing the Nazis did when they gained power was to suppress real left-wing groups, the Social Democrats and the Communists.
By the way, a minority of racists have also been economically left-wing, but their left-wing economic views are distinct from their right-wing racial views.
Byron DeLear
Good depiction Harry. Nazism rested on a few pillars, two key ones being the blood cult of "Aryans" and violent, hyper nationalism. Their philosophy was survival of the fittest---an affirmation of inequalities in society---not a refutation. Communists and socialists attempted to elevate the working class above land owners and capitalists, in essence, a great culling of status quo power structures. Nazis were a "new world order" as well, but hardly based on attempts toward equality. The "socialism" in the Nazi rubric takes a distant tenth place to the obsessive and violent national superiority complex in Nazism---which wiki summarizes nicely, "German Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and social Darwinism, asserted the superiority of an Aryan master race and criticised both capitalism and communism for being associated with Jewish materialism. It rejected the Marxist concept of class struggle, promoting instead the idea of "Volksgemeinschaft", or "people's community"." Everybody marching in lockstep under the totem of Der Fuhrer is the "socialism" in Nazi ideology.
So a post-punk band from Manchester didn't build an airport?
1) How do they think that it is possible to keep hidden the things they claim are hidden with the thousands of people that would have to be involved, like at the Denver airport?
2) Why would any self-respecting secret organization bent on world domination publicize their intentions with coded symbols displayed in public?
I would probably put my secret bunker closer to where I live.
Joyce D.
I got caught up in the drama of whether or not Mr. Wyatt Martin would reveal the hidden identity of R.C. Christian. I was expecting Scott to hand Mr. Martin a cash proposal, like $100,000 for the name of the person.
It was a serious letdown that Mr. Martin was supposed to reveal the secret just because he liked Scott.
Seriously who really cares who commissioned the Guidestones.? One rightwinger is the same as any other.
See, Jason? This is exactly what I take issue with. Here is a person, Joyce D., who believes that the craziness on the Guidestones spins out of right-wing ideals when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. The ideas of eugenics and socialism are about as far left as you can get. The right....typically associated with a desire to decrease government influence is responsible for socialism, an idea where government calls the shots on everything? C'mon!
The Guidestones are obviously not presenting a right wing point of view. The whole environmentalism, population reduction, world government scenario originates in an extreme version of leftist positions. But the paranoia around the Guidestones, imagining a global cult trying to impose genocide (rather than some cranks who put up some granite slabs), is pretty much found on the right.
Agreed. Thanks, Jason. I think that clarification may be useful as this conversation progresses.
Joyce D
What are the most extreme hard right governments in history that we have records of? 1. Hitler and Germany. 2. Stalin and the USSR.
There is a HUGE difference between what Margaret Sangor wrote about birth control and what the Nazi's implemented based on faulty science.
The right wing, associated with big business, exploitation of workers, and the greedy reason for two world wars, must accept the true definition of right wing.
Any group calling for one world government, with one world language, and governed by one world court, and committed to culling the population to 500,000,000 should leave some traces in the written record.
If we're willing to apply quick labels to ideologies then I think you will find that both Nazi socialism and communism in the USSR would both be labeled as extreme left-wing ideologies. Reagan, a right-leaning President, abhorred Communism, and is generally regarded as having ended the Cold War.
This is why there are two axis in most political ideology tests.
Shane Sullivan
Exactly, Corridan. A Socialist and an Anarchist are both generally considered left-wing, but one believes in a powerful government, while the other believes in little or no government at all. It's similar with Fascists and Libertarians on the right-although even with such a model, it's possible that a person's beliefs will fall into more than one category.
I agree that Communism was a left-wing movement, but Nazism was certainly not one. Both aimed to attract support from the working classes, but for completely different purposes and with very different programs. Communism, like other left-wing movements, promotes - in theory, at least - economic and social equality. Nazism, like some other right-wing movements, promotes nationalistic (and in its case, racial) interests. Nazism, of course, was virulently opposed to inter-ethnic social equality. Even the parts of the program aimed at the interests of working class were expressly intended only to benefit "Aryans." Moreover, I would argue that those planks were there merely to attract working class votes and were never the essence of Nazi ideology or practice.
I'm just delighted that we're finally discussing a major undercurrent on this website - left-leaning political ideas. You are among friends here, Joyce D.
You can keep putting the world "socialism" after "Nazi" but this does not constitute an argument.
The German Nazis weren't the only National Socialists at the time. It originated in Italy but the Italians didn't have the racial component that was a hallmark of German National Socialism.
Francisco Franco wasn't purely a National Socialist though he accepted aid from Nazi Germany. He was more a traditional Strongman dictator though he waged war against the Communists and other fellow travelers.
As for the paranoia surrounding the Guidestones emerging from the right, not too long ago (circa 2008? I think with the Endgame documentary) Alex Jones went crazy on the stones, and that resulted in vandalism and the attempted destruction of the monument. The vandalism was linked to being Jones-inspired because of some repeated key words he consistently used in Endgame spray-painted on the slabs -- globalists, Rothschild, Skull n Bones, North American Union, Rockefeller, etc. It was also permanently defaced with epoxy, and I believe someone attempted to yank down one of the slabs by chaining it to a truck.
