Question that im sure nobody will have any problem having their answer recorded for television. Show of hands, how many believe alien life exists. Pretty decent number of people. Im going to throw in there as well. I think so, steving hawking thinks so. In a giant universe, there is distinctly a probability that somewhere alien life has evolved and probably looks different from us. But they might be out there opinion slightly different question. How many of us believe that aliens have visited earth . Sergeo, the only man with the strength of his convictions, i appreciate that. Heres a question. Is the idea that aliens have visited earth in and of itself a Conspiracy Theory . I dont believe so. No . Why not . If you take into consideration the fact that were trying to go to mars, we would be alien life there. The fact that another life form has become inning tell gent enough to do space travel. It takes another species to land themselves on another planet. Is an entire race working together a conspiracy . It seems reasonable. Its odd to the indict the entire planet of wherever for wanting to come and visit. Even if we are going to arguably, maybe we could consider it a Conspiracy Theory. Its a conspiracy of aliens in and of themselves, right . Which is not what we tend to talk about, when we talk about ufo Conspiracy Theorys. Alien Conspiracy Theorys. Those are theorys that include an element of human complicity, usually of government complicity. And these ideas that there are not only aliens visiting earth but that the state is in some way voefled with those visits is a really prominent Conspiracy Theory. Its a multitude of conspiracy theo theorys. And like the kennedy conspiracy that we were talking about last week. To just stand here and name every ufo Conspiracy Theory would take much longer than we have in this class. So tragically, we will not be talking about the fact that nasa is hiding the existence of the planet nabir. Tragically, we will not be talking about the fact that we are in secret contact with andromeda and part of a vast intergalactic war. And we will not be talking about the fact that the earth is hollow and filled with interstellar beingings who may or may not have been allied with the nazis in world war ii, depending on who you ask about i see a couple smiles at those ideas. Which is understandable. But these are real ideas, that real people fiercely and fully believe in. We should make clear, not everybody who believes in ufos, believes in ufo conspiracy theories. Even those who do believe, there is a wide variation. We keep coming back to this idea of a fringe conspiracy. Thats evident within these ufo Conspiracy Theorys. But its worthying about, right . That these ufo Conspiracy Theorys are widely treated as something laughable. In fact, serious discussion of them is really an effective cultural taboo. We talked about the labelling of something as conspiracy, as a distancing measure. Alien Conspiracy Theorys are possibly one of the most evident examples of the distancing of conspiracy sifts belief from acceptable discourse. And yet at the same time, even as theyre treated as laughable, as risible, theyre some of the most widely believed Conspiracy Theorys. We go back to the 60s. Gallop polls find 96 of americans had heard of ufos, 46 believed that they were real. 1973. 57 believe that ufos are real. By the 90s, 71 believe the government is at least hiding information about ufos. They may or may not be real, but theres definitely more going on there, than the government is letting us flow. Those numbers remain relatively stable. 2015 poll showed that 56 believed that ufos are real. 45 believe that aliens have actually landed and visited earth on top of that. To put that in context, 56 believe ufos are real. In that same survey. 47 said that the Big Bang Theory was real. This is very much a widely held belief, that is very mainstream. At least the idea that something is going on with ufos, even if we narrow it in to a specific example, like roswell, a majority of americans will repeatedly say they are at the very least unsure whether or not a flying saucer crashed in roswell, new mexico. So we have this odd disconnect between this very mainstream idea, this majority idea, and yet the way that its treated within our political and cultural discourse. Its also not an idea thats new at all. The idea that weird lights or objects in the sky is something to be concerned about is nothing new. But then if you are a serf if 13th century europe. What are you going to think that floating lights in the sky might be . Is it going to be aliens . Witches . Omens of doom . Any other guesses . God. God, right. Devils, witches. Omens, overwhelmingly a super natural explanation. And its not really until we start to see that kind of enlightenment rationalism is a plant these ideas of Divine Providence, that we move from super natural to scientific explanations for these unexplained phenomena. Although even then, we need to be careful about drawing too wide of a divide between those two, as were going to see, the two ideas, the super natural and scientific are going to remain pretty thoroughly intertwined. We have 11 of people here, that think ufos are real, but dont think aliens have visited earth, i was stwonderring, are ufos just an unidentified flying object. Wheres the boundary there. Unidentified according to who. There are a lot of things i cant identify in the sky, but i assume somebody can. Thats true. The polls, the wording isnt great. The way that the poll explains that is not that theres an 11 difference between those who believe ufos are an extraterrestrial phenomenon, right . What gets commonly referred the extraterrestrial hypothesis that ufos are real and alien related. 