In recent days the acclaimed American writer Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has become embroiled in accusations of antisemitism following her promotion of a book by the British conspiracy theorist David Icke during an interview with the New York Times. Icke rose to fame – or infamy – in Britain during the early 1990s when he abandoned his career as a successful television sports presenter to become the self-styled “Son of the Godhead”, warning British TV and radio audiences of a secret cabal of lizard-people seeking to enslave humanity. Since then he has refined his allegations, claiming that the unnamed reptilian race emerged in the Middle East some 6000 years ago, exerting a malevolent influence over world history through the creation of the international banking system and the sponsorship of such individuals as the millionaire-turned-philanthropist and far-right hate-figure, George Soros.
Until recently David Icke had largely fallen into obscurity in the United Kingdom, initial sympathy for his obvious mental health problems in the 1990s turning to derision in the early 2000s as his stories of shape-shifting alien overlords became evermore deranged. However, every dog has its day, and the rise of the Brexit movement in the UK has given the ex-journalist a new lease of life. This started with a TV appearance on This Week, the leading BBC news and politics show, just before the referendum vote to leave the European Union in 2016, and has continued to the present day, with his elevation to the position of an expert on EU wrongdoing by the mainstream press in London, including the likes of the Daily Mail, the Daily Star and the Express.
Which makes the apparent outrage in the British news media at the supportive words of the novelist Alice Walker somewhat ironic given that UK journalists and editors have been giving a platform to David Icke and his outrageous fake histories and sly insinuations for the last two years.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
In fact, Icke’s appearance on This Week, if it had any purpose beyond public amusement, was probably intended as “black propaganda” against Brexit which may have backfired. As for his claims that ” the EU was ALWAYS designed as a centralised super-state with the ultimate aim of killing off traditional nation states”, that is the logical consequence of the EU’s aspirations to “an ever closer union”, unless the words are pure rhetoric. Even lizard-obsessed lunatics are sometimes right.
The media which prominently eatured Icke and the media which derided Walker’s support for him were rather different. If the likes of the Daily Mail, the Daily Star and the Express.are the equivalents of “the acclaimed American writer Alice Walker”, US literary taste is at an even lower level than I had thought.
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Soros is a hate figure due to costing many folks a lot of money (self included) on Black Friday. How far are Icke’s ideas from the Raelians?
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Do you mean Black Wednesday?
Soros didn’t cost anyone money then. He saw what was going to happen and made sure he made money out of it, The British government – and the people who went with them – lost money from a mixture of vanity and stupidity. The government spent enormous amounts of foreign currency trying to keep sterling at an inflated level. They’d have lost the money regardless of what Soros did.
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It was black anyway. On reflection I could say Lamont lost me money as he promised to save the pound.
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Ach Lamont! Dear God, there’s a name I’d forgotten. On the broader issue of Icke, it’s odd. I know a teacher on FE courses who recently had a student quote Icke as if he was the last word in making an argument legitimate. Which says something about the times we live in.
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Teacher is obviously a lizard from Rigel VII.
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🙂
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It’s interesting how certain ideas about our world that are dubious are promoted alongside ideas about our world that are almost certainly true. David Icke is a perfect example of this.
He’s the “wacky tin foil hat man” who mostly talks sh*te, but then some of what he says is actually true and accurate.
It’s a great way of confusing the masses, censoring informed debate and obfuscating the truth.
Let’s ask a fundamental question; What is the purpose of mass media?
Answer; To disseminate information.
But if only a tiny fraction of the information thrust in our faces is meaningful, what the point in the rest?
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What is the purpose of mass media?
To make money of course.
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I’s like the old line about a magazine – it’s a whole lot of adverts wrapping up a few pages of articles. Having worked in that area in the 90s in London that’s a lot more true than false.
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Wonder if the Daily Mail journalist, born in Co. Louth, who was ejected from a party at the Irish embassy in London for heckling the Ambassador’s speech said she was annoyed at his suggestion of a possible second Brexit referendum. was one of the lizard people?
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The Dept of Foreign Affairs are only good for heckling at.
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On folk like Icke I often wonder how much is sincere and how much is a sort of sustained self-interest and self-regard. Here’s a guy who had a public profile, and perhaps wanted a higher one. If you can find an audience – any audience – then for some that’s enough, it doesn’t much matter about the message. On a human level I’d actually have a bit of sympathy, lots of people want a bit of the limelight, in terms of the content that’s where the problem lies.
