First, What Is 'Disclosure Day'?
Before we get to the aliens on bicycles, let’s clarify the human part. “Disclosure Day” is the informal name for a long-standing effort by activists to get the U.S. government to release all its classified information on unidentified anomalous phenomena
(UAPs), better known as UFOs. This movement isn’t a disorganized collection of enthusiasts; it has a key figurehead. Stephen Bassett, a political activist and lobbyist, has been the primary engine behind this push for decades through his organization, the Paradigm Research Group (PRG). His goal, and that of the broader movement, is to end what they call a “truth embargo.” They believe various government and military bodies have been concealing definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitation for over 70 years. The central demand is for full, formal acknowledgement—not just blurry videos, but an official admission that we are not alone. To galvanize support, Bassett’s PRG established “World Disclosure Day” on a specific date to serve as a rallying point for believers and the media.
It's Not About the Premiere Date
Here’s where the first assumption often gets tripped up. If the link to Spielberg is direct, you’d expect the date to be an anniversary of a film's release. But it’s not. World Disclosure Day is observed on July 2nd.
So why that date? It has nothing to do with Hollywood premieres and everything to do with UFO mythology. July 2, 1947, is the date that believers mark as the beginning of the Roswell Incident in New Mexico. While the official military story involved a weather balloon, Roswell became the foundational event of modern UFO lore—the supposed crash of an alien spacecraft and the recovery of its occupants by the U.S. government. By choosing July 2nd, the movement’s organizers were deliberately creating a kind of “Intergalactic Independence Day,” a direct counter-narrative to America’s terrestrial celebration of independence on July 4th. The date is meant to be a political statement about a new kind of freedom: freedom from secrecy.
The Real Link: A Shift in Attitude
So if the date isn't the connection, what is? The simple answer is philosophical. The link to *E.T.* and *Close Encounters* isn't about the calendar; it's about the very soul of the modern disclosure movement. For much of the 20th century, pop culture aliens were invaders. From *The War of the Worlds* to 1950s B-movies, extraterrestrials were hostile conquerors here to destroy our monuments and steal our resources. They were a metaphor for Cold War anxieties and existential threats.
Steven Spielberg changed the script. In *Close Encounters of the Third Kind* (1977), the aliens are mysterious but ultimately benign beings seeking communication through music and light. They are objects of awe and wonder. Five years later, *E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial* (1982) went even further, giving us a gentle, lost botanist from space who just wants to go home. He wasn’t a threat; he was a friend. This cultural shift was monumental. It offered a new, more hopeful vision of first contact. The disclosure movement largely adopted this optimistic, Spielbergian framework. Its advocates are far more likely to speak of enlightenment, technological advancement, and cosmic brotherhood than they are of invasion and conquest.
How Spielberg Rewrote the Alien Script
It’s hard to overstate the impact these films had on the public imagination. They didn’t just create blockbuster hits; they provided a powerful emotional counterpoint to the shadowy government conspiracies of the post-Watergate era. In both films, the antagonists aren’t the aliens, but the secretive, heavy-handed government agents trying to control the situation. The ordinary people—the Roy Nearys and the Elliots of the world—are the ones who successfully make contact through empathy and openness.
This narrative is perfectly mirrored in the disclosure movement. Activists see themselves as the everyday people trying to break through the government’s wall of secrecy to connect with a greater truth. The assumption is that the truth itself—the existence of E.T.—is not the scary part. The scary part is the cover-up. By framing contact as a positive, wondrous event being withheld by a paranoid government, the movement taps directly into the cultural DNA that Spielberg created. The aliens aren’t the problem; the men in black are.