56 believe ufos are real. 11 fewer believe that some of those ufos have landed and that we have had contact with the aliens. Thats the differential thats playing out there. The differential between Something Else going on is that 56 going up to 71 from the 90s. The idea that there is something going on with this question. And that idea that there is something going on has a long history. This concern over extraterrestrial contact has a long history. If we go back to 1835, the new york newspaper the sun garners major attention in reporting that an astronomer has found life on the moon. Life in the shape of a series of humanoid bat people. Turns out unsurprisingly that its a hoax. Im sorry to disappoint anybody who is hoping that bat people really are living on the moon. But it points us to the ideas that are already percolating around in the 19th century. That gets really evident in the late 19th century. In 1891, when thomas blot alleges that a man from mars appeared in the kitchen of his rural home and fully endorsed late 19th century democratic socialist utopianism, which was nice for thomas block to hear since he was already a believer in such things. Or in 1896, 1897, where you see a series of unexplained airships seen in the skies over the west coast. Theres a really interesting variety of stories that come out of this. Some of them claim that they see humanoid beings inside peddling to make it go, which if that is a spaceship, thats a lot of pedaling. Some allegedly call out to the airship as it goes over and the airship calls back down to say that they are from mars. Even in the 19th century, people are very fixated on the idea of life from mars. There is this long history, this long concern about contact with extraterrestrial life and extraterrestrial life visiting us here on earth. But when we talk about modern ufo conspiracism, what were really talking about is the post world war ii era. And these conspiracies paint an alternative history of america from the cold war to the present. What we might call ethno sociologists of extraterrestrial conspiracism that reflect very terrestrial concerns about agency, about state power, about dissempowerment and depersonalization. About ideas of expertise and authority and especially of ideas of skepticism about expertise and authority and about narratives of progress whether social or scientific. That modern ufo phenomenon gets kickstarted after world war ii in 1947 by this gentleman, Kenneth Arnold. People had seen, pilots had seen unidentified phenomena during world war ii. They get commonly referred to as foo fighters which is where the bands name comes from. But its not until Kenneth Arnolds sighting in late june of 1947 of what he described to newspapers as flying disks, what gets widely reported as flying saucers, that the modern ufo phenomenon begins. And it spreads very, very quickly. Over the july 4th holiday that year, thousands of men and women contact authorities to report more than 850 sightings of ufos. Thats never been paralleled since. Theres never been such a frenzy of ufo sightings as there was over independence holiday in 1947. Although sightings remain fairly common through to the early 1950s. And you get pictures like this from new jersey from 1952, alleging a sighting of an unidentified flying object. And unsurprisingly, you see a variety of effort to try to explain this phenomenon. Two of the most influential voices in that process are frank scully and donald kehoe. Scully was a writer for variety magazine who publishes behind the flying saucers in 1950, where he really focuses in on the story of flying saucers that crash in the american southwest. Where did that crash take place . Not roswell, but thank you for falling into my easy trap. In fact, scully says that they crash in as tech, new mexico. They never mentioned roswell. Were going to talk later about why that is. Scully says sources crash in azte krerx, and not only do sources crash, scully says, but bodies are found, three to fourfoottall alien beings, really cementing the modern idea of the little green man comes out of scullys books. He also claims that the sources come not from mars but from venus. And the 1950s are really kind of a key time in a mars venus battle over where these flying saucers come from. Scully loses popularity after 1952 because true magazine publishes an extensive article debunking his entire book, pointing out the fact that most of or really all of scullys sources are professional conmen and really spending page after page making fun of scully for believing the con men, and even making fun of how terrible frank scullys writing is. Its a really mean article. And it destroys scullys credibility. But scullys ideas are going to have a really long shelf life. And actually, just in recent years, theres been an uptick in people trying to attract some of the roswell tourism away over to aztec and publishing new books saying scully was right and sources really did crash in aztec, new mexico. A little bit more kind of credible, at least at the time, than scully, is donald kehoe, a retired officer from the marine corps who writes three very popular books. The flying saucers are real, which is released in 1950. Flying saucers from outer space, which comes out in 1953. And the flying saucer conspiracy, in 1955. And kehoe reports conversations and interviews that hes had purportedly with air force officers and specifically air force intelligence officers, to try and substantiate his warnings that first of all, ufos are real and military pilots are encountering them on a semiregular basis. Second of all, he thinks theres a very good chance that the aliens have set up a mother ship in orbit of earth and that the ufos are coming from that mother ship rather than all the way from another planet. And thirdly, that these ufos are most likely from mars. Hes not a venus fan. Hes back on the mars train. Whats interesting about kehoe is that he does see a conspiracy. He does see a conspiracy by the military to cover up the reality that earth is being visited by these flying saucers. But he doesnt blame them for doing so. For kehoe, what he calls the silence group, is acting out of a desire to protect National Security. And a desire to prevent public hysteria. While he disagrees with that decision, he sees it as a matter of reasonable disagreement. He doesnt see nefarious motives at work. And that is an idea that is going to change significantly over the 60s and especially coming out of the 70s into the 80s. Its really easy at the time to see the impact of writers like kehoe who see a conspiracy of silence but not necessarily a nefarious conspiracy of silence. 