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David Icke
Icke in 2013
Born	David Vaughan Icke (1952-04-29) 29 April 1952 (age 72) Leicester, England
Occupation(s)	Writer, public speaker
Known for	Conspiracy theories, television sports broadcasting, football
Television	BBC Sports, Newsnight, Breakfast Time, Grandstand (1980s)
Political party	Green Party (1988–1991)
Movement	New Age conspiracism
Spouse(s)	Linda Atherton (m. 1971–2001) Pamela Icke (m. 2001–2011)
Children	Four
Parent(s)	Beric Vaughan Icke; Barbara J. Icke, née Cooke
Website	www.davidicke.com

David Vaughan Icke (/aɪk/ born 29 April 1952) is an English writer and public speaker. A former professional footballer and sports broadcaster, Icke has been described as a professional conspiracy theorist; he calls himself a "full time investigator into who and what is really controlling the world." He is the author of over 20 books and numerous DVDs, and has lectured in over 25 countries, speaking for up to 10 hours to audiences that cut across the political spectrum.

Icke was a BBC television sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, when in 1990 a psychic told him he had been placed on Earth for a purpose and would start to receive messages from the spirit world. The following year he announced that he was a "Son of the Godhead", and that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes, a prediction he repeated on the BBC's primetime show Wogan. He said the show changed his life, turning him from a respected household name into someone who was laughed at whenever he appeared in public.

He continued nevertheless to develop his ideas, and in four books published over seven years—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)—he set out a worldview that combined New Age spiritualism with a denunciation of totalitarian trends in the modern world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that many prominent figures belong to the Babylonian Brotherhood, a group of shapeshifting reptilian humanoids who are propelling humanity toward a global fascist state. The reptilians use the rings of Saturn and the Moon, all reptilian constructs, to broadcast our "five-sense prison": an "artificial sense of self and the world" that humans perceive as reality.

Michael Barkun has described Icke's position as New Age conspiracism, writing that Icke is the most fluent of the genre. Richard Kahn and Tyson Lewis argue that Icke's reptilian hypothesis may be Swiftian satire, offering a narrative with which ordinary people can question what they see around them.

Early life

Family and education

Icke was born in Leicester General Hospital to Beric Vaughan Icke and Barbara J. Icke, née Cooke, who were married in Leicester in 1951. Icke was the middle child; there was a brother seven years older and another seven years younger. Beric Icke had wanted to be a doctor, but his family had no money, so he joined the Royal Air Force as a medical orderly instead. He was awarded a British Empire Medal for gallantry in 1943 after helping to save the crew of an aircraft that had crashed into the Chipping Warden air base in Northamptonshire. Along with a squadron leader, he ran into the burning aircraft, without protective clothing, and saved the life of a crew member who was trapped inside.

Beric Icke became a clerk in the Gents clock factory after the war, and the family lived in a terraced house on Lead Street, near Wharf Street in the centre of Leicester. When Icke was three, they moved to a housing estate known as the Goodwood, one of the 1950s council estates the post-war Labour government built. "To say we were skint," he wrote in 1993, "is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole." He recalls having to hide under a window or chair when the council man came to collect the rent; after knocking, the rent man would walk around the house peering through the windows to see whether anyone was at home. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told him to hide. Icke wrote in 2003 that he would still get a fright when someone knocked on the door.

He was always a loner, spending hours playing with toy steam trains, preferring to cross the street rather than speak to anyone. He attended Whitehall Infant School, then Whitehall Junior School, where he spent most of his time feeling nervous and shy, often to the point of almost fainting during the morning assembly and having to leave before he passed out. The family doctor suggested a referral to a child psychologist, but his father refused.

Football

Icke made no effort at school, but when he was nine, he was chosen for the junior school's third-year football team. It was the first time he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as his way out of poverty. He played in goal, which he wrote suited the loner in him and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain.

After failing his 11-plus exam in 1963, he was sent to the city's Crown Hills Secondary Modern (rather than the local grammar school), where he was given a trial for the Leicester Boys Under-Fourteen team. He left school at 15 after being talent-spotted by Coventry City, who signed him up in 1967 as their youth team's goalkeeper. He also played for Oxford United's reserve team and Northampton Town, on loan from Coventry.

Rheumatoid arthritis in his left knee, which later spread to the right knee, ankles, elbows, wrists and hands, stopped him from making a career out of football. Despite often being in agony during training, he managed to play part-time for Hereford United, including in the first team when they were in the Fourth Division of the English Football League, and when they were promoted to Division Three. He was earning up to ₤33 a week. In 1973, at the age of 21, the pain in his joints forced him to retire.

First marriage

Icke met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa; she was working as a van driver for a garage. Shortly after they met, Icke had another of the huge rows he had started having with his father—always a domineering man, his father was upset that Icke's arthritis was interfering with his football career—so he packed his bags and left home. He moved into a bedsit and worked in a travel agency, travelling to Hereford twice a week in the evenings to play football.

