Deception and Delusions in the Suppression of David Icke
Paranoid Conspiracy Theories: Deception and Delusions in the Suppression of David Icke
Deception and Delusions in the Suppression of David Icke
Introduction and Thesis Statement Part 1:
The Curious Case of David Icke
By Richard Finnegan
http://members.shaw.ca/revelation18/news.htm
It is customary when writing academic papers to begin with a thesis statement. Every now and then you may encounter research papers that do not begin with a thesis statement, but such instances are rare and usually indicate that you are either reading old literature or something written by somebody more interested in entertaining the reader than in critically informing them. There is a very good reason why this custom has been adopted: it was adopted because scholars do not like guessing about what they are going to be reading. In order to analyze a paper critically, the reader must know up front what he or she is going to be reading and just what ideas or conclusions the author is trying to "sell." This, of course, is more than a mere custom, it has its genesis in the ideas of fairness and honesty in academic debate. There are other such rules or codes of conduct that are expected to be followed as well, such as, an insistence that all quotes and references be sourced and presented in context; quoting out of context is regarded as dishonest and thus frowned upon. In university, an egregious tendency towards quoting out of context can bring your studies to an abrupt and untimely end. Almost everyone who has had any significant degree of post secondary education has been instructed in these procedures (that would include lawyers and most politicians), and is aware of why they are considered important. In this paper I will, of course, provide my introductory thesis statement up front, but I wish to make a very slight and brief deviation from custom, in the sense that I also want and need to make it clear what I will not be writing about in this paper.
This paper is not designed to validate the ideas and theories of David Icke; nor is it designed to validate the ideas of other conspiracy theorists who have been subjected to the same treatment as Icke. That I will address some of his theories in this paper is clear, but only those ideas that have been the subject of such bitter debate, and which have also been used to justify the suppression of Icke in Canada (particularly) and elsewhere. For those in the conspiracy community or others who might be hoping to find such validation in this paper, you now know that what you seek will not be found here and can move on if the actual subject matter is not of interest to you. However, it is my belief that the subject matter of this paper should be of interest to everyone, and, as you will see, there is a very good reason for this.
The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the free speech implications of the censorship campaign that has been waged against David Icke in Canada by Richard Warman and other members of the Canadian and Ontario Green parties, who were, at least initially, assisted in their efforts by various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and B'nai Brith. While the two latter organizations are well known for their opposition to free speech under the tiresome "you cannot yell fire in a crowded theatre" argument (which I will address later),1 I was quite surprised to learn that the Green Party has essentially led this campaign because I have voted for them in the past and would have never done so had I known their dedication to free speech was so utterly abysmal. Suffice it to say that I will not be voting for them in the future until they adequately address the very serious issues that will be raised in this paper.
This paper will examine the nature and extent of the campaign against David Icke, the justifications that have been used to support it, and the various deceptive and dangerous tactics that have been used to enforce it. The methods used against Icke may be even more frightening and disturbing than the actual censorship. During the course of the campaign, Icke's oppressors have resorted to disseminating false information, intimidation (of bookstores, venues, and other third parties), and some of the most egregious instances of quoting out of context I have ever had the displeasure of viewing. The primary tool of demonization has, oddly, not been directly related to anything Icke has actually written or said, but by various specious "guilt by association" and "guilt by citation" arguments, along with other stranger and even more deluded theories. That the parrots in the press have not spotted these techniques, when they are supposed to serve as bulwarks against censorship, is also disturbing. It would appear that the Press has had no interest in verifying the various serious charges that they have instead recklessly echoed; you would think that before calling somebody an anti-Semitic "neo-Nazi" that you might want to take a moment to ascertain if the charge is true, particularly considering the very serious and crippling effect such a label can have. In order to illustrate the nature of the techniques used against David Icke it will be necessary to provide some background on who he is and what he purports to believe. I will also argue that the campaign against Icke is just the most visible (if, to this point, distorted) part of a larger campaign designed to demonize conspiracy theorists in general.
I will conclude this essay by addressing the basic free speech implications and discuss why everyone should be concerned about protecting Icke's right to speak and write freely without threat of censorship or intimidation, regardless of what you think of his ideas. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression form the foundation upon which free and open societies are built; without this foundation freedom itself is threatened, and thus it must be tenaciously defended against all challengers. As you read this essay, it is important to understand that this essay is not really about David Icke; this essay is not about Richard Warman, the Green Party, or the other groups and individuals that are described here. This essay is about everyone; it is about you and me, and all those who seek to suppress opinions or ideas that they do not like. David Icke could be anyone, and in many ways he is everyone in this debate. Today it is fashionable to censor and suppress David Icke, but if we fail to act and express our opposition to this campaign, tomorrow it could be anybody who expresses an idea or opinion that is not endorsed or supported by the majority.
(Please feel free to spread this essay far and wide on the internet; print publication and publication for profit is expressly prohibited without prior authorization from the author)
Notes: 1. Before anybody gets upset about this comment, which I will document later, I should say that the genesis of their opposition to free speech is very understandable. The well known and terrible history of Jewish persecution was bound to create these kind of reactions, but ultimately, as the distinguished Jewish Professor and free speech advocate Noam Chomsky and others have said, those reactions are misguided and if entertained could threaten the liberty of us all (back to essay)
Part 1:
The Curious Case of David Icke
Undoubtedly, a significant number of the people reading this essay will have no idea who David Icke is or what he claims to believe.2 Most of Icke's ideas are extraneous in terms of the purpose of this essay and as such will not be discussed here. Those interested in a more thorough understanding of Icke's beliefs should acquire, supposing the censors allow you, a copy of one of his books.3 Some of Icke's more contentious beliefs will be discussed at length later, but immediately all that will be necessary is a brief overview of his beliefs and how he came into the public spotlight. It should be noted up front that nutshell descriptions of Icke's beliefs are inherently unfair, and while it is necessary for me to attempt to describe some his beliefs here, the reader should be aware of the problematic nature of this endeavor. To date, there have been surprisingly large numbers of people willing to engage in sweeping generalizations and demonizations of Icke without even the most general knowledge of who he is or what he writes about; such behavior should be regarded as utterly reprehensible. If people really insist on judging Icke (and clearly many people do), then let us at least make sure we are aware of who he is and what he believes, otherwise judging him fairly becomes an impossible task. That is the purpose of the first part of this essay.
To suggest that David Icke's theories are unusual would be an understatement. Icke is the author of several books that (in a nutshell) essentially maintain that an elite cabal of shape-shifting, child molesting, human sacrificing, Satan worshipping, lizard-aliens are currently engaged in a conspiracy to centralize power and enslave the human race. It would be easy to dismiss such assertions prima facie as being the products of a deranged mind, but Icke is actually quite lucid and a brilliant public speaker-- dismissing him as a madman simply will not suffice. While Icke does have specific reasons for believing what he does, it is quite clear that he is prone to flights of speculative fancy; this propensity has taken him into areas that more "respectable" researchers would never dream of going -- a good example of this is his now infamous "lizard theory."
In his 1999 book The Biggest Secret, Icke introduced his lizard theory with some reluctance: "I wish I didn't have to introduce the following information," wrote Icke, "because it complicates the story and opens me up to mass ridicule."4 It certainly did. The fact that he knew he would be ridiculed and proceeded with his lizard theory anyway should tell the reader something very important about Icke; namely, that he simply does not possess the same inhibitions that most people do; if the reader has any doubts as to the legitimacy of Icke's uninhibited status, a quick look at the cover of his 1996 book I am me, I am free should settle the issue quite quickly.5 Understanding the significance of Icke's relative lack of inhibitions is crucial to understanding the man and the theories he advances.
Icke's lizard theory is based on secondhand allegations that various elite families possess an alien-reptilian bloodline that allows them to transform between human and reptilian shapes. The Bush family are cited as being shape-shifters, as are the Rothschilds, the Windsors, the Rockefellers, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton (not Bill), and Henry Kissinger, just to mention a few. Icke's lizard theory, like most of his theories, was inspired largely by previously published material written by people such as Alex Christopher and alleged CIA mind control victim Cathy O'Brien (later he would also incorporate the tales of Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa).6 O'Brien claimed that George Bush Sr. had told her that he was an alien and then transformed into a lizard in front of her; strangely, O'Brien herself believed that this was a visual illusion achieved by some sort of hologram machine, but Icke uses other such testimonies to suggest that it was not an illusion, but an actual physical transformation. Despite the debatable nature of his sources, the stories of O'Brien, Christopher, and others are crucial to Icke's lizard theory, although he also looks extensively at various historical, archaeological, and mythological evidence that seems to support his theory as well. Interestingly, Icke also points to some very solid scientific evidence that suggests that a part of the human brain is reptilian in nature;7 just how valuable or significant this and the other evidence he presents is, is ultimately up to the individual to decide. When absolute proof or disproof is not forthcoming, the individual must decide for themselves whether or not to make what William James called a "leap of faith." Personally, I do not think that believing in Icke's lizard theory is necessarily anymore "ridiculous" than, for instance, believing that Moses turned a staff into a snake and parted the Red Sea or that Jesus walked on water.
Whether we are talking about shape-shifting lizards or about prophets parting the Red Sea, I choose not to make a leap of faith and instead choose to disbelieve, but I grant the right of individuals to make such decisions for themselves. For all I know Icke's lizard theory could be correct, and I would encourage the reader to review the evidence he presents and decide for themselves. The ability to make such individual choices and decisions is an important part of what living in a free and diverse society is supposed to be about. While I reserve the right to reject stories of super-human prophets or shape-shifting lizards, I have enough respect for diversity that I am not going to show up outside the local church or synagogue and taunt people for choosing to believe otherwise -- the same applies to showing up outside a David Icke lecture and harassing people who choose to believe in his theories (unfortunately, Icke's detractors engage in this type of behavior on a regular basis; one wonders if they would support mobs of people showing up outside a church or synagogue and harassing the people that go inside); in both cases such behavior constitutes a kind of bigotry and intolerance for diversity that I find far more threatening than the bizarre arguments of people such as Richard Warman who suggest that Icke's ideas constitute a menacing threat to society.
