Project Blue Beam

Project Blue Beam is a conspiracy theory which claims that NASA is attempting to implement a New Age religion with the Antichrist at its head and start a New World Order, via a technologically-simulated Second Coming. The allegations were presented in 1994 by Quebecois journalist and conspiracy theorist Serge Monast and later published in his book Project Blue Beam (NASA). Proponents of the theory allege that Monast and another unnamed journalist, who both died of heart attacks in 1996, were in fact assassinated, and that the Canadian government kidnapped Monast's daughter in an effort to dissuade him from investigating Project Blue Beam.

The project was apparently supposed to be implemented in 1983, but it didn't happen. It was then set for implementation in 1995 and then 1996, and it still didn't happen. Finally, Monast thought that Project Blue Beam would be brought to fruition by the year 2000, and… well, you can probably guess the rest.

Structure


Project Blue Beam has all the usual hallmarks of a conspiracy theory:


 * It attempts to shoehorn events that have happened, and are happening, into its "predictive" framework, particularly with references to films being used to prepare people psychologically for the conspiracy's dramatic conclusion.
 * It shows a lack of comprehension of the practical psychology of those who are not paranoid.
 * It plays on fears of alleged advanced technology that most people, including its author, do not understand.

The theory cobbles together past conspiracy tropes, starting from paranoia and progressing to technologically-implausible plans with motivations that literally do not make any sense.

The theorist's death from a middle-age heart attack cut off its possible spread early and left it short on source material in English &mdash; though there is the tantalizing promise of several books' worth in French &mdash; but did cap the theory off nicely.

Propagation
The theory is widely popular (for a conspiracy theory) on the Internet, with many Web pages dedicated to the subject and countless YouTube videos explaining it. The actual source material, however, is very thin indeed.

Monast lectured on the theory in the mid-1990s (a transcript of one such lecture is widely available), before writing and publishing his book, which has not been reissued by his current publisher and is all but unobtainable. However, a three-page summary of the theory, apparently penned by Monast himself, appeared in his French-language periodical RINF (Réseau international de nouvelles par fax) at the end of 1994. The currently available pages and videos all appear to trace back to four documents:


 * A transcript of the 1994 lecture by Monast, translated into English.
 * A GeoCities page written by David Openheimer and which appears to draw on the original book.
 * A page on educate-yourself.org, compiled in 2005, which appears to include a translation of the book from the French.
 * Monast's page in French Wikipedia. The French Wikipedia article is largely sourced from two books on conspiracy theories and extremism by Pierre-André Taguieff, a mainstream academic expert on racist and extremist groups.

From these few texts have come a flood of green ink, in text and video form, in several languages. Even the French language material typically does not cite the original book, but the English language pages on educate-yourself.org. However, conspiracy theorists seem to use quantity as a measure of substance (much as alternative medicine uses appeal to tradition) and never mind the extremely few sources it all traces back to.

Proponents of the theory have extrapolated it to embrace HAARP, 9/11, the Norwegian Spiral, chemtrails, FEMA concentration camps, and Tupac Shakur. Everything is part of Project Blue Beam. It's well on its way to becoming the Unified Conspiracy Theory.

Behold a Pale Horse, William Cooper's 1991 green ink magnum opus, has lately been considered a prior claim of, hence supporting evidence for, Blue Beam by advocates. The book is where a vast quantity of now-common conspiracy memes actually came from, so retrospectively claiming it as prior evidence is somewhere between cherrypicking and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. However, the following quotes intersect slightly with the specific themes of Blue Beam:

The theory
Without a universal belief in the new age religion, the success of the new world order will be impossible!

The alleged purpose of Project Blue Beam is to bring about a global New Age religion, which is seen as a core requirement for the New World Order's dictatorship to be realized. There's nothing new in thinking of religion as a form of control, but the existence of multiple religions, spin-off cults, competing sects, and atheists suggest that controlling the population entirely through a single religion isn't particularly easy. Past attempts have required mechanisms of totalitarianism such as the Inquisition.

Monast's theory, however, suggests using sufficiently advanced technology to trick people into believing. Of course, the plan would have to assume that people could never fathom the trick at all &mdash; something contested by anyone sane enough not to swallow this particular conspiracy.

The primary claimed perpetrator of Project Blue Beam is NASA, presented as a large and mostly faceless organization that can readily absorb such frankly odd accusations, aided by the United Nations, another old-time boogeyman of conspiracy theorists.

According to Monast, the project has four steps:

Step One
Step One requires the breakdown of all archaeological knowledge. This will apparently be accomplished by faking earthquakes at precise locations around the planet. Fake "new discoveries" at these locations "will finally explain to all people the error of all fundamental religious doctrines", specifically Christian and Muslim doctrines.

This makes some degree of sense; if you want to thoroughly usurp a current way of thinking, you need to completely discredit and destroy it before putting forward your own. However, religious belief is notoriously resilient to things like facts. The Shroud of Turin is a famous example that is still believed by many to be a genuine shroud of Jesus as opposed to the medieval forgery that it has been conclusively shown to be. Prayer studies, too, show how difficult it is to shift religious conviction with mere observational fact. Indeed, many theologians avoid making falsifiable claims or place belief somewhere specifically beyond observation to aid this. So what finds could possibly fundamentally destroy both Christianity and Islam, almost overnight, and universally all over the globe? Probably nothing. Yet, this is only step one of an increasingly ludicrous set of events that Project Blue Beam predicts will occur.

