>> watch tonight at 8:00 eastern on cspan 2. on lectures in history, emory university professor teaches a class on how cob conspiracy theorys about ufos have shaped american culture. he begins in the late 40s and describes how public opinion changed over the course of the 20th century, often paralleling societial anxio societial anxieties. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. >> let's start with with a question nobody will have any problem having their answer recorded for television for. show of hand. how many people believe alien life exists pretty decent number of people. i'm going to throw in there as well. i think so. steven hawking thinks so in a giant yun verse, there is a probability that somewhere,

alien life has evolved and probably looks pretty different from us, but it might be out there. slightly different question. how many of us believe that aliens have visited earth? the only man with the strength of his convictions. appreciate that. so here's a question. is the idea that aliens visited earth in and of itself a conspiracy theory? no? >> if you take into consideration the fact we're trying to go to mar, we would be alien life there, so the fact that another life form say that has become sbel jeintelligent eo do space travel, visit another planet isn't really a conspiracy theory. >> yeah, seems fair.

>> i guess it depends on how you define the scope of a conspiracy theory because it takes a species collaborating together to land themselves on another planet. so is a race working together considered a conspiracy? i wouldn't really think so. >> seems reasonable. seems a little odd to indict the entire planet of where ever for wanting to come and visit. and even if we are going to say arguably maybe we could consider it a conspiracy theory, it's a conspiracy of aliens and of themselves, which is not what we tend to talk about when we talk about ufo conspiracy theory, alien conspiracy theorys, those are theorys that include an element of human come plplicity. usually of government complicity. and these ideas that there are not only aliens visiting earth, but that the state is in some way involved with those visits,

is a really prominent conspiracy theory. it's not really one conspiracy. it's a multitude of conspiracy theorys. and like the kennedy conspiracy we were talking about last week, to just stand here and name every u ufo conspiracy theory would take much longer than we have in this class, so tragically, we will not be talking about 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 contract with an dromm da and and part of a vast intergalactic war and tragically, we will not be talking about the fact that the earth is hollow and is filled with interstellar beings who may or may not have been allies with the nazis in world war ii.

i see a couple smiles at those ideas. which is underable. but these are real ideas that real people fiercely and fully believe in. and we should be clear. before we dig into this too much, as bridgette brown makes clear in that reading you did for today, not everybody who believes in ufos believes in ufo conspiracy theorys. and even amongst those who do, there is a wide variation. we keep coming back to this idea of fringe conspiracy on a center conspiracy. that's very much evident within these ufo conspiracy theorys. but it's worth thinking about that these are widely treated add laughable. in fact, serious discussion of

them is really an effective cultural taboo. trz we've talked about the labeling of something as conspiracy. as a distancing measure. alien conspiracy theorys are possibly one of the most evident examples of the distancing of con spear cyst belief from acceptable discourse and yet at the same time, even as they're treated at laughable, rise bable, they're some of the most widely believed conspiracy theorys. if we go back to the '60s, gallup polls find 96% of americans had heard of ufos. 46% believed that they were real. 1973. 37% believe ufos are real. by the '90s. 71% believe that the government is at least hiding information about ufos.

they may or may not be real. but there's definitely more going on there than the government is letting us know. and those numbers remain relatively stable. a to 15 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, 57% said that the big bang theory was real. this is a widely held belief that is 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 a majority of americans will say they're unsure whether or not a flying saucer crashed in roswell, new mexico. so we have this odd disconnect between this mainstream idea, this majority idea, yet the way it treated. it's not 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 surf in 13th century europe, what are you going to think that floating

lights in the sky might be? aliens? witches. omens of doom. any other guesses? >> god. devils. witches. omens. a supernatural explanation. it's not until we see that rational israel mism survey plant these ideas that we move from kind of supernatural to scientific explanations for these unexplained phenomena. even then, we need to be careful about drawing too wide of a divide between those two. as we're going to seem. the two idea, supernatural a scientific are going to remain

thoroughly intertwined. matthew. >> 11% of people here think that ufos are real, but don't think aliens have visited earth. i was wondering, are ufos just an unidentified flying object. where's the boundary there? >> unidentified according to who? there are a lot of things i can't identify in the sky, but i assume somebody can. >> this is true. yeah, the polls, the wording isn't great. the way that the poll explains that is not there's an 11% different in those who believe ufos are an extra tres yal phenom nan, the hypothesis, that ufos are real and alien related. the 11% difference is is 56% believe ufos are real, 11% fewer belief that some of those have landed and that we have had

contact with the aliens. trz that's the difference there. the difference is that going up to 71%, there is something on with this question. there is something going on has a long history. this concern over contact has a long history. we go back to 1885. the sun garners major attention in reporting that an astronomer has found life on the moon, life in the series of humaniod bat people. turns out that it's a hoax. sorry to dispoint you.