1952, that same year that true magazine is debunking scully, life magazine leads with a big front cover splash of Marilyn Monroe and the headline there is a case for interplanetary sources and life comes down hard in that issue to say that they think something probably is going on with ufos. Less concerned with credibility, but no ness influential in putting these ideas into the american consciousness is the glut of alien invasion films in the 1950s. Of course, the classic the invasion of the body snatchers. But also invaders from mars, killers from space and more. And theres a couple interesting elements to be brought out from these films. Not the least of which is a lot of them deal with aliens either taking control of humans minds or of replacing them entirely with lookalikes. And given these are coming out mid to late 50s, what other fears have we been talking about that that kind of coincides with . Marissa . The u. S. Government. Communist infiltration. Yeah. Brain washing of korean pows. Brain washing, good. This is very much playing on two simultaneous fears bubbling up in the 1950s. Not just that the communists are infiltrating but theyre infiltrating through these kind of mind control ideas. And pairing that with this fear of extraterrestrial threat as well. And it really is an extraterrestrial threat. These films overwhelmingly buy in to a donald kehoe style view of whats happening. The threat is purely extraterrestrial. It is is not human. And in fact, most of these films rather than the state being complicit or suspect, government agents, particularly military agents, are the heroes. Theyre the ones saving us from this extraterrestrial threat. So you have yeah. What is the story behind the motives of the aliens to be a threat, to attack us . Is there a thought of why theyre doing that . Yeah, kind of the why of the conspiracy attack. There isnt really a single unifying idea in the 50s. Other than domination. The plan is always to conquer the world. Why they want to conquer the world is open for interpretation. Is it because their own planet is dying . Is it because they want to kind of make us into slaves . Theres a pretty wide latitude there, but yeah, good question. We see this kind of kehoe style opposite of paranoia at work to some extent. Anybody remember our word for opposite of paranoia . Security. Yeah, but not quite. Security is kind of the middle line. Hope. Indifference . Yeah, not quite. What do you call it when a conspiracy is acting feel good, but not against you . Anybody remember that . No. Not paranoia, but pronoia. This is an example of pronoid conspiracy thinking. Thats evident in another threat of extraterrestrial phenomena that emerges in the 50s which is an increasing number of people who claim that not only have they seen ufos but they have been contacted by aliens. And this is really kicked off by a man called george adamski. Hes the first contactee to publish a book length account of his experience in 1953. And adamski contradicts virtually everything that has come before him. He says that theyre not from mars. Theyre from venus. And if scully is right about him being from venus, hes wrong about him being short. He said theyre about 56. Theyre humanoid, and theyre very beautiful. Adamski also says they are not a threat. He says the coming was friendly. Now, adamski is going to lose kind of Popular Support in the 60s after he claims that he would be leaving any day now for an interplanetary conference on saturn and somehow never quite makes his appointment for that. But, his ideas, his narrative that there are these friendly visitors has very much caught on. And throughout the 1950s, you see this series of encounters with extraterrestrial beings who have seemingly come to warn humanity about our warlike nature, to warn us that Nuclear Weapons will destroy us all. A very pure distillation of common cold war fears at the time. Cold war fears also bear no small resemblance to the 1951 film the day the earth stood still. Which is basically the exact same plot adamski recounts two years later, but nobody really picked him off on this at the time. So theres still this pronoia at work in the early 50s, yes, the government might be lying to us, but theyre doing it for our own good. Or yes, aliens are visiting, but theyre doing it for our own good. That increasingly is going to take a darker turn as we move out of the 50s into the 60s. You start to see at least the governments motives and its methods become much darker in hiding the truth. Thats especially going to become symbolized by the idea of the men in black. The men in black is an idea that is really kind of more or less put into play by an author called gray barker. And gray barker is an interesting guy. Barker makes a pretty good Living Publishing books about supposedly true ufo encounters, but to friends, privately calls flying saucers a bucket of shit. So, very much capitalizing on this trend. But hes going to more or less launch this idea of the men in black in his 1956 book, they knew too much about flying saucers, a book thats based on the experiences of a factory clerk from connecticut. A man called albert bender. Who claimed that three men in black suits had approached him and intimidated him into not telling the truth about his alien encounter. Obviously, bender had not been that silent given that he, a, was able to tell gray barker about it, and b, publish his own book about it in 1962 in which he explains that its not the martians of the venitians. In actual fact, he had been taken for a ride in a flying saucer to the south pole by grizzly monster light aliens from the planet kazic, whether that might be. Despite the lets be generous and say skepticism which with we might greet albert benders story, the idea that government agents and these sinister men in black are working to hide true information really gains popularity. And it really takes off going through the 60s and 70s. As an interesting phenomenon going on with just the men in black themselves, in the quite often, theyre characterized as altogether human agents of the state, but at the same time, theyre often given many inhuman or unearthly