The X-Files: The Shape of the Conspiracy - Part Four: Cancer and Contagion

If the Japanese and the French got their moments in the limelight in Season Three, in Season Four it's the Russians' turn. It feels logical then, rather than overdue, when in 'Tunguska' and 'Terma' the series pays due homage with more than adequate care and attention both to the heritage of Cold War paranoia on conspiracist lore and to the Tunguska mystery in ET mythology. And of course diplomats and sneering congressmen are also in on the Conspiracy. (Immigration officials, alas, are just hapless, clumsy oafs.) The Conspiracy's abuse and murder of oldies feels just as real (and in its own way just as horrifying) as its abuse and murder of unborn children: at either end of life, the cold bleak "ethics" of modern medicine are similarly threatening and frightening.

Krycek's back, and his and Mulder's special relationship is just as hot and spicy as ever. And just to up the phwoar factor, both Mulder and Skinner get shirtless scenes. And which way Krycek swings politically (and Mother Russia with him) is also up for grabs. Far-Right? Far-Left? In post-Soviet Russia there's not very much difference, so it's a neat shout-out both to the enigmatic Russian reality (perfectly reflected in the political confusion of post-Trump America, where politics is more likely to be a matter of race than ideology) and to the conspiranoid mentality that can recast a communist like Lee Harvey Oswald as the stooge of a "fascist" Deep State.

Meanwhile, back in the bleak world of dark, semi-deserted hospitals, it's confirmed (in 'Memento Mori') that rogue clones are still actively trying to sabotage the Project. Indeed, the "rebel colonists" subplot has arguably been in the works since Season One, with an internal resistance to the Syndicate's plans has been implicit all the way through: after all, if it hadn't been for individual flunkies of the Syndicate having crises of conscience (whether consciously or not!) there would never have been a Deep Throat, nor any other leaks for Mulder to work on.

In 'Tempus Fugit' and 'Max' though, we see the other side of the Syndicate - in other words the military themselves who actually carry out (without question, of course!) the cover-ups, the salvaging of crashed UFOs, and indeed covert warfare against the alien colonists. Implicitly, all this is being done under the umbrella of MJ12, and there's no sign of Garnet or the Smoking Man and his friends here. And in fact things are more exciting without them. We're invited to believe that these are soldiers (or airmen, in this case) not so much only obeying orders as relentlessly following protocols that were laid out more than a generation ago. If civilians get in the way, that's just too bad.

And interestingly enough it works because it feels as if this is The X-Files going back its roots, before the big baddies suddenly became a bunch of fat and/or old men in suits sitting around in their posh club and making only vaguely cryptic comments about what's going on with all the menace and dread of a tea party at the Ritz. Scott Garrett (aka 'Moustache Man' to fans) is genuinely scary precisely because he is just a government functionary, and of course that he ends up being abducted himself is a reminder that in The X-Files there are conspiracies within conspiracies... which of course would eventually give birth to the "Rebel Colonists" subplot in the following season. 

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

These people have lost the plot completely.

The EU is rescuing the American Deep State

No sooner have they got the money together to get their online newsfeed up and running again than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are peddling conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and, er, the government of Serbia.

RFE/RL was of course the old CIA propaganda broadcaster during the Cold War. Did it do "a good job" encouraging the people of Russia to stand up to communism? I'll let others be the judge of that - except to say that trying to persuade people to swap socialism for liberalism is obviously something of a fool's errand, both practically and ideologically.

Now of course though we're through the looking glass. After the Cold War, the Deep State effectively went into business for itself, except that it was still selling "liberal" capitalism and what in Britain is effectively Blairite "centrist dad" politics. And even after Trump tried to clip its wings, drain the swamp, shine a light into the darkness, and so on... it turned out that the only thing he could do was try to "de-fund" it.

And look how that turned out! The worst sort of "blowback"!

But then that is the sort of problem you can expect to run into when you only have two political parties, one of which is completely evil, and one of which only cares about money.

[H/T: Last 3xit]

Steve Sailer writes ...

[D]uring the recent “racial reckoning,” many Americans seemed utterly ignorant for purposes of public policy discussion of two fundamental facts of American sociology: that blacks tend to commit more serious crimes per capita and that they average lower in intelligence.

And yet, absolutely nothing suggested that they had forgotten these unfortunate realities when it came to their own private lives. White urbanite liberals in 2020 didn’t suddenly move to low-rent neighborhoods because they realized that their fears of crime were just a racist delusion, nor did they enroll their children in low-test-score schools because only racists think that the racial makeup of a school affects how fast the teachers can cover the material.

During the mostly peaceful George Floyd protests, metropolitans instead tended to move to small towns and suburbs, reversing the urbanization trend of the lower-crime early 2000s.

_ pic.twitter.com/cDfj7nORwa

— Kaguya’s Top Gal (@hayasaka_aryan) October 29, 2025

Germany prepares for war... again!

The Germans are preparing for war. But at the moment it's being taken for granted that not everyone is going to be in favour of it. In fact it ought to go without saying that Germany is currently the most antiwar country in the whole of the western world. And it has to be said that that's despite some pretty stiff competition.

The problem of course is that war is inevitable. For all the magical thinking of western elites (including both the Biden and Trump Administrations in America), Putin's conquest of Ukraine is currently continuing largely unimpeded by anything other than his own troops' incompetence.

And so of course there's going to be war at some point whether the demos like it or not. And thus it's interesting to observe, in the face of such an obvious "democratic deficit", the means that a supposedly democratic government will be forced to deploy against its own voters.

As Lisa Haseldine describes exercise Red Storm Bravo (itself a rehearsal for Operation Deutschland) in The Spectator

The first day’s main event was moving a military convoy through the centre of the city after dark. As the sun set over Hamburg’s port, I watched the heavily armed soldiers march towards a fleet of about 70 military vehicles, lined up three abreast. Some were small armoured vehicles, others enormous Rheinmetall-branded trucks, several with machine-gun turrets that would later be manned as the convoy sped through the city. Many soldiers wore balaclavas to prevent them being identified, according to our Bundeswehr escort. 

... 

At two points along the route, the convoy was stopped by pretend protests: at the first, army reservists in civvies waved banners and chanted at the convoy to ‘turn back’; at the second, ‘protestors’ staged a sit-in, with signs saying ‘glue’ around the necks of some to denote those who would have stuck themselves to the ground. The point was for the riot police to practise removing them. Groups of three took turns: a grab at the protester's head from behind and a knee to the back, one arm twisted around, then the other, allowing the police to peel them off the ground and carry them away.

So far, so German!

The "interesting" question of course is to what extent countries with longer and, er, perhaps "deeper" traditions of "liberal" democracy will follow suit. Can one really imagine English police, let alone the Army, cracking down on "democratic" protesters in London or Marchwood?

We'll wait and see.