A TV hoax became real to conspiracy theorists who adopted it

Evidence

One of the earliest attempts to link the Illuminati with UFOs came in 1978 from Stan Deyo, an American expatriate in Australia. His book The Cosmic Conspiracy fused Illuminati theory with dispensational premillennialism and a variety of UFO speculation generally referred to as Alternative 3. Alternative 3 began as the eponymous 1977 British television program that purported to expose a plot in which a secret organization of the superrich kidnapped and exploited scientists in order to create a clandestine space-colonization program that would allow them to escape the earth before pollution and overpopulation reached catastrophic levels. Though widely considered a hoax, both the television program and a subsequent book quickly came to be accepted as fact by many conspiracy theorists. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 314

Categorization

• CANDY: The premise of the 1977 TV hoax — superrich escaping earth via kidnapped scientists — is a striking elevator fact about how fake media became ‘real’ gospel.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how the Alternative 3 hoax prefigured current ‘elites escaping to Mars/bunkers’ narratives espoused by billionaires.
• XREF: connects to: A conspiracy group’s fictional image can outshine its real tiny history — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 269; A hoax TV broadcast seeded the elite-escape conspiracy into UFO lore — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 431; Viewers use TV dramas to confirm preexisting suspicions about what is real. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 222 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• A hoax TV broadcast seeded the elite-escape conspiracy into UFO lore #exemplifies (0.90) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 431
• Viewers use TV dramas to confirm preexisting suspicions about what is real. #corroborates (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 222
• Conspiracy films provide real-world theorists validating proof for their paranoia #exemplifies (0.85) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 218
• Refuted conspiracy theories persist for decades after being debunked #expands (0.80) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 240