As an interesting footnote to this discussion, I should say that while I do not believe in Icke's lizard theory, I must admit that I did suffer one brief moment of doubt: in the 30 December 2001 Edmonton Journal, there is a story that describes Tony Blair's recent trip to Mexico, in which he and his wife were observed worshipping Mayan lizard statues next to a pyramid.8 After reading this story, I was momentarily possessed by the curious notion that Icke's theory might not be so wild after all. As I pondered this oddity further, I recalled the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet imploring Horatio to remember that "there are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Alas, the spell was fleeting, and the sound of George W. Bush's voice on the television promising to conquer the evil powers of darkness snapped me back to the even more surreal reality of daily life. But the Blair story serves as a good example of the type of evidence used by Icke and perhaps helps to explain why some people believe in his lizard theory. I will not begrudge them or David this right, and I am not even prepared to say that they are wrong -- only that I do not believe it myself, despite Blair's lizard-worshipping ways; unfortunately, not everyone is so liberally inclined.
While most people are inclined towards ignoring Icke's lizard theory as a kind of unsubstantiated urban legend (indeed some of Icke's own followers ignore his lizard theory and focus on other aspects of his writing), others (such as Richard Warman) have used it as evidence that Icke hates Jews. At first glance this suggestion may seem even stranger than Icke's lizard theory, and in many ways it is, but the accusation makes a little more sense when you understand the beliefs of the Christian Identity movement (although, even then the charge falls flat on its face when subjected to academic scrutiny). I will address the specific accusations of "racism" and "anti-Semitism" in some detail later; for now it would be good to turn our attention to some of the more believable aspects of Icke's writings, which probably serve as the primary attraction for most of his followers (I base this on my discussions with numerous Icke fans).
It would probably be a lot easier to understand the attraction of Icke's ideas if you forgot about his lizard theory completely (as difficult as that might be), because much of what he writes about is based on very earthly and (at points) more believable ideas. In fact, Icke's lizard theory occupies only a small portion of the body of his work. Most of his work is dedicated to studying power structures and the machinations of various secretive organizations such as the Freemasons, the Club of Rome, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, and other powerful individuals and associations. Richard Warman, former spokesman for the Ontario Green Party, once said that Icke has "never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like";9 this is one of the few useful comments Warman has uttered relating to David Icke, because it is not far off the mark -- in fact, Icke's books serve as a kind of great amalgamation of almost all of the major conspiracy theories that have been written about over the past one hundred years.
One of the more interesting and useful aspects of Icke's books is his use of what is essentially a variation of the Hegelian principle of "thesis vs. antithesis = synthesis," which Icke refers to as "problem-reaction-solution."10 Icke's regular references to the process of problem-reaction-solution are designed to show how politicians and other powerful individuals frequently manufacture problems in order to generate reactions from the public, which they can then manipulate for their own purposes. For example, let us say that various politicians and U.S. based health care organizations have decided that they want to destroy public health care in Canada and establish an American-styled privatized system. Using Icke's Hegelian formula, they would first create a problem by allowing public health care to erode to such a terrible state that the public would react and reflexively demand a solution to the problem -- at which point politicians would come forward with the prefabricated "solution" of American-styled health care; a big business agenda would thusly be transformed by deception into an act of "responsive government." Icke maintains, and I believe he is quite correct, that this formula is used by the rich and powerful on a regular basis. In fact, policy analysts discuss such strategies in their elite journals and private discussions, although seldom outside the confines of university campuses or backroom meetings. For instance, a variation of this strategy was discussed by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones in their paper "Agenda Dynamics and Policy Subsystems," which appeared in the November 1991 edition of the Journal of Politics. In that essay Baumgartner and Jones discussed the necessity of changing public perceptions in order to implement desired policy changes, which is a form of deliberate manipulation that has very little to with liberty and democracy. Understanding that such strategies are well known and used in elite circles would help the average citizen to better understand and interpret the world around them and how they are being manipulated by the people in power.
David Icke also envisions the world as a pyramid of power in which relatively few people (members of secret societies and other occult organizations) control the world from the top for their own twisted purposes, while manipulating unwitting accomplices lower down in the pyramid (various government agents, police, etc.). Icke believes that those at the top of the pyramid have engineered wars for profit and have engaged in heinous depopulation strategies. Because Icke views the world as a pyramid, his solution to the problem is just for the people at the bottom of the pyramid to simply step out of line and stop buying into the program of manipulation. If enough people do this the pyramid will collapse because it is those at the bottom that support the ones at the top. Icke does not advocate the use of violence in this process; in fact, quite the opposite is true. Icke advocates loving your enemies even while you are exposing them as corrupt manipulators.11
Whatever your opinion of Icke's beliefs, I do not think there can be any question that Icke is one of the most charismatic and sharpest (in terms of oratory and debating skills) speakers in the conspiracy movement today. That there are individuals whose ideas are somewhat easier to swallow and better documented is clear, but Icke possesses a charisma that most conspiracy theorists do not. Icke's charisma and oratory abilities also help explain why the British Green Party once regarded him as their brightest and most hopeful light.12 While researching this essay I was forced to go back and dig up old newspaper and magazine articles relating to Icke's rise and fall from the British Greens, and the information I gleaned from that research is very helpful when attempting to understand him. One of the big questions I have had about Icke is whether or not he believes what he writes about, or whether it is all simply part of a moneymaking scam. When I presented this idea to David he was quick to point out that he could have made far more money by steering clear of his lizard theory completely and sticking to more believable ideas, and he makes a valid point. Ultimately, my research into his rise and fall from the Greens did more to answer this question than anything else. Understanding the circumstances surrounding his departure from the British Green Party has inclined me towards believing that Icke is indeed sincere. I find it hard to believe that any man would have subjected himself and his family to the incredible ordeal that David was subjected to in the UK without possessing a firm belief in what he was doing. The incredible ridicule and bigotry Icke was subjected to in the United Kingdom after his "conversion" to the New Age movement and exodus from the Green Party is, quite frankly, disturbing. The UK claims to be tolerant of diversity, but the case of David Icke, I believe, destroys that notion completely.
David Icke first came into the limelight in the UK as a professional soccer13 player. After a stint with Coventry City and Hereford United in the English league, rheumatoid arthritis forced him into an early retirement.14 He then pursued a career as a sports writer and later as a sports presenter with BBC television. After moving to the Isle of Wight in 1982, Icke found himself growing increasingly concerned about environmental issues; this led him to begin campaigning for the British Green Party and he eventually became their national spokesman. His new high profile position with the Green Party was perceived as a conflict of interest by BBC executives, and this led to his demotion15 and later exodus from the BBC. As spokesman of the British Green Party, Icke occupied a front line position during the party's most successful election bid (1989), when the Greens gained almost 2½ million votes nationally.16 Icke's wit and charisma led many to regard him as the party's best and most hopeful representative;17 they would not hold that view very long, because Icke was about to make a significant departure from the mainstream, and enter into the most tumultuous period of his life.
In a book that Icke wrote in 1989, entitled It Doesn't Have to Be Like This: Green Politics Explained, Icke uttered some words that probably have more meaning today than they did when he first wrote them: "Well what a turn-up," wrote Icke, describing his ascent into the political limelight. "From professional footballer to television presenter to green politician." "Whatever next?"18 Whatever indeed. I doubt even Icke could have fathomed where he would be a dozen years later. In 1989, Icke seemed to think that he had found his calling in life as the high profile spokesman of the Green Party, but it was not to be. Something else began calling David instead; voices and spirits of the dead - a recipe for political disaster, not just for himself, but, to a certain extent, for the Green Party as a whole.
There are hints throughout Icke's book It Doesn't Have to Be Like This that suggest the direction that he was heading. In a chapter entitled "Summon the Spirit,"19 Icke delivers a message not very far removed from some of the spiritual overtones that now adorn his work. Icke had half-jokingly warned his readers in the foreword of that book that the "man who has written this book is completely out of his mind … quite bonkers."20 In 1989 this statement was a joke, but by 1991 a large portion of the British population would interpret it quite literally. The impetus for this shift can be found in David's appearance on the Terry Wogan Show on BBC1 in 1991,21 but Icke's description of the events that led up to that moment are worth taking a look at first, in order to give that momentous event some needed perspective.
I cannot, of course, vouch for the authenticity of Icke's description of the events that led to his spiritual awakening, but I have no reason to doubt his description - no reason, that is, beyond the ingrained prejudices against believing in the fantastic that most people possess. Although I am history major, I began my university studies with an eye on philosophy, and as such I am undoubtedly more open minded than most of Icke's detractors, and will not automatically discount his tales of the fantastic (anyone who has studied any significant amount of philosophy will understand why I take this position -- what is real is not always as simplistic as one might suppose, and when we begin questioning what we believe and why, it does not take long before cracks in the fabric of reality begin to appear). My preferred method of dealing with such tales is simply to put them aside until they can be either verified or refuted. The story of Icke's conversion to the New Age movement is very similar to the stories told by other New Age gurus, with the only significant difference being Icke's high profile position in British society. Icke claims that in 1990 he began to feel a presence around him, as if "there was always someone in the room when there was not." "It got to the point where I sat on the side of the bed in a hotel room in London in early 1990 and said to whoever or whatever: 'If you are there will you please contact me because you are driving me up the wall'."22 He claims that the voices in his head then led him to a bookstore containing various New Age books, many of which featured stories very similar to the one that he would later recount. He was attracted to a book written by a New Age guru and healer who would later tell him that a spirit was instructing her to give him a message. Much of that message (including a prediction of an upcoming earthquake) would, predictably, be proven incorrect, but that did not detract from the overall value of the experience for Icke. The woman informed Icke that the spirit had told her that (in brief) Icke was born into the world to lead people to a great awakening.23 This would later be translated into a much more astounding claim that, fatefully, Icke would make on national British television.