He and Atherton were married on 30 September that year, four months after they met. A daughter arrived in March 1975, followed by one son in December 1981 and another in November 1992. The couple divorced in 2001 but remained good friends, and Atherton continued to work as Icke's business manager.

Journalism, sports broadcasting

The loss of Icke's position with Hereford meant that he and his wife had to sell their home, and for several weeks they lived apart, each moving in with their parents. In 1973 Icke found a job as a reporter with the weekly Leicester Advertiser, through a contact who was a sports editor at the Daily Mail. He moved on to the Leicester News Agency, and through them did some work for BBC Radio Leicester as their football reporter, then worked his way up through the Loughborough Monitor, the Leicester Mercury, and BRMB Radio in Birmingham.

He worked for two months in Saudi Arabia in 1976, helping with their national football team. It was supposed to be a longer-term position, but he missed his wife and new daughter and decided not to return after his first holiday back to the UK. BRMB gave him his job back, after which he successfully applied to Midlands Today at the BBC's Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, a job that included on-air appearances. One of the earliest stories he covered for them was the murder of Carl Bridgewater, the paperboy who was shot during a robbery.

In 1981 Icke became a sports presenter for the BBC's national programme, Newsnight, which had just started. Two years later, on 17 January 1983, he appeared on the first edition of the BBC's Breakfast Time, British television's first national breakfast show, and presented the sports news for them until 1985, which meant getting up at two o'clock in the morning five days a week. In the summer of 1983 he achieved his ambition when he began co-hosting Grandstand, at the time the BBC's flagship national sports programme. He also published his first book that year, It's a Tough Game, Son!, about how to break into football.

Icke and his family moved in 1982 to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, somewhere he had always wanted to live. He continued working for BBC Sport until 1990, often on bowls and snooker programmes, and at the 1988 Summer Olympics; he had stopped presenting Grandstand in 1983 when a new editor took over who appeared not to like him. Icke was by then a household name, but despite his professional success, a career in television began to lose its appeal. He wrote in Tales from the Time Loop (2003) that he found television workers insecure, shallow and sometimes vicious. In August 1990 his contract with the BBC was terminated when he refused to pay his Community Charge, a controversial local tax introduced that year by Margaret Thatcher. He did end up paying it, but his announcement that he was willing to go to jail rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.

New Age interests

Green Party, meeting with Betty Shine

Icke had begun to flirt with fringe medicine and New Age philosophies in the 1980s in an effort to find relief from his arthritis, and this encouraged his interest in Green politics. Within six months of joining the Green Party, he was given a position as one of its four Principal Speakers, positions created in lieu of a single leader. The Observer called him "the Greens' Tony Blair".

His second book, It Doesn't Have To Be Like This, an outline of his views on the environment, was published in 1989, and he was regularly invited to high-profile events. That year he discussed animal rights during a televised debate at the Royal Institute of Great Britain, alongside Tom Regan, Mary Warnock and Germaine Greer, and in 1990 his name appeared on advertisements for a children's charity, along with Audrey Hepburn, Woody Allen and other celebrities.

Despite his success, Icke wrote that 1989 was a time of considerable personal despair for him, and it was during this period that he said he began to feel a presence around him. In March 1990, in a newsagent's in Ryde, he felt a force pulling his feet to the ground, he wrote, and heard a voice guide him to a particular section of books. One of the books was Mind to Mind (1989) by Betty Shine, a psychic healer in Brighton. He read the book, then wrote to her requesting a consultation about his arthritis.

Icke visited Shine four times. During the third meeting, on 29 March 1990, Shine told him she had a message from the spirit world. He had been sent to heal the Earth, she said, and would become famous but would face opposition. The spirit world was going to pass ideas to him, which he would speak about to others. He would write five books in three years; in 20 years a new flying machine would allow us to go wherever we wanted and time would have no meaning; and there would be earthquakes in unusual places, because the inner earth was being destabilized by having oil taken from the seabed.

In February 1991 Icke visited a pre-Inca Sillustani burial ground near Puno, Peru. He felt drawn to a particular circle of waist-high stones. As he stood in the circle, he had two thoughts: that people would be talking about this in 100 years, and that it would be over when it rained. His body shook as though plugged into an electrical socket, he wrote, and new ideas poured into him. Then it started raining and the experience ended. He described it as the kundalini (a term from Indian yoga) activating his chakras, or energy centres, triggering a higher level of consciousness.

Turquoise period

There followed what Icke called his "turquoise period". He had been channelling for some time, he wrote, and had received a message through automatic writing that he was a "Son of the Godhead", interpreting "Godhead" as the "Infinite Mind". He began to wear only turquoise, often a turquoise shell suit, a colour he saw as a conduit for positive energy. He also started working on his third book, and the first of his New-Age period, published in May 1991 as The Truth Vibrations.

In August 1990, before his visit to Peru, Icke had met Deborah Shaw, an English psychic living in Calgary, Alberta. After he returned to England from Peru they began a relationship, with the apparent blessing of Icke's wife. In March 1991 Shaw began living with the couple, a short-lived arrangement that the press called the "turquoise triangle". Shaw changed her name to Mari Shawsun, while Icke's wife became Michaela, which she said was an aspect of the Archangel Michael.

