Manifest(uf)o II

The Deficiency in Skepticism and Continued Thoughts on the State of Ufology

Over a year has passed since I first posted the Manifest(uf)o, an attempt to come to some broad understanding of what ufology means to our culture at large and how interested individuals should approach the subject. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, very little has changed in the subsequent months. The ufologists and UAP enthusiasts still hope for disclosure from the government, dutifully interpreting rather mixed signals from the different governmental personalities that address the community. The timbre of these messages seems to change depending upon the time or day, but the hope and faith continues. Indeed, at time of writing, we are due for yet another congressional hearing, where I assume insinuations will be made that some grand truth is being covered up, heard from a friend of a friend or via some raucous game of UFO telephone. Hints and allegations, as Paul Simon would say.

All along the way, the disclosure advocates will use all the badges, medals, stars, and stripes in their spokespeople’s possession to eliminate any doubt the UFOs are a real and emerging threat to the United States. Skeptics will call these claims overblown, sometimes in the way that I do: There is a faction of the U.S. military establishment that peddles the idea of a clear UFO reality without showing the public any of the information that could establish this as true. I do consider myself to be a skeptic but have consistently pushed back against association with the strain of skepticism that resembles the dregs of the New Atheism movement—a joyless, coldly calculated group of skeptics that eroded any cogent discussion for a decade. A tendency to belittle believers or experiencers has soured me on many of the current figureheads. While this is a less pressing issue than the others examined here, if anything, the coarse trivialization of earnest witnesses tends to help reach content quotas without diving into deeper contextual issues.

I often focus more on the believers and the cadre of current and former military or intelligence personnel that continually reinforces belief. This particular analysis will focus on the skeptics, who might inadvertently be doing their own kind of perception management. While topics in ufology are most often swiftly debunked by figures on the skeptical side of things, there are very few changes in the overall conversation—the subject has not really advanced past the early days in which Philip J. Klass served as the enfant terrible of the scene. Even now, same as always, the skeptics wage an impossible war for an objective reality, a hill which will inevitably never be reached with personal experiences or belief systems blocking the route. These two factions within the UFO subject matter are like oil and water, but both struggle to grasp the bigger picture in their squabbles, always stuck on the niche details of niche events within a niche subject. I won’t pretend to not be guilty of this myself, there is truth to be found within the minutiae. But in the case of many skeptics, the important context behind the very existence of the perpetual UFO dispute itself gets lost.

UFO stories, culture, and criticism are not born in a vacuum and have had a political valence since the earliest days of the phenomenon. Even from the “starting point” of the subject matter, it was intimately connected with aerial warfare: Kenneth Arnold’s sighting 1947 sighting of nine silvery objects was quickly followed by military and intelligence shenanigans. Writer Mark Pilkington, as quoted in the prior Manifest(uf)o, noted in Mirage Men that “military and civilian intelligence agencies acted as midwives in the birthing of the UFO myth.”¹ While many skeptics can read the smoke signals, only a select few seem interested in how or why the fire started. It’s an arson case where investigators are more interested in proving that the plumes in the sky are not flying saucers—the fires of military intelligence, espionage, and infosec games inevitably continue to burn. More concerning, some skeptics seem to advocate for these heightening flames so long as they are unencumbered by the UFO smoke. Unfortunately, clean-burning fuels are a pipe dream.

Following a federal election that included a lot of punching leftwards in an apparent attempt to avoid accountability, ufology’s place as a smaller node in a broader culture war became more apparent. The personal political leanings of UFO/UAP advocates can range broadly, but previous articles have noted a distinct far-right contingent that gets welcomed alongside more moderate and traditional conservatives and liberals. These dimensions also exist within the skeptic community. However, the broad ideological differences between them get shaken off to certify that the collective attitude towards the UFO issue has little variation. To many within the skeptic community, the existence of UFOs is being exaggerated by certain factions inside and outside the U.S. military establishment, all to distract from lapses in national security or to erode its foundations. UFOs are explicitly to the detriment of the United States DoD apparatus in this reading. While acknowledging that certain bad seed military figures are responsible for the perpetuation of the UFO mythos throughout popular culture and fringe subcultures, the defense establishment is seen as a net positive. Further, skeptics want the good eggs within this establishment to clamp down on those bad seeds who threaten American domination. To illustrate how this brand of skepticism functions, one that does not always question but often advocates for military action, I present profiles from a couple of figures within the UFO-skeptical community: Skeptic A and Skeptic B. These two examples are real people, but I feel the blind item format serves the purposes of the argument better without slinging mud unnecessarily.

