When was that conspiracy theory from?I just realized that the fake alien invasion as an excuse to institute a dystopian
new world order thing is basically the original ending of (the graphic novel version of) Watchmen
I first started reading about this stuff back in the dialup era, so at least early/middle 90s? Quick google search...here we go:
Serge Monast. Here's a transcript of a 1994 presentation about
Project Blue Beam which was allegedly a program originally intended for deployment in 1983. Whereas
Watchmen was 86/87.
Sometimes it's difficult to determine proper sequence for these things to figure out who got what from whom. For example, when
Lilith Fair happened in the late 90s, at the time, Lilith was most well known as a night demon responsible for raping men in their sleep and murdering children. It was a name you might list right alongside Beelzabub, Baal, Astaroth, etc. So for awhile it was
incredibly weird watching these women going around, trying to get young girls to "celebrate Lilith." As in like...imagine a group going to public schools and receiving official endorsement to encourage high school girls to worship Lucifer. That's pretty much what it seemed like at the time.
But their claim was that Lilith was the first woman, created before Eve. A version of the story that does
not appear in the Bible. Whereas Lillth as Adam's first wife
does appear in a certain fictional novel you might have heard of by the name
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe by C.S. Lewis.
So for a while it seemed to me that somebody was either actively trying to encourage demon worship based on a lie and doing a very good job of it, or simply comically bad at fact checking,
But now, of course, the "Lilith as Adam's first wife" version of the story is common knowledge, and if I
check wikipedia, sure enough, fourth paragraph down she's attributed as the first wife of Adam, based on some obscure piece of 13th century Jewish satire.
So who got what from whom, and when? Was Sarah McLachlin a fan of 13th century Jewish satire about demons, or did she read the Chronicles of Narnia, went with it and got lucky?
Was Project Bluebeam a real or fake military program that was known in the 80s to conspiracy theorist circles from which Alan Moore took the premise and used it for Watchmen and Serge Monast didn't get around to giving that presentation until 7 years later? Or did Alan Moore come up with the idea and Serge Monast stole it and turned it into a conspiracy theory hoping nobody would notice? Or had Serge been telling people about Blue Beam for a decade, and the 1994 presentation is simply the one that survived to the internet age?
Hard to say.
Anyway, since we're discussing specific theories, if you want a really fun one...if I can find it...yes:
Project Superman. That's one of my favorites. Probably a couple hours worth of reading, but totally worth it if you're into that kind of thing.