Which made me wonder if anything will happen to the Guidestones after this episode. But it was such a sloppy and "nothing to see here" episode, maybe nothing will come of it.
When he told that supposedly random woman at the airport that he was going to find the truth, I imagine she said something like "You do that, buddy," and walked on, and they edited that out. I also think they should move that line Wolter reads in the intro, "Sometimes history isn't what we've been told," to the end of the show. It makes more sense after he's shown us his version of historical research.
I can't imagine that a kook like Greg Ericson is going to be very happy that Wolter dispelled his paranoid delusions by the end of the show. Expect that Ericson's next set of rants on his website are going to target Wolter as being part of the coverup.
That being said, I have three completely unrelated takeaways from this fairly obvious waste of an hour of my life.
First, what's Ericson's problem with people watching Wheel of Fortune -- is Pat Sajak in on the conspiracy.
Secondly, the 're-enactment' at the opening of the show was fairly humorous, but it has a pretty glaring fake aspect. There was never a briefcase full of cash. RC Christian, if he ever existed, transferred all of the money from other bank accounts according to Wyatt's previous accounts of the transactions.
Finally, Wolter's fake phone call from the Guidestones was yet another example of Wolter telling one character from the show a completely dishonest version of something that has literally just happened on the show. "I'm here at the Georgia Guidestones, and I've just seen some amazing solar events" (or words to that effect). Actually, Scott, you've just watched sun from inside of a whole. Absolutely nothing "amazing" about that. But I'm glad he's getting cell service from a field in the middle of nowhere in rural Georgia.
Who's side is Scott on anyway? His investigation seriously shortchanged hardcore conspiracy theorists. I was hoping to find out more about the mysterious "keypad" over the plaque commemorating the time capsule buried by the freemasons.
I was led to believe that punching in the correct code on the fake braille pad would allow a person to be escorted by security into the secret sections of the underground complex.
I wish somebody could crack that code.
I read that the "keypad" is used to emit a signal that directs alien ships directly to that room of the facility.
This picture suggests another explanation:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1201/543361650_7f72335d8d.jpg?v=0
BTW - Ericson implied that Americans watching game shows on their big-screen TVs opens the door for the NWO is "just like" how the Nazi's took command over Germany.
The Nazis gained a foothold in German politics not because of complacency - but more due to the despair and devastation suffered by many Germans after WWI (and, of course, the Nazis were savage murderers).
I did chuckle a bit at the idea of Germans back then watching Wheel of Fortune (Rad von Glück?) on their Weimar-era big screen televisions.
They were best pre-Fingerpoke. After that, it went downhill and Vince eventually bought WCW.
Am I the only person who thinks of the wrestling stable every time a conspiracy "theorist" rambles about the NWO?
I also found the 'Brad Meltzer Decoded' episode about the Guidestones much more entertaining and informative,
It helps when Meltzer's team (the 2 guys and the gal) had some personality sprinkled with some humor.
I thought Stacey, the Denver airport rep did a nice job explaining the murals, gold/silver mining cart, etc.
I was waiting (hoping) for an eye-roll or two from the young lady but maybe edited out?
I saw that episode, and all the episodes. In each of these shows that purport to reveal hidden knowledge, relating to the host or the crew is important. With the Metzger crew, I really like Buddy. He is one of the most friendly people I have ever seen on TV. I want to be his friend.
I feel the same on the Bigfoot show. I really like Bobo and Ranae.
I'm partial to Christine McKinley. I want to be her friend. ;)
Buddy is a big teddy bear. He does a lot of nature writing, particularly about the west..
The part where Wolter digs a hole in the park to "test the geology" to ascertain whether there could be tunnels at the airport is one of the dumbest things I've seen on TV in a long time. Yep . . . it's dirt. You know what dirt is, don't you? It is something through which tunnels can be excavated . . . this whole story is really coming together!
That's is actually very true though. They always do various tests on the ground before doing any type of large construction whether it be above or below ground.
Oh come on . . . yes, the sediments matter to construction projects, but what do you think they're testing for? Digging a 12" deep hole a long distance away from the actual construction site and noting that the soil is sandy "tests" absolutely nothing relevant. It is just supposed to look like he's applying his geological background in some sort of evidence-based way, which he's not.
It's really a missed opportunity. Wolter could have done something educational and explained to the camera how engineers and geologists determine whether ground can hold the weight of what will be built on it or whether the bedrock is suitable for underground structures. Instead, he ran his fingers through the dirt and simply pretended really hard at the camera, eschewing education for showmanship.
If I remember correctly, what he was purporting to "test" was the idea that long underground tunnels might extend from beneath the airport out to other places. I'm not sure what could have happened during this "test" that would have led to the conclusion that tunneling was simply impossible - striking bedrock? finding clayier soil? The whole exercise made zero sense.
Mark E.
I was at Barr Lake this summer and can verify there is sand there, and I didn't even have to dig a hole to find it.
Stephen JC
I too, was amazed by this episode. Wolter discredits the conspiracy at the airport and seems kinda unsure about the Georgia guide stones. It seemed like he himself could care less about the topic of this show. Usually he seems pretty enthusiastic but he seemed to lack that and the energy to want to do this particular episode.
I was surprised too. The woman at the Denver Airport sort of burst his balloon.