Skeptic A works for a large multimedia news company with a conservative slant. They create impressive debunks of UFO events and personalities, with a not insubstantial amount of focus placed upon the networks at play. They consistently engage with or promote other pieces of media from their employer, often content with a marked right-wing agenda. While criticizing one camp of UFO believers for wasting taxpayer money, Skeptic A nevertheless collaborates with prominent UFO personalities in other venues. This scenario indicates that, to a certain degree, the money of private individuals is okay to squander on ufology books, videos, or conferences, only being an issue when it is part of the federal budget. If one is to browse stray comments from Skeptic A, they will see that their position is that UFOs are drones or other military equipment from foreign adversaries encroaching in American airspace. As opposed ineffective UFO research, Skeptic A would rather this taxpayer money go elsewhere in the American war machine to take on the aerial phenomena of foreign origin. As a former employee of a major foreign policy wing of the U.S. government, they rarely question the traditional conservative side of the U.S. military when it comes to any subject aside from UFOs. For example, they have contended that Chinese spying operations in America are overrunning the country, propped up by devious third worlders. As for those pesky flying saucers, Skeptic A seemingly believes they are a distraction from the real, encroaching enemy that needs to be summarily dealt with. While advocating for a powerful American military, they question frivolous uses of funding and anything perceived as “woke” or non-traditional within the ranks—splitting hairs on a dog that bites.

Skeptic B crops up in mainstream media less than Skeptic A but makes some appearances in widely read newspapers or news websites. They are also a journalist but have a decidedly more classical liberal bent, often verging on centrism. Their work is published in a variety of places, but their social media presence is integral to their overall reach. Their work is subsidized by a think tank, which in turn receives its funding from a broad swath of charitable foundations and philanthropic groups, all headed by some of America’s richest families and individuals. While a conspiracist would deem these elite organizations the “Illuminati” or some other cabal, a more grounded observer would nevertheless recognize that these groups are not offering truly unconditional funding. Setting aside the fact that these charities are used to evade taxes, the inherent issues of gifts or donations from wealthy figures and business scions are many: The recipients tend to never criticize or examine the desires of their benefactors, nor do they acknowledge their benefactors’ ultimate goals of maintaining and growing their wealth. Indeed, many think tanks funded by this money are unlikely to hire anyone who questions too much of the status quo, not wanting to upset their revenue stream. As such, despite being part of an alternative political persuasion to that of Skeptic A, Skeptic B similarly advocates for military power, although in a gentler interventionist manner. In practice, this interventionism is rarely gentle: Countless examples throughout U.S. history illustrate how big business holds an envious eye over the labor and resources of foreign lands, not averse to using federal means to command ownership of this potential capital.² Skeptic B is well read on UFO and fringe literature but blinded by an allegiance to a market-backed colonialism, though they rarely see it as such. They fail to see the UFO subject as anything more than games being played by the intelligence services of foreign countries, primarily Russia, or Russia-backed agents within the American military. Like Skeptic A, Skeptic B wants these foreign influences eliminated, even if that means a proxy war like the cold warfare of old.

A strange bedfellow in terms of this Russia hysteria exists within the believer side of UFO community: Colonel Philip J. Corso, the ardent cold warrior who told the public that he handled extraterrestrial material while part of the Pentagon’s Foreign Technology Division. Corso, a far-right war hawk, was “dissatisfied with the CIA’s internationalism” in the 1960s and sought to heat up the then Cold War by alleging that the Agency was run by KGB communists.³ Corso’s usage of the UFO mythology was undoubtedly aiming to achieve similar end goals, though his intentions remain largely unclear. There is little doubt about his authoritarian streak, however. Bizarrely, Skeptic B contends that a similar Russian FSB wing exists inside the present CIA and other DoD agencies, and they are the ones pushing UFOs and other fringe issues to the forefront—a strange photo negative of far-right conspiracy peddlers like Corso. The goal is nevertheless similar, intending to microwave some leftover Cold War tensions so the American public buys into the imperialist project.  In this way, Skeptic B’s beliefs take on their own conspiratorial qualities, often involving a vast network of interrelated figures who are all working on behalf of the Russian intelligence apparatus. This interpretation often has a less material basis given how intertwined American business, military intelligence, and other DoD initiatives often are, let alone how uniquely American the UFO craze has been since the beginning. At times, the analytical trajectory of Skeptic B feels like willful ignorance of glaring possibilities in order to carefully follow the U.S. foreign policy line.