characteristics. Characteristics that very often allied the differences between these scientific and supernatural explanations we have been talking about. And quite often, almost demonic powers are ascribed to the men in black. Walking as though they are not of this earth. Not blinking. Unnatural powers of persuasion, even up to and including the idea that when they appear, an odor of sulfur also appears. This very, very literal call back to folklore about demonic appearance. The fact that traditionally, they also appear in numbers of three. Also heavily rooted in kind of mystical supernatural texts. Its not just accounts of human action that take a darker turn as we move into the 60s. Increasingly, narratives of alien contact are going to turn away from friendly warnings about war into abduction and experimentation. That really starts with a couple from new hampshire. Betty and barney hill, who claim to have been abducted in 1961, although their story doesnt really receive wide publicity until 1965. And the hills abduction is really going to set the template for all of the abduction narratives that come after. And looking at the spread of abduction conspiracism is really interesting, especially if we conpair it to kennedy conspiracism. Because like kennedy conspiracism, this is very much a grassroots endeavor. Theres not somebody sitting behind their desk saying this is what you all need to believe is the truth about whats going on. Its all of these people going out and trying to uncover the truth themselves. The difference being that in terms of abduction conspiracism, theyre not detectives. Theyre not going out and looking for evidence, right . Theyre not turning themselves into experts on bullet trajectories. They themselves are the evidence. Their own abduction experience proves the truth of their conspiracy. Spencer. Do you feel like theyre trying to uncover the truth or just trying to get book deals . I feel like everyone is just like i could make up a story and turn it into a Public Affair and get a lot of publicity from it, and like, i dont know, do you have any idea what their motives were, whether they were trying to uncover the truth or get money or what. I think its really too complex of a question to have a single answer to. Not least because while there are certainly these criticisms labeled leveled against abductees or experiences, as they prefer to be called, while they are these accusations that theyre just trying to profit, that theyre trying to cash in and sell books, on the other hand, as Bridget Brown points us to, a lot of these people who come forward and say they have been abducted, that is a socially devastating phenomenon. Theyre going to get cut off from groups of friends. Theyre going to be ostracized. They risk being fired from work. So you can benefit from this, but you really are going to have to benefit from within the world of ufo abduction conspiracism. One thing that question gets at is the theory of the paranoid style doesnt seem to be enough to explain these firstperson encounters. Like we need its unlike anything we have seen in any other conspiracies. So we need another framework to understand. It could be profit motive or mental illness, something that came up in the reading, and is there kind of a third prong to that . Kind of a different schema through which we can approach these people . Outside of theyre either crazy or trying to make money . Yeah. The third prong would be they have been abducted by aliens, i suppose. The problem is were never really going to know for sure what their motivations are in this. But youre right. It is this fundamental difference between earlier conspiracism that we have talked about, where people are bearing the burden of this conspiracy themselves. Its their own direct experience. Pearl harbor conspearicists arent saying they flew the planes at pearl harbor. Kennedy conspiricists is arent saying theyre the ones taking the shot, but this is fundamentally different where theyre saying they have been abducted. I think it could be lack of verifiability. When you claim that it is your own narrative and you were in fact abducted by aliens or what have you, theres no factual ground point. The kennedy assassination, you have a ground point, x, y, z happened. Its undisputed. Kennedy was shot. Or if theres something who says hes still alive. I feel like in these, one of the rhetorically useful things of saying its your own experience is nobody can really deny that. Yeah, and that is at the root of why this why ufo conspiracism can become so expensive. We have talked about this, the fact that in terms of abduction evidence, that evidence is by definition personal. It is by definition subjective. And once we move away from the kind of objective veracity of physical evidence, what do we get to . What we have been talking about for the last couple of classes. Yeah, but this kind of wider issue. We talked about it with thompson. Knowing we cant ever know that it happened or that it didnt happen so were left with however we feel like interpreting the things we personally were able to experience. Good. Mary, you want to jump on this. This sounds a lot like religion so why are we so quick to discount fuufos . To the extent we talk about kind of mystical angelic visitations, why do we accept those but discount ufo visitations . Good question. Some people combine the two. Some people say that ufos are angelic visitors. Some people or scholars tend to say that theyre coming from the same kind of place. Right. That people who are saying that they were abducted now are the people who would have said that they were visited by angels several hundred years ago. Devon, were you going to one troubling thing is the numbers you brought up earlier. Like the 1947 spike after Kenneth Arnold when 850 people all came forward with alien stories. The likelihood that these trends of them all of a sudden being from venus, from all of a sudden being from mars follow verifiable truth especially when you cant following it up with evidence is problematic. Certainly. And its inscribed into the name. As matthew pointed us to before. Theyre literally called unidentified flying objects. And