There can be little doubt that when David Icke wandered onto the set of The Terry Wogan Show in 1991 that he knew his life was going to change; of course his life had already changed with that fateful visit to the bookstore and his meetings with the psychic, but things were about to change for the worse. Did he know that his actions would result in him becoming the victim of incredible ridicule and bigotry? Did he care? Only David Icke can answer those questions for sure. Nevertheless, it was on the Wogan Show that Icke announced the predictions given to him during his meetings with the psychic; he apparently went a step further and declared himself "the son of the Godhead"24 and destined to be the "healer of the Earth."25 He later adorned himself in turquoise and declared it the mystic colour of the universe. Oddly, while reporters and other members of the press found this claim a source of unremitting humor, just this year Icke had his revenge when scientists announced that "turquoise" was indeed the dominant colour of the universe, just as he had claimed.26 In terms of New Age messages, Icke's claims were not particularly remarkable (even those that have not been subsequently proven by science). But for the average Englishman Icke's New Age message was just too much. The result was disaster, not only for Icke, but also for the Green Party as a whole.
The reaction and fallout from Icke's announcement was immediate and would continue for quite some time. The laughter that greeted Icke's claims on the Wogan Show was but a mere sampling of the incredibly vicious teasing and ridicule he would be subjected to in the months that followed. When Wogan's audience laughed at David's claims, he responded by saying "the best way of removing negativity is to laugh and be joyous … So I am glad that there's been so much laughter in the audience tonight."27 Typical of such hosts, Wogan seized the moment to ridicule his guest even further. "But they're laughing at you," said Wogan, "[not] with you!"28 After a brief gasp, Wogan's insensitive jab was greeted by the audience with hoots of applause and approval. Wogan obviously thought he was being witty, but a more sensible and tolerant person would understand that he was just being vicious and bigoted. Taunting and ridiculing a person in public for their beliefs is not something any truly tolerant person would do. Debating and asking critical questions is fine, but ad hominen attacks and teasing is quite beyond juvenile; it is, as I have said, quite vicious and (in my mind) inexcusably bigoted behavior. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if this type of behavior was adopted for people who believed in Christianity or Judaism, which are, in many ways (as mentioned earlier), just as or more "ridiculous" than anything Icke has ever uttered or written. The result would be outrage, but apparently such behavior is fine when dealing with the New Age movement or the conspiracy community. It would seem that tolerance and respect for different beliefs is something that only applies to mainstream or "approved religions" and ideas, which, of course, is not tolerance at all, but, rather, just another form of popular consensus.
In many ways, the story of David Icke's conversion to the New Age movement reminds me of the story of Shirley MacLaine -- a Hollywood actress who announced in 1983 that she had talked to spirits and aliens in South America.29 Both were high profile figures in their respective societies, both claimed to have had experiences too fantastic for most people to believe, and both were subjected to mass public ridicule for discussing their beliefs in public. After his announcement on the Wogan Show, Icke would spend the better part of the next two years as the laughing stock of England; he could hardly go anywhere without people pointing and laughing at him. It made little difference whether or not Icke was with his family and children; the taunting was relentless. In one particularly appalling incident a group of one hundred youths gathered outside his Isle of Wight home yelling "We want the Messiah" and "Give us a sign, David!" The police had to be called in to remove the mob.30 Newspaper columnists and talk show hosts in the "tolerant" nation of England began using him as the butt of their jokes. A lesser man might have thrown himself into the Thames to save himself and his family from the constant harassment. But Icke remained resolute.
The effect of all of the negative publicity that Icke was receiving began, of course, to be strategically extrapolated upon the Green Party as a whole. The Liberal Democrats began referring to the Greens as being indistinguishable from the mock Monster Raving Loony Party; even the founder of the Loony party could not resist joining the bandwagon of bigotry and came out and declared Icke "too loony even for us."31 Icke apparently informed the Green Party prior to his public announcement that we wanted to resign because he felt his new beliefs would affect the party negatively, but they urged him to continue.32 In any case, his resignation became public knowledge in March of 1991. But Icke's resignation and concern for the party was apparently not good enough, the Green Party UK and in Canada would subsequently set out to totally demolish his reputation and make it clear that this "ridiculous" and "offensive" man did not represent the values of the Green Party. At this point there was no talk, not even a single suggestion from anyone, relating to charges of "anti-Semitism" or "racism" which would later become a regular feature of Green Party attacks on Icke.33 Since other efforts to discredit Icke did not work, one can say that at least the new charges were successful in defaming him, even with they were not true -- but the fact that the claims were not true (or, at least, not apparently true)34 was a mere trifle for those who have sought to banish Icke to the darkest nether regions of society.
The claims that David Icke was an anti-Semite first began after the publication of his books The Robot's Rebellion, …And the truth Shall Set You Free, The Biggest Secret, and his most recent book Children of the Matrix. The latter three books have generated enormous controversy and even protest. For some bizarre reason the bulk of the protests and actions against David Icke have been in Canada; the reason for this is not entirely clear, but as a third generation Canadian I find this development disturbing. Canada is not exactly a hotbed of free speech; in fact, few allegedly "free" societies show less respect for free speech than Canada (Germany being one possible exception), and this may explain the kind of demented hysteria that has surrounded Icke in Canada. The most active leader in the campaign against Icke in Canada has been Green Party candidate Richard Warman, who nearly had my website shut down for merely providing a link to one of David's stories, which he claimed was "defamatory" (a claim I regard as utterly bogus). Warman has been assisted in his efforts by both the Canadian and Ontario Green Parties, as well as the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith (not to mention a motley assortment newspaper and magazine writers). Icke's detractors have resorted to disseminating demonstrably false information, intimidation of bookstores and venues, destruction of private property, and gross instances of quoting out of context (there is also now an indication that a tactic known as "astroturf" has been used as well -- I will explain this deceptive tool later). The reaction and tactics utilized by Warman and his accomplices would lead you believe that Icke must be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, because little else could justify these kinds of vile strategies. Canadian Dimension magazine even published a story featuring an artist's rendition of a shadowy Icke dressed up as a Nazi with a swastika armband;35 the article was written by a nurse-turned-academic, Will Offley, who is quite skilled at distorting facts and building bogus guilt by association arguments (as will be shown later); where nurse Offley learned this talent is unclear but it may have been from other even more skilled propagandists, such as John Murray and Matthew Kalman. The depth of the deception used to justify the campaign against Icke is, quite frankly, startling; it is little wonder that Icke has come to believe that there must be some sort of sinister forces working behind the scenes to perpetuate it, because somebody has obviously spent a lot of time and money to spread the deception across Canada, and now across the globe as well. As will be shown in parts two and three of this essay, claims and suggestions that Icke is a "racist" and a "neo-Nazi" are spurious in the extreme and at points possibly indicative of some kind of neurosis.
To be continued …
(Please feel free to spread this essay far and wide on the internet; print publication and publication for profit is expressly prohibited without prior authorization from the author)
[I would like to thank everyone that has assisted or contributed to this essay, as well as those who have offered support should push come to shove in this issue. Time will tell what the censors will or will not do as this proceeds. Special thanks go to David Icke (who has been more than helpful even though we do not agree on everything), Will, Glen, Chris, GB, NC, Banyen, an unnamed source at Shaw Communications who has given legal advice, as well as the legal tips forwarded by concerend civil libertarians, and various unnamed members of the Canadian Green Party and Jewish community who are concerned about what has transpired.]
Notes:
2. Since I have no idea what Icke really believes and cannot say
that he is not simply the ultimate snake-oil (or lizard-oil, as the case might
be) salesman, I have chosen to use the term "claims to believe,"
because I realize that his stated beliefs may be disingenuous. My
research has led me to believe that he is not disingenuous, but I have no way of
knowing this for sure; only he knows the truth of the matter. Suffice it to say
that whenever I say that Icke "believes" something, it should be taken
to understand that he claims to believe something -- whether or not he
actually does or not I do not know.
3. I would recommend …And the Truth Shall Set You Free
as the best overall synopsis of his beliefs. David Icke, …And the Truth
Shall Set You Free (Cambridge: Bridge of Love, 1998 [1995]).
4. David Icke, The Biggest Secret (Scottsdale, Arizona:
Bridge of Love, 1999): 19.
5. The cover of the book features a picture of Icke completely
naked with his arms raised in the air - while Icke does possess a certain
charisma and a gift for the gab, he is not exactly Adonis -- as such the cover
should be considered more as an indication of his lack of inhibitions than as an
indication of vanity. If he was built like Fabio or Brad Pitt the vanity
argument might work … but Icke is no Fabio. Subsequent releases of this book
have covered the more "private" region of his body, but it is worth a
look because it tells you a great deal about the personality of the man. The
cover can be view at the following link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0952614758/reader/1/002-9942749-8105620#reader-link.
David Icke, I am me, I am free (San Diego: Bridge of Love, 1998 [1996]).
6. See, for instance, David Icke, The Children of the Matrix
(Wildwood, MO: Bridge of Love, 2001): 256-257, 245-246, 249; also, Icke, The
Biggest Secret, 28-29, 35.
7. That the human brain has certain reptilian characteristics is
fairly well established. Whether or not this lends much support to Icke's lizard
theory is another question completely; clearly he thinks that it does. For a
scientific overview of the reptilian aspects of the human brain see, Philip
Lieberman, Human language and our reptilian brain: The subcortical bases of
speech, syntax, and thought, (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2000); or, F.
J. Irsigler, "Group differences revealed in morphogenetic parameters,"
Mankind Quarterly 32.3 (Spring 1992): 285-311.
8. Lorne Gunter, "Some Limits of Tolerance Seem Boundless:
Every faith or Spirituality gets Benefit of Doubt; Why Doesn't
Christianity?" Edmonton Journal, 30 December 2001, available online:
http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal...ry.asp?id=3290E253-1346-4F79-85F7-CB37C8B2B48E,
last accessed 2 January 2002; this link is apparently now defunct, but the
article can still be seen on David Icke's website at: http://www.davidicke.net/newsroom/europe/england/2002/uk010902b.html
.
9. Quoted in Kim Bolan, "Protesters to Target Controversial
Author: British Writer David Icke, Who Plans a Workshop in Vancouver, is Accused
of Holding Anti-Semitic Views," Vancouver Sun, 11 March 2000, A8.
10. See, for instance, Icke, …And the Truth Shall Set You
Free, 67-69.
