A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

insistence on the survival of the individual human personality, minus its animal attributes, after
death. The maintenance of self, the central, centripetal desire attached to totalizing historical
narratives remained despite the disruptive forces of trance, out-of-body excursions and
prophesized social upheaval. The vision of heaven and thus the utopia envisioned by the
movements we have been examining was a vision of purity, and the drive toward purity, by the
very rigor of its exclusivity, is arguably fascist.
Thus the displaced utopian imaginary can and did operate in a fascist register as well as a
progressive one. The sense of world historical mission and destiny so often attached to fascist
politics, especially in its national socialist guise, began already to nudge it into the realm of the
displaced utopian imaginary. When one adds the politics of race and all the mystical baggage it
had accrued via Blavatsky’s musings as well as a divinely ordained mission of purification, one
finds oneself squarely in the realm of the mythic, the realm whose logic the displaced utopian
imaginary pursues. Pelley’s impulse toward the seizure of power and his organization of a cadre
of armed supporters might seem to tilt his movement over into traditionally active utopian
politics. I would argue, however, that the fantastic nature of his politico-spiritual aspirations and
the fact that said aspirations never successfully went beyond posturing and wishful thinking
placed him more so in the trajectory we have been tracing.
Pelley’s politics, while labeled by his contemporaries as fascist, were a troubled amalgam
of white supremacy, Christian messianism and democratic ideals. As to his sympathy for
European fascism, his own words in a broadside addressed “To All Christian Ministers” leave
that affiliation unquestionable.
This organization is working shoulder to shoulder with the finest Germanic elements in
the United States to actualize the ideals of the Nazi Party of the Fatherland, without
violence if it can be managed, but similarly inspired to bring a rebirth of racial
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