The relationship with Shaw led to the birth of a daughter in December 1991, although she and Icke had stopped seeing each other by then. Icke wrote in 1993 that he decided not to visit his daughter and had seen her only once, at the request of Shaw. Icke's wife gave birth to the couple's second son in November 1992.

Press conference

In March 1991 Icke resigned from the Green Party during a party conference, telling them he was about to be at the centre of "tremendous and increasing controversy", and winning a standing ovation from them after the announcement. A week later, shortly after his father died, Icke, his wife Linda Atherton, their daughter, and Deborah Shaw held a press conference to announce that Icke was a son of the Godhead. He told reporters the world would end in 1997, preceded by several disasters, including a hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran. Los Angeles would become an island, New Zealand would disappear, and the cliffs of Kent would be under water by Christmas. The information was being given to them by voices and automatic writing, he said.

Icke wrote in 1993 that he felt out of control during the press conference; he heard his voice predict the end of the world and was appalled. "I was speaking the words, but all the time I could hear the voice of the brakes in the background saying, 'David, what the hell are you saying?'". His predictions were splashed all over the next day's front pages, to his great dismay.

Wogan interview

The headlines attracted requests for interviews, including from Nicky Campbell for BBC Radio One, Terry Wogan for his prime-time Wogan show, and Fern Britton for her ITV chat show. The Wogan interview, on 29 April 1991, was the most damaging. (Wogan interviewed Icke again in 2006, acknowledging that his comments had been "a bit sharp".) Wogan introduced the segment with "The world as we know it is about to end." Amid laughter from the audience, Icke prevaricated when asked if he was the son of God, replying that Jesus would have been laughed at too, and repeating that Britain would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes. When Icke said laughter was the best way to remove negativity, Wogan said of the audience: "But they're laughing at you. They're not laughing with you."

The interview proved devastating for Icke; the BBC was criticized for allowing it to go ahead. Des Christy of The Guardian called it a "media crucifixion". Nancy Banks-Smith commented on the influence of the sports commentator on Icke's presentation, describing him as "a religious leader who talks the garbled jargon of Saturday sport."

Icke disappeared from public life for a time, unable to walk down the street without people mocking him. His children were followed to school by journalists and ridiculed by schoolmates, and his wife would open the back door to get the washing in only to find a camera crew filming her. In May 1991 police were called to the couple's home after a crowd of over 100 youths gathered outside, chanting "We want the Messiah" and "Give us a sign, David." Icke told Jon Ronson in 2001:

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.

Writing and lecturing

Icke wrote that the Wogan interview set every bridge to his past ablaze. It was the making of him in the end, he wrote in 2003, giving him the courage to develop his ideas without caring what anyone thought. His book The Truth Vibrations was published in May 1991, and he continued to write, turning himself into a popular author and speaker.

In 1995 his publishers turned down his latest manuscript, And the Truth Shall Set You Free. The allegations he was making meant that "he horizon was filled with disappearing backsides and clouds of dust, and, for all I know, they may still be running." He borrowed ₤15,000 from a friend and set up Bridge of Love Publications, later called David Icke Books, and with the help of others, including the artist Neil Hague, he self-published that book and all his work since. He wrote in 2004 that And the Truth was one of his proudest achievements.

According to Lewis and Kahn, Icke produced a consolidation of all conspiracy theories into one project with unlimited explanatory power. The Biggest Secret was reprinted six times between 1999 and 2006, and Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (2002) became a long-standing top-five bestseller in South Africa. By 2006 he had lectured in 25 countries, attracting audiences of several thousand each time, his books had been translated into eight languages, and his website was getting 600,000 hits a week.

He became known in particular for his lengthy lectures. He lectured for seven hours to 2,500 people at the Brixton Academy, London, in 2008, and the same year addressed the Oxford Union, the University of Oxford's debating society. His book tour for Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010) encompassed lectures in Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands and the United States, and ended in October 2012 with a ten-hour lecture at London's Wembley Arena.

Personal life, politics

In 1997 Icke met his second wife, Pamela Leigh Richards, in Jamaica. He and Linda Atherton divorced in 2001, and he and Richards were married the same year. The couple separated in 2008 and divorced in 2011.

Icke stood for parliament in the 2008 by-election for Haltemprice and Howden (an East Yorkshire constituency), on the issue of "Big Brother—The Big Picture". He came 12th, with 110 votes (0.46%), resulting in a lost deposit. He explained that he was standing because "if we don't face this now we are going to have some serious explaining to do when we are asked by our children and grandchildren what we were doing when the global fascist state was installed. 'I was watching EastEnders, dear' will not be good enough."

Key ideas

Overview

Icke combines New Age philosophical discussion about the universe and collective consciousness with conspiracy theories about public figures being reptiles and paedophiles. He argues in favour of reincarnation; acquired characteristics; a collective consciousness that has intentionality; modal realism (that other possible worlds exist alongside ours); and the law of attraction (that good and bad thoughts can attract experiences).