to the ideas that are already percolating around in the 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 19 sench democratic utopianism, which was nice for thomas to hear since he was already a believer in some things. or in 1896, 1897, where you see a series of unexplained air ships seen in the skies over the west coast. there's a really interesting variety of stories that come out of this.

some claim they see beingings inside peddling too make it go. that is a spaceship, a lot of peddling. some calling out and saying they are from mar, even in the 19th century, people are very fixated on the idea of life from mars. there's in long history, this long concern about contact with extraterrestrial life and visiting us here on earth. but when we talk about modern ufo con spespiracies, what we'r 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 e-- of conspiracies that reflect concerns about agency, about state power. about disempowerment and depersonalization. about ideas of expertise and authority. especially of ideas of skepticism. about expertise and authority. and about narratives of progress of social or scientific. that modern ufo phenomenon gets kick started after world war ii in 1947. kenneth arnold, people had seen, pilots had seen unidentified phenomena during world war ii. they get commonly refer today

add foo firgts, which is where the band's name comes from. but it's knot until kenneth arnold's sighting in late june of 1947 of what he describes to newspapers as flying disks, what gets wildly reported at flying saucers, that the modern ufo phenomenon begins. and it spreads very, very quickly. over the july fourth holiday that year, thousands of men and women contact authorities to report more than 850 sightings of ufos. that's never been pair lelde, such a frenzy of ufo sightings as there was over independence holiday in 1947. all though 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 that n that process, frank sculley and donald kehoe. sculley 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 take place? not roswell, but thank you for falling into my easy trap. sculley says they crashed in as tech, new mexico. they never mentioned roswell. we're going to talk later about why that is. sculley says sources crash in as tech, not only crash, but bodies are found, three to four foot tall alien beings, reallying the modern idea of the little green man. he claim it is sources come not from mars, but from venus. and the 1950s are are really kind of a key time in in a mars venus battle over where these flying saucers come from.

sculley loses popularity because true magazine publishes an extensive article debunking his book, pointing out the fact that most of or really all of sculley's saucers are professional con men. and really just spending page after page making fun of sculley for believing the con men and even making fun of how terrible frank sculley's writing is is. it's a really mean article. and ilt destroys his credibility. but sculley's ideas are going to have a really long shelf life. and actually, just in recent years, there's been an uptick in people trying to attract some of the roswell tourism away over to astec and publishing new books

say iing he was write and they really did crash in as the tec, new mexico. a little bit more kind of credible, at least at the time, than sculley, is donald kehoe. a retired officer from the mari 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 he's had with air force officers and air force intelligence officers to try and substantiate his warnings that that first of all, ufos are real and pilots are encountering them on a

semiregular basis. second of all, he thinks there's a very good chance that the aliens have set up a mother ship in orbit of earth and ufos are come frg that mother ship rather than all the way from another planet and thirdly, that these ufos are most likely from mars. not a venus fan, he's back on the mars train. what's interesting about kehoe is that he does see a conspiracy. he does see a conspiracy by the military to cover up that earth is being visited by these flying saucers, but he doesn't 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, he sees it as a matter of reasonable disagreement. he doesn't see nefarious motives at work. that is an idea that's going to change significantly. over the '60s and especially coming out of the 70s into the 80s. it's really easy to see the impact of writers like kehoe who see a conspiracy of silence, but not a nefarious conspiracy of silence. 1952, that same year that true magazine is debunking sculley, 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 they think there is probably something going on with uf oz. less concerned with credibility, but tho less influn nshl putting these ideas into the american consciousness. is the glut of alien invasion films in the 1950s. of course, the body snatchers, but also invasion of the saucerman, invaders from mar, killers from space, earth versus the flying saucers and more. there's a couple of spres elements, not the least of which is a lot of them deal with aliens either taking control of

human's minds or of replacing them entirely with sim lack row, with look alikes. what other fears have we been talking about? marissa? >> like. >> certainly communist infiltration. yeah. >> brain watching of pows. >> playing on two fears in the 199-50s. not just that 2 communists are infiltrating, but that they're infiltrating through this kind of mind control ideas. and pairing that with this fear

of extraterrestrial threat. these films overwhelmingly buy into a donald kehoe style of view of what's happening. the threat is purely extra traes yal, it's not human. most of these films, rather than the state being come police it or suspect, government agents particularly military agents, they're the ones saving us p from tr threat. yeah. >> what is like the thought behind the motives of the aliens to be a threat, to attack us? like is there a thought of like why they're doing that? >> yeah, kind of the why of the conspiracy attack. there really isn't a single unifying nd of '50s. other than domination.