11. Icke, …And the Truth Shall Set You Free, 466-500;
see also, David Icke, Turning of the Tide, video, Bridge of Love, 1996.
12. Michael McCarthy, "Green Conference: Realists Demand a
Single Leadership to Improve Image," The Times (of London), 20
September 1991, p.5.
13. Or "football" -- depending on what side of the
water you are on. Icke was a goalkeeper, and there is actually an interesting
article on Icke's "goaltending" philosophy on the web at the following
link: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/bob.dunning/icke1.htm
.
14. David Icke, "About David Icke: The Man, His
Philosophy, and His Work," DavidIcke.com, available online at: http://www.davidicke.com/icke/about.html
. Last accessed: 7 January 2002.
15. "Icke Out of BBC News," The Times, 4 October
1989.
16. "Greens Savour Bittersweet Victory; European Election
Results," The Times, 20 June 1989, p.1.
17. McCarthy, 5.
18. David Icke, It Doesn't Have to Be Like This: Green
Politics Explained (London: Green Print, 1990): 7.
19. Icke, It Doesn't Have to Be Like This, 198-204.
20. Icke, It Doesn't Have to Be Like This, ix.
21. Some of the more awkward moments of that broadcast are
described in an article published in The Guardian newspaper in March of
2001 by Jon Ronson (a man who gives the term "beware of wolves in sheep's
clothing a newer and subtler meaning"); it would also become part of his
book Them: Adventures With Extremists. See, Jon Ronson, "Beset by
Lizards," The Guardian, 17 March 2001, available online at: http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,457988,00.html
. Accessed 7 January 2002.
22. Icke, "About David Icke: The Man, His Philosophy, and
His Work."
23. I am summarizing two of Icke's accounts, the first on his
webpage, and the second a recorded interview given fairly recently. See, Icke,
"About David Icke: The Man, His Philosophy, and His Work"; also,
"David Icke: Do you believe your world is real?" News for the Soul,
interview of David Icke by Nicole M. Whitney, November 2001, available online
at: http://www.newsforthesoul.com/intro-icke/main.html
.
24. Anna Pukas, "Neo-Nazis Rally to 'Son of
Godhead'," The Sunday Times, 9 July 1995, p.7.
25. Judy Goodkin, "David Icke: A Childhood," The
Times Magazine, 7 August 1993, p.42.
26. See, Eugenie Samuel, "The Universe is Turquoise, say
Astronomers," New Scientist, 10 January 2002, available online at: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991775
. Last accessed 11 February 2002.
27. Quoted in Ronson.
28. See Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Limb (New York:
Bantam, 1983).
29. Ibid.
30. "Icke Taunted," The Times, 27 May 1991,
p.7.
31. Douglas Broom, "Sutch joy as Loonies secure four
seats," The Times, 4 May 1991, p.5.
32. In a personal communication Icke informed me that he had
effectively ceased being a member of the Green Party nine months prior to March
of 1991, and that it was only after he finally went public with his beleifs that
they suddenly indicated that they no longer wanted anything to do with him. It
was then that the following article appeared in The Times newspaper:
"Icke Quits as Greens' spokesman," The Times, 20 March 1991,
p.2
33. See, "Icke Quits as Greens' spokesman," p.2; and,
McCarthy, p.5.
34. I cannot see inside David Icke's heart or mind, and as such
I cannot say absolutely what is or is not true about what he believes. Icke's
detractors have apparently decided that they can see inside his mind, since
their arguments against him are not based on his words but upon quasi-psychic
assumptions about what he believes. I would suggest that for the public at large
Icke must be judged based on what he says, and nothing Icke has ever said or
written can be regarded as promoting anti-Semitism -- in fact, as will be shown
later, he has consistently spoken against anti-Semitism.
35. Will Offley, "David Icke and the Politics of
Madness," Canadian Dimension (May 2000): available online at: http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v34/icke.htm
. Last accessed: 20 February 2002.
That ADL-inspired episode featuring the custard-pie debacle was shown as part of Jon Ronson's TV series last year. I've never seen such cowardice in my life. The moron was halfway out the door before the pie even left his hands ...
David Icke, one-time goalkeeper, TV presenter and self-proclaimed Son of God, has re-invented himself as a travelling guru. Would Canada take seriously his warnings of power-hungry extraterrestrial reptiles or would he be dismissed as an anti-Semitic bigot?
Jon Ronson Saturday March 17, 2001 The Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,457988,00.html
In a meeting room in a community centre in Vancouver, the blackboard said "Strategy" and the leaflets said "Bigot Alert". A coalition of prominent anti-racist organisations shook hands and took their seats, notepads at the ready. A "leading racist" was about to land in Canada on a speaking tour. TV and radio stations were vying to secure chatshow bookings. There would be celebrity appearances, meet-and- greet-the-fans sessions and high-profile book signings. This was, the coalition felt, an unusual and disquieting turn of events. The media do not, as a rule, scramble to book racists for celebrity appearances. But this was an unusual racist, they said. "Above all," began the chair of the meeting, "David Icke represents a political threat. His writings are anti-Semitic. David Icke states that the global elite, the Illuminati who dominate every aspect of our lives, are genetically descended from an extraterrestrial race of reptiles who came to earth some time ago in the form of humans, who are capable of changing their shape, who engage in ritual child sacrifice, who drink blood . . ."
The coalition shook their heads wearily. In terms of code words, they had now heard it all.
"What is this crap, this metaphorically hidden language?" asked a member of Anti-Racist Action, a visiting scientist from Somalia. "Who is a lizard? It's bullshit. Bullshit! As a human being, you have to use proper language."
"What do these words imply?" I asked him.
"What do you think they imply?" he replied. "Lizards? Reptiles? Cockroaches? Amphibians? They imply hatred. Racist hatred."
"Do you think that, when David Icke says lizards, he means Jews?" I asked.
"Of course!" he said. "What is lizard? What is amphibian? It is a pile of rubbish. Why he's using those terminologies such as lizards? This vile language. Vile bullshit. I'm totally, culturally shocked."
"So," continued the chair, "what are we going to do about this?"
Wheels had already been set in motion. The Canadian hate crimes unit had been alerted. So had the media. The coalition had also written to the former Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney, to inform him that David Icke was accusing him of being a reptilian, child- sacrificing paedophile. But so far, to the coalition's bafflement, Mulroney had declined to initiate legal action. Indeed, every individual accused of reptilian paedophilia by David Icke had so far failed to sue, including Bob Hope, George Bush, George Bush Jr, Ted Heath, the Rothschild family, Boxcar Willie, the Queen of England, the Queen Mother, Prince Philip, Kris Kristofferson, Al Gore and the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group.
"Why do you think that is?" David Icke had asked me when I interviewed him about this matter in London. Then he turned to my notepad and thundered, "Come on, Ted Heath! Sue me if you've got nothing to hide! Come on, George Bush! I'm ready! Sue me! I'm naming names! Come on, Jon? Why are they refusing to sue me?"
There was a silence. "Because they are twelve-foot lizards?" I suggested, smally.
"Yes!" said David. "Exactly!"
"Keep in mind that this is not a meeting to debate what David Icke stands for," announced the chair back in Vancouver. "This is a meeting for people who are opposed to David Icke's presence in the community. I would like to know if any people here consider themselves supporters of David Icke?"
There was a silence. "I . . . uh . . . haven't made up my mind yet," said a man in a beige jacket whom nobody recognised. "I don't know what David Icke stands for. I have been fighting Nazis for 20 years, but sometimes it is difficult to tell who the Nazis are."
This man was unshaven. His blond hair was long and lank. Anti-racists shared quiet glances. Strictly speaking, this man had - by failing to have made up his mind - contravened the stated rule. This meeting was for people who had made up their minds. But the tacit consensus was not, at this stage, to demand his removal from the room.
"David Icke is opposed to community values," explained the chair patiently. "The purpose of this meeting is to organise against David Icke. If that is not your purpose, you might want to reconsider whether this is a meeting you want to be at."
A beat allowed this thought to linger, and then the subject was changed. "He's clearly out to act as a conduit to the patriot movement," said Tony from the British Columbia Socialist Caucus, "the far-right anti-Semitic racist militia movement."
It was at this moment that the stranger in the beige jacket made a startling announcement. "I have been in the militia movement of the United States for four years," he said, "and I only ever met one racist there."
The action that followed this declaration was swift. "I think at this point it may be unproductive if you continue to remain in the room," said the chair.
The militiaman looked shaken by this rapid response. "If you . . . uh . . . want to rule me out, fine," he stammered, "but I just wanted to see if I could do anything to help."
"I think that people are uncomfortable with you sitting at the meeting."
"I came to hear what David Icke was about and whether I could help," he said. "Could I just ask two questions?"
"But this isn't a debate," smiled the chair.
"Okay. Okay. I'll go. But could I just ask . . ."
"Please, no."
"I'm gone," he said. "I'm gone." Then he left.
A break was called. In the car park, informal suggestions were thrown around over cigarettes by the younger and more rebellious activists. Someone offered to launch a physical attack on David Icke at his hotel. I suspected a giant misunderstanding was in danger of spiralling out of control. Knowing what I did about David Icke's past - specifically, his startling announcement on the Terry Wogan chatshow on BBC1 in 1991 that he was the Son of God - I guessed that when he said that 12ft lizards secretly ruled the world, he really was referring to lizards. But what did I know? The code words did seem to be increasingly abstruse. I elected to remain an impartial observer to the unfolding events in Vancouver in the hope that some clarity might develop in the days ahead.
Wogan. The blue comedian Jim Davidson was top of the bill that night (this was primetime BBC1, in the autumn of 1991), but most of the viewers had tuned in to see Terry Wogan's first guest. There had been rumours in the tabloids all week that something unexpected had happened to David Icke, the popular BBC sports personality, once a professional football player, now the host of Grandstand and a household name. The tabloids said that David Icke had started wearing only turquoise, that he was predicting cataclysmic flooding and earthquakes - and that he was claiming to be the Son of God.