In The Biggest Secret (1999), he introduced the idea, adapted from the work of the Russian-American writer Zecharia Sitchin, that many prominent figures derive from the Anunnaki, a reptilian race from the Draco constellation, In Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2012), he identified the Moon (and later Saturn) as the source of holographic experiences, broadcast by the reptiles, that humanity interprets as reality.

Reptoid hypothesis

Icke argues that humanity has been genetically manipulated by an ancient race of bloodlines from the Middle and Near East, the "Babylonian Brotherhood", known throughout history as the Illuminati, and originally extraterrestrial. He briefly introduced the extraterrestial hypothesis in The Robot's Rebellion (1994), some of it citing Bill Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse (1991), and expanded it in And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995).

In The Biggest Secret (1999), Icke identified the Brotherhood as descendants of reptilians from the constellation Draco, who live in caverns inside the earth. They are the race of gods known as the Anunnaki in the Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš. They are also the Watchers, the fallen angels who mated with human women in the Biblical apocrypha. The first reptilian-human breeding programmes took place 200,000–300,000 years ago (perhaps creating Adam), and the third (and latest) 7,000 years ago. The hybrids of the third programme, more Anunnaki than human, today control the world. Their mixed background allows them to shapeshift from reptile to human.

The Brotherhood created and controls the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, Round Table, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Club of Rome, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group, as well as the media, military, CIA, Mossad, science, religion and the Internet, with witting or unwitting support from the London School of Economics.

As of 2003 the reptilian bloodline encompassed 43 American presidents, three British and two Canadian prime ministers, several Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs, and a smattering of celebrities, including Bob Hope, Chris Christopherson and Boxcar Willie. Key bloodlines are the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, various European aristocratic families, the establishment families of the Eastern United States, and the British House of Windsor. Icke confirmed to Andrew Neil in May 2016 that he believes the British Royal Family are shapeshifting lizards. He identified the Queen Mother in 2001 as "seriously reptilian", and said he had seen Ted Heath's eyes turn black while the two waited for a Sky News interview in 1989. Lewis and Kahn argue that Icke is using allegory to depict the alien, and alienating, nature of global capitalism. Icke has said he is not using allegory.

At the apex of the Brotherhood stands the Global Elite, and at the top of the Global Elite are the Prison Wardens. The goal of the Brotherhood, their "Great Work of Ages", is a microchipped population and fascist world government.

Monatomic gold, Nordics

Icke took his ancient-astronaut narrative from Zecharia Sitchin, who argued that the Anunnaki had come to Earth for its precious metals. Icke maintains that they came for monatomic gold, a non-existent mineral (only gases can exist in a monatomic state) that, he writes, increases the capacity of the nervous system ten thousandfold. After ingesting it, the reptilians can process vast amounts of information, speed up trans-dimensional travel, and shapeshift from reptilian to human, he writes.

In Children of the Matrix (2001), Icke added that the Anunnaki bred with another extraterrestrial race, the Nordics, who had blond hair and blue eyes, to produce a race of human slave masters, the Aryans. The Aryans retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes, a desire for top-down control, and an obsession with ritual, lending them a tendency toward fascism, rationalism and racism. Lewis and Kahn argue that, with the Nordic hypothesis, Icke is reflecting standard claims by the far right that the Aryan bloodline has "ruled the planet throughout history".

Dimensions

The reptilians not only come from another planet, but are also from another dimension, the lower level of the fourth dimension (the "lower astral dimension"), the one nearest the physical world. Barkun argues that the introduction of different dimensions allows Icke to skip awkward questions about how the reptilians got here. Icke writes that the universe consists of an infinite number of dimensions that share the same space, just like television and radio frequencies. Some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths, and it is from one of these other dimensions that the Anunnaki control the planet, although just as fourth-dimensional reptilians control us, they in turn are controlled by a fifth dimension.

Problem–reaction–solution

Icke writes that the Brotherhood uses human anxiety as energy. "Thus we have the encouragement of wars," he wrote in 1999, "human genocide, the mass slaughter of animals, sexual perversions which create highly charged negative energy, and black magic ritual and sacrifice which takes place on a scale that will stagger those who have not studied the subject."

In Tales From The Time Loop (2003), Icke argues that the reptilians created religious, racial, ethnic and sexual division to divide and conquer humanity. He cites the Oklahoma City bombing and September 11 attacks as events organized by the Global Elite. The incidents allow the reptilians to respond in whatever way they intended to act in the first place, a concept Icke calls "order out of chaos" or "problem–reaction–solution". One of their methods is to create fake opposites, or "opposames", such as the Axis and Allied powers of World War II. The movement of societies toward totalitarianism because of these conflicts he calls "totalitarian tiptoe".