I've always found the story of Valiant Thor (sometimes "Val" Thor, Valient Thor or Valiant Thorr) interesting. He may not have been named after the comic book character Thor. If taken at face value, he was talking to people in the UFO community in the late 1950s, before the comic. I've never found a written reference to him before the late 1960s, but I suspect he may have been a hoax that took a while to get into print. His messages were very late-1950s in content (he never mentions "vibrations," for example), and the "Val Thor" name could be inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still, where Klatuu steals the identity "Major Carpenter" when he escapes the authorities.
The Prince Valiant comic has been around since the 1930's, and there were plenty of Vikings in it, so maybe he was a careful reader of the funny pages.
Leslie Harris link
I'm still mystified (an emotion that was not elicited by anything else presented in this episode) by why they need a forensic geologist to demonstrate that dirt is something you can dig tunnels through and that the Georgia Guidestones aren't smooth all the way around. I may have to stop watching this show even ironically.
I'm mystified as to why it took TWO guys with shovels to dig that hole.
Surely there's a "how many conspiracy buffs with shovels does it take to dig a hole" joke in there somewhere.
Leslie I maintain that that the Georgia guidestones represent extreme right wing ideology.
What would left wing guidestones be?
1. Labor unions are good. All workers should join them.
2. All people, no matter what their race, have a right to vote.
3. All nuclear weapons must be surrendered and destroyed.
4. The US will stop trying to be the world's cop.
5. There are issues that are above petty world politics, like global warming.
6. Who appointed us, the US, to be the world's cop? The UN should take up that responsibility.
Can anyone in here add to my list?
We need a liberal guidestones erected to both confront and debunk the notions of the clearly delusional and misguided people represented by R C Christian.
Ah, a good example of how the world should be, and how it is.
1. Paying Union members more than what they are worth drives up the price of the goods they are manufacturing.
2. Provided they are an adult citizen of the nation they are voting in.
3. Except someone will cross their fingers behind their back and say they destroyed their nukes, when in fact they did not. People lie. And they lie for advantage.
4. Obama was elected. Twice. You won. Enjoy it.
5. It's cold outside. I'm in Georgia. I wish it were warmer. It's like February here. That's not right.
6. We took that responsibility when we won WWII. Leadership rises to the occasion.
Joyce D, all 6 of your points above would be far more credible on this website if you have initials after your last name.
StrongStyleFiction link
What a disappointment. This episode had nothing to do with Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall or Kevin Nash. /kidding.
I see, an NWO joke. Good one!
Your comment is relevant. Ancient Aliens, America Unearthed, and all the shows about the End of Times are exactly like professional wrestling.
l bean
LOL! This!
With professional wrestling, the fans are in on the joke.
AAHHHH! I noticed the clothes, as well!!
Everything you wrote was spot on, Jason...reflecting my exact reaction while watching the episode. The only thing you didn't mention was how Wolter could possibly have missed the R.C. Christian and a pseudonym for Rosicrucians? Even the hapless Jesse Ventura made that connection.
It's sad. Ventura would have had to spend 5-10 minutes researching the Guidestones in order to make that connection. So either Wolter or his producers didn't spend that much time researching -- the word "Rosicrucian" was enough of a dog whistle.
But the Rosicrucians are a real group, with property and an administration building in San Jose, so maybe it was one of those "let's just avoid the chance of libel" situations.
Maya in Georgia
Why do the feds want to keep our presence here a secret? Do they think we're responsible for the Guidestones? Remember, it was RC Christian, not RC Mayan...or is that just what we wanted everyone to think?
WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN GUIDESTONEMANIA RUNS WILD ON YOU, BROTHER!
I just ran across a TV series from New Zealand, Leigh Hart's Mysterious Planet. You can watch it on YouTube.
Why does anybody waste such time reviewing all the episodes of these shows and writing detailed reviews about them is what mystifies me. Must have a lot of time....must be nice....
Will Falcone
My thoughts too. It kind of reminds me of those 35yr old guys that have a "headquarters" set up in the basement of his moms house.
He's being paid for it, directly or indirectly. Although it will never be admitted and I'm sure the response will be something about feeling "obligated" or feeling it was "moral and ethical duty"
So says 35 year old Will Falcone from his headquarters in his mom's basement.
It takes me, on balance, less than 2 hours to produce one of these reviews, beginning to end, since I write most of it while watching the show itself in real time--in my own house, thank you. The only payment I receive is web traffic that, with luck, inspires sales of my books--just like the way Scott Wolter's show has twice this season promoted his own book (which A+E Networks disavowed).
What I want to know, is why, since the new season of AU began, empty-headed trolls like Allen and Will Falcone wait until the wee hours of the morning to post the same overused, lame insults at Jason's expense.
It's not cool, you're not scoring points and it's so unoriginal, you might as well have not typed anything at all. I'd ask you to post something of substance, but it's obvious your brain cells are like ships...they're passing by silently in the night.
The ''trolls'' are most likely one person i should think.
I for one applaud the work Jason is doing.
A must needed voice of reason in a world where conspiracy theories are becomming increasingly widespread.
If you only understood the irony of your own post....
Debunking stuff on TV that is factually false is a noble endeavor. Most of us believe in science. Debunking the lies of Wolter is the same as debunking the lies of Creationists.
I just don't get that guy Wolter.
Could be the same person, probably different people though. With as popular as those shows are becoming it's only logical to assume that believers in them are going to start posting to defend them.