the problem is that all of these conspiracies are trying to inscribe them with meaning, are trying to identify something that is by definition unidentified. And so we do reach that same kind of point of crisis of knowing, as we have been talking about, that epistemological crisis that mantra we were talking about on tuesday, that there are these known knowns, these known unknowns. And those unknown unknowns. The things you dont know that you dont know. And thats whats going to allow ufo conspiracism to be so expansive. Because once you move away from the striblktdtures of any physil evidence, pretty much anything is going to come into play. And pretty much anything is going to come into play. But still, the facts that there is this wide latitude of where these conspiracies could go, the fact that they tend to track within these trends, would seem to suggest something to us about how theyre being shaped by the historical context. For example, these abduction narratives. The fact that as they are refined and revised over the following years by authors like whitley strieber, that they become ever more focused on medical experimentation and increasingly focused on graphic and explicit sexual violation. And scholars like brown draw a direct link between the kind of evolution of these abduction narratives and changing anxieties over sexual and reproductive sociologies and technologies. The fact that these abduction narratives start around the time that new forms of contraception are coming into play, around the time that new forms of sexual liberation are coming into play. The fact that increasingly, these abduction narratives focus on reproductive experimentation after the roe v. Wade decision in the 70s, and especially in line with the culture wars over abortion in the 80s. Do you think theres a separation between people who look into this as a conspiracy or an interest versus like the issue of how it relates to religion and the fact that is almost has like a basis in science and like study like extraterrestrials are here to study us. Theyre not here to, like, i dont know, like save us or like take us back to their planet or Something Like that, but theyre here to like, in this case, like study reproductive, like, systems of humans or, like, take over your brain or Something Like that. Is that kind of like the opposite like, to me it seems like kind of the opposite side of religion, because like okay. People who look at this kind of can say that theres a basis of Scientific Evidence or scientific maybe not evidence but theories behind it. That there is a rational motive behind why. Instead of just like an angel flying through the air, like, this is a machine made by beings who have the intelligence to make a machine are coming with, like, a motive to like learn about humans. Certainly, although you could make a fairly good argument that although theyre supernatural, angels or Divine Providence would usually have had a rational reason behind why they were coming into play as well. You want to join . I thought about the relationship between the belief in aliens and religion is that i think it has to do with the need to believe in something bigger than yourself and bigger than like what we have going on here. On earth, and i think that a lot of people who become religious after something bad has happened is because theyre looking for reassurance or they are needing to believe that like everything happens for a reason. And i think that you can apply that logic to the belief in aliens that, like, things that are happening or people think are happening are because Something Else exists. Mmhmm. Everything happens for a reason, we have talked about before as one of these kind of founding mantras of conspiracism, that everything happens within a conspiracy for a reason. That it is part of a plan. And in kind of a divine prov dingsal version of that, its happening because of gods plan, in light of a rationalist view of that, its happening because of a human or in this case extra turest rheeal agency, that there is a plan, that there is something happening. I still think theres a difference there because in terms of like gods plan that is completely centered around humans, and like yeah, and like earth. And if youre looking at extraterrestrials, youre recognizing that there is another planet with a population of other beings and like other life and other realities besides just human reality. And i feel like the idea of god, like, in gods plan has to do with only a human reality. So like that would bring in, like, response to something happening either looking to god or looking to aliens would be two different narratives. Matthew. Yeah, i think alien conspiracies are similar to a very particular type of religion. Like, you know, most religious people i think, are similar to the way most of us think or said that we thought aliens might be out there somewhere past where we can see, and for religion, the past where we can see just happens to be after death, just not outside the range of our telescopes. The alien conspiracies we have talked about are more similar to the premillennialists we talked about before where it starts extended into where we can see or thought to be able to see if this conspiracy werent muddying the waters or obscuring things. Yeah, and there are, as we hopefully will get to, well see, there are people who make an explicit connection there as well. There is there are those who make an explicit linkage between this evangelical premillennial dispensationism and extraterrestrials, usually, folding extraterrestrials in as agent of satan, as agents of the antichrist within those prophecies. These are interesting questions. And theyre Big Questions that unfortunately i dont think were going to be able to answer today. But that relationship between extraterrestrial visitation and supernatural religious visitation is intimately intertwined. And these supernatural elements, these otherworldly elements are key parts of these abduction narratives, these alien narratives. But its not just religious narratives that are playing into this as well. These narratives have strong elements of native american captivity narratives from the 