Red Dresses

In Infinite Love is the Only Truth (2005), Icke introduces his three categories of people. The highest level of the Brotherhood are the Red Dresses. These are "software people" or "reptilian software". They lack consciousness and free will, and their human bodies are holographic veils. A second group, the "sheeple" (the vast majority of humanity), are conscious, but do as they are told and are the Brotherhood's main energy source. They include the "repeaters", people in positions of influence who repeat what other people tell them; he cites doctors, teachers and journalists as examples.

The third group, by far the smallest, are those who see through the illusion; they are usually dubbed dangerous or mad. The Red Dress genetic lines interbreed obsessively to make sure their bloodlines are not weakened by the second or third levels of consciousness, because consciousness can rewrite the software.

Saturn–Moon Matrix

The Moon Matrix is introduced in Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010), in which Icke suggests that the Earth and collective human mind are manipulated from the Moon, a spacecraft and inter-dimensional portal controlled by the reptilians. The Moon Matrix is a broadcast from that spacecraft to the human body–computer, specifically to the left hemisphere of the brain, which gives us our sense of reality: "We are living in a dreamworld within a dreamworld—a Matrix within the virtual-reality universe—and it is being broadcast from the Moon." Unless people force themselves to become fully conscious, their minds are the Moon's mind.

This idea is further explored in Icke's Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From (2012), where he introduces the concept of the "Saturn–Moon Matrix". In this more recent conceptualization, the rings of Saturn (which Icke believes were artificially created by reptilian spacecraft) are the ultimate source of the signal, while the Moon is merely a sort of amplifier.

Reception

Academic views

Icke has emerged as a professional conspiracy theorist and prominent member of a global counter-cultural movement combining New World Order conspiracism, the truther movement and anti-globalization, with an extraterrestial conspiracy theory subculture (Roswell, alien abduction, crop circles, Men in Black, The X-Files). His audiences consist of all ages and political persuasions, from the far-right Christian Patriots to the New Age movement. Barkun categorizes Icke as a New Age conspiracist, describing his work as "improvisational millennialism", with an end-of-history scenario involving a final battle between good and evil. Because everything is connected in the conspiracist world view, every source is mined for links.

As a result of Icke's prominence, public figures are now regularly asked whether they are lizards. An Official Information Act request was filed in New Zealand in 2008 to ask this of John Key, the prime minister. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was asked the same during a livestreamed Q&A in June 2016. (Both men said they were not lizards. Key added that he had taken the unusual step of consulting not only a doctor but a vet.) In a 2013 survey in the United States by Public Policy Polling, four percent believed that "'lizard people' control our societies by gaining political power".

According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Icke preaches a message of love and enlightenment, but The Robots' Rebellion (1994) contains "all the familiar beliefs and paranoid clichés" of the US conspiracists and militia: aliens, mind control, gun-control fears and secret societies. Barkun argues that Icke has actively tried to cultivate the radical right. "There is no fuller explication of beliefs about ruling elites than Icke's," according to Barkun. In 1996 Icke spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (which mandates background checks on people who buy guns in the United States), including Kirk Lyons, a white nationalist lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux Klan. Icke regards Christian patriots as the only Americans who understand the New World Order, writes Barkun, but he also told a Christian patriot group: "I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to replace it with."

Lewis and Kahn note an almost obsessive-compulsive element to Icke's writing, which includes anything he can find to support a narrative with unlimited explanatory power. They suggest the lizards may be allegorical, a Swiftian satire used to alert readers to the emergence of a global fascist state. Relying on Douglas Kellner's distinction in Media Spectacle (1995) between a reactionary clinical paranoia and a progressive "critical paranoia" that confronts power, they argue that Icke displays elements of both, and that his "postmodern metanarrative" may be a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure within which to question what they see around them.

Use of the Protocols

In The Robots' Rebellion (1994), Icke introduced the idea that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic tract first published in Russia in 1903, which puported to present a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world. After the Protocols was exposed as a hoax by The Times of London in 1920, it disappeared from mainstream discourse, Barkun writes, until interest in it was renewed by the American far right in the 1950s. Icke refers to the Protocols 25 times in the Robot's Rebellion, calling it the "Illuminati protocols". Barkun argues that this is the first of several instances of Icke moving close to antisemitism.

Icke's use of the Protocols was greeted with dismay by the Green Party's executive. They had allowed him to address the party's annual conference in 1992, despite the controversy over his Wogan interview, but in September 1994 they decided to deny him a platform. Icke wrote to the Guardian that month denying that The Robots' Rebellion was antisemitic, and rejecting racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind, while insisting that whoever had written the Protocols "knew the game plan" for the 20th century.

According to Alick Bartholomew of Gateway, Icke's former publisher, an early draft of And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995) contained material questioning the Holocaust; Icke was dropped because of it. Having read the material, Sam Taylor of the Observer argued in 1997 that it was not antisemitic, but that Icke was "tapping into a seriously paranoid, aggressive strain in U.S. society". Icke was briefly detained by immigration officials in Canada in 2000, after complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress. His books were removed from Indigo Books, a Canadian chain, and several stops on his speaking tour were cancelled, as was a lecture at Blackheath Halls in London.