While I would not want to meet Skeptic A or Skeptic B at a house party without a hasty escape at my disposal, they also would not enjoy each other’s company. A meeting would likely devolve into the now classic culture war arguments, masculinity vs. femininity, bickering about what is or what isn’t woke, all undeniably leading nowhere. But they would have one quality very key in common: An abject fear of foreign adversaries and a desire to cut away the UFO believers from the military establishment so that it can capably bomb distant lands and supply overseas allies with the firepower necessary to keep the MID money flowing. The true irony of this skeptical turn is that the result is the same ramped-up cold war paranoia and militaristic enthusiasm that so often takes hold of UFO believers. Indeed, much like other culture war distractions, volatile disagreements take place between believers and skeptics, despite both implicitly agreeing that segments of the military or its contractors need to be well-funded. The only disagreement seems to be about which war crime manufacturer gets to take home the pot.

As in any political debate, a subset of the UFO enthusiast population—a smaller group anecdotally speaking—gets ignored, their concerns never entering the arena of discussion. This cluster of individuals sees the military shenanigans lurking omnipresent behind the UFO subject and does not assume that it’s the doing of a few bad apples. Rather, the UFO issue is a homegrown military intelligence tool, propaganda distribution method, or psychological operation. I am certainly biased towards something along the lines of these views, and I hope that I am not overestimating the numbers of this subgroup, but it remains one of the best explanations for the UFO meme. It is an explanation with material and historical bases that largely do not exist in narratives that emphasize the possible paranormal elements or underplay military engagement with the subject. These problems are exemplified in the present skeptic/believer dialectic, one which leaves the broader military or the American colonial establishment unexamined in an explicitly military (and increasingly big business) subject matter. Believers and skeptics rely on the military for answers, but neither questions the answers they receive—different factions give suitable answers for each interested party in the endless UFO debate.

The perpetuation of this limited discussion directly benefits military forces: If paranormal phenomena is to blame, more funding for research and defense is needed. If impressive technology from foreign adversaries is to blame, more funding for research and defense is needed. UFO fervor can serve as cloaking for black projects or operations deemed too unsavory for public knowledge. It keeps classified aerial tech classified, neither skeptic nor believer approaching the truth. It can distract from substantially more important policy issues, both at home and abroad. Ufology groups and communities can serve (and have served) as networks for intelligence gathering. They could also be easily used for testing information security. Understated in all of this dialogue is the fact that, despite a historically rocky relationship between civilian UFO researchers and the military, devotion for military figures within the UFO topic has rarely been so prominent. It seems that if the UFO subject comes up at all, that the American military gets rewarded and any imperialist missions it may be serving get all the easier to achieve. Although I now appear to be repeating myself.

I am not advocating that people stop engaging with the material from these deficient skeptics, if anything, I am advocating for continuing to read, listen, or watch—none are entirely without merits. But as one does so, it is important to remember that UFOs are not the only grift in town. While ufology has historically been a laundering tool for various far-right ideologies, I have seen firsthand that people involved in skeptical communities brush aside violent or unsavory ideologies perpetuated by their own figureheads, sometimes sacrificing their interest in otherwise solid historical analysis to do so. These days, being opposed to the proliferation of American military domination and a ballooning military budget is seen as an uncouth position for some reason. But in the realm of UFOs—a subject that has been intertwined with the military from its inception—ignoring its utility as an instrument for stoking up nationalistic fervor against an unknowable other is a grave mistake. Skeptics who are content to turn this unknown other into a known other, one that is nevertheless exotic and threatening, are doing a disservice to the subject. It should be a topic that sparks inquiry and investigation, not an excuse for solidifying preconceived notions that have been heartily propped up by American propaganda mills. It is especially galling that these figures consider themselves investigative journalists without interrogating the presence of the DoD organizations within the UFO subject beyond what those same organizations tell them. Rest assured, these individuals know how to investigate, but only do so within comfortable boundaries that don’t tread upon the combat boots, so to speak. As the conversation has reached a broader populace, largely unencumbered by the criticisms put forth, it would perhaps behoove the skeptical community to ask why the discussion has remained so firmly within the zeitgeist. Perhaps it would even be worth asking who reaps the spoils from the endless parade of UFO stories inexplicably making it to the halls of congress.

But what do I know? Maybe we’ll have confirmation of an extraterrestrial presence by the end of the day. Maybe then the ludicrously vast amount of military spending will all be worth it.

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1. Pilkington, Mark. Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. London: Constable, 2010. Page 71.

2. See Schlesinger and Kinzer’s Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatamala (New York: Doubleday, 1982) for one of the most egregious examples. Past Getting Spooked articles have approached this phenomena, with Laura Briggs’ Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) going uncited but providing important background.

3. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Page 214-215.