I had watched a videotape of this broadcast before leaving London for Vancouver. It was startling to see how David Icke looked, how haggard and exhausted and terribly nervous - so unlike the genial BBC soccer and snooker correspondent whom the British public had come to feel so comfortable with - and dressed from head to toe in a turquoise shellsuit (turquoise being a conduit of positive energy) as he stepped out on to the stage.
"Why you?" asked Wogan with an incredulity that reflected the mood of the land. "Why have you been chosen?"
"People would have said the same thing to Jesus," David Icke replied. "Who the heck are you? You're a carpenter's son."
"When might we expect tidal waves, eruptions and earthquakes?" asked Wogan.
"They will certainly happen this year," said David.
This conversation took place amid howls of laughter from the studio audience.
"Why should we believe you?" said Wogan.
"I'm saying that these things are going to happen this year," said David, "so we'll see, won't we?"
"And what will happen to you if they don't happen?" asked Wogan.
"They will happen," said David.
He said this with such ferocity, such conviction, that the audience stopped laughing for a moment. However wise and modern we are, this kind of thing can still shake us up. You could feel it sweep across the television studio, sweep across the land, a stirring of some primordial paranoia. Could David Icke actually be a soothsayer? At that moment, I think the nation looked to Terry Wogan for guidance. How would he respond? Which way would this go?
"The best way of removing negativity is to laugh and be joyous, Terry," said David. "So I'm glad that there's been so much laughter in the audience tonight." There was a small silence.
"But they're laughing at you," said Wogan. "They're not laughing with you."
There was a gasp, followed by rapturous applause. So the Canadian coalition was unaware of the moment that David Icke's career had crashed so dramatically in Britain. Had they known, would they have felt differently about the reasons why he said that giant lizards secretly ruled the world? Furthermore, the coalition seemed to have disregarded the fact that many of the lizard-people Icke had publicly named and shamed were not Jewish. There was a piece of compelling evidence that David Icke did mean Jews when he said lizards. Buried somewhere in the middle of his hundreds of thousands of published words is a short paean to the Protocols of Zion - the absurd 19th- century Tsarist forgery proclaiming to be the minutes of a meeting of the Jewish secret rulers of the world: "Protocol 9: The weapons in our hands are limitless ambition, burning greediness, merciless vengeance, hatred and malice. It is from us that all-engulfing terror proceeds . . . We will not give [the people of the world] peace until they openly acknowledge our international Super-Government."
It is incredible that this document, which portrays my people as cackling villains from a Saturday matinee, formed the template for contemporary anti-Semitism. It is so obviously a fake. Even if some of us do possess "limitless ambition, burning greediness, merciless vengeance, hatred and malice" (and I know I do), we'd never come right out and admit it to our peer group. There are appearances to uphold.
But then, David Icke has declared that the Protocols of Zion is evidence not of a Jewish plot, but of a reptilian plot of Illuminati lizards. And nobody would be concerned about David Icke if it wasn't for the fact that his career is now a global sensation; that he lectures to packed houses all over the world, riveting his audiences for six hours at a time with extraordinary revelations; and that pop stars and movie stars request private audiences, with both PW Botha and Winnie Mandela happy to associate themselves with him. Indeed, in terms of the size of his following, he is the most influential racist on the lecture circuit - if, that is, he is a racist.
The airport. Two Canadian immigration officers discreetly scanned the queue at passport control. They were holding clipboards. One turned to the other and murmured, "That's him."
Although David Icke had overheard this exchange, and was preparing himself for the worst, he feigned breezy innocence by humming Que Sera Sera. He looked different now. The turquoise was long gone. He wore a comfortable sweater. His eyes were messianic-blue, and his grey hair was guru-long. There was little ridicule in his life now. "Good evening!" he sang, handing over his passport. It was swiped through the scanner, and two words immediately appeared on the screen: "Watch for." At this, David Icke's composure was shattered. "So this is life in the free world?" he boomed. "It's pathetic! Simply pathetic!"
He was quickly bustled towards a holding room, protesting his innocence along the way. "I am not an anti-Semite! I have a great respect for the Jewish people. Is this a Jewish plot? No, no, no!"
The authorities eyed him with some distrust. When David Icke said he didn't believe it to be a Jewish plot, was this code? Did he really mean that he did believe it to be a Jewish plot? What, exactly, was he thinking?
I was, of course, not there to witness what happened to David Icke inside the holding room. But from his own description of the events relayed to me later, I have attempted to piece the scene together. A man in rubber gloves scattered the contents of his baggage across a table - his clothes and toiletries and reading matter - and began to scrutinise them for some tangible evidence of anti-Semitism.
"Yes." clarified David Icke, "the families in positions of great financial power obsessively interbreed with each other. But I'm not talking about one earth race, Jewish or non-Jewish. I'm talking about a genetic network that operates through all races, this bloodline being a fusion of human and reptilian genes." He threw up his hands. "And now, suddenly, the idea is that I'm saying it is a gigantic Jewish plot. But let me make myself clear - this does not in any way relate to an earth race."
David Icke's line of defence was clear. When he said lizards, he really was referring to lizards. He was not talking about cockroaches, or amphibians in general, contrary to the suggestions mooted at the meeting in Vancouver, but Annunaki lizards, specifically, from the lower fourth dimension.
The immigration officers glanced at each other, attempting to square this denial with the memo they had received from a coalition of respectable and trustworthy anti-racist groups, accusing David Icke of anti-Semitism. Finally, after four hours of questioning, they concluded that when David Icke said lizards, lizards was what he meant. He was free to enter the country. There was no law against this. How could the lawmakers anticipate that sort of thing?
David Icke shook hands with the immigration officers, collected his things and wandered outside to the concourse, where his entourage was waiting in a car to pick him up. It was 2am.
"It is certainly not a misunderstanding," said David, as we were chauffeured from the airport to the hotel. "They are assassinating my character."
"But why would they want to do that?" I asked.
"Because I am getting too close to the truth." He looked out of the window. "I miss my little boy," he said. "I cannot tell you the agony of being away from my little boy. But you've got to keep walking and talking."
We reached the hotel, checked in, retired to our rooms for showers, and met again in the foyer. David was jetlagged and downcast. "Would I want to do other things with my life, something other than all this frigging travelling? God, yes."
"What would you be doing if you weren't doing this?" I asked him.
"Something related to sport," he said. "I still love sport."
"I guess you've burnt your bridges with the BBC," I said.
"Oh, I'd never go back to that." he said. "The thought of presenting the same programme day after day, year after year. I think I'd have taken the pill by now. But do I want to go around radio station after radio station, book signing after book signing, interview after interview? No."
We had breakfast and then we walked the three blocks to the studio of AM 1040 Radio One, where David was booked for a celebrity appearance on the morning show. David was now more alert and cheerful. Smiling, he entered reception. We were greeted by the station manager, a small man wearing glasses and a friendly striped jumper.
"Hi!" David smiled, extending his hand. "David Icke. I'm due to be on a programme at 10.15."
"Okay," said the station manager. He coughed. "I've reviewed the material that was submitted to us, and I've also reviewed the radio regulations of 1986 . . ."
"I don't believe this," murmured David.
"And I don't feel comfortable having you on."
"Why?"
"I just don't feel comfortable. That's it. Thanks for coming in." The station manager clapped his hands together. "Thanks very much."
"You invited me to your radio station," said David patiently. "I turned up on time, and now you stand here and say without any substance or explanation that you're not having me on?"
"Thanks for coming in," said the station manager.
"You know what?" said David, leaning across the reception desk. Their faces were now inches apart. "It's pathetic. You say you believe in freedom? You couldn't spell it."
He turned to me. "This," he said, pointing at the station manager, "is one of the architects, unknowingly, of the destruction of our freedom."
"You did say you were sick of doing radio interviews," I offered.
"That's not the point," said David. "The information is being suppressed by unknowing, frightened little men like him."
"Oh, thanks," said the station manager.
"This is unbelievable," said David. He was now addressing my notepad. "Oh no, there's no conspiracy, no cover-up, no suppression, ladies and gentlemen of the world."
"Please leave," said the station manager.
That night, at Rosie's Bar in downtown Vancouver, David and some of his entourage drank mournfully until closing time. Word had just reached them that another media interview and a personal appearance in a bookshop had been successfully prevented by the coalition. There was only so much to be gained from being the maligned victim, the speaker of truth in a venal world. This was now becoming a serious problem. Book sales were at risk.
David's entourage attempted to buoy him up. "At least this blows the myth of a free media in Vancouver," said a quiet, bearded Austrian called Henrick. "Clarity is good, right? At least this clarifies things."
"Yeah," said David, wearily.
I could not determine how Henrick fitted into the Icke camp. He just seemed to be there all the time, one of perhaps a dozen men and women in Vancouver who drove for David, picked up the hotel and restaurant bills, took him aside to whisper things that I couldn't hear, transported the books and the videos, organised the media engagements, kept the cottage industry rolling.
But the most surprising presence within David's entourage was that of Brian Selby, a veteran local journalist from the left and a one-time prominent Greenpeace activist. (The coalition was mystified by Brian's apparent defection to the far right. It had been the subject of much debate during their anti-Icke meeting.)
"I've been in this town 15 years," said Brian, "and I've gotta say that this is the most twisted political cluster-fuck I've ever seen. You've got the weirdest coalition. You've got the draconian powers of the Canadian Jewish congress. Then you've got people with a history of being progressive. The Seattle protesters . . ."
"Nobody does all this against one person unless there's something much bigger going on behind the scenes," added David.
"You've got to have a lot of power to call up a radio station and get the plug pulled on a show," agreed Brian.
"They're sending us a message. They're saying, 'Don't fuck with us now or forever more.'"
There was a silence. "Who is pulling the strings?" said David.
After David went to bed, Brian and Henrick elected to take matters into their own hands. "We need to defuse this whole concept that David Icke is an anti-Semite," said Brian.
"But how?" I asked.
Brian said he still had some friends inside the anti-Icke camp from his days as a leftist activist. He would use his contacts to initiate a meeting. But how to convince them of David's innocence?