Icke has strongly denied that his work is antisemitic, arguing that it is "friggin' nonsense" that the reptiles represent Jews. "There is a tribe of people interbreeding," he told Jon Ronson in 2001, "which do not, do not, relate to any Earth race ... This is not a Jewish plot. This is not a plot on the world by Jewish people." British writer David G. Robertson argued that Icke clearly did not intend the reptiles to represent Jews because he identified non-Jews as reptilian too, and at times described the reptiles as Aryan; Robertson maintained that to claim Icke refers to Jews when he writes about reptilians requires conspiratorial thinking in itself. Louis Theroux cautioned that it might not only be unfair to Icke to allege that he is associating Jews with the Global Elite, but also that it lends a seriousness to ideas that would otherwise not deserve it.

In popular fiction

Icke's ideas inspired Mark Millar's creation of the Chitauri, alien shapeshifters who appear in The Ultimates comic book series and in the 2012 film The Avengers.

Selected works

Books

• (1983) It's a Tough Game, Son!, London: Piccolo Books. ISBN 0-330-28047-3
• (1989) It Doesn't Have To Be Like This: Green Politics Explained, London: Green Print. ISBN 1-85425-033-7
• (1991) The Truth Vibrations, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-006-5
• (1992) Love Changes Everything, London: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 1-85538-247-4
• (1993) In the Light of Experience: The Autobiography of David Icke, London: Warner Books. ISBN 0-7515-0603-6
• (1993) Days of Decision, London: Jon Carpenter Publishing. ISBN 1-897766-01-7
• (1993) Heal the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-005-7
• (1994) The Robot's Rebellion, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-022-7
• (1995) ... And the Truth Shall Set You Free, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-5-9
• (1996) I Am Me, I Am Free: The Robot's Guide to Freedom, New York: Truth Seeker. ISBN 0-9526147-5-8
• (1998) Lifting the Veil: David Icke interviewed by Jon Rappoport. New York: Truth Seeker. ISBN 0-939040-05-0
• (1999) The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9526147-6-6
• (2001) Children of the Matrix, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-1-6
• (2002) Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-2-4
• (2003) Tales from the Time Loop, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-4-0
• (2005) Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-6-7
• (2007) The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy (and how to end it), Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9538810-8-6
• (2010) Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9559973-1-0
• (2012) Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 0-9559973-3-X
• (2013) The Perception Deception: Or ... It's All Bollocks — Yes, All of It, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-955997389
• (2016) Phantom Self (And how to find the real one), Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9576308-8-8

Videos

• (1994) The Robots' Rebellion
• (1996) Turning of the Tide
• (1998) The Freedom Road
• (1999) David Icke: The Reptilian Agenda, with Zulu Sanusi (Shaman) Credo Mutwa
• (1999) David Icke: Revelations of a Mother Goddess, with Arizona Wilder
• (2000) David Icke Live in Vancouver: From Prison to Paradise
• (2003) Secrets of the Matrix
• (2006) Freedom or Fascism: The Time to Choose
• (2008) David Icke Live at the Oxford Union Debating Society on YouTube
• (2008) Beyond the Cutting Edge'
• (2008) David Icke: Big Brother, the BIG Picture on YouTube
• (2010) The Lion Sleeps No More
• (2012) Return to Peru
• (2012) David Icke Live at Wembley Arena

Notes

1. Reptilian figures include George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie
2. 1479714 Leading Aircraftman Beric Vaughan Icke, Royal Air Force, The London Gazette, 14 May 1943: "One night in March, 1943, an aircraft crashed on a Royal Air Force station and immediately burst into flames. Squadron Leader Moore (the duty medical officer) saw the accident and, accompanied by Leading Aircraftman Icke, a medical orderly, proceeded to the scene. Squadron Leader Moore directed the removal of the rear gunner, who was dazed and sitting amongst the burning wreckage, to a place of safety. The aircraft was now enveloped in flames and ammunition was exploding. Nevertheless, despite the intense heat and the danger from exploding oxygen bottles this officer and airman entered the burning wreckage in an attempt to rescue another member of the crew who was pinned down. Without any protective clothing they lifted aside the burning wreckage and, with great difficulty, succeeded in extricating the injured man. Squadron Leader Moore rendered first aid to the rescued man. Squadron Leader Moore sustained burns to his chest and hands in carrying out the operation. This officer and airman both displayed courage and devotion to duty in keeping with the highest traditions of the Royal Air Force."Acting Squadron Leader Frederick Thomas Moore, B.S., F.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (23417), Reserve of Air Force Officers, was awarded the MBE for his part in this action."

