The release of the UFO files won’t satisfy conspiracy theorists – but it certainly serves Trump’s agenda | Daniel Lavelle

TThe US Department of Defense released the first batch of its UFO files last week under President Donald Trump, who promised to make them public “based on the overwhelming interest.”

Trump is right, of course. Nearly half of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth, and many believe the government is hoarding the evidence in some obscure laboratory or military base. This conspiracy began in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, when the Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release regarding a plane crash. “flying disc”, and never really disappeared.

But why now? The release of these files is due in part to a decade of sustained pressure from a group of dubious UFO lobbyists, such as “whistleblower” Luis Elizondo, Jeremy Corbell and Tom DeLonge of Blink-182, who exploited America’s foundation of unreality and made a fortune selling books, History Channel “documentaries” and lectures.

The UFO conspiracy also proves perfect for Trump. Publishing the files fits perfectly into its playbook. Since taking the escalator to Trump Tower in 2015, the president has positioned himself as a political outsider who will expose the dark hand of the deep state that pulls the strings from the shadows.

Conspiracy theories are closed feedback loops and offer convenient escape clauses. If the files contain proof that Ork’s men are with us, Trump emerges as the hero. But when those files inevitably don’t provide the smoking ray gun, he can claim that the deep state is so deep that it can even hide information from the president.

The UFO conspiracy also pleases its acolytes. Vice President JD Vance said he’s “obsessed” with UFOs, but he doesn’t think their pilots are little green men — he thinks they’re demons. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested in a documentary on UFOs that the government may be in possession of extraterrestrial technology. Flying saucers also provide a decent hiding place for Trump, a galactically unpopular president who is suffocating under scandals and calamities. These files are a great distraction from his illegal actions in Venezuela and Iran.

And if we are to believe the first government publication, ufologists around the world will be very disappointed. So far, the files have produced a rather disappointing collection of unsubstantiated close encounters, images and videos featuring grainy spots and blurs that don’t come close to evidence of an alien invasion.

Some of these videos were debunked by online sleuths almost as soon as they were published. The one depicting a star-shaped UFO is almost certainly a flare attached to a parachute. Another recording appears to show a red orb weaving strangely between wind turbines at a wind farm, but the orb is likely a red balloon. Actually, scratch that. He East a red balloon.

I used to think that little green men might be behind all these sightings. I was originally influenced by the modern UFO wave when the New York Times revealed in 2017 that the Pentagon had a secret UFO program. Subsequent hearings on UFOs, in which whistleblowers made wild claims about docked spaceships and their “non-human” pilots, convinced me to travel across the United States to hunt aliens. By the end of my trip, I had learned far more about human beings, especially those in the United States, than I had about aliens.

Far from being a cosmic visitor, ET represents a giant slice of Americana. It began shortly after World War II, when the United States became the world’s superpower. Such a position creates a paradox. When you are most powerful, you are most vulnerable. Ask any alpha lion of the savannah.

The postwar United States was a place of fear, witch hunts, blacklists and red alerts, followed by decades of scandal – think the JFK assassination, Vietnam and Watergate. The boom in Hollywood science fiction has overcome this terror of the other, of the shadow puppeteers. This whole story explains why aliens permeate the American psyche.

Even the most sophisticated and credentialed UFO enthusiasts seem to be influenced by their imaginations and emotions rather than the evidence. When I spoke to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who once hypothesized that a comet passing through the solar system might be debris from an alien spacecraft, he imagined aliens as enlightened sages who would descend upon us with all-knowing wisdom and guide us toward a utopia. This seemed to me to be a materialistic version of God. Religion dressed in a white coat.

This is not to say that conspiracies don’t exist. They do it. But they generally take place outdoors. Believe it or not, the US government doesn’t need to kiss you behind your back. It does it right in your face. In 2008, greedy Wall Street bankers deliberately broke the economy, the government bailed them out, and people paid for it. He has spent the better part of the last two decades tearing up the social contract and pointing the finger at minorities and migrants.

When the perpetrators of this injustice say something I agree with, it can be hard to swallow. For example, I barely agree with a single word that comes out of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lips, but after the first installment of files was released on Friday, she posted something that’s been on my mind for 10 years: “I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda.”

Greene is right: Americans should stop thinking about what their government might be hiding in the shadows and get angry about what it’s actually doing right under their noses. The truth is out there – it’s right in front of you.

• Daniel Lavelle’s new book, Chasing Aliens, was published on April 30 (Viking, £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy from Guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

• Daniel Lavelle is an independent journalist