17th and 18th centuries. Fears of white colonists, particularly of white female colonists being abducted and held captive by native americans. In terms of their kind of sexual content, theyre the almost pornographic detail that these abduction narratives go into, theres a significant rhetorical debt owed to the anticatholic escaped nun narratives of the 19th, early 20th centuries. Some of which we saw advertised in those klan newspapers we were looking at. And so theres a lot of different elements coming into this. Not just sexual anxieties as well. Anxieties about race, the fact that the first abducted couple is an interracial couple is not unrelated. The fact that one of the major fears in the 60s as interracial marriage is ruled legal by the supreme court, the fact that these fears of misaugination are present even as alien abduction stories present new fears of interspecies sex. Those are not unrelated elements. And you have this kind of really interesting conflation, as brown points to, between the kind of individual body of the abductee, of the experiencer, and of the national body, of the citizenry as a whole whos being violated by this conspiracy. And it is increasingly a conspiracy. It is something in which the government is complicit in. We were talking very briefly, related to that question of race, theres a really odd kind of eugenicist element that plays into alien abduction theories coming out through the 70s, 80s, 90s as well. And whilst theres this kind of huge tax onmy of alien races that gets constructed, theres really three kind of key races, races, species, whatever you want to call them. One of which is the pladians, who are described as benevolent and loving and beautiful and highly evolved and spiritual. Anybody want to guess what the pladians are meant to look like . Caucasians . Any specific kind of caucasians . Blond, blue eyed . Blond, blue eyed. Theyre incredibly arian. Theyre commonly referred to as tall nordics. Nordic itself being a term of eugenicist taxonomy coming out of the early 20th century. As opposed to those lower class southern europeans who cant be counted as being as racially superiors with nordics. And you see the short gray as the kind of equivalent of southern europeans to some extent in this taxonomy. The short gray, whose description owes a debt to those little green men, right, to the movies of the 50s, to frank scully splu scully explanations, but whose Popular Culture explanation is cemented by benny and barney hill. Not only do they set the te template of for abduction narrative, but they set the narrative for what the big headed gray alien with big eyes looks like and cements that in the public consciousness. The other big kind of grouping of alien species within these taxonomies are our old friends the reptilians. Or to give them their ufo conspiracy name, the draconians. Who are these tall lizard people who are probably hiding amongst us, plotting to take over the earth at any time. Anybody remember the english conspearicist we talked about before who is particularly focused in on these reptilians . Anna . I dont remember that, but i did read something recently that popped up saying that someone had seen Justin Bieber turning into his reptilian form a few weeks ago. And he is a secret giant lizard. But he is also one of them. Yes. Which i had never heard before. Very talented. Yeah, those people are everywhere, matthew. We cant discount this. Especially if you ask david ike, the english conspearest we talked about on our very first day of class, who is thoroughly an advocate of the idea that the lizard people are the queen, the president , virtually everybody in high office. Anybody remember what ike thinks that they do, how they survive . They drink the blood of blond people, basically. Right. They drink blood. They dont just drink blood. They drink blood of blondeyed blueeyed, blond haired children, of these arian children. So again, they are this specific racial threat. And containing these kind of deep elements of antisemitic blood libel myths as well. Sergio . I was going to ask, is there a i dont know if its a Conspiracy Theory, but a theory on since theyre described as draconians feeding on arian like children, would it also be that theyre feeding on pladian children . Well, now were getting into the deep weeds. Depending on who you ask, the pladians and draconians may be working together in conjunction with the secret rulers of the state. On the other hand, they may be engaged in a secret millennial long war. On the other hand, we may be the descendants of the pladians. On the other hand, the reptilians may have traveled back in time to create us to create a food source for themselves, which is to say virtually any answer is possible, to your question. Because as we have established, this epistemological crisis, this divorce from physical evidence, virtually any Conspiracy Theory is possible. And those conspiracy theories are increasingly going to make the government complicit. And an excellent example of that is roswell. Allegedly, flying saucer crashes in roswell in july of 1947. Right on trend with our other ufo sightings. And because its surrounded by this wealth of other ufo sightings and because the air force pretty quickly declares the wreckage thats found in roswell to be that of a weather balloon, the media moves on. There are hundreds more ufo sightings to report on. And its not until the boom in ufo conspiracism coming out of the late 1970s that roswell really regains attention in conspiracist circles. We talked about this a little bit on tuesday. Why might be see a boon in conspiracism and particularly antigovernment conspiracism in the late 1970s . You have watergate and then the revelation of cointel pro, all these things that are coming out, the church committee. So its just a lot of, like, operations that the public didnt know about that are now in the public. Uhhuh, good. You have watergate, the church committee, all these revelations of cia misdeeds. Mk ultra. Lending even more greed nls to the idea of secret medical experimentation going on. And there is a very kind of explicit linkage being made in the late 70s between this postwatergate