On 12 February 2018, multiple tabloids including the British Daily Mail published a story reporting that former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer said that the Illuminati were not only real but suppressing "exotic" technology from extraterrestrials that could solve climate change. Daily Mail reported:
Paul Hellyer, who oversaw the Canadian defense forces in the 1960s, has come out and said that the illuminati is a real entity and is controlling the world - making him the highest ranking government official worldwide to do so.
Hellyer told the Lazarus Effect podcast he believes the world's elite has the technology to reverse the effects of climate change, but is holding back from the public. When asked why, Hellyer said that the Illuminati wanted to help the petroleum industry.
The Illuminati are a group that conspiracy theorists assert controls the world's affairs and economy, and its members come from the worlds of politics, business and entertainment.
According to Hellyer, many members of the Illuminati have stakes in how well the oil industry performs financially.
You wouldn't know it from the tabloid headlines, but this is hardly breaking news. Hellyer, who did serve as Canadian defense minister in the 1960s, has been on the record making these types of comments for years.
In fact a simple web search of his name reveals that news stories about Hellyer's outlandish theory appear with some frequency and they rarely veer off the same theme -- aliens have visited Earth and are hiding key technology from humans because they believe we are too destructive and irresponsible. Daily Mail has previously published at least two nearly identical stories about Hellyer's alien conspiracy theory: one in 2011 and another in 2014.
Repetition doesn't make Hellyer's theories true, however, regardless of his former title. The "Illuminati" conspiracy theory is a long standing and pervasive yarn in which a secretive global cabal aiming to form an autocratic single world government pulls the strings and is behind basically every major event. Although the idea that aliens have visited Earth is favored among UFO enthusiasts self-proclaimed abductees, scientists haven't found evidence that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, let alone any that have visited Earth and judged humans beneath them.