Here, Brian and Henrick fundamentally disagreed. Henrick argued that the coalition needed to understand that David Icke's lizard claims were "politically relevant" (the lizards being the hidden hand behind corporate globalisation) and that they had a "factual core" (there was much talk here of archaeological evidence linking ancient cultures with reptilian invaders).
Brian, however, wanted to keep the lizards out of it all together. "I mean it," he said, severely. "Don't mention the lizards. The lizards just confuse things. Jon?"
"The lizards muddy the waters," I agreed.
"Okay," murmured Henrick, sullenly.
"So what's your argument?" I asked Brian.
"Two words," he said. "Noam Chomsky."
"The Jewish intellectual?" I asked.
"David, at his most controversial," explained Brian, "is saying nothing that Noam Chomsky hasn't himself written regarding, for example, powerful Zionists." He paused. "What do you think?"
"It isn't unconvincing," I said.
"This is open and shut," said Brian. "Chomsky is the darling of the left. There's no way they can argue with that. Do you reckon?"
I shrugged. "It will be interesting to see how they might argue with that," I said.
The next evening, Brian and Henrick and I met Sam, the coalition's unofficial organiser, on neutral ground at a downtown bar. The stakes were high. More media interviews had been prevented by the coalition. Furthermore, the anti-racists seemed to be on the verge of convincing the Canadian hate crimes unit that Icke's books should be seized and literally incinerated, and Icke himself deported.
"Hello, Brian,"nodded Sam, formally.
"Sam," nodded Brian. "This is Henrick."
Henrick nodded formally.
"Jon," nodded Sam.
"I'm just here as an impartial observer," I said. "I'm just going to sit here."
"Okay," agreed the two camps.
The formalities were over and the discussion began.
"So," said Sam, "you say that Icke is not an anti-Semite." Brian held up his finger to say "wait a minute" and he rifled through his briefcase. He retrieved a sheaf of photocopies, which contained the writings of Noam Chomsky. Brian had marked passages that convincingly reflected his thesis - that David Icke was no more anti-Semitic than this respected Jewish scholar.
Sam studied the photocopies. He nodded thoughtfully. "This might be true to an extent," he finally agreed. "But there is a very big difference between Noam Chomsky saying it and David Icke saying it."
"Which is?" asked Brian, his eyes narrowing.
"Well, firstly," said Sam, "Noam Chomsky is Jewish. Secondly, Noam Chomsky is not mad. Thirdly, Noam Chomsky is, in fact, an intellectual. And, finally, Noam Chomsky is not an anti-Semite."
Henrick shuffled uneasily in his chair. He clearly felt that Brian's modus operandi was falling apart before their eyes. Yes, Henrick had promised to leave the lizards out of the discussion, but these were desperate times, and they called for desperate measures.
Henrick shot me a glance. "Go for it," I mouthed.
"There is full documentation," announced Henrick, which proves that 20 reptilian races have interfaced, intermingled and interbred with the human race, and are now controlling society from above."
Brian stared daggers at Henrick.
"Twenty?" said Sam, leaning forward.
"Approximately 20," said Henrick. "Certainly it is somewhere between 15 and 25."
"Have you got the names of these reptilian races?" asked Sam, producing a notepad from his bag.
"Yes, I have," said Henrick, obviously pleased that Sam was showing an interest. "Okay. Firstly: Grays."
Sam wrote down Grays.
"Next there are the Adopted Grays."
Sam wrote it down.
"Then there are the Troglodytes."
"They're the ones who live in caves, right?" said Sam.
"In caves," confirmed Henrick. "Then there are the Crinklies."
"What do the Crinklies look like?" asked Sam.
"They are cuddly, pink, with old-looking faces," said Henrick.
"Can I just point out," interrupted Brian, sharply, "this Chomsky passage regarding the oppressive subtext of the Talmud . . ."
"Then there are the Tall Blondes," said Henrick.
"What do they look like?" asked Sam.
"Kind of like Swedes," said Henrick. "Next come the Tall Robots."
"They're the ones covered in aluminium foil, right?"
"Right," said Henrick. "Then there are the Annunaki."
"The Annunaki," said Sam. "They're the ones David Icke goes on about the most."
"Exactly," said Henrick. "George Bush is Annunaki."
Sam excused himself so he could step outside for a cigarette. He returned to discover that Henrick had taken the opportunity to grab his notepad and add further names of reptilian races to the list.
"The Elderbarians," he had written. "These are the crop-circle makers. The Zebra Repticular. The Albarians. The Interdimensional Sasquatch. The Goat Sucker or Goat Eater often found in Mexico."
"Is there friction between these alien races?" asked Sam.
"Yes," said Henrick. "Constant friction."
"Do they actually fight each other?" asked Sam.
"Yes," said Henrick. "They are constantly battling for control of the 15 dimensional portals. One is in Jerusalem. One is in Tibet. Nobody knows where the other 13 are."
"This," said Sam. "is a very interesting conversation."
"That was very weird," said Sam to me after Brian and Henrick had gone home.
"It was weird," I agreed. "You know, I've been trying to keep an open mind, but now I'm pretty certain that David Icke really does mean lizards when he says lizards."
But the anti-racists were still not convinced. "It's the hidden reptilian hand of Judaism coming to take over the world," said a coalition member called Richard Warman. "It's all about dehumanising your enemies. How do we make Jews despicable, sub-human, and worthy of our condemnation? So, yes, I still believe that when David Icke says lizards he means Jews."
It looked as if things could get no worse for David Icke. His supporters had pulled out all the stops to dampen hostility towards him, but even Henrick's intricate lizard dissertation had failed to convince Sam that David was not an anti-Semite. Now he was a martyr. His fans started approaching him on the street, shaking his hand, sometimes even breaking into spontaneous rounds of applause, offering words of support.
"It's so terrible what those awful Jewish people are doing to you," said one old lady.
"Little me!" David put his hand on his heart. "This 'nutter', as they call me. If I'm mad like they say I am, why don't they leave me alone? But ever since I started exposing the reptilian elite, the opposite has happened. Why is that?"
"The Jews are drawing their own parallels," suggested one fan. "Nothing that you have ever said could in any way be construed as anti-Semitism. They're just paranoid. It's not true. You are not an anti-Semite."
"Jewish people have suffered as much if not more from this global manipulation as anyone else," agreed David. "Far from being the perpetuators of it, they are massive victims of it. And, in terms of racism, my own daughter's boyfriend is himself black."
"You've changed my life," said another fan. "I used to be a sheep, I used to be like them, but you've changed my life."
On Thursday, the anti-Icke camp suffered a public humiliation. VTV, Vancouver's popular local television station, decided to ignore the coalition's request to cancel David's scheduled TV appearance. Instead, it put him on live - head to head with an eminent local psychology professor called Bill Bierstein:
Host: "Professor, why do you think Mr Icke has such a following when a lot of people would think his ideas are out of this world?"
David (turning furiously to host): "What research have you done on that? Nothing! Nothing! Nonsense!"
Professor: "People like to enchant themselves. They want there to be grand conspiracies by superpowerful beings, rather than just a bunch of mistakes made by decent people . . ."
David: "Professor!(To host) Is he going to go on forever?"
Host: "Let's get Mr Icke to respond to that."
David: "Professor, did you major in patronising the people of British Columbia?"
Professor: "Well, there's no need for insulting comments."
David: "Okay, tell me about the Bilderberg Group."
Host (interrupting): "Let's talk about why . . ."
David (thunderously): "Don't tell me what I'm going to say. Tell me about the Bilderberg Group!"
Host (listening anxiously into her earpiece): "Mr Icke, we don't want to talk about that right now. Let's talk about . . ."
David (a knowing smile): "I'm sure you don't!"
Host: "Why are Jewish groups calling you anti-Semitic?"
David: "Because I'm getting too close to the truth."
Professor (laughing): "Don't get into these convoluted paranoid fantasies that people are trying to shut you up . . ."
This was, under the circumstances, the wrong thing to say. David could be accused of many things, but fantasising that he was being censored was not one of them. David smiled a little, and then he went in for the kill.
David: "I have had three major interviews pulled this week. I've had book signings cancelled. You wanna read the papers a bit more, mate! There Are Lizards And There Are Lizards."
The Professor faltered. Professor: "Well, uh, if you have nothing better to do than to insult me, then I'm sorry for your process of thought . . ."
But it was over. The professor had blown it. In the days that followed this TV debate, some of the coalition began privately admitting to me that the whole thing was beginning to backfire. David Icke's fans were not, by and large, anti-Semites. It was more alarming than that. They were, in fact, the coalition's core constituents - liberals and anti-racists and left-wingers concerned with the perils of global capitalism. These people were beginning to look upon the coalition as the villains, as the hidden hand, as "them".
...
"Having visions," agreed Rob from Anti-Racist Action. "The nutcase stuff," said Sam. "Do we want to hang him on that?"
But the others argued forcibly that the coalition should avoid these areas. "We're not here to do a psychological analysis on him," said a woman called Julia. "Just leave it. Let's leave it."
When three representatives of the coalition appeared on a radio phone- in show to drum up support for a mass protest against David Icke, they received a volley of antagonistic questions. Why were they obsessed with denying freedom of speech to someone who clearly wasn't an anti-Semite? Who was really behind the coalition? What were they hiding? And so on.
The coalition hastily convened a meeting at a downtown coffee bar to discuss new tactics. Sam suggested producing a press release announcing that David Icke was suffering from some form of mental illness. "To me, he sounds schizophrenic," he said. "Hearing voices."
But as the evening wore on, the gathering began to seem more like a postmortem than a strategy meeting. A young activist called Ali said that she felt she had pinpointed the coalition's tactical error: they had made young people feel stupid. "Young people are seeing this big task before them," explained Ali, "trying to combat economic global corporatisation. And a lot of them have read David Icke and thought, 'Hey! He's on our side. I'm looking for answers and he seems to have them.' And we've made them feel stupid, like they've done something bad by getting sucked in." Ali paused. "And now theyÍre saying to us, 'Don't tell me IÍm stupid!Í What we should have said to them was, ïYouÍre not stupid. We understand why you thought he was okay.'But we didn't. And now they think we think theyÍre stupid."