the plan is always to conquer the world. why is open for interpretation. is it because their own planet is dying? is it because they want to kind of make us into slaves? there's a pretty wide latitude there, but yeah, good yes. we see this kind of style of opposite of pair noy area. anybody remember our word of opposite of paranoia? >> security. >> indifferent. >> 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. that's evident in another threat of phenomena that emerges in the 50s, a number of people who claim that not only have they seen ufos, but they who have been contact ed by aliens and this is really kicked off by a man called gorge. he's the first contactee to publish a book length account of his experience in 1953. he contradicts everything before him. they're not from mars, they're from venus. he's right about them being short. he says they're about 5'6".

humanoid and very bueeautiful. he says they're not a threat. he says the coming was friendly. he's going to lose popular support in the '60s after he claims he'll be leahing any day for an interplanetary conference on saturn, but his ideas, his narrative that there is these friendly visitors has very much caught on. and throughout the 1950s, you see this series of encounters with beings that have come to warn human thety about our war like nature, to warning that nuclear weapons will destroy us all.

a very pure distillation of common cold war fears at time. also bearing no small resemblance to the 1951 film, the day the earth stood still. which is the same plot he recounts two years later. nobody really picks him off on this at the time. so there's this pronoi arks at work in the early '50s, the idea that yes, the government might be lying to us, but they're doing it for our own good or yes, aliens are visiting. but they're doing it for our own good. that increasingly is going to take darker turn as we move out of the '50s into the '60s. we see the government's motives and methods become much darker

in hiding the truth. this comes 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. he's 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 he's 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 that's 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 intimidate d into not tellig 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 it's not the martians or venn ugs as. he had been taken for a ride in a flying sawyerser to the south pole by grizzly monoster like aliens from the planet kasic, where ever that may be. despite the let's be generous and say skepticism which with we

might greet albert bender's 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 phenom knop going on with the men in black themselves, in the quite often, they're characterized as all together human agents of the state, but at the same time they're often given many inhuman or unearthly characteristics. characterists that align the difference between these explanations and quite often, almost demonic powers are ascribed to the men in black.

walking as of 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 sulphur also appears. this very, very literal callback to folklore about demonic appearance. the fact that traditionally, they also appear in numbers of three. they're also rooted in supernatural texts. it's not just accounts of super action as we move into the '60s. increasing increasingly, narratives of alien contact are going to turn waway from friendly barnings about war into abduction and exper menation. that really starts with a couple from new hampshire.

betty and barny hill, who claim to have been abducted in 1961, although their story doesn't really receive whid publicity until 1965. it's going to set the template for everything that comes after and looking at the spread of abduction con spear schism is really interesting, especially if we compare it to kennedy. because like kennedy con spespi, this is very much a grass roots endeavor. there's not somebody sitting behind their desk saying this is what you all need to believe is the truth about what's going on. it's all of these people going out and trying to uncover the truth themselves. the difference being that in terms of abduction conspiracies,

they're not detectives. they're not going out looking for evidence, right? they're not turning themselves into experts on bullet trajectories. they themselves are the evidence, their own abduction experience proves their conspiracy. >> do you feel like they're trying to uncover the truth or get book deals. i feel like i could make up a story and turn it into a public affair and get lot of publicity from it. i don't know. do you have any ideas of what their motives, if they were really trying to uncover the truth or get some money or not? >> i think it's really too complex of a question to have a single answer to. not least because while there are certainly these criticisms labeled levelled against abductees or experiences, as they prefer to be called, while

there are these accusations they're just trying to profit or cash in and sell books, on the other hand, a lot of these people who come forward and say they're been abducted, that is a socially devastating ni no, ma'am non. they're going to be cut off from friends, be on stra sized. so, you can benefit from this. but you're going to have to benefit from within the world of ufo abduction con spear czyz cz. >> one question is that the kind of theory that paranoid from hoff stetter doesn't seem to be enough to explain these first person encounters. it's unlike anything we've seen in any other conspiracies. so, we need another kind of

