The UFO/free energy narrative as libertarian fantasy

Many adherents of the UFO coverup/Disclosure/recovered technology story believe that the alien spacecraft supposedly being concealed by the government and/or its aerospace contractor partners possess the key to human emancipation via "free energy". I suggest that this technofantasy is a way of parlaying or at least feigning social conscience with anti-government sentiment that is core to the libertarian world outlook, an outlook that is at least partially held by multitudes of Americans even though they may not all be self-described libertarians as such (for example, the mantra "government is the problem" has been a highly popular one since the neoliberal economic "revolution" of Ronald Reagan, which helped normalize certain Miltonian libertarian notions about the supremacy of the free market and the need for deregulation). Since libertarians distrust government programs, they are probably unreceptive to most calls for transitioning away from fossils fuels toward available renewable technologies in a scaled fashion, which would entail a substantial government involvement in building the infrastructure, investing in research and development, and providing economic incentives for individuals and private enterprise (which would count as a "market distortion" in the libertarian view) to achieve such a vast transformation. Alien free energy tech may thus serve as a "safe" arena in which libertarians can psychologically deal with this problem (or at least postpone it) by circumventing tricky social realities-such as how technology must be embedded within social relations to be effective, and the necessity for concerted state action in dealing with environmental issues-while retaining the anti-government angle. Science and serious social analysis and diagnosis are thus cast aside; magical escapism is inserted; government as the enemy is preserved as the favored theme; hyper-individualist posturing is presented as social concern. Ironically, this is the type of thinking that only ensures that the ecological despoliation of the planet will get worse while we wait for a grand "reveal" that will "change everything". This seems to amount to little more than a giant cosplay, as honorable (albeit naive) as the underlying sentiments of libertarians may be. As noted earlier, the "Disclosure" idea has a certain similarity with Christian fundamentalist expectations about the End of Times and the Rapture. Needless to say, (and I hope that this will not be controversial to my readers) social policy that is based on faith rather than evidence can be dangerous when necessary action is eschewed in favor of clinging to preferred myths and tropes.

Of course, the technofantasy of free energy also channels and expresses the broader technology-centric focus prominent in Western culture that is far broader than libertarianism per se. (See the "Skunkworks" blog by Canadian scholar and commentator more on the role of technology in shaping the UFO mythos and the narrative around UAP). I mean only to suggest that the free energy angle might be especially appealing to libertarians and libertarian-adjacent people who believe in ET contact and the cosmic coverup, and that the free energy belief system, whether harbored by libertarians in any particular case, is a concentrated expression of the broader tendency for regarding technology as the solution to all problems. (An especially topical issue at a time when unprecedentedly wealthy tech-billionaires wield remarkable political and cultural power) Clearly, the "free energy as libertarian fantasy" model doesn't provide a comprehensive explanation for the popularity of the free energy motif in ufology (indeed, many left leaning people in the UFO space also seem to believe in the existence of this type of technology. I also refer to Curtis Peeble's comments in "Watch the Skies!" (1994) about the convergence of belief around alien coverup tales by people on both extremes of the political spectrum). Nevertheless, it might well account for a substantial or at least underappreciated part of it, especially to the extent that libertarianism conditions the political and social thinking of many people in the United States and may thus bias those who believe in UFOs to think of free energy along such lines. A similar, and somewhat overlapping, interpretation is that belief in alien-sourced free energy expresses general social frustration against mainstream institutions (especially corporations and the overarching neoliberal paradigm from which many have felt increasingly estranged) and a desire for a sort of social catharsis or collective emotional release from the quagmire in which humanity currently finds itself - though ironically, again, with a solution situated in technology (itself part of the grab bag of items that neoliberal hegemony has conditioned people to reach for). The drivers that motivate the free energy belief are therefore benevolent and commendable (human freedom, an end to our destruction of the natural environment, and a wish for an era of peace and harmony) but are being channeled into an incorrect prescription. It is little wonder that, given all the ecological, social, economic and political challenges facing our world, many hanker for rescue by extraterrestrials assuming the role of "celestial saviors". (See Ted Peters' "UFOs: Gods Chariots?" (1977; 2014))

Interestingly, the free energy motif is rather reminiscent of the QAnon/MAGA-adjacent "medbed" meme, which also speaks of government coverups, miraculous technology and untold benefits to humanity if only this technology could be made freely available. Medbeds are imagined to bed-like contraptions in which all ailments, even amputations, can be reversed, and they are supposedly being concealed by secretive forces (the Deep State, globalist cabals, etc.). Again, there is an evident reticence toward dealing with the complicated social aspects of science (and in this case, health policy) while favoring pseudoscience and outright science denial. Also of significance, medbeds seem to be quite reflective of some alien/science fiction-themed media, such as the movie "The Fifth Element" (1997) in which an artificial person is created in a contraption resembling a bed, and the movie "Prometheus" (2012) in which the lead protagonist has an alien squid baby pulled out of her body by a similar machine. Conspiracy culture and sci-fi often overlap, with the former drawing upon the latter for many of its visual and narrative elements, but at times this relationship is inverted (such as with "The X Files" series), though the dynamic is actually more subtle than any one-way scheme would suggest. The ultimate origins for an X Files-style plot device might itself come from an earlier sci-fi story that was absorbed into conspiracy culture and then fed back to or discovered by fictional content creators. With each cycle, the motif grows stronger through reinforcement and normalization, burrowing its way into the collective (sub)conscious, giving these ideas a certain uncanny familiarity and authenticity (See Diana Pasulka's discussion of this and the related "realist montage" effect in her book, "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology" (2019)) before erupting again to seed further rounds of proliferation. This accretion and melding of fiction and conspiracy lore, where cause and effect can at times be difficult to discern are, we think, highly likely as routes for explaining many of the stories emanating from the UAP crash retrieval saga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKYlOy6w__M

Despite the libertarian overtones, there's arguably a pro-government angle at play. As Peters has suggested, the entire Disclosure narrative evinces a type of grudging admiration of the US government, which is seen to have the power not just to recover and conceal alien technology, but to exploit it and to maintain a longstanding silence supposedly spanning decades. Disclosure, Peters suggests, might be a way of channeling patriotism and celebrating US hegemony and prowess, even if the believers in the cosmic coverup disagree with the coverup itself.

I've long thought that the Bob Lazar story may carry a libertarian flavor. His is of course one of the quintessential recovered technology/reverse engineering fables within alien lore. Lazar's wasn't the first such story, but it was an accelerant in that throughline, and it also drew upon anti-government sentiment during the Reaganite 1980s. The Area 51 facility served as the centerpiece and became a household name around the world thanks largely to his story. More than that, it became a type of symbol for government secrecy (again with the odd duality of a grudging admiration for the US government's power and prowess). Importantly, Area 51 and the Nevada Test Site had long been a focus of legal wrangling between the state of Nevada and the federal government. Lazar himself, who feigned victimhood for his role in "exposing" the alien reverse engineering program at the (nonexistent) "S4" facility near Area 51, is an entrepreneurial type (albeit with some ethical and credibility issues) who is seen by his supporters as someone who stood up to the government to bring the truth to the masses and suffered retaliation for it. The resilience of the Lazar story's appeal is probably explainable in such terms, just as much as for his claims about the alien tech itself. That gets onto the original issue in this piece: free energy. Lazar says that the alien craft use element 115 and anti-matter. His physics claims have been definitively debunked as pseudoscience, but they operate within a liminal space between sciencey-sounding credibility and unattainability. This is at least adjacent to the free energy narrative and may well serve a similar social function, probably unbeknownst to Lazar himself.