Review 22.3
1 March- 21 March, 1997

Appropriation warning: Most of the ideas, dialogue, and content of this column are the work of a friend of mine, who gave me copyright clearance to use his shtick because I said I liked it. If, in a week or so, some journo finds this material on an old Internet site, I reserve the right to blame my friend, muddy the waters by reference to public domain, and dye my hair blond. Further correspondence will be dealt with through my lawyers. So there. Sammy rang me up the other day, livid because of something he'd seen on TV. He watches too much TV, but that's another matter. Anyway, he'd been watching Seinfeld, and an ad came up for a program called Dark Skies, which is yet another of the "there's a Masonic alien running the CIA" conspiracy programs that have flooded our screens since the success of the X-Files.

Sammy might have misheard things, and to be honest I didn't see the promo myself, but he claimed to have heard one of those sepulchral voice-overs in the promo warn "The Government is lying to you". If he was wrong, I apologise to Channel 10, which broadcasts Dark Skies; then again, it appears to be a reasonable summation of what these programs are all about. UFOs, alien abductions, cures for cancer, the operations of the International Monetary Fund, we're being lied to about every single one of them. And then there's that satanic eye in the pyramid on US banknotes. What's all that about? I'd like to know.

Sammy was now ranting. "This is so irresponsible. Which Government? They probably mean the Americans, but they're suggesting that our Government, and all governments, are in the business of conspiracy. What great secrets would John Howard be covering up? That there's three guys in Queensland who've discovered how to make a high alcohol content beer, and the Government's keeping this from us?"

We then got talking about the X-Files, a program I can't get into, but which Sammy watches because a) it's on a TV screen and b) the pictures move and sound comes out. The X-Files, he felt, wasn't so bad, because it never took itself too seriously. It also had to be seen in the context, he said, of far worse programs of this genre, including one called Conspiracy, which was aired by Channel 10 a couple of months ago, and which rehashed a wide range of risible theories of the sort that were once confined to the shelves of a League of Rights bookshop. What role did Pine Gap play in the Whitlam sacking? Who's listening in to your phone calls? Why can I never find my socks? The Rothschilds were in there somewhere, as they always are, pulling those damned strings.

Conspiracy theories are pretty big business these days. They haven't necessarily become any more sophisticated or credible since they moved beyond the tight little domain of the extreme right, but they have become more commonplace. I believe the far-right has lost control of the old Conspiracy Theory Industry to a certain extent and it has found its '90s home in fringe/new age circles.

For despite all the hippy-dippy all-you-need-is-love babble of the new age, there is a surprising amount of common ground between it and the far-right. Firstly, there's the "muck-and-mysticism" tradition of the far-right, which lauds honest, humble Christian rural stock over grasping, urbanised, money-obsessed rootless cosmopolitans. This sometimes intersects with the back-to-nature interests of the new age. Then, on a theological level, many new agers draw their inspiration from individuals writing in the last century (such as Madame Blavatsky or Alice A. Bailey) whose accounts of humanity's spiritual development drew strongly on racist preconceptions about primitive vs. civilised people. Neo-pagan rejection of Judeo-Christian beliefs also often shaded into a crude anti-Semitism.

Of even greater import is the conspiracy mentality of the two groups, fuelled in new age circles by understandable disappointment and cynicism born of post 60s politics, where it became clear that governments were simply not trustworthy. By the 80s and 90s, governments around an increasingly globalised world showed themselves limited in their responses to outside events, which in turn heightened a sense of helplessness in a wide range of communities, not just the new age. It is this sense of helplessness that has in some way helped fuel the (apparently short-lived) rise of Pauline Hanson. As for the new age, it merged with the paranoid myths of the far right to create magazines such as the Queensland-based Nexus, which on one hand promotes UFO spotting and transformational spiritual beliefs and on the other runs the vilest anti-Jewish conspiracy drivel, alongside articles singing the praises of the far-right kooks of the US militia movement.

The X-Files may very well be harmless entertainment, and I'm loathe to get too whipped up over something that may even possibly defuse popular sentiment for paranoid conspiracy theories. Even so, I think we would be wise to take a more intelligent look at such programs, particularly as we approach the year 2000. Many experts believe the coming few years will bring out of the woodwork a wide range of end-time conspiracy cranks, some of whom may even turn to violence to usher in their millennial vision. As for Sammy, he was already planning his next project: an Australian version of the X-Files. "If we were to do it right, in the time-honored fashion of Australian TV, we'd have to cast as Mulder and Scully two overexposed celebs who are never off our screens," he said. I threw up the name Angry Anderson, but Sammy said that he'd be put to better use playing one of the domes at Pine Gap.

We finally decided on Gary Sweet and Pauline Hanson. The last suggestion had Sammy in his stride. "You know how on the X-Files, there's this line they keep flashing up: 'I want to believe'. Instead, we'll have her saying the line: 'I want them to leave'." Frankly, I'll leave the scriptwriting to him. If it were my gig, I'd have Hanson abducted by an alien in the first episode. I'd also get John Pasquarelli to play the alien. Save on make-up.