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January 18, 2002
Reptiles rule the planet
Icke's New Age conspiracies are the same old lies.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
Jewish newspapers, for obvious reasons, spend more time dealing
with conspiracy theorists than do most media, excluding perhaps
Jerry Springer and X-Files. Although Jews have been scapegoated
throughout history, the modern conspiracy theorist has great interest
in things Jewish. Canadian Jews have been faced with a fair share,
dealing, as we have, with Jim Keegstra, Ernst Zundel and Doug Collins.
Unfortunately, there is another case at hand, albeit imported from
the United Kingdom. David Icke (pronounced "Ike") was
a rising star in soccer until he developed arthritis. He became
a sports journalist, working at the BBC, among other outlets, and
then went on to be a major player in the British Green party, but
was thrown out of that organization when he published his first
book, outlining the tip of his conspiracy iceberg. Since then, he
has developed an apparently successful business publishing conspiracy
theories and shopping his ideas around the world on speaking tours.
He is (or was, it remains to be seen) scheduled to speak in Vancouver
in March, but the Ridge Theatre has cancelled his speech at that
venue. (See "Venue backs out on David Icke," in Jan. 18,
2002, archives.)
Like Christian televangelists, the motives of conspiracy theorists
are difficult to discern. Perhaps they fervently believe what they
preach. Or perhaps they have found a niche for themselves preaching
what people want to hear and find it a lucrative undertaking.
Icke seems to have taken his core idea - that earth is controlled
by "Illuminati" which are shape-shifting extraterrestrial
reptiles - from the pages of the Weekly World News but, aside
from that, all of Icke's "ideas" seem to be just a collection
of the same lies that have been spread for centuries about Jews,
other races, government conspiracies and evil international forces
bent on world domination. His philosophy, if it could be called
that, is a lazy man's paranoia. He even goes back to the well to
haul up the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which
is to conspiracy theories what paint-by- numbers is to art.
He opposes gun control and alleges that mass shootings are a part
of the plot to turn people in favor of gun control and, thus, make
them more pliable for domination. He has accused the United States
government of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Among those Icke deems to be satanic reptiles in human form are
Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Queen Mother, Bob Hope and Kris Kristofferson.
He claims all religions were created by Lucifer "in his many
forms." In a strange way, Icke may yet prove a unifying figure
in the world: he has slagged Christians, Jews and Muslims, among
others.
He credits the creation of the state of Israel to a "secret
society manipulation" and refers to Israel as "Rothschild-land."
Icke claims that the Torah was written by book-burners who manufactured
history to suit their ends and invented Moses to cover their tracks.
"This bunch of human-sacrificing, blood-drinking fanatics and
black magicians, who you would not trust to tell you the time, compiled
the law which Jewish people to this day are supposed to follow,"
Icke has written. "Other 'laws' have been constantly added
or revised since, to cover all eventualities.... They encourage
murder and mayhem of every conceivable kind. The Talmud must be
the most racist document on Earth."
Icke, in his book ...And the Truth Shall Set You Free (modestly
subtitled "The most explosive book of the 20th century,"
as if Mein Kampf had never been written), called for a reconsideration
of the Holocaust.
"Whether people like it or whether they don't, the official
version of The Holocaust [Icke's capitalization] cannot avoid this
exposure to proper debate for very much longer."
Though he takes particular interest in Jews, Icke's theories cut
a very wide swath. According to Icke, the domination of earth has
been planned for centuries, but was advanced significantly by Cecil
Rhodes, who Icke says was the leader of an Illuminati subgroup called
the Round Table and expanded the efforts to Africa. The Rhodes scholarships,
which were funded through a legacy after Rhodes' death, are part
of the Illuminati's plot because, according to Icke, Oxford University
is the "centre of the Illuminati's manipulation of 'education.'"
Once the Rhodes scholars graduate, they return home to advance the
sordid cause of the Illuminati, Icke wrote.
"The ratio of these 'Rhodes Scholars' who go back to their
countries to enter positions of political, economic and media power
is enormous compared with the general student population,"
according to Icke. "They act as Illuminati agents. The most
famous Rhodes scholar in the world today is Bill Clinton, the two-times
president of the United States. But while Rhodes was the official
front man for the Round Table, the real controllers and funders
were, and are, the House of Rothschild, the banking dynasty which
is at the heart of so much of the global conspiracy." Immediately,
Icke defends his assertion about the Rothschilds with an irrelevant
piece of pretzel logic: "This is not an anti-Jewish remark
because the Rothschilds claim to be Jewish. The Rothschilds have
manipulated Jewish people more than any other!!"
In the same way that proponents of gun control laws are, in Icke's
universe, behind the mass shootings that seem to occur with startling
regularity, Jews are perversely responsible for everything, including
the Holocaust. In his view, those who purport to be Jews are not
really Jews at all but rather, variously, Khazars [a national group
of Turkic ancestry living north of the Black Sea between the seventh
and 10th centuries CE] masquerading as Jews or, of course, reptilian
extraterrestrials taking the form of Jews. Either way, that makes
it much easier to stomach the explanation that " ... a small
Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked
with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution
and the Second World War.
"This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite [sic] used the First World War
to secure the Balfour Declaration and the principle of the Jewish
state of Israel in Palestine (for which, given the genetic history
of most Jewish people, there is absolutely no justification on historical
grounds or any other). They then dominated the Versailles Peace
Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World
War inevitable. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the
funds available for his rearmament."
Though it is tempting to ridicule Icke's science fiction-like ideas
and historically moronic theories, thereby dismissing him as a kook,
he manages to draw thousands of people to pay good money to hear
him speak and to buy his books. Moreover, some of those who have
heard him speak say he manages to make these fantastical interpretations
seem like common sense.
With a little knowledge and the ability to read, Icke apparently
was able to create his masterful business of selling these ideas.
"When I reached the point some years ago where I had put together
the structure through which a few people control the direction of
the world ... it was clear that this network of secret societies
and covert groups manipulating global politics, business, banking,
military, media and so on, could not have been put together in a
few years or decades. It had to go back a very long time.
"So I began to trace it back into what we call history. I did
this in the knowledge that, for some reason, bloodline and genetics
were vitally important to these manipulators, the Illuminati or
Illuminated ones - illuminated into knowledge that the public never
see."
He then summarizes several thousands of years, cross-pollinating
biblical stories with various cultural mythologies. The shorthand
is that reptilian extraterrestrials have been reshaping themselves
in the form of almost everyone who mattered in world history, including
the royal families of Europe.
If any of this sounds familiar, Icke essentially admits the sources
of his material.
"Movies like They Live, The Arrival (the first, not
the sequel) and the U.S. television series, V, tell the story
of what is REALLY going on. I urge you to think about watching these
movies to get up to speed if you are new to all of this."
Icke's merging of New Age rhetoric with typical anti-Semitic and
race-based conspiracies is a new and somewhat deceptive mix. Reports
say he is attracting the predictable mix of white supremacists and
far-right activists, but he is also succeeding in drawing in sensible
people and managing to convince them that he is not completely crazy.
Canadian Jewish Congress and the Green party (which apparently is
still trying to put distance between themselves and Icke) are concerned
enough to be raising alarms over his scheduled appearance.
^TOP
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