aliens and masons and nazis, oh my!

Forth Reich conspiracies are alive and well in a potboiler coming soon to a conspiracy-laden bookshelf near you.

Conspiracy writer Jim Marrs has a new book out, Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America. The bad guys trying to rule the world this time are (insert dramatic pause) Nazis. But hold on folks, not your garden variety World War 2 Nazis but those who started building businesses in Europe as Germany was being rebuilt and those brought over by Project Paperclip and ended up as corporate magnates who espouse Nazi ideology by being… well… erm… corporate magnates.

The fact that the scientists brought over to America after the end of World War 2 to share their classified knowledge of top secret Nazi projects were far from loyal SS troopers and were most likely slated for execution so the Allies would never find out how to build V2 rockets, doesn't enter the picture.

Neither does the opposition they faced from war veterans who found it repugnant to "work with the enemy." It's also downright insulting to Wernher von Braun who created the Saturn V rocket and was one of the people who lobbied the US government to see space as more than a place from which to hurl nukes at the Russians.

Fourth Reich essentially creates a new definition of Nazism vague enough to become anything Marrs wants it to be and then uses it to attack people the author doesn't like by tying them to wars, authoritarian laws and incendiary speeches. He might have had a stronger argument if he focused on the love Hitler received from powerful people around the world before he invaded Poland and the companies that used slave labor he provided to make Nazi war machines.

But by focusing on scientists with very dubious loyalties to the Nazi Party working in the Swiss Alps on last minute attempts to miraculously win the war at the 11th hour and unwilling members of the Nazi party trying to survive Hitler's oppression and make a few marks so they could feed their families after the war, he undermines his basic premise. In short, the book is one long Ad Nazium.

There's another thing with which Marrs confused me. Between all the evil neo-conservatives, Trilateralists, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Rothchilds the Builderberg Group, aliens, energy companies hiding extraterrestrial goodies and now, Nazi bogeymen heading all the top global corporations all fighting for control of the human race, how can any one of these conspiracies function without being undermined by at least three or four others?

By this point, all of the evil forces trying to control us should be tripping over each other and unleashing an interstellar war for control of a tiny blue planet floating around a run of the mill star in Nowhere, Milky Way.

Unless of course there's an uber-conspiracy on top of all this playing the other secret rulers and orders for chumps in their ultimate quest to do… something. I guess we'll find out in the next book, won't we? After all, this is why it's so good to be a conspiracy writer. You'll always need to create a new layer of evil on top of the layers you already laid down to explain the holes in your theories.

That means more books, more sales and another book in the making as soon as the ink dries on the first edition of your latest potboiler. If people object, just accuse them of being sheep brainwashed by the government controlled mass media or a government stooge out to discredit you, the truth-seeker, in the same way a politician running for office would counter his foes. Yes, it's a good business being a conspiracy theorist…