References

1. ^ Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 103.
2. Michael Barkun, Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011, 72.
3. ^ "Biography 1", davidickebooks.co.uk, accessed 8 June 2011 (archived).
4. ^ Tyson E. Lewis, Richard Kahn, Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 75.
5. David G. Robertson, UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016, 121.
6. David Icke, In the Light of Experience, London: Warner Books, 1993, 192–194.
7. Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures with Extremists, London: Simon & Schuster, 2001, 152–154.
8. ^ "David Icke: Was He Right?", Channel 5, 12 December 2006, from 00:02:20.
9. ^ "David Icke on 9/11 and lizards in Buckingham Palace theories", This Week, BBC (video), 20 May 2016, 00:04:02.
10. Will Offley, "Selected Quotes Of David Icke", Political Research Associates, 23 February 2000.
11. ^ Jon Ronson, "Beset by lizards (part one)"; "Beset by lizards (part two)", The Guardian, 17 March 2001, edited extracts from Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures with Extremists.
12. For Saturn and the Moon, David Icke, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2010, 34ff, and David Icke, Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2012.
13. For "five-sense prison," David Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications, 2003, 462.
14. Barkun 2003, 98; 103ff, 163.
15. Lewis and Kahn 2010, 73ff, 83.
16. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 28–30.
17. "1479714 Leading Aircraftman Beric Vaughan Icke, Royal Air Force", The London Gazette, 14 May 1943.
18. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 29, 33.
19. ^ David Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications, 2003, 2–3.
20. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 36, 38.
21. David Icke Coventry City
22. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 39–40.
23. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 44, 46.
24. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 54, 58 (for Oxford).
25. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 66–69.
26. David Icke, Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2012, 4.
27. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 69–73.
28. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 61–63.
29. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 61.
30. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 82, 96, 253–254.
31. Robertson 2016, 139–140, 147.
32. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 72, 75.
33. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 78.
34. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 79, 81, 83.
35. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 85–86.
36. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 88–91.
37. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 91–92.
38. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 93–95, 99–100.
39. David Icke filmography, British Film Institute, accessed 20 September 2014.
40. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 98.
41. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 109.
42. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 104.
43. Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, 7.
44. "Protester David Icke finally pays community charge," The Guardian, 14 November 1990.
45. ^ Maev Kennedy, "Icke resigns Green Speaker and parliamentary roles," The Guardian, 20 March 1991.
46. David Icke, Truth Vibrations, London: Gateway, 1991, 3.
47. ^ Sam Taylor, "So I was in this bar with the son of God ...," The Observer, 20 April 1997.
48. David Icke, "Does the Animal Kingdom need a Bill of Rights?", Royal Institute of Great Britain, 1989.
49. Weekend Guardian, 22–23 September 1990.
50. Icke, Days of Decision, 19.
51. "The 10 worst decisions in the history of sport", The Observer, 12 January 2003.
52. Icke, The Truth Vibrations, 4.
53. For the date and predictions, "Biography 2", davidickebooks.co.uk, accessed 12 December 2010 (archived).
54. Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, 12–13, 16.
55. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 190, 208.
56. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 192.
57. Robertson 2016, 130.
58. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 223, 254.
59. Robertson 2016, 134–135.
60. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 188 for his father; 192–193 for the press conference.
61. Robertson 2016, 130–131.
62. John Ezard, "'Son and daughter of God' predict apocalypse is nigh," The Guardian, 28 March 1991.
63. Icke, In the Light of Experience, 192–193.
64. ^ Robertson 2016, 131.
65. ^ "Wogan, Now and Then", BBC, 2006.
66. "David Icke on Wogan", BBC, 29 April 1991, courtesy of YouTube.
67. Ronson 2001, 154.
68. "The day David Icke told Terry Wogan 'I'm the son of God'", The Daily Telegraph, 29 April 2016.
69. Des Christy, "Crucifixion, courtesy of the BBC," The Guardian, 6 May 1991.
70. Nancy Banks-Smith, "Prophet with a cauliflower ear," The Guardian, 1 May 1991.
71. "Icke taunted," The Times, 27 May 1991.
72. Ronson 2001, 173.
73. Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, 26.
74. Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, 14, 17.
75. ^ "David Icke: Was He Right?", Channel 5, 12 December 2006.
76. Icke, And the Truth Shall Set You Free, Introduction to 21st century edition.
77. ^ Paul Doyle, "David Icke", The Guardian, 17 February 2006.
