A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

hermetic credo as above, so below, was understood as a reflection of a higher spiritual struggle.
While Pelley’s writings and organizing called for an engaged politics, it was always with the
understanding that such engagement was an extension of actions occurring at a cosmic level—
again enacting the spiritualization of the material. This, in Pelley’s thinking, was what set his
movement apart from more traditional political action. “A hundred abortive ‘movements’ to aid
in this national crisis have been started in the past three years, to fall by the wayside because
their platforms were based on the assumption that this distress was but a passing episode in
human life instead of the Great Armageddon designated by Divine Prophecy.” 163
The national
crisis in question was the Depression read as the corruption of America by Hebraic forces.
According to Liberation, President Hoover was manipulated by agents of the
“International Shylock,” the bankers responsible for the Depression in the first place;
meanwhile, their covert communist brethren sought to “emasculate” Christian principles
for “racial profit.” The Galahad college curriculum in 1932 covered “predatory cliques”
in American life, false claims to divine favor by “certain people,” and “racial ethics” in
the lost world of Atlantis. Finally, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on
30 January 1933, Pelley announced formation of the Silver Legion and brought the “work
of Christ militant into the open.” 164
It was the formation of the Silver Legion, and its most public face, the Silver Shirts, that brought
Pelley fame as a homegrown quasi-fascist.
The utopian politics that issued from the nexus of alien-human communication were
more invested in an apocalyptic narrative than in politics per se. The displaced utopian
imaginary was as open to the fascism of the 1930’s as it was to the rational reform of the
nineteenth century. In fact, I argue that various elements of the displaced utopian imaginary
readily lend themselves to the emergence of a fascist politics. Most obviously, the racial politics
implicit in Theosophy and its variants harbor the seeds for such a development. The basic
163 William Dudley Pelley, The Silver Ranger, Bulletin No. 3, (Oklahoma City). Undated material recovered from
Noblesville, Indiana Public Library’s vertical file archive on William Dudley Pelley in July of 2005.
164 Ribuffo, 57.
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