era and a boom in alien conspiracism and particularly abduction conspiracism. You see the establishment of citizens against ufo secrecy in 1977. An organization dedicated to using freedom of information act requests to get the government to reveal the truth about ufos. Which is almost beautifully naive. The fact that you think the government is planning a huge conspiracy but because the law is on your side, you can still get them to reveal those secrets. Its a really nice sentiment. But not only does citizens against ufo sinkerousy come along, but a Nuclear Physicist turned ufologist rediscovers roswell. And we dont want to draw kind of overly simplistic links between this postwatergate nationalist concern and this boom in roswell conspiracism, but sometimes the researchers themselves make that subtext text. Stanton friedman explicitly says roswell is a cosmic watergate. Other rival researchers like don schmidt described the kennedy assassination as a formative experience and compare the governments statements on roswell to the Warren Commission report. In neither case can this official document be trusted. Philip courso, who writes the really popular the day after roswell is a firm advocate of the two oswalds theory of the kennedy assassination and goes further than that to say that the entire cold war was really just a cover to help develop antialien defense mechanisms. And you see this flood of roswell literature through the 80s, through the 90s, that said, yes, the government covered it up. And they didnt do it for our own good. Donald kehoe was wrong. Instead, it is a litany of misinformation and misdeeds. No longer is the air force this benign body trying to protect the public from national hysteria. Now, president truman sets up magic 12 in 1947 as a special government body to cover up the truth about ufos. Presumably also in charge of those men in black. And this reaches in such a crisis point that in 1994, the air force actually releases a report about roswell, 1,000 pages long. And you can still find this, as i pulled it off for today, on the dod website. This is still very easily publicly available. And the air force says, okay, actually, we did lie to you about it being a weather balloon. In actual fact, its the wreckage from project mogul, which was a topsecret project to try to detect longrange soviet nuclear experiments. So its good, right . That comes out, all of the roswell conspiracy theorists say brilliant, its cleared up. We can move on . No, it doesnt tend to work that way. The government coming out and saying we have been lying to you for almost 50 years but now were telling you the truth doesnt convince an awful lot of these conspiracy theorists. In much the same way that the pearl harbor inquiry just spurs more conspiracy theories. In much the same way the Warren Commission just spurs more conspiracy theories. The air forces roswell report just spurs more conspiracy theories. Its not helped by the cia also coming out in 1997 and saying, we have also been lying to you. And we lied to you about the ufo sightings. You did see stuff, but it was topsecret military planes and we couldnt tell you. Sorry. But ufos still arent real. Which is going to have exactly the same impact. Saying you have been lying for years is not going to build public trust that youre now telling the truth. And so over this kind of course of the 80s and 90s, as this roswell conspiracism specifically develops and this abduction conspiracism more generally develops, you really see it move into not mainstream acceptance, but mainstream recognition. Nobody came to class today never having heard of roswell. Nobody came to class today having never seen a picture of a short gray alien with a big head and big eyes. And its really very strongly at the forefront of popular consciousness in the 90s. You get bestselling paperbacks that get turned into highrated tv shows. The truth about roswell gets turned into a showtime show. You get the classic tabloid covers. Weekly world news is all over the clinton alien relationship in the 90s. There is even at some point intimations that bill clinton has another sex scandal but this time with an extraterrestrial intern. And of course, television. Theyre the reason why the xfiles comes along in the 90s, because it is kind of pop cultural culmination of a lot of these trends that we have been talking about. And the fact that these trends become so prominent within mainstream discourse is also going to open up room at the fringes for even more esoteric conspiracies to develop. Matthew. Scully from the xfiles, is that a throwback to scully to frank scully . Yeah. Yes. Very much so. Yeah. Theres a lot of kind of these references back in the creators of the xfiles are very well steeped in this when they come along. Also very well steeped in this law are people like william cooper, who releases behold a pale horse in 1991. And behold a pale horse is a really odd book in many ways. Not least the fact that cooper doesnt just believe virtually every Conspiracy Theory we have talked about today. He believes virtually every Conspiracy Theory we have talked about all semester. And because if you believe in a conspiracy, that conspiracy is in this book, it makes the book very, very popular and very, very influential among conspearicist circles. And amongst a wide veert of conspiracist circles. Coopers book is popular with the patriots or Militia Movement in the 90s. Timothy mcveigh is a fan of behold a pale horse. But also, its really popular in the hiphop Fan Community and the idea that jayz is an illuminati mastermind. These kind of very disparate communities unite behind Holding William coopers behold a pale horse in high regard. And part of that is how all encompassing coopers narrative is. And it has to be all encompassing because he has a very direct philosophy. He writes, i do not believe in fate. I do not believe in accidents. I cannot and will not accept the theory that long sequences of unrelated accidents determine world events. Remind us of anything . Bingo. Cooper is an excellent example of that idea of mechanistic causality, of that idea that evelyn brought up before, that there has to be a reason. For