The Rightwing Alien Agenda

Why do so many on the right love ET?

One of the surprising aspects of the UFO story that broke this week is how readily it was taken up by some on the far right of American politics. Matt “What is a Woman” Walsh was first out of the box, devoting fifteen minutes of his daily show to the topic. Jesse Watters, new host of his own primetime Fox News smugfest, interviewed prominent UFO researcher and documentarian Jeremy Corbell. Over at the Public, a substack whose main beat is “fighting censorship” (of the leftwing variety, of course) and being mad at “trans activists,” just published a big article entitled “US Has 12 or More Alien Spacecraft, Say Military and Intelligence Contractors.” Before he got shit-canned Tucker Carlson regularly aired stories covering the topic. Even Pizzagate propogandist and former naval urine analysist Jack Posobiec has expressed interest.

Historically, UFOs have more typically been associated with the woo-woo left; tree huggers, crystal sniffers, Sasquatch seekers. You know, smelly people. So why are these two opposing groups finding common cause on this subject?

Matt Walsh and Michael Ian Black - besties?

The most prosaic explanation is simply that UFOs are cool. There’s nothing inherently political in the subject, so why wouldn’t all kinds of people want to know more about the possibility of extraterrestrial life? But UFOs also appeal to the conspiracy-minded among us. Central to the story of American UFOs is the idea that the US government has orchestrated a decades-long conspiracy hiding the truth from the American public. That sort of paranoid thinking has appealed to those on the political fringes at least since the JFK assassination, and has exploded in the years since. Interestingly, the conspiracy minded used to gravitate towards the left, particularly during the 60’s and 70’s. The rightwing joined the fray during the Clinton years, grew exponentially during the Obama administrations, and is now the default setting among those I mentioned above. A UFO cover-up would confirm all of their fears, and would open the door to validating concerns about other “conspiracies,” such as vaccines turning kids gay or something, and all their fun theories about Jews.

On that subject, it may be worth noting that the original Nazis (we’re sadly at a place in our history where we have to distinguish between yesterday’s Nazis and today’s) had a keen interest in the occult and devoted enormous resources towards finding evidence of lost technology. A persistent story is that they even developed the first flying saucer, possibly “with help.” A cottage industry has sprung up documenting possible Nazi links between UFOs, ancient mythology, and an alleged secret Antarctic base to which top Nazi brass escaped after the war. (If you’re interested, the UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast has two great episodes on this.) Do today’s fascists share some genetic memory with those from yesteryear? Perhaps. After all, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization certainly speaks to the fascist’s love of hierarchies. I mean, what could be more Master Racy than an intergalactic being?

Interestingly, the most prominent researchers in the field seem to be entirely apolitical. Or, if they have strong political opinions, I’ve never heard any of them expressed. This makes a lot of sense. If you’re trying to bring a fringe subject into the mainstream, I assume the last thing you want to do is alienate (pun intended, I’m a professional comedian) a good percentage of the population.

A beautiful thing about UFOs is they allow us – at least for now- to project whatever we want onto them. We don’t know what they are, who made them, where they come from, or their purpose. Many people still don’t even believe they’re real. As such, we can make of them whatever we want. Are they benevolent? Evil? Will they destroy us or save us from ourselves? Like gender, they are open to interpretation*. UFOs may be one of the few subjects about which those of us on the left can join hands with our political opponents on the far right and find common cause. What a beautiful idea. And if we can do that, maybe we can come together and solve all of our Earthly woes… together. I’m obviously kidding – UFOs or not, those fuckers can go fuck themselves.

Also, just for fun, here’s this.

*I wrote that just to annoy any right-wingers who may be reading.