I personally work 4pm to midnight so I only ever get to post on my favorite blogs in the early morning hours.
But despite being "new", you actually offer something to the discussion, as opposed to the same ad infinitum sniping by "one hit wonders". I thank you for that.
Well thanks!! I try...
Hey, he's only human. (Or she. Doesn't matter.)
Jason's comment about the poor quality of the second season of America Unearthed reminded me of what happened with MonsterQuest's second season. They apparently ran out of monsters so they had to do episodes on things like wild dogs and big cats.
Also, the "geologist" Scott Wolter doesn't seem to know the difference between a rock and a sediment. In this episode when Scott Wolter was at the Denver airport, he picked up a handful of loose sediment and looked at it with a loupe, then he called it "sandstone". Sorry, Scott but sandstone is a rock, not loose sediment. A real geologist knows that.
Rev. Phil Gotsch
re: "sandstone" … Yes and No …
SOME sandstones (St. Peter Sandstone, e.g., outcropped in many areas of southern Minnesota) are so "loosely consolidated" as to be easily excavated with a shovel, and in which birds fairly easily dig burrow-nests …
NOT all "rocks" are quite exactly rock-"hard" ...
I'm familiar the the St. Peter sandstone but we're not talking about anything like it. Wolter clearly picked up loose sediment and called it sandstone. A competent geologist knows better. What you're doing looking at this backward. The issue isn't whether "all rocks are hard", it's whether loose sediments are rock.
I remember that with Monster Quest. My favorite was when they went looking for the killer fish in Minnesota. That was the episode where they jumped the muskie.
I think he was just stating what was in the sample he dug up. If he said sandstone I think he was implying what traces of rock he thought were in the sediment.
What I don't get is the airport layout as a swastika. That was really reaching far.
You're making excuses for him. That, unfortunately, is what people do for hapless pseudoscientists who are confronted with real science.
No, it's simply called being logical. If I was making an excuse for him I could think of a better one than that....
American Unearthed is quickly losing any entertainment value..I had some hopes in the beginning that it would take a more critical approach to all the supposed mysterious ruins in North America like the Newport Tower, ruins in New Hampshire and so on...but it didn't. I can actually take the somewhat "enthusiastic" approach to investigate pre columbian visits to North America..but the production value (poor) and Scot Wolter's focus on the whole Dan Brown thing left last season on a downward trajectory. This season its much worse so far...two shows about nothing...heck the old "In Search of.." was better.
Michael Haynes
I was actually stunned by the latest "America Unearthed" episode. It was the closest that I've ever seen Scott come to a rational conclusion! Granted, there were no alledged ancient sites for him to investigate in this episode, and he was clearly out of his comfort zone, but I have to give him some credit for not completely buying into The New World Order conspiracy.
Have you noticed that at the end of each episode, Scott asks viewers to submit their own sugestions and/or artifacts for him to investigate? Though you suggest that the show's producers put him up to this, I think that this last episode, and the previous one regarding Jason's Pillar, are based on viewers' submissions. So far, Scott is 1-1: He bought into Jason's Pillar, but not the New World Order. That's a good batting average for him, although it seems like a risky strategy if he wants to keep the show on the air (after all, that's alienating half his audience).
I wonder if he's going to do an episode on a fairly recent discovery in my neck of the woods in western North Carolina. Last year, petroglyphs were discovered in the mountains of the Cherokee Reservation (this is a genuine archaeological discovery). There is also a branch of the Cherokee people who believe that they are descended from the lost tribes of Isreal that came to America in the 6th Century BC (which was debunked by the genetic project sponsored by National Geographic several years ago). Nows that sounds like something right up Scott's alley!
Keep up the great work, Jason. I always look forward to reading your blogs.
I was also wondering if he'd try to do the Cherokee/Lost Tribes connection. There is a controversial engraved rock (the Bat Creek Stone) that goes with it, so I'm guessing he'll get there eventually if he hasn't already (I'm only just now working my way through the first season).
He's scheduled to do an episode on it this season. He's been promoting the Bat Creek Stone for years thanks to his "analysis" of it, which he published in Ancient American magazine, but which, even taken at face value, fails to prove what he thinks it does. In that analysis, he failed to consider the possibility of a hoax creating a false patina and therefore did not factor that into his analysis.
I'm going to read up on his methods at some point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he appears to me to be claiming to have some special insight that makes it possible for him to say with a high degree of certainty whether the carving on a rock is "old" or not. It would be such a simple exercise to put a purported method of doing that to a blind test using samples of known age. I don't suppose that has happened or ever will happen.
Yes, he claims to have invented a new science, "archaeopetrography," which he claims is a reliable method of dating stone based on weathering patterns. Officially, though, he's only asking whether observed traits match what would be expected (http://www.ampetrographic.com/?PageData=119), which does not adequately test for possible hoaxes. His exact methodology, to my knowledge, hasn't been publicized beyond the brief descriptions in his books and articles.
This is not to be confused with the other "new" science of archaeopetrography proposed by Edward F. Bakewell in 2005 and involves geo-sourcing artifacts by analyzing their mineral content (http://www.cannonmicroprobe.com/geo-archaeology.htm) otherwise known in a broader application as petrography, archaeological petrography, etc.