framework to understand. you know, could be profit motive or mental illness, something that came up in the reading, is there kind of a third problem to that? kind of a different scream through which we can approach these people? >> outside of they're crazy or trying to make money? there is this fundamental difference between earlier c conspiracies where people are bearing the burden of this conspiracy themselves. it's this direct experience. pearl harbor con spear cysts aren't saying they flew the planes there. kennedy con spear cysts aren't saying they're the ones who took the shot. i shouldn't say that. there are a a couple who say

they did. this is different where they're saying they have been abducted. >> someone that could be lack of ver fiable thety. when you claim it's your own narrative or what have you, there's no factual crowd point. kennedy kuz shot. you can't go too far past that. >> unless some say he's still alive. >> or at least it looked like he was. i feel like in these, rhetorically useful things about saying it was your own experience is that nobody can really deny that. >> yeah, and that is why this can become so expensive. the fact that in terms of abduction evidence, that evidence is by definition personal.

it is by definition, subjective. once we move away from the kind of physical evidence, what do we get so, what have we been talk ing about from the last couple of classes? yeah, but this kind of wider issue. >> we can't know it never happened, so it's left of how we feel of inning. the things that we were able to experience. >> good. mary. >> this sounds a lot like religion, so why are we so quick to discount ufos when we base everything on this word of god and these personal experiences people in power have had. >> okay. so to the extent that we talk about kind of mystical angelic visitation, why do we ak cemecc

those, but discount ufos? it's a good question. some people combine the two.ufo visitors. some people, solars, tend to say they're coming from the same kind of place. the people saying they were abducted now are the people who would have said that they were visited by angels several hundred years ago. >> one troubling thing is the numbers. like the 1947 spike after kent arnold when 850 people came forward. the likelihood that these trends of them being from venus, from mar, follow verifiable truth, especially when you can't follow it up with any physical evidence is a problem.

they're called unidentified flying objects. the problem is all of these are trying to inskrip them with meaning, are trying to identify something that is by definition, unidentified. so e with do reach that same kind of point of crisis of kn knowing that the logical crisis that rums fieldian mantra we talked about on tuesday, there were these known knowns, unknowns, the things you don't know that you doen't know. that's what's going to allow this to become so expensive. because once you move away from the strictures of physical evidence, pretty much anything is going to go into play. and pretty much anything is

going to come into play. but still the fact there is this wide latitude of where these could do, the fact they tend to track within these trends would seem to suggest something about how they're being shaped by the historical context. for example, these abduction narratives. the fact is that they are refine and revised over the following year, that they've become more focused on medical exper menation and increasingly focused on graphic and explicit sexual violation. and psychological lors like brown draw a direct link between the kind ofevolution of these

abduction narratives and changing anxieties over sexual and reproductive technologies, the fact that these abduction narratives start around the time that new form 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 exper menation after the roe v. wade decision in the '70s and especially in line with the cultural wars over abortion in the '80s. >> duo you think there's a separation between people who look into this as a conspiracy or interest or the issue of how it relates to religion and the fact that it almost has like a

basis in science and like study, like extra tras yals are here to study us. they're not here to like save us. or like take us back to their planet or something like that, but they're here to in this case, like study reproductive systems of humans or like take over your brain. is that kind of like the opposite, to me, it seems like kind of the opposite side of religion because like people who look at this can say that there's a basis of scientific evidence or scientific maybe not evidence, but like theory behind it. >> but there is a rational motive behind why. >> instead of like an angle fly ing ing el flying through the air, this is a machine made by beings who have the intelligence who are come wg a motive to like earn about humans.