78. "David Icke: Beyond the Cutting Edge (2008)", IMDb.
79. Paul Evans, "Interview: David Icke", New Statesman, 3 March 2008.
80. Oliver Marre, "Pendennis", The Observer, 20 January 2008.
81. David Icke, "David Icke Live at the Oxford Union Debating Society", produced by Linda Atherton, Commonage, February 2008.
82. For ten hours in London, Robertson 2016, 146.
83. Robertson 2016, 139–140.
84. Robertson 2016, 147.
85. "Haltemprice and Howden: Result in full", BBC News, 11 July 2008.
86. Martin Wainwright, Allegra Stratton and agencies, "Haltemprice and Howden byelection: Davis sees off Loonies and claims victory in 42-day detention battle", The Guardian, 11 July 2008.
87. "David ICKE stood for the None (No Party)", VoteWise, accessed 12 December 2010.
88. Philippe Naughton, "Reptilians beware – David Icke is back!", The Times, 27 June 2008.
89. For law of attraction, Icke, Children of the Matrix, 291ff, and The Biggest Secret, 30–40. For other possible worlds, Icke, The Biggest Secret, 26–27. For DNA, Icke, Infinite Love is the Only Truth, 78–84, 148.
90. Icke, The Biggest Secret, 5–9.
91. ^ David Icke, Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2012.
92. Barkun 2003, 105.
93. Icke, The Biggest Secret, 52ff.
94. Robertson 2016, 138.
95. ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity, New York University Press, 2003, 291.
96. Robertson 2016, 140ff.
97. Icke, The Biggest Secret, 19–25.
98. ^ Icke, The Biggest Secret, 40.
99. Icke, The Biggest Secret, 43.
100. Icke, Children of the Matrix, 339. For London School of Economics, Icke, Human Race Get off Your Knees, 134, 646, and Jonathan Kay, Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground, HarperCollins, 2011, 180.
101. ^ Lewis and Kahn 2010, 83.
102. ^ Barkun 2003, 104.
103. David Icke, "This much I know", interviewed by Ben Mitchell, The Observer, 22 January 2006.
104. ^ Lewis and Kahn 2010, 82.
105. Robertson 2016, 150–151.
106. Icke, The Biggest Secret, 30.
107. Lewis and Kahn 2010, 81.
108. Icke, Children of the Matrix, 19, 79, 251.
109. ^ Icke, The Biggest Secret, 26–27.
110. ^ Barkun 2003, 106.
111. Kay 2011, 72, 179–180.
112. Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, 2002, 154, 205.
113. David Icke, "Problem-reaction-solution", News for the Soul, accessed 12 December 2010.
114. ^ Robertson 2016, 139.
115. ^ Icke, Infinite Love is the Only Truth, 78–84, 148.
116. David Icke, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2010, 618, 627, 632.
117. For professional conspiracy theorist, Barkun 2011, 72.
118. Barkun 2003, 106–108.
119. Ben Guarino, "‘I am not a lizard’: Mark Zuckerberg is latest celebrity asked about reptilian conspiracy", The Washington Post, 15 June 2016.
120. "Conspiracy Theory Poll Results", Public Policy Polling, 2 April 2013.
121. Paul Harris, "One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says", The Guardian, 2 April 2013.
122. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity, New York University Press, 2003, 290–291.
123. Barkun 2003, 98; 106–107.
124. Barkun 2003, 108.
125. Barkun 2003, 107.
126. Tyson Lewis, Richard Kahn, "The Reptoid Hypothesis: Utopian and Dystopian Representational Motifs in David Icke's Alien Conspiracy Theory," Utopian Studies, 16(1), Spring 2005 (45–74), 52. JSTOR 20718709
127. Lewis and Kahn 2010, 88ff; Lewis and Kahn 2005, 55–56.
128. Jon Ronson, "David Icke, the Lizards, and the Jews", Channel 4, 6 May 2001, 00:06:12.
129. ^ Barkun 2003, 48–50, 145–146.
130. ^ Mark Honigsbaum, "The Dark Side of David Icke", London Evening Standard, 26 May 1995.
131. Also see Norman Simms, "Anti-Semitism: A Psychopathological Disease," in Jerry S. Piven, Chris Boyd, Henry W. Lawton (eds.), Judaism and Genocide: Psychological Undercurrents of History, Volume IV, Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2002, 30ff.
132. "Greens bar Icke", The Independent, 12 September 1994.
133. Vivek Chaudhary, "Greens see red at 'Son of God's anti-Semitism'," The Guardian, 12 September 1994.
134. Stephen Goodwin, "Icke factor could thwart Greens' serious message", The Independent, 29 September 1994.
135. David Icke, "Down but speaking out among the Greens," letters to the editor, The Guardian, 14 September 1994.
136. Barkun 2003, 144.
137. Frances Kraft, "New Age speaker set to talk in Toronto", The Canadian Jewish News, 7 October 1999.
138. Jason Cowley, "The Icke Files", The Independent on Sunday, 1 October 2000.
139. Ronson (Channel 4) 2001, 00:04:26.
140. Robertson 2016, 151.
141. Louis Theroux, "Stranger than fiction", The Guardian, 7 April 2001.
142. Alex Godfrey, "Kick-Ass 2: Mark Millar's superhero powers", The Guardian, 8 August 2013.

Further reading

• Official website
• David Icke at IMDb
• Banyan, Will. "The Big Picture: David Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster" (pdf), Paranoia Magazine, October 2003.
• Kay, Jonathan. "When paranoia goes intergalactic", The National Post, 12 May 2011.

Video

• Britton, Fern. Interview with David Icke, ITV, 1991.
• Icke, David. Presenting snooker, BBC, 1980s.
• Icke, David. "Does the Animal Kingdom need a Bill of Rights?", Royal Institute of Great Britain, Arena, BBC 2, 1989.
• Icke, David. "Live at the Oxford Union", February 2008.
• Icke, David. "Still crazy after all these years", from The Lion Sleeps No More DVD, 2010.
• Maher, Bill. Interview with David Icke, Religulous, 2008.

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