The 2001 MUFON Symposium press conference was one of the most surreal things I've seen in the 15 years I've been studying the subculture of ufology. Coming just two months after the Disclosure press conference in Washington of Steven Greer, the press conference at the MUFON Symposium (indeed, the entire symposium), revealed the growing fracture within ufology.
On one side, you had the "old guard" - people like Stanton Friedman, Robert Wood, Barry Downing, Ann Druffel, and Budd Hopkins - who had been researching and talking about UFOs for decades.
On the other side you had the brash new "revolutionaries," epitomized here by Greer and his cohort Daniel Sheehan. Overtly political, they were willing to go far beyond the simple old flying saucer gospel of the Old Guard by tying the belief that the UFO phenomenon represented extraterrestrial visitation (which is what the Old Guard had been pushing for years) to a determined activist agenda that dealt with a wide range of topics that they saw as related to ET visitation.
Towards the end of the 2001 MUFON press conference, those tensions / fault lines boiled over, as can be seen in this exchange about the Strategic Defence Initiative between Greer and Sheehan on one side, and an ineffective Druffel on the other. At the end, Hopkins stands up and takes a clear shot at Greer and Sheehan and others like them, to the approval at the end of Friedman (whose body language throughout tells you what he was really thinking about Greer and Sheehan).
What the Old Guard failed to understand, however, was that the political activism and rampant conspiracism that was being put forward by Greer et al was a natural extension of the things the Old Guard had been talking about for years. In that sense, Greer et al were not a radical departure from traditional ufology, as Hopkins implies - rather, they were the logical result of a world-view that believed (a) aliens were visiting Earth and abducting humans, and (b) that the government was covering it all up. It is why I have called Friedman the Godfather of Exopolitics when I wrote:
Friedman is the de facto Godfather of Exopolitics - in large part, he created the "family" that is modern pro-ET, "Cosmic Watergate" ufology, but like Vito Corleone, he is incapable of taking what he has created and moving it into its next logical phase. Indeed, like the Don, it is a phase that he wants nothing to do with, even as others around him, who have been inspired by him, recognize the logical and inevitable implications of what Friedman has been saying all of these years, and are prepared to act on it, no matter how much he protests.
But while I singled out Stan, it implies to the others as well - Hopkins with his abductions, Wood with his MJ-12 documents, and so forth. If Stan was the Godfather, these other figures were his capos.
For anyone interested in the history of Ufology as a social movement of American society, the 20 minutes in this video are a fascinating look at the year where everything really changed (the 9/11 attacks accelerated the move two months later by fostering even more paranoia and conspiracism), and Disclosure and Exopolitics began their move to become the dominant theme within the subculture.
Paul Kimball
2 comments:
It's absurd of Sheehan to argue that since military experts don't think SDI would work against human threats, it must have been designed to protect against aliens.
Reagan wanted a missile shield, and that was easy for politicians to sell to voters. It looked like they were doing something strong to protect against total atomic destruction, even if, in truth, that protection was impossible to realise. Reagan was a little deluded and the politicians were cynical. There are other examples of such unwanted weapons programmes:
Congress pushes for weapons Pentagon didn’t want
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/congress-pushes-for-weapons-pentagon-didnt-want/nRC7w/
But it is not uncommon in ufology to argue in the abstract and tendentiously eliminate the human factor from consideration.
Isn't that what Friedman does when he argues that there is so much evidence for UFOs, scientists such as Menzel can't genuinely disagree, therefore, they MUST be members of the secret control group MJ-12?
Really great observation, Paul... such an interesting clip to watch: the Old Guard, all of them in various ways delusional, reacting in horror at the delusional lunacy they helped to create.
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