At night, the sky of New Jersey, located on the east coast of the United States, lights up with a strange ballet of aircraft. In recent weeks, hundreds of reports have flooded in, with residents worried about these nocturnal choreographies. Faced with questions from the public, the response from the authorities remains incomplete. If they mention devices that pose “no credible threat”, they nevertheless have no clear answer to provide to the public.
To the point of annoying… Even members of Congress. “You’re telling me we don’t know what those drones are in the skies of New Jersey? », was indignant Republican Tony Gonzales, elected to the House of Representatives against Robert Wheeler Junior, member of the FBI, last Tuesday. “The United States authorities are undoubtedly lost themselves. In the Hudson Valley in 1984, many people reported seeing strange lights and no one was able to explain it,” recalls Pierre Lagrange, sociologist and anthropologist, associate researcher at EHESS) and author of Did the War of the Worlds take place? (Robert Lafont, 2005).
From fairies to aliens
According to Robert Wheeler Junior, authorities received no fewer than 3,000 reports related to these unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in a single week. If some people wonder and talk about “UFOs” whose true essence the American authorities are hiding, Pierre Lagrange recalls that “UFOs are above all a “popular disbelief”, not a popular belief”. The majority of the public considers, in fact, that these are myths or explainable events whose origins are not yet known.
But in the United States, “the development of aviation and aerospace, at the cutting edge, stimulates the imagination of the population who sometimes sees a connection with extraterrestrials”, underlines Thomas Michaud, researcher on the relationships between science fiction and innovations. “Before, people believed in fairies, ogres or unicorns. Some people were already having fun making photo montages in the 19th century to make people believe in the existence of fairies. By discovering our land, we understood that it was in the realm of the imagination but today, it is the space that we do not know very well,” slips the author of Institutional science fiction (L’Harmattan, 2023).
The mystery of military activities
In addition, the government’s secret military activities worry many citizens who often link them to this type of event. In a post on Reddit, an Internet user raises the possibility that these drones are “NHI”, an acronym that could be translated as “no human involved”, thus implying an extraterrestrial origin. However, he ends his publication by assuring that, according to him, “the most likely scenario” is that these are “advanced American drones”.
“Historically, there have been “black programs” in the United States with military testing programs which have swallowed up colossal sums of money. The F-117 [un avion d’attaque au sol] was already around ten years old when the general public discovered it,” explains Pierre Lagrange. The secrets surrounding military research – notably the military base nicknamed Area 51, entirely inaccessible to the public – fuel paranoia about these unexplained phenomena.
Such a cultural fascination
“There is an imagination of a secret army and a government that would plot against the people in the United States. It developed during the Cold War and found new impetus with Hollywood or series like ”X-Files”,” adds Thomas Michaud. The theory of “chemtrails”, according to which the white trails left by planes are in reality government spraying, also found its source on the American Web in the 1990s.
However, UFOs are also fascinating in France and “one of the very first groups of amateur investigators was French, created in 1951”, recalls Pierre Lagrange. “In France and in Europe too, there is a UFO culture [ou ovniologique] and many followers,” adds Thomas Michaud. He notably mentions a symposium on the arrival of extraterrestrials organized at the Zénith in Limoges last March and which brought together several thousand people. Interest in UFOs is therefore not only American. And given the concern over the aerial ballet that has enlivened New Jersey’s night skies in recent weeks, the subject is far from extinction.
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