The History Channel’s created a bizarre secret history of a war against Martian invaders that’s an allegory for WWI. The accompanying video has a spooky resonance and plausibility that is not to be missed.
I’m fascinated by the centennial of WWI; for a long time, the consensus was that WWI was a pointless and brutal expression of ruling class greed (Piketty implies that its underlying cause was a squabble among great dynastic fortunes triggered by the exhaustion of new colonial territories to conquer and absorb). Today, as wealth disparity soars and the have-nots are once again sent to the front lines of a series of brutal battles that turn on control of oil fields and other sources of wealth for investors, the attempt to re-cast WWI as a noble adventure for king and country feels like a naked attempt to manipulate the public consciousness to legitimize the next round of sending the poor to die in order to secure the fortunes of the rich.
On its 100th anniversary, The Great Martian War tells the story of the catastrophic events and unimaginable horrors of 1913-17, when Humankind was pitted against a savage Alien invasion.
With powerful and detailed First World War parallels, The Great Martian War fuses sci-fi fantasy with specialist factual history to explore the real-world tragedies and unique horror of World War One.
(Thanks, Hugh!)