• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In Los Angeles there is a radio station catering largely to an African-American audience—KKBT 92.3 FM, also known as “The Beat”—that features an interesting show called Street Science, hosted by Dominique Diprima. Since I live near Los Angeles I am a periodic guest, the token skeptic when street science veers into pseudoscience. In 1997 they organized a show about UFOs, and the other guests included Don Ecker, publisher of UFO Magazine, and Dwight Schultz, the actor best known as “Barclay” on Star Trek, The Next Generation. After the usual banter about blurry photographs and government cover-ups, the host opened up the phone lines. Suffice it to say that after years of doing such shows I am not unaccustomed to interviews in which most of the other guests and call-ins are believers in the topic of discussion. But this time was different. It was not just that these callers believed in UFOs. They believed in a particular type of UFO: a messianic “mothership” circling the Earth that in 1999 will release hundreds of smaller ships that will invade targeted cities.

I did not think too much about the first call or two of this nature, but after half a dozen or so I realized what was going on. Announcing themselves as members of the Nation of Islam (NOI), these callers explained that there is no doubt about the existence of UFOs—their leader, the Minister Louis Farrakhan, had himself been to visit the “Mother Plane” in space, described in the NOI’s July 4, 1996, edition of the Final Call newspaper as “a human-built planet, a half mile by a half a mile” carrying “1500 smaller baby planes” with bombs “designed for the destruction of this world.” The “Mother Plane,” the newspaper explained, was visited by Louis Farrakhan himself on September 17, 1985, where he received communication from deceased NOI prophet Elijah Muhammad. For some NOI members, the science fiction film Independence Day was nothing short of a documentary. Final Call, in fact, explained that the hit film’s acronym, ID4, “is a biogenetic reference to a genetic inhibitor which ceases certain procedures in evolution and life, according to researchers at M.I.T.,” the alma mater, it pointed out, of the “Jewish genius” played by Jeff Goldblum in the film. In fact, according to Final Call, the existence of the spacecraft was known to both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, who met in 1985 to discuss a plan to deal with alien invasion:

Col. Colman S. Vonkeviskzky, MMSE, … a former Hungarian staff major and a military scientist who said he has been engaged over 45 years in dealing with the United Nations about the UFO phenomenon. In a telephone interview, Col. Vonkevickzky said that former President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev spent five hours in confidential talks during the 1985 Geneva Conference, discussing what military strategies to take in the event of alien attack against earth. All the methods used by the government to harm the real “Mother Plane” have failed, just as their efforts to crush the Nation of Islam have failed … . Frankly, this government needs help—desperately. I think the best thing they can do is consult with Minister Farrakhan.

Several callers made reference to the end coming in 1999 when the “Mother Ship” will descend upon Earth, release its smaller ships to topple the “white government,” and place the black man back in his rightful position of power. The longer I listened the more incredulous I became. Did these callers really believe that the messiah was coming in the form of an alien? Many of them did. But how could Louis Farrakhan, who, regardless of his political beliefs, has always struck me as an intelligent man, believe such nonsense? His message is usually one of this-worldly self-reliance, not otherworldly wishful thinking. Ted Koppel wondered the same thing on the October 15, 1996, episode of Nightline:

Koppel: Minister Farrakhan, frequently what you say makes eminently good sense and is extremely lucid, and then—and I’m going to read you this quote because we don’t have it on videotape