Step Two


Step Two involves a gigantic "space show" wherein three-dimensional holographic laser projections will be beamed all over the planet &mdash; and this is where Blue Beam really takes off. The projections will take the shape of whatever deity is most predominant, and will speak in all languages. At the end of this light show, the gods will all merge into one god, the Antichrist.

This is a rather baffling plan, as it seems to assume that people will think this is actually their god, rather than the more natural twenty-first-century assumption that it is a particularly opaque Coca-Cola advertisement. Evidence commonly advanced for this is a supposed plan to project the face of Allah, despite its contradiction with Muslim belief of God's uniqueness, over Baghdad in 1991 to tell the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Someone, somewhere, must have thought that those primitive, ignorant non-Western savages wouldn't have had television or advertising and would never guess it was being done with mirrors. In general, pretty much anything that either a) involves light or b) has been seen in the sky has been put forward as evidence that Project Blue Beam is real, and such things are "tests" of the technology &mdash; namely unidentified flying objects. Existing display technology such as 3D projection mapping and holograms are put forward as foreshadowing the great light show in the sky.

This stage will apparently be accomplished with the aid of a Soviet computer that will be fed "with the minute physio-psychological particulars based on their studies of the anatomy and electro-mechanical composition of the human body, and the studies of the electrical, chemical and biological properties of the human brain", and every human has been allocated a unique radio wavelength. The computers are also capable of inducing suicidal thoughts. The Soviets are (not "were") the "New World Order" people. Why NASA would use a Soviet computer when the USSR had to import or copy much of its computer technology from the West is not detailed.

The second part of Step Two (wouldn't that be Step Three?) happens when the holograms result in the dissolution of social and religious order, "setting loose millions of programmed religious fanatics through demonic possession on a scale never witnessed before". The United Nations plans to use Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as the anthem for the introduction of the New Age one world religion.

There is relatively little to debunk in this, the most widely-remembered section of the Project Blue Beam conspiracy, as the idea is so infeasible. Citing actual existing communication technology is odd if the point is for the end product to appear magical, rather than just as cheap laser projections onto clouds. This hasn't stopped some very strange conspiracy theories about such things popping up. Indeed, the notion of gods being projected into the sky was floated in 1991 by conspiracy theorist Betty J. Mills. And US general (and CIA shyster extraordinaire), actually floated a plan to fake a Second Coming over Cuba to get rid of Castro.

Step Three
Step Three is "Telepathic Electronic Two-Way Communication". It involves making people think their god is speaking to them through telepathy, projected into the head of each person individually using extreme low frequency radio waves. (Atheists will presumably hear an absence of Richard Dawkins.) The book goes to some lengths to describe how this would be feasible, including a claim that ELF thought projection caused the depressive illness of Michael Dukakis' wife, Kitty.

Step Four
Step Four has three parts:
 * 1) Making humanity think an alien invasion is about to occur in every major city;
 * 2) Making the Christians think the Rapture is about to happen;
 * 3) A mixture of electronic and supernatural forces, allowing the supernatural forces to travel through fiber optics, coax, power, and telephone lines to penetrate all electronic equipment and appliances that will, by then, all have a special microchip installed.

Then chaos will break out, and people will finally be willing, perhaps even desperate, to accept the New World Order. "The techniques used in the fourth step is exactly the same used in the past in the USSR to force the people to accept Communism."

A device has apparently already been perfected that will lift enormous numbers of people, as in a Rapture. UFO abductions are tests of this device.

Project Blue Beam proponents believe psychological preparations have already been made, Monast having claimed that 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and the Star Trek series all involve an invasion from space and all nations coming together (the first two don't, the third is peaceful contact) and that Jurassic Park propagandises evolution in order to make people think God's words are lies.

The New World Order according to Monast
The book detailed the theory. In the 1994 lecture, Monast detailed what would happen afterward.

All people will be required to take an oath to Lucifer with a ritual initiation to enter the New World Order. Resisters will be categorised as follows:
 * 1) Christian children will be kept for human sacrifice or sexual slaves.
 * 2) Prisoners to be used in medical experiments.
 * 3) Prisoners to be used as living organ banks.
 * 4) Healthy workers in slave labour camps.
 * 5) Uncertain prisoners in the international re-education center, thence to repent on television and learn to glorify the New World Order.
 * 6) The international execution centre.
 * 7) An as-yet-unknown seventh classification.

The actual source of the theory
Joel Engel's book Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek was released in 1994, shortly before Monast's lecture on Project Blue Beam:

In May 1975, Gene Roddenberry accepted an offer from Paramount to develop Star Trek into a feature film, and moved back into his old office on the Paramount lot. His proposed story told of a flying saucer, hovering above Earth, that was programmed to send down people who looked like prophets, including Jesus Christ.

All the steps of the conspiracy theory were in the unmade mid-'70s Star Trek film script by Roddenberry, which were recycled for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Devil's Due, broadcast in 1991.

There is no evidence of deliberate fraud on Monast's part; given that his head was quite thoroughly full of squirrels and confetti by this time, it's entirely plausible that he thought this was the revelation of secret information in a guise safe for propagation. However, the actual source was so obvious that even other conspiracy theorists noticed. They confidently state it was obvious that Monast had been fed deceptive information by the CIA. Of course!