Volume 13, Issue 1, 2022
Stefano Bigliardi

Pages 22-49
https://doi.org/10.5840/asrr20226891
Ancient Aliens, Modern Fears: Anti-scientific, Anti-evolutionary, Racist, and Xenophobic Motifs in Robert Charroux
The French author Robert Charroux (1909¨C1978) contributed to the popular discourse about alien visits to earth in the remote past, that he advanced in voluminous books replete with narratives of anomalous ¡°facts.¡± According to Charroux, humanity is divided in ¡°races¡± whose existence is explained in reference to greater or lesser ¡°genetic¡± similarity to the ¡°ancient aliens,¡± as well as to radiation that genetically modified humans on the occasions of major catastrophes (natural as well as human-induced). Additionally, he was convinced that a factor in humanity¡¯s decadence was its attachment to technology, that he regarded as detrimental in various ways; science, in his opinion, was overrated, a case in point being the theory of evolution. Extending the analysis of Charroux¡¯s work offered by scholars like Wiktor Stoczkowski and Damien Karbovnik, I scrutinize Charroux¡¯s books, reconstructing his ambiguous attitude towards science, his criticism of evolution, his racist theories, and his xenophobic worldview.