UFOs, Joe McCarthy & Assault on the Capitol
Having never watched Tucker Carlson I had no idea he pushed UFO conspiracy theories on his show..
Link to tweet
After the fight, McCarthys Republican colleagues congratulated him for taking down a liberal. Pearson sued McCarthy, claiming injury, and for months McCarthy publicly accused Pearson of communist sympathies.
Then things got weird.
Pearson soon extended their feud into the realm of science-fiction flying saucer stories and, in so doing, set up a symbolic, supernatural dimension to ideological battles still playing out on cable TV today. That strange mix of McCarthyism and UFOs continues to poison the History Channel and Fox News, a Trojan horse hiding political radicalization under silly alien stories. It sounds funny until you realize that the QAnon conspiracy theoryinvolving Donald Trump, space aliens, and cannibal pedophiles, among other absurditiesbelieved by many of the Capitol insurrectionists is founded on exactly this same mix of political propaganda and pseudoscience. And that is by design.
It started out innocently enough. Pearson portrayed himself in the 1951 flying saucer movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. In the movie, the government panics when an alien with leftist ideas lands on Earth. Audiences got to see Pearson play the anti-McCarthy, the voice of reason, calm and sane in the face of panic. In response to the movie, McCarthy called Pearson a communist tool. But anti-communist conservatives didnt just hate the movie because Pearson was in it. The Day the Earth Stood Still told the story of an extraterrestrial who descends to Earth, displays nearly supernatural power, dies at the hands of soldiers, and is resurrected. Before his ascension back to the heavens, he talks about space as a paradise of pure reason, ruled over by impassive robots unhappy about Earths nuclear weapons. He gives humans a choice: live in peace or be destroyed...
https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/ufos-mccarthy-qanon-aliens-conspiracy-theories.html
StClone
(11,683 posts)In Conservative circles they find they need to take action against the obvious (xenophobic) threat. Reagan had "Star Wars" SDI to use against UFOnauts: https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/strategic-defense-initiative-reagan-star-wars-jerry-pournelle-larry-niven
It seems pretty sure nutzo Trump had the same idea as a threefer (defending against aliens as another of his infamous distractions, while pissing away billions as gifts to his defense buddies, and illegal insider trading schemes on defense stocks).
Your link posits on-line searchers are delivered to QAnon via the algorithms and this may well be. This connection, along with Art Bell, is a logical step to attract and fear up the base for the "Alien Left." I think this has been going on for a time. Where the Tucker bunch lands and fine themselves scared silly by paranormal, conspiracies, and Art Bell late night nonsensical weirdness. It scares them. Therefore, it must be something out of Left Field!
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)StClone
(11,683 posts)The Right were roused to see its message as dangerous.
From the article:
The films director, Robert Wise, admitted that he intended a leftist message. What we were saying is that the United States and other nations would have to give up some measure of sovereignty if world peace was ever to be achieved, he told Cinefantastique in 1976.
They are frightened, and use this theme much today-be afraid of those different than us, or claim better ideas, with all this do-gooder, world peace, and intellectual-betterism.