>> you could make a good argument that although they're supernatural, angels or devine dense. >> i thought thabt the relationship between the belief in aliens and rell religion is that it has to do with the need to believe in somebody something bigger for yourself and what we have going on here on earth. a lot of people who come religious after something wad has happened is because they're looking for reassurance and are needing to believe everything happens for a reason. you could apply that, things that are happening are because something else exists. >> everything happens for a reason. we've talked about before as one of these founding monotras of

conspiracy. that everything happens within a conspiracy for a reason. that it is part of a plan. in a in rationalist view of this, it's happening because of human of extraterrestrial agency, that there is a plan, there is something happening. >> i think there's a difference there because in terms of like god's plan that is completely centered around humans, and like yeah, like earth and if you're looking at extra terrestrials, you're recognizing there's another planet with a population of other beings and other lives besides just human reality. i feel like the idea of god and god's plan has to do with only a

human reality. so that would bring in different kind of like response to something happening either looking to god or looking to aliens would be a two different narratives. >> matthew. >> yeah, i think though you know, alien conspiracies are similar to like a very particular type of religion. most religious people like we said that aliens might be out there somewhere where we can see and for religion, the past where we can see just has to be after death, not just outside the range of our telescopes. alien conspiracies we've talked about are more similar to like the premillennials, where it starts extending wlinto where w can see or we ought to be able to see if this weren't you know, muddying the waters or obscuring

things. >> yeah and there are as we hopefully will get to, we'll see, there are people who make an explicit connection there as well. there's an, there are those who make an explicit linkage between this evangelical premillennial and extraterrestrials, usually folding them in as agents of satan, of the antichrist within those kind of prophesies. these are interesting questions. they're big questions. that unfortunately, i don't think we're going to be able to answer today. but that relationship between extraterrestrial visitation and supernatural religious visitation is intimately intertwined and these other worldly elements are key parts of these abduction narratives, these alien narratives.

but it's not just religious nair ties playing into this as well. these narratives have strong elements of native american captivity narratives, from the 17th, 18th centuries, fears of white colonists, particularly of white female colonists being on ducted and held captive by native americans, in terms of their kind of sexual content, they're almost pornographic detail that these abduction narratives go into, there's a significant rhetorical debt owed to the anticatholic escaped nun narratives of the 19th, early 20th century, some of which we saw advertised in these clan newspapers we were all looking at, so there's a lot of different elements comeing into this. not just sexual ainge its as wechlt anxieties about race.

the fact that the first b 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 this these fears of -- are very, very present even as alien abduction stories twenty with new fear of interspecies sects. those are not unrelated elements. and you have this kind of really interesting conflation between the kind of individual body of the experience e and of the national body of the citizenry as a whole who is being vited by this conspiracy.

increasingly a conspiracy. something in which the government is comply sit in. also briefly, related to the question of race, there's a really odd kind of ewe general cyst almost that plays into alien abduction theorys through the '70s, '80s, 90s as well. and while there's this huge tax onmy of alien races that gets constructed, there's really kind of three key races races species, whatever you want to call them. one of which is the klideans, who are described as benevolent and loving and beautiful. and highly evolved. and spiritual. anybody want to guess what they are meant to look like?

>> caucasians. any specific kind? >> blond, blue-eyed. >> they are incredibly air i can't. referred to as tall nordics. nordic itself being a term of eugene sis taxonomy coming out of the early 20th century. as opposed to those lower class southern europeans who can't be counted as being as racially superior as the 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 sculley explanations. but whose popular appearance

culture is really cemented by betty and barney hill again. not only do they set the template for the abduction narrative, they set the idea of what the big-headed gray alien with the big eyes looks like and really cements that within the popular consciousness. the other big kind of grouping of alien species within next taxonomies are old friends the reptilians. all to give them their i fo 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 con spir sift we talked about who's particularly focused in on these con spir tastes, particularly focused on these reptilians?

an anna? >> i don't remember that but i did read something recently that popped up. saying that someone had seen justin bieber turning into his reptilian form. >> uh-huh. >> he is a secret giant lizard. >> that he is also one of them. >> yes. >> yeah. >> which i'd never heard before. >> very talented for a -- >> yeah, well, people everywhere, matthew, we can't discount this. especially if you ask david ike, the english conspiracyist we talked about the 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 they do? how do they survive? >> they drink the blood of blonde people basically.