The next morning, the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith - the most powerful and respected groups within the anti-racist alliance - cut their losses. They telephoned Sam to say they were withdrawing their support from the coalition. This was a tremendous blow. Now, the only people left battling Icke were Sam and his young friends from Anti-Racist Action. On Friday night, these tatters of the opposition met at the Havana Bar on Commercial Drive. It was a melancholy occasion.
"I guess it's over," I said.
There was a silence.
"No!" said Michael. "It isn't over."
Michael is young and handsome. He had been pepper-sprayed in Seattle and trampled by Mounties in Vancouver. You could still smell the pepper spray on his bandana. "Thousands and thousands of people," said Michael, "went down to Seattle, risked their lives to try and address the problems created by the evolution of global capitalism, and now this pompous wingnut, this buffoon has flounced into town . . ."
Michael didn't need to finish his sentence. We knew. David Icke had flounced into town with his lizard thesis on the dangers of international capitalism, and he was cleaning up, winning the hearts of those Michael himself had hoped to convert by serious debate about global economics, swiftly followed by some kind of direct action. Rational thought was being vanquished, and the lizards were winning. "He can discredit the whole movement," said Michael. "I can see the World Trade Organisation saying, 'If you oppose us, youÍre just scared of some . . . some . . . lizard conspiracy.' And that's the most scary thing to me."
I think that, in David Icke, Michael was seeing an omen of the blackest kind. He was seeing the future of thought itself: a time when irrational thought would sweep the land, much as racism had done the previous century, when Washington DC was a blaze of white, the white of a million Ku-Klux Klansmen marching past a Klan-friendly White House and a Klan-friendly Capitol Hill.
Then Michael said, "This ridiculous guru has blinded the people of Vancouver, and there's only one thing for it."
"Which is what?" I asked.
"Icke needs his pomposity pricked in public," said Michael. "He needs to be humiliated, disgraced, he needs to become a laughing stock. Only then will his followers see him for what he is - a self- important, humourless clown."
And, as we sat on the terrace of the Havana Bar, Michael understood how he could make that happen.
It was Saturday morning at Michael's house. Michael and Sam and a few of their friends were making the final preparations for today's physical assault on David Icke.
"Are you nervous?" I asked them.
"I'm getting butterflies," said a woman called Linda. "It's exciting. I just hope no militia wingnut acts in a hostile way."
"Oh, it'll be just new-age flakes there," said Michael.
"No it won't," said Linda. "Just look at Mr Militiaman who turned up at the meeting last week. He was dangerous."
"The point is," agreed Tony, "if someone is unstable enough to believe that lizards run the world, God knows what they might do to us."
The plan was this: at 2pm, David Icke was scheduled to make a personal appearance at Granville Books in the centre of town.
Sam and Linda would arrive first to create a distraction.
"Some chanting," said Sam.
"Any kind of confusion," said Michael. "And then IÍll just run in, get to the front of the queue, and smack the meringue pie right into IckeÍs face!"
"Excellent!" said Sam.
"A flaky pie for a flaky guy!" said Michael.
The anti-racists envisaged a devastating result. The mask would slip the moment Icke's face was publicly splattered with meringue. His self-importance would blow up into the most hilarious tantrum, and he would be seen for the pompous fool he was.
"We're going to ridicule the idiot," said Michael. "Are we ready, my fellow les entartiers? Let's go . . ."
At 1pm David Icke and I walked the three blocks from the Rosedale Hotel to Granville Books. I was feeling terrible about my passive role in the impending pie attack. I believed that Michael was correct in his analysis of how David would respond to this public humiliation. But I had decided to remain an impartial observer, and so I gave him no clue as to what was about to happen. David was in high spirits. He started reminiscing about the events of the early 90s, the bad days that followed his appearance on the Wogan show. "You know," he said, "one of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into 'Icke's a nutter'. I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule."
David carried on walking and talking. "You have to keep walking and talking," he said. In the aftermath of the Wogan show, David told me, he had exiled himself from Britain. He took to travelling in the US and South Africa - countries that knew nothing about his predictions of cataclysmic flooding. Their failure to materialise had damaged his credibility in Britain even further. Nonetheless, he began to blame the media for the ridicule he suffered at the hands of the general public.
"Yes, I said some pretty astonishing things back then," he explained, "but the media still managed to massively exaggerate them. And what I realised, with all the laughter and all the ridicule, was just how easy it is to get vast numbers of people to believe anything. You just have to print it in enough newspapers. So I started to look into who was in a position to orchestrate this kind of global manipulation. And that's how I learnt about the Bilderberg Group."
David became an avid reader of Big Jim Tucker and his magazine, the Spotlight. Blaming the global elitists, in part, for scheming the assault against him in the British media, he researched and wrote two books about the spiderÍs web of secret societies that controlled the planet. He wrote that the global elite are hopelessly drawn to strange rituals, that they run around in robes and burn giant wicker owls at a secret summer camp called Bohemian Grove in the forests north of San Francisco. Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller are rumoured to be among the berobed.
David came to believe that the global elite were not just stealthily influencing free-trade legislation so as to ease the way for complete global domination; they also operated, out of the White House, a harem of kidnapped and hypnotised underage sex slaves.
Shocked by his findings, he looked to ancient times, hoping to find some validating evidence. He discovered primitive cultures that had carved effigies of lizard-men descending from the skies. He put two and two together. This was the key. The reptilian invaders were the secret rulers of the world. Now he was ready to publish.
It was a hit. His career went into turn around. He was invited to speak all over the world. "And, you see," said David, "it all turned out all right. Now my children can hold up their heads and say, 'That's my dad. You laughed at him. But look at him now.'" Granville Books was packed with fans and TV crews and journalists. "Nobody's going to travel miles and hours just to come and see an anti-Semitic madman," suggested a fan to me. "Whatever Mr David Icke has to say is more than fascinating."
David's entrance was greeted with whoops and applause. "You are one of the great thinkers of truth!" yelled a lady from the back.
"Hooray!" responded the crowd.
"Thank you," said David. "Once we free our souls, the hierarchies of all religions, the Muslim hierarchy, the Jewish hierarchy - I call them 'OppoSames' - can't touch us." This statement was greeted with cheers and spontaneous applause, and autographs were signed.
It was 30 minutes later that Sam and Linda entered the shop to create their distraction. They noisily elbowed their way into the middle of the crowd.
"Tell us why you're against Jews!" yelled Sam, the television cameras now on him. "Tell us about the Protocols of Zion."
"Don't care!" screamed the supporters. "Don't care! Get out of here!"
Two old ladies grabbed Sam and pushed him - with unexpected savagery - against a display of new-age literature.
"Out!" they chanted with ferocity. "Out! Out! Out! You're not welcome! Get out!" Michael slipped into the shop. His face was hidden by a scarf, his pie buried beneath his trenchcoat. He noticed me and he winked.
I looked away.
Michael quietly walked towards the front. ïOut! Out! Out! . . ."
Fans and TV crews blocked his path. He hesitated for a moment. But then, miraculously, a gap appeared, a window of opportunity. Michael opened his coat, retrieved his pie, and took aim. The meringue pie flew through the air. It lightly brushed DavidÍs sleeve and continued its journey. It splattered, with a devastating thud, all over the childrenÍs book section.
"Well," murmured David, brushing the pastry flakes from his jacket, "that massively backfired."
"We're just booksellers,'" said the store manager softly. "You're wrecking the store."
"Shame," said some old ladies. There were sad tuts of disapproval.
The manager produced a sponge and began gently to clean the children's books. "Please leave," he said.
And, as the anti-racists slipped quietly away, a few members of David's entourage grinned behind their hands. Later, over dinner, I heard one of them murmur, "Well, the fat Jews fucked up."
David didn't hear this comment. When they saw that I had, they blushed and fell silent and said nothing like it again
© Jon Ronson, 2001. This is an edited extract from Them: Adventures With Extremists, by Jon Ronson, to be published on April 6 by Picador, at £16. Jon Ronson's four-part television series, The Secret Rulers Of The World, begins on Channel 4 in May.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND THE WTC DISASTER
IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE FORCE BEHIND THE U.S. ATROCITIES
JUST ASK:
WHO BENEFITS?
"Nothing would be what it is, Because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise -what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" - Alice in Wonderland. By David Icke
The force that seeks to control this world and introduce its global fascist state, the network I call the Illuminati, is nothing if not predictable.
The unbelievable horror perpetrated on the cities of New York and Washington is a problem-reaction-solution sting on the collective mind of all humanity and I have been expecting an event of this magnitude for some years. I thought it could be a war or a nuclear "terrorist" device, but something fantastic was always going to happen during the years of the Bush presidency when, as I wrote on inauguration day, the agenda would be pressed forward with a gathering pace.
Fast as the world was being moved towards global centralised fascism, it was still not fast enough to match the timescale demanded by the Illuminati agenda. And the opposition to their globalisation plans and their assaults on freedom, was gathering by the day. It was clear that something of enormous magnitude was being orchestrated that would so devastate the collective human mind with fear, horror, and insecurity, that "solutions" could be offered that would advance the agenda in a colossal leap almost overnight. This is what we saw in America on the ritually-significant eleventh day of the ninth month - 911 is the number for emergencies in the United States. Ritual and esoteric codes are at the heart of everything the Illuminati undertakes.
And, mind-numbing as these atrocities are, this is the start, not the end, of the next cycle of the Illuminati agenda for the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical imprisonment of humankind. More and more death and destruction will unfold as the "Free World" unites as an (in affect) world army and world government to use the threat of "terrorism" (their own) to justify a war against the people and countries they choose to take the rap for what the very forces WITHIN the "free world" are themselves responsible for. Even war with the Islamic peoples is not the end, but the means to an end - a conflict with the remaining forces of communism, which they also control. Remember that the Illuminati operate through every country and within "terrorist" organisations and those agencies which "oppose" such terrorism. Only by having agents within all "sides" can they be sure of controlling the game and knowing the outcome before it starts. The Illuminati have operatives within the Islamic world, just as they have them in the so-called "free world", as we shall see in the months to come. Saddam Hussein is every bit as much a knowing Illuminati pawn as Father George and Boy George Bush in America, for example (seeAnd The Truth Shall Set You Free).