Maybe someone should offer a cash "Hooked X Prize" to the first person who can document the recent manufacture of a fraudulent inscribed stone that Wolter pronounces to be genuine based on his geological analysis. I think it could be easily done.
Matt Mc
My guess is the reason for the Denver Airport episode was to test the waters. Most likely the producers know that there are limited sites they can do episodes on so they throw in a episode or two this season with a broader reach to see if they can go down a new path for future seasons. Being so early in the season they can have a throw away episode or two without really affecting ratings as long as they are sandwiched between stronger episodes. I could be wrong here but that is my guess.
I also see them feeling some pressure from the Travel Channel show AMERICA DECLASSIFIED. They aired a segment on the Denver Airport a few weeks ago feature the same two guests. While this show has tried to discover a lost history yet I feel it is just a limited amount of time. Plus since it has multiple segments it tends to hold viewer interests better.
If I had to bet, I don't see AMERICA UNEARTHED being renewed for a third season.
I hope you're right about this program NOT being renewed.
I'm sure this program will exploit many more sites this season including the Bat Creek Stone. This program is a disaster on many levels. Hasn't Wolter and these producers done enough damage?
Robert Jacoby
"From Glenn Beck warning darkly of FEMA concentration camps for the coming Obama-run anti-conservative genocide "
Really, Jason? Glenn Beck FEMA camps? If you had spent any time actually listening to Glenn, you'd know that he has debunked FEMA concentration camps. He does not tolerate weird conspiracy theories. Surely you could be like Penn Gillette and approach him with an open mind. (And I do disagree with him on many things, but being suspicious of government is a healthy thing.)
The odd thing about this episode is that I could see there being hidden levels at DIA. The old Greenbriar, WV location that was supposed to house Congress in case of a nuclear attack is now known about. Why not have a new secret, well protected location deep in the country? And given that NORAD's HQ is nearby, the geology would make this a prime location for a deep Air Force base below a nice, new airport with long runways. Aside from that though, yeah Scott just phoned it in this week. And I've never heard of the New World Order being a group before, it's simply been the next way things would be done.
Like many things about Glenn Beck, he has said different things at different times. Although he later changed his tune about the FEMA camps several times. He believed in the existence of the camps in the early 2000s, debunked them in 2009, endorsed them several times thereafter, and then backed off again, prompting claims that the NWO "got to him." I guess it depends on which day you catch him.
Coridan Miller
Beck just says what he thinks his audience wants to hear so the paychecks keep rolling in.
I was in Airport consulting when the Denver Idiotic (is what we called it because it simply was not needed...just another govt/business "infrastructure" project that bought a lot of votes and enriched the contractors)..was built. Believe me there are no hidden tunnels...thousands of workers dug and built the place...the only thing down there is the failed "high tech" multibillion dollar baggage system that was shut down as the airport PR person stated in the episode.
JayR link
I think in this episode, Scott Wolter finally proved what he set out to prove - NOTHING. He did not posit any crazy theories about Knights Templar conceiving the Denver International Airport on runestones discovered in Ireland some 600 years ago. Instead, he followed the theories of others and he found nothing conclusive. He allowed the evidence to lead to the conclusions. He did not contort the findings to fit some off-the-wall crackpot theory of his. Perhaps this approach is the direction he needs to take to build up some credibility for himself...
1. Establish the topic and its significance
2. List the top 3 or 4 controversial theories about the topic, but don't insert your own theory into this unless it is conclusively provable
3. Follow the theories and test them with scientific means
4. Allow the evidence to support the actual outcome, even that that means debunking your own theory.
In this episode, I was impressed that he was able to get people, who seemed reluctant to talk to others, to talk to him and work with him. He remained respectful and did not overstep any bounds.
Who was reluctant to talk to others?
Greg Ericson and Stacey Stegman both have been on other programs talking about the Denver airport, see the recent episode of America Declassified on travel channel for one such appearance.
Wyatt Martin has been doing interviews on the Georgia Guidestones for years.
The reporter was the only guest that I don't think has done interviews about this before but he is a reporter and is most likely has talked about the airport before in some medium.
The show just made it seem like these people are hard to get to, but others did so before.
I find it absolutely stunning that right-wing extremists are deeply afraid of curbing population growth!?!
A crowded, hungry world of 7 billion people, and they're worried that someone wants to address that problem!
Castration fears? What?
I would find it absolutely stunning if right-wing extremists were the ONLY group afraid of instituting policies to curb population growth.
Who decides how the population is to be curbed? Who is gifted with the right to procreate, and who gets that right taken from them when these policies are instituted?
If you are specifically talking about the political arguments of birth control and abortion by choice, both are essentially non-issues. Abortion and birth control of all sorts are widely available around the world and the population continues to grow.
Population control is an issue that will surely need to be addressed at some point in the future. The unknown of how population is to be controlled is what scares people.
Why does the population need to be curbed? Seriously as long as productivity goes up, the population will go up as well..as soon as it doesn't, it will naturally be reduced by the normal factors..and besides as people become more wealthy they have fewer kids..in poor nations kids are an economic value they work the field and so on..in developed nations they are a cost which is why Europe and Japan and the US have so few per couple now...the market will take care of overpopulation if there is such a thing..relax...the spontanous order of the market is more powerful than any central planner...read Hayek and you will understand..