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I’ve seen shades of similar behavior in other people. As I understand Icke’s record: He lost a promising int. football career because he developed rheumatoid arthritis before 20 and and had to retire at 21. Given the nature of British society and that he was at best a low-mediocre student he didn’t have much else going for him.
Apparently, he started out just looking into alternative health and healing due to his RE, and that led him to anti-vaccination movements and New Age spirituality. (My Gosh, there are so darn many people in the UK, Ireland who are against vaccinations!! It’s even worse in France and some other European countries.) Then he went off the rails over time apparently.
What’s more disappointing than an English footballer moving to crazy town, is an acclaimed author going off the deep end.
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That’s true, I’d forgotten about the footballing background. It makes sense.
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And when people turn to alternative healing for a devastating illness often their belief in crazy things IS sincere, rather than just a game for attention.
One guy I knew who was into that (Obama’s rough cohort-a little younger), got into alternative medicine and progressively wackier beliefs over it.
The crazy irony was this. He had a lot of health problems because his parents didn’t believe in vaccines or antibiotics. (They didn’t belong to any religious group that encouraged these views, they were just in that gray-space between Appalachian culture his parents were raised in and the California marijuana growing one they had moved to). So as a result of measles he both developed a permanent neurological tic and deafness in one ear, and since measles sort of weakens the immune system for a few year he got permanent lung damage from Pertussis (again no vaccines), and rheumatic fever (no antibiotics), left him with a lot of joint and heart issues.
So his forays into alternative health and healing, made him MORE fanatical about being against vaccines than his parents had actually been. So his children being denied vaccines now.
He tried to convince me that true hypothyroidism didn’t exist except in very old women of Japanese extraction and diagnosing anyone else was “Big Pharma taking advantage of you.”
After that it only got stranger. He believed that the 1930’s Oklahoma dustbowl had never happened and was a communist lie. That the polio vaccine injects you what a computer chip so the government can track your every more.
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I’ve met some people who got into alternative healing for personal reasons and then ended up adopting crazier and crazier beliefs. For things like rheumatic fever complications, post-polio syndrome, Meniere’s, a parent with Huntington’s or whatever else.
Some of them do end up adopting very strange ideas down the road.
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Yes, the controlled Press will indeed promote him as its reverse psychology I.e further shame and demonise those of whom want to leave the EU. A bit like agent Tommy Robinson. Btw, Icke and is equivalent in the States, Alex Jones are controlled opposition imho. They muddy the waters of truth by introducing ludicrous stories into their sphere. Job done. If they were genuinely whistleblowers exposing govts’ corruption etc etc they’d have been introduced to the state’s tools sorta speak a long time ago.
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Well that’s sort of a strange conspiracy theory seeing how the UK is already leaving the EU.
To me it looks more symptomatic of the fact that much of the British press was more about creating a circus than informing people. Outside BBC and a few very right wing publications mucg of the rest is on par with a US rag known as “The Enquirer”-those who’ve traveled here may have seen it.
Alex Jones is just a maniac. He started out with an immature campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of Cali (albeit one with legitimate issues), and he just went off the rails over time.
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Well, me thinks you need to do a bit of research and get your facts right I.e the UK is endeavouring NOT to leave the EU hence the uproar by the genuine brexiteers at Terry May’s backstop agreement.
Btw, irish republicans know how ‘free’ the ‘free press’ is from past experience I.e not very free at all and woe betide anyone who rails against the State driven narrative.
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Presuming they CAN find a way to reverse Brexit. I’m not sure that’s possible. At this stage they could hold a second referendum-always a tricky choice. Otherwise they’d have to ignore the vote.
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They do not want to lose face and there is enough idiots there who think that its the 1950s when the UK could dictate prices for goods as they did with Ireland, Australia etc
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The deal Teresa May is proposing is not brexit. It might say it on the tin but it doesn’t do it.
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Or could the truth be that most of Brexit was based on unrealistic expectations from the get go?
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Nope. The ‘unrealistic expectations’ are designed and propagandised to ensure brexit is watered down and doesn’t happen.
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