Luis Elizondo shot to notoriety practically overnight last year when the Pentagon’s secretive Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was made public. Elizondo directed the now-defunct program and currently serves as Director of Special Programs at To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science – you know, that oneAfter The New York Times published a report describing AATIP and the numerous videos and reports of anomalous aerial phenomena it had collected, Elizondo began speaking out about the program’s documented evidence of aircraft which display “characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.” AATIP made headlines for a few months before fading into obscurity like every non-political story has since 2016.

Elizondo is back this week, this time penning an editorial for his own page on Medium.com. In the piece, titled “Why Social Stigma About Unexplained Phenomena Holds Humanity Back,” Elizondo describes how human beings “tend to avoid associating ourselves with anything that will isolate us from the larger group or make us sound strange, or that might draw negative attention from our peers.” Social media has made this worse, Elizondo writes, in that it has provided an outlet for hoaxsters, sensationalized stories, and a medium in which true believers are ridiculed in public. Sounds pretty accurate.

This isn’t the first time Elizondo has spoken out against the social stigma associated with belief in UFOs. Earlier this year, Elizondo told Las Vegas Now that many government and military officials dismiss credible UFO research out of the belief that they are somehow demonic or counter to dominant Judeo-Christian belief systems.

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