Titus --- Most living systems on the planet are in decline due to the overreaching impact of the human enterprise. Rain forests, aquifers, fisheries, soil, air, water. We are currently entering a mass extinction of species due to the overreaching impact of the human enterprise. 1 billion people in 1800 --- 7 billion now. Do the math --- there will be no market of any decent quality or capacity with continued, rampant environmental degradation. The work of the 21 century will be to create a harmonious relationship between civilization and that which supports our civilization, the environment.
I am with you. I find it incredulous that anyone looking at a guidestone, and reading that it is calling for culling the population to a tenth of what it is now, could possibly assert that liberal, progressive people would ever suggest that. That is right wing even way worse than the Tea Party.
I just found this blog because I've always found conspiracies and pseudoscience to be interesting (read: ridiculously entertaining). I was a member for awhile on a popular site that dealt with all kinds of conspiracy theories (my favorite being the one that the Germans sank the Titanic with a sub), but it was just too much. I absolutely loved the look on the face of Stacey Stegman as she said she's dealt with the conspiracy theories "ad nauseam". At least she stays employed because of people who bite their thumb at big screen TVs and Wheel of Fortune.
For some reason I knew this was the direction America Unearthed would take. After the Dan Brown escapades of the first season, I knew they would eventually start delving into conspiracies. If this show is renewed for a third season, there WILL be an episode on aliens -- either ancient or current. Maybe Giorgio will make an appearance on a joint "Ancient American Aliens Unearthed". Now there's a show.
Season 4 : Ghosts
Season 5 - Bigfoot
Season 6 - Ancient Pawn Shops
So a guy without a plane ticket enters the Denver airport. He sports three days worth of beard growth and has a leather backpack slung over his shoulder. He proceeds to approach strangers and engage them with wild, unsolicited conspiracy theory dialog. He then wanders aimlessly around this busy airport while acting in a generally suspicious way; craning his neck for prolonged 360 degree views, blocking foot traffic while contemplating the building's structure, snooping around, etc. And, he's NOT thrown down and cuffed within the first 5 minutes?! Was the TSA guy on coffee break or something? I kept waiting for him to be arrested then using the arrest as "proof" of a cover-up.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be humorous, but the reality is that filming was probably cleared by History Channel, and then on scene he's followed around by a half-dozen cameras and a lighting crew, all with proper ID.
J.A. Dickey
The sardonic quips about how fast someone would be wrestled to the ground for real if there were no television cameras or cellphones in the
vicinity has to be appreciated in the context of the closing of the frontier
more than a century ago. Denver has an urbane sophistication equal
to NYC and way less ranting from street people on soap boxes...
Dan: You really couldn't tell if I was trying to be humorous? I spent a lot of time on that post hoping to make people smile. Back to the drawing board. I'll spend more time polishing my next attempt.
bkd69
I never understand the whole 'clues in plain sight, for those who know what to look for,' thing. It's the same thing when I read Vigilant Citizen. Look, the only two groups who presumably will know enough to read the clues are the conspirators, who don't need them, and the researchers.
"Ms. Hilton, as you already know, when Operation New Overworld is launched, you'll have plenty of advance warning, along with a travel itinerary loaded to your One Percent Assistant, which is cleverly disguised as a Vertu crapphone. In the event that you can't make to your private bunker, simply head to the nearest shopping mall with a swastika shaped parking pattern, or airport with a swastika shaped runway pattern, such as Denver. There you'll find temporary lodgings with all the expected amenities, until you can go on to your private bunker. However, Denver won't be available from April through June of 2014. Since we've moved the population control virus to the Rotavirus vaccine from the Hepatitis vaccine, we have to change out the public art sculpture that's referencing the Hepatitis vaccine."
"Way up north in the land of snow
The Kensington Rune Stone is not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away Wolter land
Oh I wish I was in Scott's Lab
Hooray, Hooray
Way up north in the last of Wolter
Look away, look away, look away
Wolter land..
Snow has seriously arrived up here as i await the sequel
to the Denver Airport episode whereupon the ATHENS of
AMERICA's BIG DIG is found to have constructed a series
of escape tunnels parallel to and underneath the aqueduct
of the Quabbin Resevoir that connect up to the FEMA/MEMA
bunker in Framingham! Despite the folly of digging into landfill
and glacial moraines here, we had a secret project being tied
into the baggage area of Denver's new airport, this is the only
way the cost over-runs on the BIG DIG from "The Duke" onto
Gentleman Mitt make sense. Do you think either of our two big
political parties would use a public project to return favors etc?
Clearly all the two decades long cost over-runs bought something!
Clearly our BIG DIG was a major construction project, there is
a NOVA episode about it. The payola scandal about the cost of
it and the shoddy nature of the ceiling tiles was newsworthy for
the Boston Globe. Boston is built on landfill, the colonial era maps
show us a small fragile leaf shaped peninsula... all else is the fill.
I was hoping someone would make a Big Dig comment. Now to connect it from Freemasons to the Irish Mob to Whitey Bolger, and you got yourself a cable-worthy conspiracy.
True... especially when thinking how we can delve into
how FBI Agent Connolly really looked the other way in
the 1970s & 1980s!!! Whitey's bright kid brother James
Bulger was the UMASS host for the BUSH/GORE debate
locally as the date glitch gloriously loomed in A.D. 2000!
