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During his term as Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was asked by a reporter what he planned to do during his holidays, to which he replied something to the effect that he intended to fly up and down the United States in a black helicopter!
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He was joking of course, about the widespread belief amongst right wing American militia or Survivalist groups, that the UN "World Government" is preparing to invade the United States, and that sinister black helicopters are part of this conspiracy. Sometimes this is combined with other strange theories; such as the belief that UN troops are being concealed in abandoned mines or wildlife reserves for a future takeover, or the belief that mysterious foreigners are in fact covert black helicopter pilots. The UN has thus replaced the Soviet Union as the insidious foreign threat of choice, and is itself sometimes characterised as a covertly communist organisation.
Not all Black Helicopter legends are quite so far fetched, they cover a wide range; from a fairly plausible belief that they are a secret military project (like the U-2 spy plane was in the late 1950s), to the belief that they are associated with "Men In Black", or that they are specialised military helicopters used by covert special-ops units for illegal missions.
Obviously there is a varying degree of paranoia involved; a search for "black helicopters" will uncover a rich vein of craziness, and not a little humour. The legends tend to melt into each other, but three main (and admittedly sometimes overlapping) categories can be identified.
Generally these a believed to belong to the US or an allied government (typically the UK); sometimes to a special unit of the military, sometimes to some other government agency. The common theme is that they're being used for some horrible and illegal purpose, although sometimes the legend seems relatively benign; in such versions the helicopters are just highly advanced and a military secret, or used part of a secret government project. For example, there is the theory that black helicopters are used to supply secret US government bunkers, built to withstand a major attack or disaster.
The more common sinister versions vary a great deal. Here's just a few:
Unlike the Government/Military helicopters described above, these all seem to have one purpose, to supply hidden armys and concentrations camps in preparation for the day "they" take over. Who "they" are is the variable factor here, often it's the secretly communist UN, but sometimes it's some other shadowy world conspiracy working through the UN like the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission or even the Illuminati!
The most obviously unbelievable thing about this idea is that the UN doesn't actually have an army of it's own, and even they did (or were a front for a foreign nation), the expense and difficulty of operating an airlift on this scale for years on end would beyond the ability of any superpower to conceal. That achieved, this hidden army has done nothing but hide for hide for years, rather than actually get on with the business of taking over. One wonders what they're waiting for.
This is the most inchoate category of legends, tending to be a random assortment of UFO related stories. It also tends to be tied into one or both of the other two categories. Cattle Mutilation and Men in Black are reoccurring themes.
Oddly, the motives of these legendary aliens are sometimes interpreted as being benign, even though these story elements are strange or frightening.