The predictability of the ritualistic, emotionless, reptilian mind can be seen in the news management that has followed this U.S. disaster. Look at what always happens in these circumstances and you will see that the blueprint is the same in almost every case. Before the event happens the fall-guy or "patsy" is already set up to take the blame, thus steering the public mind away from dangerous speculation and onto a pre-ordained target. After the Kennedy assassination it was Lee Harvey Oswald; after Oklahoma it was Timothy McVeigh; now it is Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden, deeply misguided as he may be, is no more responsible for what happened this week than I am. His name was introduced with the most obvious co-ordination immediately after the disaster unfolded in the same way that the background to Lee Harvey Oswald was being circulated BEFORE President Kennedy was even dead.
The idea that this guy from the mountains of Afghanistan with far more mouth than substance could be the "Mr. Big" of this enormous operation is utterly insulting to anyone of even basic intelligence (see the article by journalist Robert Fisk, who has met him). We are not talking a parcel bomb here, nor even some mind-controlled fanatic driving a car bomb into a restaurant in Jerusalem. Four commercial airliners had to be simultaneously hi-jacked in American air space via American airports and flown into highly specific targets within 45 minutes of each other. How was this possible? Because it was an inside job, that's how, orchestrated by forces WITHIN the United States and planned by the highest levels of U.S. "Intelligence" in co- ordination with other strands of the Illuminati spider's web worldwide.
With an army now of mind-controlled assets at their disposal, it is possible to get them to do anything they require once the mind is programmed and the trigger given to activate them. Those responsible for hi-jacking those planes and flying them into buildings will, in their conscious mind, have believed in the "cause" they were programmed to believe in. But in truth they were not hi-jacking and flying those planes, their programming was. Mind control is now so sophisticated that such programming is almost child's play.
This terror was not a failure of U.S. Intelligence for God's sake. They were not supposed to uncover the plot and getting weapons onto planes is so much easier if you have support from those who control the system. I have heard that this is another "Pearl Harbor" and yes it is. You can read in ..And The Truth Shall Set You Free and other books and studies how the American government knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, but they did nothing about it. Why? Because they wanted it to happen for a specific reason - to justify the U.S. entry into the Second World War, which President Roosevelt (a blood relative of the Bushes) had said, just to get elected, that America would not be involved in. Problem-reaction-solution - and it's the same with the terrible events of this week. (Press here for an explanation of Problem-Reaction-Solution (PRS) if you are new to this technique).
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the "pin it on bin Laden" campaign was launched as per pre-arranged plan. The Republican Senator and Illuminati stooge, Orrin Hatch, for example, told CNN that he had high-level information from the FBI that bin Laden was behind the unprecedented attacks. "I do have some information," Hatch said in reference to his FBI briefing. "They've come to the conclusion that this looks like it may be the signature of Osama bin Laden, that he may be the one behind this." It's OK, don't go on, Orrin, we get the message and you have done your job.
Then we had the story of the hire car found so conveniently at Boston airport, where two planes were hijacked, which containedyeswait for ita copy of the Koran and an instruction video for how to fly commercial jets!!! Am I in fairyland or what? I am surprised they did not claim to have discovered a letter from bin Laden in the car wishing the occupants the best of luck with their task. Maybe they plan to "find" that tomorrow, eh? It's unbelievable nonsense, of course it is, but most will believe it. And you will see more and more manufactured "evidence" of the "bin Laden connection" systematically revealed in the days and weeks ahead.
So, the question: Who benefits? Well, the Illuminati want a world government and army, a world currency and centralised global financial dictatorship and control. They want micro-chipped people and a society based on constant surveillance of all kinds at all times. And they want a frightened, docile, subservient, people who give their power away to the "authorities" who can save them from what they have been manipulated to fear.
Funnily enough the question "who benefits from these horrific events in America?" can be answered very simply: Anyone who wants to introduce the above. The disaster of 9-11, means that:
The Illuminati now have the excuse to retaliate against anyone their propaganda machine can manipulate the population to believe was to blame. Attacks against Islamic targets have the potential to be the trigger for massive conflict and upheaval across the world and especially in the Middle and Near East. The opportunities to then widen the conflict to involve Russia and China are endless. A third world war is part of the agenda and this can open the way for that as the dominoes fall.
The "free world united with America" rhetoric from Blair and other "world leaders" is code for coming together as a world army and police force to fight a "war against terrorism". Already the Bilderberg-controlled NATO (the world army in waiting) has pledged such support and the collective consciousness is being manipulated so comprehensively at this time that most people will support American and NATO terrorist attacks on unsubstantiated targets in the name of fighting terrorism. The stunning contradiction in this policy will be lost on the majority blinded by the blatant and intense mind manipulation that has followed the outrages in those U.S. cities.
As conflict escalates as a result of such calculated "retaliation" the pressure for centralisation of military power and the willingness to concede that power by the populations of America and elsewhere will gather until the world army is in place, a world army with the power to attack and take over any country that their propaganda machine can demonise.
The collective mind of humanity, and particularly that of America, is understandably now in a deeply traumatised state. They have been subjected to collective trauma-based mind control and, as any mind controller or researcher can tell you, a traumatised mind is a suggestible mind. So in the wake of the trauma comes the programming to manipulate the population to see events in the desired fashion.
One of the biggest potential obstacles to the "New World Order", the centrally-controlled fascist global state, is the psyche of most American people. When faced with the prospect of giving up their right of self-determination to global military, political, and financial control, most would be vehemently opposed once they realised what was happening. Their collective sense of security, confidence, and pride in their nation and system has been built on the foundations of immense military and financial strength. It is a collective version of the John Wayne mentality - "don't mess with us - this is America." From that has come their collective confidence in themselves as a nation. Now that very sense of who they are, and their belief that they have the power to stand alone, is in danger of being devastated.
It is absolutely no co-incidence that the targets of those hi-jacked planes were the very symbols of America's sense of itself and its own security - the Pentagon, symbol of their military might, and the World Trade Centre, twin pillars of their financial might. This is not primarily an attack on America, it is an attack on America's image and imagination of itself. Break their spirit and their sense of being "American"; break America's confidence in itself; put it in fear and fundamental insecurity; and you have overcome the most significant opposition to America allowing itself to be absorbed into the Illuminati's global and centrally-dictated society. The American psyche will now be bombarded with more and more shocks to its security and sense of self, as with Oklahoma and the school shootings in the past. But from now on everything will be increased dramatically. It is vital that Americans refuse to submit to this and realise that those who are condemning the terrorism in their midst are those who are responsible for it.
When I first travelled America in 1996, I was staggered at what a controlled society the "Land of the Free" really was (though still not as bad as Canada). Now in the wake of this tragedy, the United States, and other countries, are set to become a fortress of invasive surveillance and, what's more, because of what has happened, the American people will not utter a significant word of protest at the rapid expansion of this Big Brother society. Problem-reaction- solution. Watch for micro-chipping of people to be suggested to "stop the terrorists".
An economic disaster has long been predicted by those who have exposed and studied the Illuminati agenda. To overcome resistance to single currencies and central control of global finance, they need a world economic crash that will destroy the present system and kid the people into accepting centralised global control as the only way to overcome the crash. Problem-reaction-solution. This is another reason why these attacks struck in the very heart of America's economic system - and why in the days before the carnage the talk of a global economic recession was plastered across the world media. Now they have a blank sheet of paper with the chance to justify such a collapse and you will see global economic bodies brought in to "co- ordinate a response to the economic crisis". Indeed the G7 (Illuminati) grouping of nations has already begun this process.
These are just a few of the "benefits" to the agenda from the death and destruction in New York and Washington that was, I repeat, co- ordinated by forces within U.S. borders. Those responsible are possessed by non-human entities and have no regard for human life any more than most humans have regard for the death and suffering of cattle. The reptilian mind has an undeveloped emotional level and therefore there is no emotional consequence for them no matter to what depths of horror and depravity they may sink. You only had to watch the emotionless, going-through-the-motions, reading the script, responses of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, in the face of such immense suffering to see an example of this. It was in the class of the Queen of England after the murder of Princess Diana. At least Reagan was a professional actor. Bush and Blair wouldn't get in a school play.
Did George W. Bush know that these devastating disasters were going to happen that day? What do you think?? Did Tony Blair? What do you think?? But even they are only pawns in a game controlled by far greater powers and they are as expendable as anyone once they have served their purpose. Personally I would not be surprised in the least if Bush was sacrificed eventually to advance the "global terrorism" scenario, and perhaps someone very close to Blair also. And, of course, if Bush does go, the new President would be the serial killer, Dick Cheney (see The Biggest Secret). The stakes are going to be stacked very high indeed from this point because the final push to global fascism has begun.
The world will never be the same again, that's true, but within every danger there is opportunity. And for those of us, the vast majority, who seek peace not conflict, freedom-for-all, not dictatorship-by-the- few, now have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask what we are going to do to stop these lunatics from taking over their asylum.
Complaining is not good enough any more. Running is no longer an option because soon there will be nowhere to run. It is time to lift the arse (that's "ass" or "Bush" to Americans) from the chair and let's stop sitting down and taking this shit. People can bombard the radio phone-ins with another version of reality and when they cut you off get back again and again; tell everyone you know where they can get information to give them another fix on what is really happening; send this and other articles on these subjects to everyone you know through e-mail, fax, or post; organise PEACEFUL protests against the fascist state whenever freedoms are threatened; get people together at meetings to discuss and assimilate information the media will not tell you; LOSE FEAR AND BE IRREVERENT IN THE FACE OF THIS ARROGANT DICTATORSHIP. IT CAN ONLY SURVIVE IF WE ARE FRIGHTENED OF IT AND INTIMIDATED BY IT.
There is so much we can do if only we first decide that we want to dedicate our lives to this with an unbreakable determination that will not concede to any level of intimidation or consequences.
The Dragon is nothing like as powerful as they want us to believe it is.
Come on, what are we waiting for? - LET'S GO.
Remember:
NO FEAR!! David Icke