cooper, everything happens for a reason. There is no contingency. There is no accident. Which means that when the question of extraterrestrial life comes along, it also is going to have to be folded into his grand conspiracist narrative, and coopers is the builder brg group, the Shadowy Group that supposedly convenes once a year and is the secret puppet Masters Council of the world. Listen to alex jones for more than about ten minutes on any given day and its almost a guarantee youre going to get to the Builderberg Group quickly. Very much a foundation of the kind of new world order conspiracism that takes hold in the 90s. And cooper is a key player in that. For cooper, the Builderberg Group is founded in 1947. Why . Whats happening in 1947 . Manhattan project is mostly done by that point. The year of the roswell crash. Year all of the ufo sightings. For cooper, the Builderberg Group is created in direct reaction to the extraterrestrial threat. For cooper, though, magic 12 isnt created to cover up the truth about ufos. He says that friedman and others like him are actually government disinformation agents. In fact, what he says is majesty 12 is created to establish relations with these aliens. And cooper goes further. He says that by 1954, president eisenhower is going to sign the treaty with the aliens. That says, look, you want to come along and experiment on humans. Thats fine. Well look the other way. Well even build secret bases for you to do so, like area 51. But in return, we want secret advance technologies. The two most commonly pointed to being beam weapons and time travel. Which apparently the u. S. Has had hold of since 1954. What theyre doing with it, i dont know. But apparently, they do have it. In case anybody is wondering, according to cooper, the alien ambassadors name is his most omnipotent highness, krill. And only one u. S. President , according to cooper, is willing to challenge this threatening alliance with the aliens. Anyone want to take a guess as to which heroic president is willing to stand up to this . Jfk. Of course, jfk. Once again, we see conspearicists inscribing the kennedy death with its own meaning. Ge again, a form of counterfactual history coming into play. Whereas oliver stones counterfactual history says if kennedy had lived, he would have pulled us out of vietnam. Coopers kount factual history says if he would have lived, he would have revealed the truth about the aliens and also about the fact the cia controls the world drug markets to fund the aliens, and also the fact that eisenhower was actually working for rockefeller, who was actually part of the council on foreign relations, who is actually working for the illuminati, which is actually part of the Builderberg Group and working in conjunction with a european loyalists and as always, the catholics. Anna . Are there thoughts that aliens are behind jfks assassination to keep it quiet . Very much so. If you take coopers telling, then he may have been alien, he may have been human, but either way, its the driver of kennedys car who actually kills kennedy and does so in order to silence him on this question of the alien conspiracy. As you might tell from that, theres a heavily religious element here as well. The anticatholic element because where is he getting the behold to pay a horse from . Revelations. Good. Hes fitting in as matthew pointed to us earlier, within this strain of premillennial apock liptism, hes one thabl aliens are sa tannic agents and playing their own part in bringing about the end times. He also folds in the idea of medical conspiracy, going back to evelyns question as to why are the aliens taking us, why are they experimenting on us . Coopers argument is that aliens genetic structure is deteriorating and they need to experiment on our genetic structure in order to save the alien race, which is an interesting turn around, where you say these beings from another planet who have travelled however far to get here are still racially inferior to us. Theres a weird racial sprem schism at work there. That in some way echos the kinds of racial supremism, we saw with pearl harbor, the loss of china, the idea that the u. S. Couldnt have lost to these inferior races instead there must be complicity from within that allows america to be handed this defeat. So cooper very much operating within those strains as well. And while we roll our eyes as i think weve all rolled our eyes talking about cooper. Hes influential in not least new world order conspiracy, its no doubt that it coincides with repro duckive social anxieties. Its no coincidence that cooper and new world order both emergency in the 90s. Theres a strong linkage between the two. Thats not to say the two forms of con spirism map onto each other, but a lot of the trops we see in new world order, the men in black, black helicopters, bases, these are all trops that are drawn from ufo conspiracy. Cooper is one of the keys there giving birth to this new form of extra terrestrial conspiracyism that we seem to be working our way through now. As anyone noticed, not a lot of people are talking about alien abductions anymore. It seems to have been a late 20th century phenomenon rather than an early 20th century phenomenon. Instead, as Bridgett Brown points us were seeing these new fears of human alien alliance that is fears of terrorism, state sovereignty, and the National Security state. Unfortunately we are out of time so we will leave it there. Were going to pick up with some of these threads on tuesday, particularly the ideas about structures of space and conspirsism. Have a good weekend. I will see you then. Interested in American History tv, visit our website, cspan. Org history. American history tv at cspan. Org history. Former defense scooter, chuck haggle and his brother served side by side during the vietnam war. Up next, retired lieutenant j general Daniel Bolger interviews the two brothers. Many of those who have served in the military and gone through combat together refer to their comrades as brothers, and today we are privileged to hear from two Vietnam Veterans who were both comrades in arms and brothers, chuck hagel and tom hagel. Both volunteered to go to war