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/30/news/mn-29300
The Masonic connection to this is George Washington! (rather than Jamie Monroe or Andy Johnson or Bill McKinley) Quabbin comes into being as it currently is between 1930 and 1939 so it overlaps both the TVA and the WPA, it is a major gov't project that provided water for Boston! Clearly FDR had Bay State ancestors and in an old family trunk a precursor to Sen. Henry Clay's America Plan was found that looked very New England Federalist and like as if Alexander Hamilton had penned the plan with John Adams. Clearly this looked like as if they sketched out the vision General George Washington had on the Heights of Dorchester prior to the first Evacuation Day! It goes back that far. We know 20 years earlier FDR was on Oak Island and one of the businessmen seeking to find a pirate's gold. We also know Alan Turing was in NYC in 42/43 and before M.I.T had its first computer,modem and magnetic tape device gettin' onto the first DARPA-net we had FDR's people rethinking telegraph cables and communication systems. In the mid-1800s the Freemasons buried a network of cables like the ones that reached to the U.K under the Atlantic. Who would think
to ask if this network was revamped after the BRAINIAC had its moments? Clearly, George Washington had his visions, even including a COMMUNION-like visit from some very small Irish E.Ts!!! ( i am now waiting for S.W's staffers to read this and track me down!)
Carlene Jackson Reed
I haven't dug through all the comments, so I apologize if someone else has said this before, but:
The real and truly nefarious purpose of Masonic organizations is social networking. They're lodges composed of a bunch of guys who own businesses and like to send business each other's way.
I know this because I did some massive snooping under the guise of being a member of Job's Daughters (sort of a Masonic Girl Scouts, only for high school age girls). Our local Masonic organizations were not large, so I got to know people from all four subgroups: Freemasons, Eastern Star (older women), Job's Daughters, and DeMolay (young men).
I know, I know, I could be a patsy or a "plant" sent here to misguide everyone as to the true evil intent of Masonry. But really, which seems more likely? Guys meeting in small towns all over the US to carry on with their plan to overthrow the entire world, or guys meeting to schmooze and pal around with their peers?
I think all non-fruitcakes out there can see what I'm saying. Fruitcakes will never believe me, but then if Jesus were to return today they'd accuse him of being part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Ah well, just my two cents.
All the secret societies are just nepotism networks, it's well known to anyone not buying into the conspiracy nonsense. They are dick organizations that perpetuate class warfare and make it impossibe for people to climb the social ladder, which is nefarious enough in its own right.
Huh ?
Carlene Jackson Reed wrote,
"Girl Scouts, only for high school age girls…
Job's Daughters…
Fruitcakes..."
You've found the right blog to hang out at Carlene.
Depends on the location. Some lodges are full of farmers, retirees and veterans, all meeting for the same nefarious schmoozing. Sometimes they do this under the guise of organizing a charity -- which is funny, because everyone knows you can't schmooze and raise money at the same time.
Wait --
Thane wrote: "It was also Whigs and those that became Republicans that made up the majority of Abolitionists and were opposed to slavery. They were also those that supported expansoin of rights for the freed slaves and for the franchise for blacks... The majority of those that opposed the abolition of slavery were Democrats at the time."
True but neither those Republicans nor those Democrats bear any resemblance to today's Republican and Democratic parties. The Democrats were the party of the South while the Republicans were the party of the North. And many of those Southern Democrats later became Republicans when the Democratic party split up over the issue of civil rights: Those who supported civil rights became the modern Democrats while those who didn't support them left the party and most became Republicans. That's how the Republican party became the Southern conservative party and why the base of the Republican party is still in the South today. Meanwhile, the Northern Republicans, liberals that they were, became marginalized within the party until today, after the modern purging of the liberals and moderates within the party, almost all there is left to the Republican party is the conservatives.
For example: Conservative Southern racist Republicans Strom Thurmond and Jesse helms were once Democrats who left the party and became Republicans, while liberal Republicans like John Lindsay, Jacob Javits, Millicent Fenwick and Nelson Rockefeller were never to be seen again in the Republican party. You can put Lincoln in among them. There was a major change in both parties so the modern Republicans aren't in any way allied with abolitionists, while modern Democrats certainly are.
BootsHudson
Yep, Abe Lincoln was a modern day Democrat alright, says so in a time capsule buried in Denver
I clearly didn't say that Lincoln was a Democrat. I said he was a liberal, just like the Republicans I mentioned in the same sentence in which I mentioned Lincoln.
Jess(male) link
Some things about this beautiful continent are truly unexplainable.
It is factual that the american government forced ancient peoples from their homelands;
force-marched multiple nations to relocate ("for their own good and preservation"(Lies.)) on little less than concentration camps
What makes people think they wouldn't one day do the the same to those that chose not to comply?
More people=less money=more control=oppression=less freedom=desperate measures=death.
THIS SHOW MAKES PERFECT SENSE:MISINFORMnation.
TrueSkeptic
As Jason Colavito, himself, posts "As Profs. Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj write in their new book The Outrage Industry (Oxford University Press, 2013) in terms of political media...
Controversial content like this has always existed in small pockets of the media landscape, but in the last twenty-five years this form of commentary has come into its own, as a new genre of political opinion media that we term outrage. The genre has several distinctive attributes but is most easily recognizable by the rhetoric that defines it, with its hallmark venom, vilification of opponents, and hyperbolic reinterpretations of current events."