>> right, they drink blood. they don't just drink blood, they drink the blood of blonde eyed, blonde eyed, goodness, blue eyed, blonde haired children of these aryan children, right, so again they are the specific racial threat. and containing these kind of deep elements of anti-cemeseman blood myths as well. >> i was going to ask is there a -- i don't know if it's a conspiracy theory, but since they're described as draconians feeding on aryan-like children, would it also be they were feeding on -- >> pladians? >> pladian children? air yrya aryan-looking children? >> now we're getting into the deep weeds. depending 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've established, right, with this crisis, with this divorce from physical evidence, virtually any conspiracy theory is possible. those conspiracy theorys are increasingly going to make the government complicicomplicit. an excellent example of that is roswell. allegedly, flying saucer crashes in roswell. in july 1947. right on trend with our other

ufo sightings. and because it's surrounded by this wealth of other ufo sightings and because the air force pretty quickly declares the wreckage that's found in roswell to be that of a weather balloon, the media moves on. there are hundreds more ufo sightings to report on. and it's not until the boom in ufo conspiratism coming out of the late 1970s that roswell really regains attention in c conspirist's circles. why might we see a boom in c conspirism and, particularly, anti-government conspirism in the late 1970s? marissa? >> watergate. and you have the revelation of pro. chaos. all these things coming out. the church committee.

it's just a lot of operations that the public didn't know about that are in the public. >> good, watergate, church committee, all these revelations of cia misdeeds. lending even more credence 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 post-watergate era and a boom in alien conspirism and particularly abduction conspirism. you see the establishment of citizens against ufo secrecy in 1977. an organize dedicated to using freedom of information act requests to get the government to reveal the truth about ufos. which is almost beautifully naive, right. the fact that you think the government is planning this huge conspiracy, but because the law is on your side, you can still

get them to reveal those secrets. it's a really nice sentiment i always find. but not only does citizens against ufo secrecy come along, but a nuclear physicist turned ufo-ologist. rediscovers roswell. we don't want to draw kind of overly simplistic links between this post-watergate national concern and this boom in roswell conspirism. sometimes the researchers themselves make that subtext text. explicitly says, roswell is a cosmic watergate, right. other rival researchers like don schmidt described the kennedy assassination as a formative experience and compare the government's statements on

roswell to the warren commission report, right. in neither case can this official document be trusted. phillip corso who writes the really popular "the day after roswell," is a advocate of the kennedy assassination. and goes further than that to say the entire world war was really just a cover to help develop anti-alien defense mechanisms. and you see this flawed of roswell. through the '80s. through the '90s. that says yes, the government covered it up. and they didn't do it for our own good. donald donald keogh was wrong. instead, it's 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. right. and this reaches 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 air force says, okay, actually, we did lie to you about it being a weather balloon. actual fact, it's the wreckage from project mogul, which was a top secret project to try to

detect long-range soviet nuclear experiments. so it's good, right? that comes out. all of the roswell conspiracy therists say brilliant. now it's cleared up. we can move on. no? doesn't tend to work that way. government coming out and saying we've been lying to you for almost 50 years, but now we're telling you the truth. doesn't convince an awful lot of these conspiracy theorists. in much the same way the inquiry just spurs more conspiracy theories. in much the same way the warren commission just spurs more conspiracy theorietheories. it's not helped by the cia also coming out in 1997 and saying we've also been lying to you. and we lied to you about the ufo sightings. you did see stuff, but it was top secret military planes and

we can tell you, sorry, but ufos still aren't real. but you're going to have exactly the same impact. saying you've been lying for years is not going to build public trust that you're now telling the truth. and so over this course of '80s and '90s as this roswell con spirism specifically develops and this abduction theoryism really 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 it's really very strongly at the forefront of popular con sh consciousness in the '90s.

turned into high-rated 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 in term. and of course television. right? there's a reason why the x files comes along in the '90s. because it is the kind of pop cultural culmination of a lot of these trends that we've 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.

>> sculley from "the x-files," is that a throwback to sculley from -- >> to frank sculley? yes, very much so. there's a lot of kind of these references back in this -- the creators of "the x-files" are very well steeped in this lore when they come along. also very well steeped in this law are people like william cooper who releases "behold a pale horse" in 1991. behold a pale horse is a really odd book in many ways. not least the fact that cooper doesn't just believe virtually every conspiracy theory we've talked about today. he believes virtually every conspiracy theory we've 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 conspiricists circles. a wide variety of conspirist circles. popular with the militia movement in the 1990s. timothy mcveigh is a fan of "behold a pale horse." but also it's really popular in the hip-hop fan community. and the idea that jay z is an illuminati mastermind. these kind of very disparate communities unite behind holding william cooper's "behold a pale horse" in high regard. and part of that is how all encompassing cooper's narrative is. and it has to be all encompassing. because he has a very direct philosophy. i do not believe in fight. 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? >> causality? >> bingo. right. cooper is a excellent example of that idea of mechanistic causality. of that idea that evelyn brought up before, right. 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 conspir isist narrative. and cooper, as with a lot of modern conspirists.