Ironic, as that comment from Berry & Sobieraj COULD be applied to Jason himself. Rhetoric, venom, vilification of opponents (Wolter), LOL.
What appears amazing in reading the many 'reviews' of Wolter, and the subsequent 'support' posts that follow is how these folks fail (or ignore) the SIMILARITIES between Colavito and Wolter.
They're simply two sides of the same 'coin'. Wolter spends a lot of time support his claims that he's right in his speculative theories, Colavito spends just as much time supporting HIS claims the HE's right: that Wolter is wrong.
BOTH making their living (read $$$), and a good amount, attempting to convince the 'audience' they're correct, and therefore the audience should buy watch their show, buy their books, whatever, to continue to allow them to perpetrate their respective views.
Wolter says '+', so Colavito says '-'. Then vice versa the next round. But it's ALL for the SAME, sole purpose: To gain notoriety and wealth convincing others to buy into their theories, for or against the topic du jour.
Wolter offers SOME facts, and extrapolates conclusions and suppositions (accurately or inaccurately) from those (often too few) facts. Colavito does EXACTLY the SAME thing.
Wolter works from speculating the 'positive' (something does exist) while Colavito speculates from the 'negative' (that something doesn't exist). BOTH loudly and proudly proclaim, "You can't prove me wrong!" while consistently providing nothing that can be proven either way.
If Wolter has a show that proclaim something as true, Colavito will (almost) immediately blog here that it's false. Wolter sells books citing his claims, so does Colavito. Same / same, eh?
BOTH have their agenda, and it's simply an agenda of greed. They make $$$ off selling the audience their version of propaganda, nothing more.
Just as there is a cottage 'conspiracy theory' group, there is also the 'anti-conspiracy theory' group. NEITHER side makes money unless they convince whomever to buy into their side of the 'argument'.
Wolter can NOT empirically prove his claims as true, Colavito can NOT empirically prove his, either. Why? Because in each case, it's empirically unprovable. Example: Wolter can't prove the Templars came to America, Colavito can't prove they didn't. Why? Because (so far) evidence for either side is lacking, and may or may not ever be found. So, it's ALL speculation.
Therefore, any claim by Colavito that Wolter is a 'huckster' is, by it's very nature, the claim of a huckster.
Either way, for either side (Wolter or Colavito) their goal and objective is EXACTLY the same: To get YOU to buy into their baloney and spend YOUR hard-earned $$$ so THEY make a living.
IF one is a 'scam artist', by the very nature of their so-called 'jobs', the other MUST be, as well.
Be WISE, keep your money in your pocket, and tell them BOTH to go take a flying leap.
And THAT'S the truth of it!
Really? We're trying that line again? I don't make any money off of my reviews of America Unearthed. You might notice that this website contains no advertising. I sell my book about America Unearthed at a break-even price to ensure that the information is out there. I have a real job other than writing these reviews, one that has nothing to do with my hobby of writing about history.
I am not speculating, and I have never said I can't be proven wrong. You see, the difference is that I will cite sources and show you how I reached my conclusion so you *can* prove me wrong if you can come up with better information.
You also seem to misunderstand the role of the skeptic; I do not say that things *could* not have happened, only that there is no evidence for them, so we have no reason to believe them true.
Further attacks based on false statements about finances will be deleted as per my comments policy of 1/24/14.
taeho kim link
반갑습니다. 저는서울신촌에 살고있고 서울에서 줄 곧 생활하였읍니다. 어릴적 텔레파시나 유에프오에 관한 이야기는 조금식들어왓읍니다. 학교에서 배운 지식은 이제는 골동품상에서나들을수잇을것입니다. 2000년부터 인터넷을 하고 있읍니다. 인터넷을하고잇는도중 우연인지 필연인지 한국라엘리안사이트를 발견하였읍니다. 그리고 서울상공에서 u.f.o 보이는 비행물체를 많이 발견 하였읍니다.귻은ㅇ찌보면 한국인에게좋은징조인지도모르겠읍니다. 일찍이 조지아담스키라는 폴란드계 미국인이 말하였듯이 우리나라가 2000년대에는 노벨과학상을 수상하는 인물이 100여명에이르를것이라고말하였읍니다. 그리고 제트비행기형ㅈ동차가 서울부산간을왕래하는시절이 올 수 도 있을것 입니다. 부산에는 저의친구들이많이살고잇읍니다. 그리고 인천에도 저의 친구들이 많이 살고있읍니다. 한국 라엘리ㅣ안관계자에게도감사의말씀을드립니다.한국라엘리안무브먼트커뮤니티 사이트는www.rael.co.kr 입니다. 감사합니다.
kitch
I loved the scene of digging in the soil to prove the theory of underground bunkers.....Must admit the lady from the airport was very patient, she must get tired of the kooks but dealt nicely with him.
I tune in now for the pure entertainment of it all, not to "learn" anything...it is a case of how outlandish will it be this time!
There is only ONE New World Order: Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash. They take over the world, then Nash tears his quad.
I'm not very impressed with your evidence against said conspiracy theories. Generally, anyone who seriously looks into topics like the ones above, or scratches history more than a millimeter can come to no other conclusion. More than one president has come right out and admit them. You need another line of work, because you aren't very convincing or logical.
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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.
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