that shadowy group that supposedly reconvene once a year. puppet masters of the world. listen to alex jones for more than about ten minute obs any given day and it's almost a guarantee you're going to get to the build a berg quickly. very much the foundational element of the new world order con spirism that take place in the '90s. for cooper, the build a berg group is founded in 1947. why? what's happening in 1947? >> manhattan? >> manhattan project is mostly done by that point. >> the year of the roswell crash. >> the year of the roswell crash. all of the ufo sightings, right. for cooper, the build a berg group is in direct reaction to the extraterrestrial threat.

for cooper, though, magic 12 isn't 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 a treaty with the aliens. that says, look, you want to come along and experiment on humans, that's fine. we'll look the other way. we'll 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 they're doing with it, i don't know. but apparently they do have it. in case anybody's wondering according to cooper, the alien ambassador's name is his most omnipotent highness kril. even in alien am bass doorships. only one u.s. president is willing to challenge this threatening alliance with the aliens. anybody want to take a guess which heroic president is willing to stand up to this? >> jfk? >> of course jfk. once again, we see con spirists enscribing the kennedy death with its own meaninging. a form of counterhistory coming into play.

whereas oliver stone's counterfactual history says if kennedy had lived, he'd have pulled us out of vietnam. cooper's counterfactual history says that if he'd lived, he would have revealed the truth about the aliens. also about the fact the cia controls the world drug markets to fund the secret alliance with the aliens. and also the fact that eisenhower was actually working for rockefeller who was actually part of the council on foreign relations who was actually working for the illuminati which was actually part of the build a berg group and working in conjunction with european loyalists and, as always, the catholics. anna. >> are there thoughts that aliens are behind jfk's assassination to keep it quiet? >> very much so. if you take cooper's telling, then he may have been alien, he

may have been human. but either way, it's the driver of kennedy's 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, there's a kind of heavily religious element here as well. the anti-catholic element. because where's he getting "behold a pale horse" from? >> revelations. >> revelations, good. strongly fitting in, as matthew pointed out earlier, within this strain of premillennial apocketism. he's one of those who strongly believes aliens are probably satanic agents are playing their own part in bringing about the end times. he also folds in ideas of medical eugenic con spirism.

going back to evelyn's question. why. why are the aliens taking us. why are they experimenting on us? cooper's argument is that aliens genetic's structure is deteriorating and they need to experiment on our superior genetic structure in order to save the alien race. which is really interesting turn-about. where you say these beings from another planet who travelled however far to get here are still racially inferior to us. there's a weird racial supremism at work there. that in some way echoes the kind of racial supremism we saw with pearl harbor. that we saw with the loss of china. the idea that america couldn't possibly have lost to these inferior races. instead, there must be

complicity from within that allows this conspiracy to take hold, that allows america to be handed this defeat. cooper very much operated within those strains as well. while we roll our eyes, as i think we've all rolled our eyes talking about cooper, he is massively influential. not least in new world order militia conspirism. coincide with new reproductive technological and social anxieties. it's no coincidence that cooper and new world order conspirism both emerged in the '90s. there's a strong lingage between the two. not to say the two forms of con spirism map perfectly on to each other. but a lot of the troeps that we

see in new world order conspirism. the men in black. the black helicopters. the secret bases. these are all tropes that are drawn from ufo conspirism. cooper is really one of the key linkages there. giving birth to this new form of extraterrestrial con spirism that we seem to be working our way through now. because if anybody has noticed, not a lot of people are talking about alien abduction anymore. alien abduction narratives have kind of fallen off. it seems to have been a late 20th century phenomenon rather than an early 21st century phenomenon. instead, as bridget brown points us to, we're more and more seeing the dark side hype both signature in play. these new fears of an alien/human alliance that is deeply reflective of contemporary fears, of

terrorism, of state sovereignty. and of the national security state. all right. unfortunately, we are out of time. so we will leave it there. we're going to pick up with some of these threads on tuesday. particularly about structures of race and conspirism. so have a good weekend. i will see you then. >> thank you. >> we have a facebook question from peter. he says, are there any historical resources on the people who died in detroit? >> well, there's one in particular. the detroit free press did a piece. it would have been -- >> you can be featured during our next live program. join the conversation on facebook at facebook.com/csp facebook.com/cspanhistory. and on twitter @c-span history. if you're a teacher of social studies and civics to middle and high school student,

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